Trinity Lutheran Church

Luke 12:33-59

August 18, 2019

10th Sunday after Pentecost

 

My first reaction to Jesus word is, “Lord, your timing is off. We don’t need to hear that you are a source of division and fire. We are plenty capable of arousing dissension by ourselves. Quite honestly Lord, it seems like all hell is breaking loose already. You don’t need to add fuel to the fire.” Case in point, last week the ELCA meeting in Assembly passed a resolution to become a Sanctuary Church which means that we are declaring  a long standing practice of supporting refugees from poverty, violence and famine, people seeking asylum and refuge, seeking just means of caring for, receiving and welcoming strangers. This is nothing new because Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services has been engaged in this work for 80 years. Let me be clear too, the action of the ELCA does not direct the church or any congregation to act illegally. Nothing in the declaration to be a Sanctuary Church violates the laws of the United States. On the other hand, that does not mean that it is non-controversial, there is plenty of division and fire around this issue, politically and religiously with in one United States and one Christian Church of which we are a part. So, again, “Lord, your timing is off. We don’t need to hear that you are a source of division and fire. We are plenty capable of that on our own.” 

These are not comfortable times. They weren’t comfortable times or circumstances for Jesus either. … what stress I am under … It’s the only time Jesus admits to the stress of what he is up to, except perhaps also in the stories of the cleansing of the Temple and the Garden of Gethsemane before the crucifixion … what stress I am under … what uncertainty, what anxiety, what frustration, what pressure, strains and tensions. Wouldn’t it be nice if Love God and Love your neighbor was simply what it was all about and we all understood those words in the same way? It would have made Jesus job a lot easier. 

These words of fire and division were at first words to the church in the earliest years after Jesus Resurrection, Ascension, and Pentecost as Jesus Jewish followers were expressing a new way of believing in God, a way that divided father and son, mother and daughter as to culture, heritage, identity, faith and the deepest values of their lives. To become a follower of Jesus initiated a painful and irreparable break with one’s Jewish family. Jesus was divisive, and the stressed division has played itself out through centuries of Christian persecution of Jews from the mouth of Martin Luther to the Holocaust of WWII. ‘Lord, we don’t need more division and fire in your name.’ 

As we read this story together in Bible Study on Friday I began to hear Jesus words a little differently. I began to hear these words of Jesus not just as a call to passionate, new loyalties and preparation for the stress that would bring, but also as a lament, an expression of sorrow from Jesus at our inability to figure out the things that divide us. I think Jesus is genuinely sad that a word of God, even his own life, could split people apart with such passion and hatred. As the story goes on Jesus sarcastically says that people who are good at understanding weather patterns are inept at figuring out ‘the present times.’ … why do you not know how to interpret the present time? Then he launches into a little parable saying, … judge for yourselves what is right. Yet he knew and he knows we are divided even still about interpretation and what is right, for we hear the same thing and come to different conclusions, and what is right in one heart is wrong in another. The heart of the parable Jesus tells about people in dispute who have to bring their case to a judge is this: … when you go with your accuser before the magistrate, on the way make an effort to settle the case,... In dispute and disagreement we travel together. While we travel together we have a responsibility to talk, to listen, and to try to settle down, to understand, perhaps to come to reconciliation if not agreement, perhaps to be changed, perhaps to turn down the heat of the fire, perhaps to realize we are of separate understandings of what is right, but still willing to travel together. If we simply travel together but refuse to talk or avoid the issues between us we will end up before the judge. You know how this goes. At some point the idea of civil conversation, finding a middle way, coming to a place where we can still stand together and work together is what we are longing for. But at another point we are frustrated with how extremely difficult, nigh unto impossible this is for us to figure out, finally having to send everything to the Supreme Court, or to the final Judge of heaven and earth where someone will be dissatisfied or worse. 

I don’t know the answer to this any better than you do. I feel as passionately about many issues facing our church and society as anyone. I know the division and the fire, the frustration and the passion, and if we talk my passion often gets the better of me and I feel justified in turning up the heat. I also know it is too easy and tempting to just not talk about it because it is hard. I don’t know, and I don’t think Jesus knew how to bring us together either, and so he laments. The fallout of it for him was crucifixion. The fallout for the church and Judaism was persecution and the Holocaust. The fallout for our society is yet to play out, but the division is real, stressful, frustrating and frightening, because we are brothers and sisters in Christ and many of the people beyond the border are also our brothers and sisters in Christ and it will take a judge to sort this out to the dissatisfaction of some who will feel like they will never get out until they have paid the last penny. And so Jesus laments. 

The forecast for today is for a high of 74 with a chance of rain in the morning and partly cloudy skies for the afternoon. That much we can agree on. But as to how we are going to live together and be one nation under God and one church in Jesus, that we need to work on with patience, understanding, listening as well as talking, and with frustration and forgiveness. Jesus laments because he knows that human nature is really good at adding fuel to the fire, but not so good at what to do with the heat. We tend to get burned. While we tell God our laments and hope God will send us comfort and healing, Jesus laments our situation on the way to the cross of death and forgiveness. Jesus hopes we will send God some comfort and healing by listening to and acting with compassion from God’s sorrow. Maybe Jesus was stressed by trying to save a world that only wants salvation on its own terms. And I still I don’t know how this is all going to turn out. 

Amen.