10^th Sunday after Pentecost  (Proper 15) | 17 August 2025 | Richard Johnson |

⁴⁹“I came to cast fire on the earth, and would that it were already kindled! ⁵⁰ I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how great is my distress until it is accomplished! ⁵¹ Do you think that I have come to give peace on earth? No, I tell you, but rather division. ⁵² For from now on in one house there will be five 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.”

⁵⁴ He also said to the crowds, “When you see a cloud rising in the west, you say at once, ‘A shower is coming.’ 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? (Luke 12.49-56 ESV)

We’ve just done something quite remarkable, don’t you think? I just read a Biblical passage that talks about families being divided, and then I said this was “the gospel,” the “good news,” and you responded, “Thanks be to God!” What Jesus says here isn’t exactly what we think of as good news! What’s even more remarkable is that now you expect me to bring some light to the text and make it intelligible. And that’s a tall order! As I’ve studied my commentaries on Luke, the most intelligent thing I found was one which labeled this section, “The enigma of Jesus’ mission.” Enigma indeed! What do we make of these rather harsh words from our Prince of Peace?

And yet I suspect that for some of us, this passage strikes a profound note. I do not know very many families where there is no division. Sometimes it is out in the open, while in other cases it is carefully plastered over and ignored. But differences there are, and of all kinds—religion, politics, values. For those of us who are followers of Christ, those divisions can be grievous. I remember once sitting at the bedside of a 96-year-old woman who wept because her 70-year-old daughter had not apparent faith in God. It was a stark reminder of the divisions in families that seem to be very much a part of human life.

Christians aren’t immune

And perhaps that is how we begin to make sense of Jesus’ words. He is warning us that such division and discord happens in families, and Christians are not immune from it. Pop psychology has taught us that families are often “dysfunctional”—indeed, one wag has suggested that if we listen to all the psychologists, we’d discover that every family is dysfunctional, and no one is normal! But this shouldn’t really be a surprise to us; we confess it every week: “We are in bondage to sin.” Our Scriptures make the same point. The Old Testament is almost painfully honest in portraying people of faith who nonetheless make mistakes and have terrible conflicts within their families. The most faithful of us sometimes mess up. We don’t do everything perfectly. Division and discord are the result.

But division in a family has a more immediate cause, and that is that every individual is given by God the opportunity to make choices. We don’t always choose wisely, and we certainly don’t always choose the same thing. Jesus’ words here underscore that for us, and they remind us that we are responsible for our own choices, but not for anyone else’s. That’s sometimes a hard reality, especially for parents. We’d like our children to make the same choices we have made, to choose the same values, the same commitments. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t—but it is entirely out of our hands. This week I read a fascinating article by a very articulate Lutheran, reflecting on what he wishes he had done differently in raising his children. His children are all fine, successful, apparently happy people, he said, but despite his best efforts he did not seem to have transmitted his own passionate faith in Christ to them. So, at this very deep level of life, he feels a kind of division. Now I don’t know if his children would have made other choices if he had done things differently; often the choices people make about the most important things in life are seemingly unrelated to what anyone else has tried to teach them or instill in them. That’s just reality. And truth be told, the biggest single cause of family strife is probably the refusal or inability to accept the fact that another family member makes a different choice.

Now I hasten to add that allowing another the freedom to make his or her own choices doesn’t mean that every choice is healthy or acceptable. It simply means we must recognize our own limitation in influencing another person’s life. Sometimes a child or loved one will make a destructive choice. I’m not saying we must approve or endorse that choice; but I am saying that we must accept the fact that we have no control over the choice another makes. Blaming ourselves is of no use. Perhaps what Jesus is saying here is that we need to accept the reality of different choices. We can’t live anyone’s life but our own.

Division not always bad

Perhaps we also need to say that division is not always a bad thing. Sometimes it can be healthy. The classic example of this is the way we deal with alcoholism. There is a tendency, when a loved one is an alcoholic, to try to rescue that person. The wife will call the boss and say her husband is sick, when in fact he is drunk. The parent will bail the child out of jail after she’s been arrested for drunk driving. And so often there is a conspiracy of silence. Everyone knows this family member has a problem, but no one will talk about it. We have lots of words to describe this phenomenon: denial, enabling, codependency. The experts say that such behavior only encourages and enables the alcoholic to continue to drink. Sometimes the only way to break the cycle is to step back and say, “No more. If you choose to drink, that is your choice, but I won’t cover for you anymore.” It doesn’t mean that you stop loving the person; it means that you practice what counselors often call “tough love.”

Our task in all of this is to be faithful. If we cannot make choices for others, we must constantly make them for ourselves. Jesus talks about his baptism, “and what stress I am under,” he says, “until it is completed.” He means that he must pay close attention to his own faithfulness to his task. The writer to the Hebrews has a similar viewpoint. “Run with perseverance,” he says. Be faithful. When Jesus talks about division in families, he is not suggesting that we should just write off those whose choices separate them from us.  Rather we must continue to be faithful ourselves, loving them, praying for them, never losing hope.

Be faithful

I read a dramatic story about a boy born forty years ago in communist China to Christian parents. His parents did their best to raise their children in the faith, but at school they would be taught something radically different. They were taught to despise their own parents, and soon they did. The father in this family was imprisoned because he would not renounce his faith. When he was released after several years, he was in many respects a broken man, yet his faith in Christ was intact. The son, who had despised his father, after many years had a change of heart, and realized that the promises of Chairman Mao were empty. “I dragged home,” he wrote. “Long hair, dirty, smelling, and strangling in depression. … Nervously I slipped inside and sat on the sofa in my parents’ cramped, dingy apartment. … How long I sat there with my head in my hands, I don’t know. Finally, I heard my father’s footsteps, heard him sit across from me. I couldn’t look up. I couldn’t speak. He had every right to cast me aside. After an eternity, I felt his hand on my shoulder. When he spoke, his voice held no hint of the years he’d waited … for me to come back … and for the truth to win. ‘Welcome home, son.’”

Be faithful. Keep loving. Keep hoping, praying. Realize that Jesus, in talking about division in families, is not speaking so much about judgment as about the reality of our human state. But what he says here in Luke 12 is not the last word, or the only word. The truly good news is that he has come to reconcile those who are divided, and to bring light to those who sit in darkness. Jeremiah reminds us that he is a God who is near, who fills heaven and earth. With him the future is open. With him, there is hope. He brings division, yes, but beyond the division he breaks down walls and draws us to himself. It is an enigma, a puzzle. We do not understand it. But we are told that the peace and the joy we have been promised, we will receive. And we are urged to run with perseverance, and not to lose heart.

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Pastor Richard Johnson

Webster, NY

roj@nccn.net