229 How We Are Divided

   (Note: This blog entry is based on the text “How We Are Divided”, originally shared on August 10, 2022. It was the 229^th video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.) 

   Jesus had thousands of followers and rained on their parade when he described the way that even families would be divided in their response toward him. What is that dividing line, and which side are you on? Today, we’re going to find out.

   Jesus was getting closer and closer to Jerusalem, where he would give his life for the sake of the world, and then three days later take it back again and rise from the dead, and he knew that his followers didn’t have a clue about what it all meant.

   As he traveled, more and more people were following him, until a crowd of thousands was trailing along with his 12 disciples.

   But rather than encouraging the crowd, as most people with lots of followers would do, Jesus threw a damper on their excitement.

   Gary Player, the professional golfer, was once approached by a fan who told him that he would give anything to hit a golf ball like Mr. Player.

   Player said that it sounded to him like the man wanted to hit a golf ball like him if it was easy. He said that what it takes is getting up at 5:00 a.m. every day and hitting 1,000 golf balls until his hands bleed, and then bandaging his hands and hitting another 1,000. That’s what it takes.

   That’s the kind of raining on peoples parade that Jesus is doing in the section of the gospel of St. Luke that includes this part, in Luke 12:49-56, starting with verse 49.

49 “I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!

   We know a lot about fire in Southern California. We used to have a fire season here, but now it’s pretty much fire season all year-round.

   Brush fires are destructive, but they’re also necessary for our ecology. There are plants here that need the temperature of fire to open their seed pods. Taller shrubs must go to allow for the sun to reach new growth, and fire spreads by proximity to anything that will burn.

   Not too long after we had moved from serving in Compton, California to serve in San Dimas, California, from an urban to a suburban area, I was at our annual synod assembly. I was talking with some people about the differences between ministering in the city and in the suburbs. I said that if a person hears a helicopter in the city their first thought is, “Where’s the crime?” but when one hears a helicopter in the suburbs their first thought is, “Where’s the fire?”

   Like the two faces of fire, the cross will mean the destruction of Jesus, but it will also mean new life for all who abide in him. All that the authorities will intend for Jesus is death, but His death will open the way to new and eternal life.

   Fire has real power on real things. The Bible says that God’s word is like fire, as God says through the prophet Jeremiah, in Jeremiah 23:29,

29 Is not my word like fire, says the Lord, and like a hammer that breaks a rock in pieces?

   Fire, like God’s word, is transformational.

   Jesus is longing for the massive change that He knows is coming like a brush fire. He continues his longing in Luke 12:50.

50 I have a baptism with which to be baptized, and what stress I am under until it is completed!

  What is coming? A baptism. A transformational act of God’s power. It will mean the destruction of the old Adam in us and the gift to us of life and salvation in Jesus Christ.

   A baptism is, in part, an entry rite. It brings transformation from one thing to another. Jesus is about to give his life and take it back again for the sake of all who believe and are baptized into his death. A massive change is coming. But first, Jesus will have to die. And his love for us is such that he longs to carry out this sacrifice.

   I imagine that if anybody in that crowd was connecting the dots right then, it might now be occurring to them that, uh, if people treat the Messiah, the Son of God in such a way, how will they treat those who believe in Him?

   It might be occurring to them that this is not the road to the success that his followers are following along for. But Jesus continues in verse 51,

51 Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division!

   Now I imagine that the crowd might be slowing down a step as these events were happening.

   The people who first read these words in Luke, however, knew what he was talking about. They were living it.

   The gospels, such as Luke, weren’t written down until the original eyewitnesses were dying out. Some scholars think that some of the writers were remembering most clearly the things that the early Christians were experiencing at that time.

   Christians were originally seen as being Jews who believed that the Messiah had come in Jesus Christ. As their numbers grew, however, they became more of a threat to the status quo. They began to be seen not as a small branch of Judaism but the root of something new and different. They were being expelled from their synagogues and even from their families.

   They were also being seen as a threat to the Roman Empire. The Romans couldn’t care less about what their subjects believed, as long as they believed that everybody else’s beliefs were just as valid as theirs. That kept the peace within their conquered territories, making it unnecessary to pull troops back from the front lines to maintain order. And, after a while, the Romans required everyone to believe that their emperor was also a god in order to create unity of belief among its diversity.

   Both Jews and Christians believed in only one God. One. And that created a problem for the empire that needed to be dealt with.

   Christians were seen as a bigger problem than the Jews, however. The Romans had a great reverence for their ancestors. Christians were seen as being disloyal to the religion of their ancestors, and so were more despised.

   Lines were being drawn and Christians were being forced to choose family and empire over their faith or face the consequences. And they did.

   Some in our culture live by the motto, “Family First.” This was not the life lived by the early Christians. They were persecuted rather than live by that motto. In fact, the life of the early Christians, is the norm for Christians all over the world even today.

   Jesus spells out what being his follower is going to mean in verses 52-53,

52 From now on five in one household will be divided, three against two and two against three; 53 they will be divided: father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.”

   If you grew up in or now live in a home in which everyone was a practicing Christian, you are blessed.

   If you have never had to turn away from family or friends and travel a different path because they were pulling you away from Jesus, you are blessed.

   If you have never crossed the line among family and friends, you are blessed

   The road that Jesus and his disciples and the thousands of followers with them were on was leading to a dividing line. That line was going to be marked by the cross.

   But our desire to make Jesus serve us, to contribute to our worldly success, and to conform to our view of the world can make it difficult, if not impossible, for us to follow Jesus.

   Are the thousands following Jesus here in this text  so blinded by what they expect will be a triumphant Jesus entering Jerusalem, leading a mass revolt against the Romans, and making Israel great again as an independent country in which they, His early followers, would be given positions of power in His new regime and lives of affluence as rewards for their loyalty, that they cannot see where all this is leading for Jesus?

   Jesus marvels at their blindness to what is coming. He continues with the language of division, now pointing out the people’s division from the plans and purposes of God, in verses 54-56,

54 He also said to the crowds, “When you see a cloud rising in the west, you immediately say, ‘It is going to rain’; and so it happens. 55 And when you see the south wind blowing, you say, ‘There will be scorching heat’; and it happens. 56 You hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky, but why do you not know how to interpret the present time?

   But are we any different? Do we not expect Jesus to make us healthy, and wealthy, and successful? Do we not also seek to get along, to conform to people’s wishes, to “pick our battles” so as to maintain family harmony in matters of religion?

   Why do we wonder what God is doing in our present time?

   I read a story a while ago about a Native American man who was visiting his long-time city dwelling friend in New York. They were walking along the streets of Manhattan when he suddenly stopped and stood still.

   “What’s wrong?” said the friend.

   “Nothing,” said the Native American. “Listen.”

   “I don’t hear anything,” said the friend.

   The Native American walked over to a tree planted in a ceramic pot and motioned for his friend to come closer. He lifted a branch and there, they both heard the sound of the cricket.

   Once he could see it, the friend heard it clearly. “How did you hear that?” the friend asked.

   “Watch,” the Native American said, and he reached into his pocket and threw a few coins on the sidewalk.

   People all around them stopped and looked for the money.

   The Native American said, “We hear the things for which we listen.”

   What do we look for? Do we look for God?

   What do we hear? Do we listen for God.

   What defines us? Is it the living relationship with the one true living God that was won for us at the cross? Or is it something more connected to this world?

   St. Paul threw away his status in the eyes of the world to be a persecuted follower of Jesus. His story in the Book of Acts would make Indiana Jones pale by comparison, and all Paul sought was to magnify Jesus.

   He recounts the horrific abuse, sufferings and tortures of every kind experienced by those masses of people of faith who had gone before him, who had not buckled but whose witness continued to his day and said, in his letter to the Hebrews, 12:1-2,

12 Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, 2 looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God.   

   One of my favorite preachers, King Duncan, tells the story of Paul Stookey, who some of us might remember from the folk group, Peter, Paul and Mary.

   Paul Stookey was greeting fans after a concert in 1968 when a young man came up to him and said, “I want to talk to you about the Lord.”

   Paul said that he doesn’t know why he felt stunned, or why he sat down and listened, but he did, and that as he listened he felt hollow inside, that he had spent his life chasing meaningless things, and that when he and that young man had prayed together, that he felt that he had been transformed.

   He said, “Suddenly when I had admitted that I was sorry for the life I had led without God, everything collapsed, and I was perfectly balanced. I had been given day one again.”

   He went on to write and record many Christian-themed songs, including “The Wedding Song” that gave expression to thousands of Christian weddings of his time and since.

   Jesus proclaimed to the multitudes of people who thought they had a lock on God that following Him is not about improving your life. It’s about dying to your old life and rising to a new life. Jesus’ life. “Following Jesus,” Pastor Duncan wrote, “divides us from the person we used to be.” That’s how we are divided by the cross.

   Let us follow Jesus not for the world’s approval, but in order to be separated from it. Let us spend our lives on a path with the suffering Christ, who gives us a life that is brand new and forever, through his love for us, on the cross.