August 15, 2010

Clay Nelson

Pentecost 12     
Luke 12:49-56


Jesus is apparently having one of those days. Sounding more than annoyed, he asks, “Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division!” Perhaps he is a little fed up with the cluelessness of those who have been following him on his way to Jerusalem and God knows what. He certainly doesn’t sound like the same guy Isaiah foretold would be the Prince of Peace, but even the Messiah is entitled to lose his patience once in a while. Still that doesn’t make his talk of a divine scorched earth policy and fracturing families any easier to preach. Come on Jesus. Give me a break!

Over thirty years ago I had to preach my very first sermon in seminary on Matthew’s version of this same passage. Matthew is even clearer that Jesus is not in a good mood, “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.” (Mt 10:34) I remember nothing of what I said, only what I felt – terrified. Being quite shy (I know. That’s hard to believe now), the very idea of public speaking turned my knees to jelly. Speaking without any understanding of how the Jesus I thought I knew could say something so unexpected left me flummoxed. Where is the good news in what sounds like hellfire and brimstone?

What I didn’t have then but do now, is the research the Jesus Seminar’s New Testament scholars published 11 years after I was ordained. They tried to determine what words that are said to be Jesus’ own, he actually said. They voted on every word. They could vote with a red ball that meant “That’s Jesus;” a pink ball that said, “It sure sounds like him;” a gray ball that said, “Well, he didn’t say it, but maybe he would’ve agreed with it” and a black ball that said, “There’s been some mistake.” Most of today’s Gospel falls into the “Well, maybe” category. Only the bit about being anxious to baptize falls into the “definitely not Jesus” category. It turns out that after Easter the primitive church put these words into Jesus’ mouth, but why?

It seems becoming a Christian didn’t guarantee a life of peace and harmony after all. Apparently it wasn’t a good career move after all to join what the established religious and political authorities considered a subversive sect. Mum and Dad were not necessarily overjoyed when their pride and joy came out as having been baptized as someone deemed not socially acceptable. Not everyone welcomed them with open arms. A message of giving up your life to gain it turned out to be a harder sell than anticipated. So both Matthew and Luke felt it important to have Jesus speak to that reality when discussing discipleship. It is kind of like the disclaimer a pharmaceutical company inserts in small print at the bottom of an ad about how great their latest wonder drug is, telling you what all the unpleasant side effects are.

Well, if Jesus didn’t say it, can’t we just ignore this message and move on to something he did say – preferably something more positive, Christian and loving? We could, but while Christianity 2000 years later is now part of the DNA of the establishment, it still isn’t a source of peace and harmony. Perhaps it would serve us well to take some time to consider the warning.

Today we seem to have come to the conclusion that unity is a good thing and division is bad. United we stand, divided we fall seems to be intuitively obvious to us. When I was growing up church billboards said things like, “The family that prays together stays together.” My family thought that was a joke. When we got to church Dad went off to supervise the Sunday school, Mum went off to count the collection, my sister went off to sing in the choir and I went off to robe as an acolyte. We never saw each other. Yet the goal of unity was considered positive and still is. We see it as the source of peace and contentment. 

If unity is good, then division is necessarily bad. Clearly it is a threat to happiness and well-being. Certainly the Archbishop of Canterbury thinks so. He is going to great lengths to try to unify a fractured Anglican Communion with a new covenant that give archbishops unprecedented power to impose unity on all of us for our own good. Most bishops in New Zealand seem averse to being divisive. For instance, they have expanded a moratorium on ordaining gays and lesbians as bishops, to mean not ordaining them as priests and deacons either. Their justification for this is apparently based on the traditional view that the office of bishop is supposed to be a symbol of unity and ordaining gays and lesbians would be divisive, thus unchristian.

Yet Luke’s Jesus has a different view. He is not just warning us that following him has divisive consequences. He is arguing that whatever the cost, being divisive is our job. I know. That sounds contradictory to my usual message from this pulpit that our spiritual journey is about discovering our oneness with God and one another. Being divisive doesn’t sound like a road that will get us there. And sometimes it isn’t.

Speaking ill of others and spreading rumours is hardly a godly occupation. Those politicians who exacerbate our fears of those who are different from our selves in colour, culture, faith, sexual orientation, gender and class to gain more power certainly are not following the spirit of Jesus’ call to divisiveness. Addiction in its many forms and family violence, while divisive, are not what Jesus had in mind either.

But when a call for unity becomes self-serving, it needs to be challenged. When unity exists for the sake of a false peace that supports an unjust status quo, division must be our choice. 

Ten years ago a self-help book calling for more innovative thinking in the business world was published. I’m not much for self help books, so I never read it, but I loved the title, If It Ain’t Broke, Break It. I think this was the essence of Jesus’ diatribe. God’s peace requires rocking the boat. Today, it challenges the church to reclaim its subversive roots. It challenges each of us to ask ourselves at what price do we seek personal peace, comfort and tranquility? Who is paying the price for it? Who is suffering? Who is in pain so that our carefully constructed world isn’t rocked? Are we still willing to follow him when our mission is to break with social convention?

To quote Theresa Berger, a theology professor at Duke Divinity School, “If our world were nothing but a place of created goodness and profound beauty, a space of flourishing for all, just and life-giving for all in God’s creation, then Jesus’ challenge would be deeply troubling. If, on the other hand, our world is deeply marred and scarred, death-dealing for many life forms, with systems of meaning that are exploitative and not sustainable, then redemption can come only when those systems are shattered and consumed by fire. Life cannot (re-) emerge without confrontation. This is the basis of the conflict Jesus envisions. He comes not to disturb a nice world but to shatter the disturbing and death-dealing systems of meaning that stifle life.” [i]

I think many of us can buy into that, no matter how uncomfortable the idea of doing it makes us. Even harder is grasping how to go about breaking what is not broken. Professor Berger offers us a modern day example. She points to Lisa Fithian, a grassroots, yet global, peace activist. She has been arrested 30 times for intentionally creating crises. She intentionally annoys the powers that be – transnational corporations, the media, security forces, consumers – so that they may cease doing business as usual, examine the inequities they perpetuate, and change policies. She explains her rationale this way, “When people ask me, ‘What do you do?,’ I say I create crisis, because crisis is the edge where change is possible. I bring crisis because business as usual means injustice and death” [ii]

It has long been my position that a crisis is a terrible thing to waste. All kinds of new possibilities, often unforeseen, can be realized through them. Could Jesus mean this when he speaks of bringing fire to earth? Is crisis the edge of the sword he brings instead of peace? Is it possible that he does not seek conflict for conflict’s sake, but rather wholeness through fragmentation? How might we cause crisis in our families, in our church, in our community, in our nation, in the world to bring about a world made whole by God’s justice, love and peace?

Sorry, no one said Jesus’ way was an easy one.

[i] Berger, Teresa, “Disturbing the Peace.” The Christian Century, August 10, 2004, p.18.

[ii] Ibid.