Sermon for Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Year C, "Prince of Peace?" Luke 12: 49-56 (Proper 15C, Ordinary 20C)
Sermon 8/14/16
Luke 12:49-56
Prince of Peace?
Some of you may have seen on
facebook a funny meme I posted. It was a picture of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s
classic work, The Cost of Discipleship,
which as the title suggests, takes a hard look at what it means when we commit
to truly following in the footsteps of Christ. Only this particular picture of
the book was a copy of The Cost of
Discipleship was at a bookstore – right next to a price tag that said $16. The Cost of Discipleship? Well, pretty
cheap at Barnes & Noble!
What do you think, though? What is
the cost of following Jesus? Is there a cost to being a Jesus follower? Shortly
after my facebook post, I came across some powerful words from Bonehoeffer. He
wrote, “If we water down the gospel into emotional uplift which makes no costly
demands, then the cross is an ordinary calamity.” For Bonhoeffer, writing and
preaching and teaching at the height of Nazi power in Germany, the gospel made
very costly demands. He found no way he could follow Jesus completely without
his obedience to the gospel making him willing to offer his own life. Indeed,
he was executed by the Nazis for his actions attempting to remove Adolf Hitler
from power. What does it cost to follow Jesus?
There are places in the world today
where it is risky to be a Jesus-follower, where people who follow Jesus are
arrested and persecuted and killed. Most of us never have to experience that. Not
that being a Christian is never challenging, not that we never had to make
tough choices. But I wonder – what does it really cost me to follow Jesus?
Today, our gospel lesson continues
in Luke Chapter 12. Remember, last week, Jesus was telling us: “Where your
treasure is, there your heart will be also.” He was telling the crowds that it
is God’s good pleasure to give us God’s kingdom, God’s reign – and that’s what
we’re meant to strive after, to work for – God’s reign on earth. After Jesus
finishes talking, Peter, one of the Twelve Disciples, asks Jesus to explain his
words a little more. Our text for today picks up in the middle of Jesus’
response. He says, “I came to bring fire to the earth … I have a baptism with
which to be baptized, and what stress I am under until it is completed! Do you
think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather
division! From now on, five in one household will be divided, three against two
and two against three.” Jesus goes on to say that father will be set against
son, and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against
mother, and so on.
Last week, as I was starting to
prepare for tomorrow, I had my brother read this text to me aloud as I was
driving us somewhere or other. After he finished the passage, he said to me,
puzzled, “Jesus said this?” I knew why he sounded surprised. We love to celebrate
Jesus as the Prince of Peace! And
indeed, Jesus speaks in the gospels of bringing peace to us. But here, we are
getting a very different message. “Do you think that I have come to bring
peace? No, I tell you, but rather division!” My first reaction is: Wow. What
the world really doesn’t need any
more of is division. We have that in abundance! We look around and wonder –
have we ever lived in a world more divided? Over everything? Why would Jesus say he’s coming to bring division? Why
would we need that? What does he mean? And what about this part about being
divided – parents from children, children from parents? And that brings us back
to our first question: What does it cost to follow Jesus?
For the first followers of Jesus, the cost was very, very
steep. Sara Dylan Bruer helps us imagine. She writes: “Imagine for a moment the
scene when Peter goes back to his mother-in-law [after responding to Jesus’
call on the beach to “follow me”] and [he] says, ‘Hey, mom ... I've got some
important news. I'm not going fishing tomorrow morning. I don't know if I'll
ever step in a boat or lift a net again. I'm glad that you were healed of that
fever, and I hope you don't catch one again, because I have to tell you that I
probably won't be around to take care of you or to bury you when you die. See,
that man who healed you asked me to follow him as he travels around teaching
and healing, and I'm going to do it. I really think that God's kingdom is
breaking through in this guy's work, and that's just too important for me to
stay here, even to take care of you.’
“How would you feel if it were your son who said that to you?
There's no social security to fall back on if you're Peter's mother-in-law;
Peter is the closest thing you've got to that, and he's leaving. I have some
idea of what I'd probably feel if I were Peter's mother-in-law: Betrayed.
Abandoned. Despised. Shamed. Perhaps even hopeless. I have some idea of the
kinds of things I'd say if I were in her shoes … When I found out that Peter
AND Andrew were both going, my language would reflect even more anger, grief,
fear, and straight-up, no-chaser, and very bitter pain. I think the same would
be true … if Peter and Andrew had other brothers and I were one of them. I'd
want to ask Peter and Andrew how they could do this to all of us, how they
think we'll survive without their help with the fishing, and whose prophet
would ask a man to walk out on his family. I'd ask Peter and Andrew if this is
how they were going to follow God's command in holy writ to honor parents and
care for widows.” (1)
Suddenly, Jesus’ words make a little more sense to me.
Sometimes I forget that for the disciples who literally followed Jesus, they
were leaving more than their fishing boats to go where God was calling them.
Sometimes, following Jesus doesn’t bring peace – not if we’re thinking of peace
as the absence of conflict, and everyone just getting along. Sometimes, Jesus
brings not peace, but division, because choosing to follow Jesus should have consequences. What does it cost to follow Jesus?
Our temptation whenever we read words like this from Jesus –
and he says stuff like this more often than our minds want to remember – our temptation
is to try to find a way to soften their blow, mute their impact so it doesn’t
seem as bad as it sounds. But in this case, I think that’s exactly what Jesus
is warning against. Do you think I
come to make things easier, Jesus
asks? Nope – I come to make them more and more challenging! That’s my
paraphrase at least. Listen to
the verse just before today’s passage: Jesus says, “From everyone to whom much
has been given, much will be required; and from one to whom much has been
entrusted, even more will be demanded.” In other words – we’ve received a lot –
God’s blessings, God’s love, God’s unfailing grace, limitless second chances.
But God expects a lot from us, too. And foremost, what God expects, what Jesus
expects, is that if we choose to follow Jesus, we actually follow Jesus. It’s both that simple of a request and that
hard of a request. Because following Jesus means choosing one path and not the
other, and we’re very much a people who want to have our cake and eat it too.
We want to take the path of Jesus, but we also want to make our own choices,
choose our own way, and go our own direction when it suits us. Jesus says that
he comes and brings division – and we must choose our way or Jesus’ way, and
they are not always going the same way, friends!
Years ago, I heard Bishop Mary Ann Swenson, one of our
now-retired United Methodist bishops, preach on this text at General
Conference. She was using the version that appears in Matthew, where Jesus says,
“I have come not to bring peace, but a sword.” I can still picture her
preaching, wielding this imaginary sword. She asked, “When we say we are born
again, aren’t we saying there is something distinctive about our life before
and after Jesus? The dividing line is dividing what we leave behind and what we
take up … If the world is not different because you and I have come here, then
it’s because you and I have put something other than Christ at the center of
our lives. Jesus comes with a sword. The sword cuts to purpose, to results. And
I believe that Jesus is extremely impatient for the results. He is impatient
for the results because he is passionate about people. It is a divine,
consuming love that cuts to the results … You know, even more, Jesus says he
brings a sword, but perhaps Jesus himself might be a sword, cutting us free
from the past, from our weaknesses, our errors, opening us to a new future,
reborn. Jesus is calling us to himself, to the edge of transformation, inviting
us to enter into a new reality that God is creating.” (2)
Friends, if we are not different because of following Jesus –
then maybe we better check and make sure we’re actually following him, going where he
goes, living as he lives. If we are
not different, if our world is not different, if those with whom we come in
contact are not different because of what we do in the name of Jesus, then
perhaps we have put something else, something other than Jesus at the center of
our lives.
Sara Dylan Breuer gives us two more scenarios to imagine. “Here's
another possible outcome: Peter and Andrew tell Jesus that no prophet of the God
of Israel would ask people to ignore the Ten Commandments, and they tell Jesus
that on that basis they know precisely what sort of a man Jesus is, and there
is no way they'd follow him. They go home and tell their families about what
kind of dangerous nutcase the wandering healer turned out to be, and how glad
they are that they figured it out. The next morning, they go fishing … Here's
another one:
“Peter and Andrew tell their families more about Jesus, what
he's saying, what he's doing, and what they think that means about what God is
accomplishing right now for the world. They talk about the community of people
following Jesus and how they care for one another, how their life together is a
sign to all of how relationships could be in the world and what might come of
it if we believed the kingdom of God was breaking through this world and
therefore we could live as though God were king here and now. Peter's
mother-in-law, his sisters and all his brothers, and the rest of the family
face and go through the break that Jesus talks about in our former
relationships. It's only natural for them to grieve sometimes at the passing of
old ways of being and to chafe at or stumble in the new relationships that are
forming, but they have a new joy, a new peace, a new freedom from anxiety in
the living reality that if they have lost a mother-in-law, a son-in-law, a
daughter, or a father, they have gained more sisters and brothers than they
ever imagined they could have, and had joined a people who would come to
fulfill the promise to Abraham of numbering more than the stars of the clear
desert sky -- more to care for them and be supported by them, more to love and
be loved by than any earthly family could offer.”
What does it cost to follow Jesus? It means we have come right
up to the dividing line and must choose a path. Which way will we follow? Amen.
(1) Breuer, Sara Dylan. http://www.sarahlaughed.net/lectionary/2007/08/proper-15-year-.html
(2) Swenson, Bishop Mary Ann.
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