Dynamite?

Rev. Dave Kovalow-St. John   V   8/22/10   V   Luke 12:49-56

Mark Twain once said, “Most people are bothered by the passages of scripture they do not understand, but I have noticed the passages that bother me are the ones I do understand.”  I’m not sure if Twain was thinking particularly of our lectionary passage this morning, but he might have been.  It’s a passage that flies in the face of contemporary Christianity, the kind of Christianity reflected in a church sign I saw Friday while driving to O’Hare to pick up Marcel, our new exchange student.  The sign said, “Come On In; Find Security In Insecure Times.”

Security in Insecure Times

Now, that’s not bad. Christianity DOES provide security in these insecure times.  I wrote it down; might want to use it on our sign, someday – an idea that only got stronger when we got close to the airport and found ourselves stuck behind a car that literally burst into huge yellow flames.  Julia called 9-1-1 on her cell phone to report it, and while she did I was thinking: “These ARE insecure times.” 

And they ARE!  There’s oil in the Gulf of Mexico; anti-Islamic protesters near Ground Zero; soldiers fighting for us in Afghanistan; a lingering recession here at home; and on Thursday, we got a call from Sam’s Club warning us not to eat the eggs Karen had just purchased.  Silly me, I’d been worried about Russian reactors in Iran; I should have been worried about Iowa eggs in our refrigerator!

We live in insecure times. 

Thank goodness Jesus and the church are sources of security.  Thank goodness Psalm 55 tells me I can cast my burdens upon God; thank goodness John 14 says the Lord has promised me peace; and thank goodness in Matthew 11 Jesus promises his disciples, “Come to me all who are burdened and heavy laden…. The yoke I will give you is easy, and the load I will put on you is light.”

I get that.  I like that.  I can FEEL my blood pressure going down just thinking about those kinds of passages.

By the way, I recently saw a religion and health study. Some doctors collated the relationship between frequent church attendance and health.  They found people who attend church regularly have lower blood pressure than people who don’t!  I realize a cynic might say maybe it’s because church goers get more sleep on Sunday morning, but I think it’s because we have a source of security in insecure times.  Witness the passages I just quoted and myriad others.

Unfortunately, however, our lectionary did not give us those passages this morning.

Insecurity in Insecure Times

Whatever purpose Jesus had in mind when saying the things he says to us in today's Gospel, it was NOT to promote our cardiovascular health!

"I have come,” he said, “to bring fire…, and I wish it were already kindled!"  That's not very comforting. And from there his sermon goes even faster downhill. He asks a rhetorical question, "Do you think that I have come to bring peace on earth?"

Uh…, yeah.

We were told by the angels, when Jesus was born, that his birth would lead to peace on earth. He is the “Prince of Peace.”  But Jesus answers his own question, "No!" He says he has come to provoke division rather than peace. He prophesies that after him, homes will be wrecked, families will be split apart, children will turn against their parents, and daughters-in-law will not get along with mothers-in-law!  Can you imagine?  (That’s a rhetorical question, by the way.)

We live in a time of marital and family stress. Divorce rates have never been higher than in the last 20 years. The family courts are swamped with problem children, and problem parents, and here’s Jesus telling his disciples that they will have their own share of marital stress and family division.  And it will not be because…

--it has gotten easier to get a divorce,

--or because some of the stigma attached to divorce has disappeared,

--or because women have been empowered by education,

--or because the “currency of marriage” has been in any way devalued,

--or any of the other excuses people give when they look at statistics.

You know what Jesus says?  He says spouses and children and parents are going to run into problems with each other because they are following him!

How could the "Prince of Peace" have that kind of disruptive effect on his followers?

Just looking through the telephone book I note that one of the most popular new names for churches these days is something that involves variations on the phrase, "Family Life Center." In fact, I once served a congregation that had a major building campaign to construct a gymnasium that they called "The Family Life Building."

But here’s Jesus clearly saying that he has come to split families up. How can that be?

A Dangerous Baptism

Well, surely one part of the answer is:  family disruptions brought on by faith are not inevitable.  There are Christian couples – and Christian families – who just sail along quite nicely, thank you very much. 

But sometimes, no! 

Here’s an extreme example (you can probably think of others).  When I was in seminary, Dr. T. J. Liggett, the seminary president, baptized a pharmacy student from nearby Butler University.  This young man (I think his name was Hakim) was an exchange student from the Middle East here on a student visa.  Hakim had gone through a dramatic conversion experience, and now, in addition to going back home as a pharmacist, he wanted to go back home as a missionary.

I had never seen a baptism in the chapel before; it was nice.  A friend in the publicity office asked me to take some pictures because she couldn’t be there.  I was happy to do that. 

I had Hakim stand in front of the baptistery – Dr. Liggett stood next to him (it was kind of comical: Dr. Liggett was a head taller and about three times wider than Hakim).  It was a great picture.  I gave it to Molly; she said she’d put it in some of the seminary’s publicity.  But then, …she never did. 

I asked her about it later.  Here’s what she told me.  She said, “We decided not to make a big deal out of Hakim’s baptism because he doesn’t want the pictures to get back to his home.  He’s still trying to figure out how in the world he is going to be a missionary. Once his family finds out about his conversion, they will probably disown him. He will undoubtedly lose any scholarship help he’s getting from home, and when he does go back, he could be in danger of losing his life.

It really made me stop and think.  The only danger I ran when I got baptized was that water might run up my nose.  When people at school heard I’d been baptized, if they said anything at all, it was just, “Oh, that’s nice.” 

You see, in my experience, baptism was a joyful occasion. But I think Hakim’s baptism may have been more of what Jesus had in mind.  Look at our reading.  He describes baptism as a fire – a threatening, destructive, maybe even devastating experience.

Lewis, Gandhi, and Jesus

C. S. Lewis says the Christian faith is a thing of great comfort. But it does not begin in comfort. It begins in distress, and there is no way to get to the comfort without first going through the distress.  

In the context of the Gospel, Jesus will eventually pronounce "peace" on his followers. But not before he, himself, walks a narrow way to the cross and suffers and dies amid great conflict.

The serenity brought by faith is real, a mighty fortress IS our God, and yet we do our faith a disservice if we do not understand that following Jesus has a cost.

As I was tootling around on the internet, getting ready for this morning, I found this quote from, of all people, Mahatma Gandhi.  The great Hindu leader once said, “You Christians look after a document (the New Testament) containing enough dynamite to blow all civilization to pieces, turn the world upside down and bring peace to a battle-torn planet. But you treat it as though it is nothing more than a piece of literature.”

Could it be that the words of Jesus in our reading this morning seem odd to us because we have overstressed one aspect of his message at the exclusion of others? We have stressed peace, but not the conflict between good and evil. We present Jesus as the way to security and blessing, but fail to put equal emphasis on his demands for obedience and cross-carrying.

At the very least, I know this: it is easy to be surprised when there is a “flood of mortal ills,” or when “our ancient foe doth seek to work us woe.”  We’re Americans; we like depending on our own strength (and a lot of times we get away with it).

But then along comes a stroke, or a divorce, or a fire, or an oil spill, or whatever…;  and we are reminded that we are not in charge.

I think Jesus is getting us ready for that.  I see this passage as a warning against complacency.  Put your trust in God, he’s telling us, because nothing else will work.  I see that in what he is saying to us this morning.  Happily, in the whole of his LIFE, I also see him saying:  put your trust in God, because that WILL work.  Amen.

Hymn

Well, it’s time now to prepare for offering and communion, which we’ll do with verses 1, 2, and 4 of hymn number 65, “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.”