August 18, 2019
Jer 38:4-6, 8-10; Heb 12:1-4; Luke 12:49-53
Brookdale
Jesus says two disturbing things in today’s Gospel. First, he says that he has come to set the earth on fire. At first hearing, that sounds more like hell than like the kingdom of God. What is Jesus talking about?
In the Hebrew Scriptures, fire often signals the presence of God, as when Moses sees the burning bush, or Moses encounters God in fire on Mount Sinai. Fire cleanses and it demands transformation and response. In the book of Acts, which is the continuation of Luke’s Gospel, tongues of flame descend on the heads of the apostles at Pentecost. God is setting fire to the earth, and he does it through us. So this message should disturb us—in a good way.
The second disturbing thing that Jesus says is that he comes to bring not peace but division. But isn’t Jesus the Prince of Peace? Doesn’t he pray to God that we may be one, as he and the Father are one? Does Jesus want division? That sounds more like schism and sectarian fighting than loving our neighbor. Of course, the answer is that Jesus does not want division. He is warning us that those who follow him are apt to be caught up in division and conflict, no matter how loving and peaceful they are. After all, Jesus himself died on a cross.
That division and conflict can come from people who resist God’s word. Certainly the scribes and high priests resisted Jesus’ teaching. Today’s first reading is an example from the Hebrew Scriptures of division caused by prophecy. At the time of Jeremiah, Israel was ruled by the Babylonian empire. Nobody liked being ruled by Babylon, and some nobles wanted the king to rebel against Babylon and ask Egypt, the other superpower of the day, for help. Jeremiah was inspired by God to warn the king that rebellion would be disastrous. The pro-rebellion nobles didn’t like his message. Today’s reading recounts how threw him into a dry cistern to die. (In the event, Jeremiah was saved, but the king took the nobles’ advice and rebelled, and the rebellion was a disaster. The Babylonians destroyed the temple and the city of Jerusalem, and that was the end of the kingdom.)
Jesus causes division when justice and Christian kindness do not align with our laws and customs. Sometimes division comes because God inspires people to be compassionate when law and social structures are not. Members of the Unitarian-founded group No More Deaths leave water and blankets in southern Arizona, where illegal immigrants have to walk 30 to 80 miles across the desert after crossing the border. Helping illegal immigrants is a crime. At least eight members of No More Deaths have been arrested and charged with felony crimes for leaving water and food for these brothers and sisters of Jesus. Trying to change unjust laws or social structures causes even more division. Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, and other leaders caused major division when they tried to end desegregation on Montgomery buses. And there are many more examples.
I believe it would be a mistake to think that when Jesus causes division, it’s between good people and bad people. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn put it like this:
The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either — but right through every human heart — and through all human hearts. Jesus warns us that division and conflict arise when his message meets what the Gospels sometimes call “the world”—our self-interest, our habits, and our hardness of heart. Division happens because the world is not ready for the kingdom of God. This creates division in our hearts. Part of us welcomes the kingdom. But part of us would throw Jeremiah into the cistern to shut him up. Our challenge is to recognize that line between good and evil and let Christ increase in our hearts.