If you think about it, we
talk a lot in the church about what a unifying figure Jesus is. We see him
chiefly as someone whose love is a like wide circle, whose grace constantly
extends to welcome more and more people. We admire how Jesus includes everyone,
finding space in his community for the repulsive leper, the despised Samaritan,
and even the uptight Pharisee—people we would probably exclude or despise, had
we lived back then. Jesus even dies praying for forgiveness for the people who
nail him to the cross. Jesus is all about unity, it seems, a unity grounded in
the wonderful things Jesus brings to us—things like peace, and love, and joy.
In fact, during the Sundays
of Advent many congregations often use an Advent wreath with four candles to
symbolize some of the gifts that Jesus brings. As a child I learned that one
candle, for example, was the “peace” candle, because the angels would sing at
his birth of the wonderful peace on earth and goodwill toward humankind that
would follow his reign on earth. The other candles were lit to represent joy,
love, and hope, all fabulous and fantastic and friendly things we want from a
unifying, all-embracing Jesus.
However, based on what Jesus
himself says today in Luke’s gospel as he talks to his disciples about the
expectations his kingdom has for the earth, we might need to re-think that
Advent wreath this year. It sounds like we need to get rid of the peace candle
and replace it with the division
candle! “Do you think I have come to
bring peace to the earth?” Jesus asks, clearly fired up at his disciples. “No, I tell you, but rather division!” We
may need to rename not just a candle, but maybe re-think the whole idea of
candles, themselves, with their soft, glowing nature. Jesus says he comes to
bring fire to earth! With that in mind, maybe the whole Advent wreath should
just be torched as kindling on the altar!
The bottom line is that if we
take Jesus at his words this morning, he doesn’t sound very unifying at all, and
the fire of which he speaks isn’t very warm and fuzzy. This is not the side of
Jesus we’re accustomed to, the one that normally gets lifted up. No, this is a
side Jesus that lays waste to the airbrushed Jesus we often project for
ourselves, the soft-edged Jesus that never really challenges us or asks any
demands of us. By contrast, here we see a Jesus that might actually cause some
real pain and division in our lives, a Jesus that might indeed bring about some
hardship and conflict when we follow him.
In an interview this pastweek at the Edinburgh International Book festival, the retired Archbishop of
the Church of England, Rowan Williams, said that American and British
Christians who talk of being persecuted should “grow up” and not exaggerate
what amounts to being “mildly uncomfortable.” Those words may offend us, but I
think the fired up Jesus we see in this morning’s gospel would wholeheartedly
agree with Archbishop Williams. Many Christians in Egypt, by contrast, can claim
to know about persecution. Or Christians in Syria can, too, as well as some
Muslims in Myanmar and in other places throughout the world.
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| Coptic orthodox Christians in Egypt protesting discriminatory policies |
What followers of Jesus in
places like that can tell us is that Jesus’ love places us on the edge of a
kingdom that rubs rough against a broken creation. Church is not just a
well-meaning social service organization that brings together people to perform
service projects in the community, however effective those service projects may
be. Neither is church a place where individuals “tank up” on inspiration for
the week. Rather, church is a community where our relationships with other
individuals take center stage, as broken and damaged as they may be. Jesus’
fellowship is a new family that can, in fact, cause us to fall out of favor occasionally
with the rest of the world, even other family members, for the decisions we
make and the stances we take. By the power of the cross, Jesus forms among us a
new kind of family that rearranges us according to God’s love and forgiveness, not
according to what gender or race or social status the world gives us.
For hundreds of years, women
who entered convents, for example, to follow monastic orders and live in a
religious community based on the teachings of Jesus were shunned and abandoned
by their families as a result of their decision. For such a woman, following
Jesus in this way brought disgrace to her family because, by taking a vow of
chastity and poverty, she eliminated her family’s ability to use her through
arranged marriage and child-bearing as a means of solidifying relationships with
more powerful families. At a time when women were valued as little more than
property or a tool for concentrating family wealth or maintaining blood lines, Jesus
offered a new, life-giving alternative. But, in doing so, he set mother against
daughter, and daughter against mother.
But there is danger in
separating the personalities and purposes of Jesus, as if he is nice Jesus and
then mean Jesus, unifying Jesus and dividing Jesus, soft-glow Advent candle
Jesus and fired-up, frustrated Jesus. For the fired-up Jesus this morning is,
indeed, the one over whose birth in Bethlehem the angels sang, “Peace on earth,
good will toward humankind.” The difference is that we must form our notion of
peace around him and his message and not some misbegotten form of peace that
remains in our own hearts and makes us self-absorbed. The particular kind of
peace that Jesus brings does involve division. It divides us from things that
go against this kingdom—things like our sin, our attachment to racism, economic
oppression, and environmental abuse, to name a few. Jesus comes to divide us
from all that, to remove them from human community as well as from our own
lives.
Can we stand for Jesus’
kingdom and at the same time be complacent about changing this world to look more
like him? Can we pray “thy kingdom come…on earth as it is in heaven” and at the
same time stand in the way of justice in our own communities? Can we give
thanks to God for the beauty and wonder of the gift of our lives, and not be
concerned, in some way, about things like abortion, or the level of the prison
population in our country? If this more complete picture of Jesus that we hear
from in the gospel text causes us to take stock of our lives and scrutinize
some of our choices, then it is doing what he’s supposed to. Jesus means to say
he is not simply a dashboard decoration or a wall-hanging or pillow embroidery.
The peculiar way Jesus unites people is divisive, in and of itself. But it is
what saves us all.
To those who think Jesus
comes simply to help us be spiritual and enlightened, Jesus says, “No!” To
those who believe Jesus comes to help us achieve inner peace, Jesus says, “Nuh-uh!”
To those of us who feel that Jesus’ message is simply about making life easier,
making us feel happier, this Jesus says, “Nope! Think again!”
I recently returned from
spending a week in Pittsburgh as a voting member of the Churchwide Assembly of
our denomination the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Our denomination,
like any church communion anywhere else, is very divided over many things. We
heard heated debates this week on many of the topics with which we struggle—human
sexuality, gun control, community violence…how properly to follow Roberts Rules
of Order. We elected a woman bishop, a fact that many Christians around the
world will have a hard time knowing what to do with. We passed a thorough
social statement on criminal justice and what Christians can and should say
about that issue in this country. And although there were decisions made that
didn’t please everyone, although there are some who no doubt still feel the
division there is some solace in the fact that we actually grappled prayerfully
over these issues and others like them—that our faith is not just about
lighting the subdued candle of an inner peace, but wondering how to burn
towards the vision of a world where all relationships will be formed by the word
of God and the love of Christ’s cross.
Because there will be a day,
sisters and brothers, when we will realize that we have been fully cleansed in
Jesus, when we realize we have been plunged into that grace, when we realize
that we have, in fact, “laid aside every weight and sin that clings so closely,”
and we will be fully united, totally one. There will be a place and time where
nothing divisive—not even death—will lay claim to us. He will have divided us from it and from
within us forever. We will stand and
break bread with all those who have gone before us and who have felt the fire
of his love, the tax collectors and the
Pharisees of every time and every age. We will receive what Jesus has given, in
full.
And for that promise, for
that glorious promise, my sisters and brothers, we may follow him now.
Thanks be to God!
The Reverend Phillip W. Martin, Jr.
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