The thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost, 08/14/2016

Sermon on Luke 12:49-56, by Hubert Beck

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

He also said to the crowd, “When you see a cloud rising in the west, you say at once, ‘A shower is coming.’ And so it happens. And when you see the south wind blowing, you say, ‘There will be scorching heat,’ and it happens. 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?”

Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version,

OUTCASTS OF THE WORLD BUT CITIZENS OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD

Jesus sure loves to mess around with our minds, doesn’t he? He dwells extensively on the peace that he brings to the world and then turns around, saying that people misread him on that score. “Do you think that I have come to give peace on earth? No, I tell you, but division.” So what are we to believe about him, anyway? The angels declared “peace on earth” when he was born and instead he brings about tremendous discord almost every time he turns around! It is hard to understand just what he really is about when all is said and done.

Let the Real Jesus Show Himself

Jesus tells his hearers (and us) exactly what he is really about in the text! We do not have to guess. “I came to cast fire on the earth.” THAT is what he is all about! His task is to set fire and burn away the many ways we humans have of avoiding the real issues of life – to burn away all the worthless and foolish things we humans manufacture as the things worth most and which are to be sought after with foolishly misbegotten efforts! THAT is what he came for! Fire reveals – and he reveals the world’s treasures for what they are, fool’s gold. And fire destroys – which is what he also devotes himself to – to destroy all ill-conceived hopes and dreams upon which we place our hopes and dreams.

Among the many things fire may represent, one of the most important is that of cleansing, purifying, refining all the supposedly worldly-wise interpretations of what life is about. There are many such interpretations running around loose all over the world – and Jesus came to challenge all of them in order to re-establish the real and basic understanding of life and the world intended by God from the time of its initial creation.

One need only look around one’s self, listen to worldly chatter for just a short time, read anything from novels through the daily paper, watch TV for a brief moment or two in order to determine the values and standards and morals of the world. It is difficult to imagine that anyone would possibly want these values and standards and morals to be the decisive, determinative, ultimate way life should be lived. Yet those values, standards and morals have grabbed hold of the world’s imagination and even made them its best or final goal of what life should look like if only they could be achieved.

There must be more than all that, shouldn’t there be? Isn’t there a superior way to anything the world can dream up or live out over against the ways of life that surround us, even at their best?

Jesus says “Yes” to questions like this. There is a kingdom ever so different from any or all of the kingdoms of this world – and Jesus points to that kingdom with all his might and mane. He came to proclaim the Kingdom of God as the only sovereignty worth pursuing and in which to live. He came to challenge all those worldly sovereignties pretending to be “the ultimate,” “the best,” “the supreme of all that is.” THAT is the fire he came to set in the middle of this world – to set fire and destroy any and all bearers of messages such as those fool’s gold goals while, at the same time, establishing the godly dominion wherein God’s people could live with joy and delight.

But, he assures us, this divine rule will also be the cause of an immense amount of pain before the joy and delight show their presences. “Do you think that I have come to give peace on earth?” he asks. “No, I tell you, but rather division.” THAT is the Jesus who speaks in the text today – and THAT is the Jesus who calls us to take up his cross as Simon of Cyrene was forced to do and then to follow him to Calvary, no matter what the cost and pain may be to our own personal serenity.

The Cost Will Be High – But It Will Be Worth It!

In short, Jesus is not “messing with our minds” when he calls the peace of this earth for what it is – a false peace, a misleading moment of calm, a deceptive silence at best. If it can do no more than cause a brief cessation of conflict (which will be resumed at the very next opportunity); or give you a short-lived respite from economic, physical, social or other such distresses (all of which are, indeed, only short-lived respites at best); or even give a momentary happiness of some sort or another (any of which are themselves, indeed, short-lived); then, while those kinds of peace may be momentarily preferable to perpetual warfare, economic or physical or social troubles, it is in fact only a disguise, a mistaken “stillness,” to say the least.

The peace of God comes at a high price. Jesus says “would that it [this fire] were already kindled!” What fire? you ask. “I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how great is my distress until it is accomplished!” There is no question but what he spoke of his fast-approaching crucifixion. The tension and stress within the breast of this Savior of the world must have been rising higher and higher as the shadows of Jerusalem fell over him as he neared the city. His entire life had been a steady march toward this end, for he had known all along that this was to be his end. But, like all the rest of us experience at various times, when the “moment of truth” came closer and closer the internal pressures rose higher and higher until, in Gethsemane, he pleaded for another way – which the Father denied him. Already now, however, he speaks of those stresses as he sees the specter of the cross coming into view. “Would that this fire were already kindled.” “What I wouldn’t give to have it over!”

It was the “time of decision” already as Jesus spoke. And those who would follow Jesus would have to put up more on the line than merely visiting with him every now and then as he set his foot on the path to Jerusalem. His was the radical mission of challenging the world with all its powers, of confronting and even defying those powers – and that brought him no favors!

Nor will it bring any favors to those who follow him, who take his name upon themselves in their baptism, who take his side in denying the kingdoms of this world their hold over them in favor of the rule that prevails in the Kingdom of God. Divisions would inevitably take place between those who willingly stand with the One through whom the Kingdom of God has become evident and those who prefer the kingdoms of this world. That may – and does, indeed – cut through family ties as well as neighborly, social, cultural and national ties, for the “cleansing fire” that rids us of the impurities of sin to make way for the full commitment the Lord asks of us – as the Father asked it of his Son – is very hot and many want nothing to do with heat like that!

Jesus is Both the Sign and the Price of This Kingdom

Jesus turned to the crowds (he had been speaking to his disciples in the first part of the Gospel reading) and set himself and the words he spoke before them as the “sign” of this Kingdom of God that was then coming into full view. Inasmuch as his listeners were largely engaged in agriculture (the vast proportion of those to whom he spoke were so engaged) he used language they easily understood. Clouds coming from the west (from the Mediterranean Sea) bore rain and winds from the arid south brought the “scorching heat” of which he spoke. Through those signs he made application to “signs of the Kingdom.” If they could “interpret” the earthly signs of the weather (the word “interpret,” commentators often note, carries the meaning of “testing,” of “proving the genuineness of something,” of “being aware of something as being very worthwhile”) they could surely recognize the immense importance of the incoming Kingdom of God through this one standing in their midst. He not only was, himself, the “sign” of that for which they were hoping, but his words and works by means of which the poor were raised to privilege, the sick were invested with health, the weak and lowly were honored, and the needy cared for should surely impress those who saw and experienced them with the recognition that these were “the works of God’s Kingdom.”

Still more, however – he who was the “sign” was also the “price of entrance” to be paid for those who wanted to go into the Kingdom of God! His “longing” for the moment when all this would come together in the “baptism he was to be baptized with,” the “baptism causing him distress until it was accomplished,” tells us of his willingness to endure that fiery cross on which he would experience the chastisement for the sin of the world. But even more, that same cross would reveal the gracious mercy of God who both made this compensation available and then paid it himself through his Son. (The word “baptism” speaks to the point of engagement with an event or a person who determines the direction of our lives, joining that event or person to the one who is baptized. Baptism typically involves water in Christian rituals, but it is used at various places in the New Testament to speak of that which will take place at or in some decisive moment. See Mark 10:38, 39 or Acts 1:5 for such examples.)

This “baptism of Jesus” is both the “heart of the matter” and the “moment of resolution.” It is that upon which God’s people depend for their hope and their salvation.

Where Hearers Become Part of the Text

Our baptism is the place where Jesus’ baptism of fire and our lives are joined in such a way that we become citizens of the Kingdom of God – and that is a cherished moment. It is a blessed “ceremony of citizenship.” We must by all means treasure both that moment of induction and the life that has become ours through that “ceremony of citizenship.”

But this text compels us to recognize that this “blessedness” was not easily obtained for us – and even more importantly, this “blessedness” has a cost for us also.

The “obtaining” of it we have already noted. None other than our Lord Jesus acquired it for us through his life, suffering, death and resurrection, counting that cost to our balance sheet.

But in telling and re-telling that saving story to ourselves we must also recognize that the “ultimate price” he paid was already taking its toll on him long before his suffering and death! As someone once said, “Passionate people irritate ordinary people no end.” And if he was anything, Jesus was passionate about his mission.

He was passionate for the Kingdom of God and in that obsession, for it could well be called that, he established himself as an opponent of all the kingdoms of this world. Mind you, that does not mean he was against the created fabric of the world, for that had come from his own hand eons ago in a perfect condition. So he did not then nor does he now have any animus toward the material world as such. It was against the “principalities and powers” that have hijacked this world of his creation that he exercised his rule and authority with such an immense fervor that he earned the hatred, animosity and enmity of all who were citizens of this world -- and they could not tolerate this hostility to their reality, so they nailed him to the cross.

It was such a passion for the Kingdom of God that he urged upon his followers – and urges upon us today through this Gospel. We commonly think that “good people” will be well received in society – and that is true so long as the “good people” only remain “good,” but not better. If and when they become radically passionate for the righteousness that prevails in God’s kingdom, however, they will quickly become an irritant in society. We see and experience that in our world today – although it is not true only today. It has always been so. When people present themselves as ardently fanatical about any cause or a program out of the ordinary they become outcasts and a pariah very quickly for that matter.

Jesus would not be any better received today than he was in his own day – not the “real Jesus” we encounter in today’s text. Oh, the domesticated and tamed down Jesus so often presented as though that were him would be acceptable. But not the Jesus we encounter in the text.

In this text Jesus is not asking his people to become devoted to one or more of the earthly schemes and programs of caring for the needy or improvement of the environment or bettering the economy or racial encounters, important though these issues may be and even essential as many of them are – and much as I would encourage the hearers to become involved in. The fire burning within his breast, however, was the all-consuming will to serve God with every fiber of his being in everything he did – even when it meant that he was to sacrifice himself in performing such service. It is to that kind of ardor that he calls us to give our most serious devotion.

That does not mean we are to deliberately antagonize people with an obsessive need to speak of God in every other sentence that we utter nor does it mean that we are to intentionally irritate people with a pushy piety setting us apart as God’s special people.

It does mean, however, that we are to purposely seek out within ourselves those feelings and motivations and impulses that are led by or devoted to that which serves the world rather than God; to do everything we can to exercise a worldview centered around those things and activities that best serve God; to be constant in seeking God’s way and will in those things given us to do in our various stations in life; to speak and act in accord with a life governed by God – a redeemed life ready and willing at all times to “redeem” others in turn in our own way. We are set among people and given all kinds of opportunities to act in accord with Jesus’ redeeming love, attempting to bring them, too, under the purview of the one whose suffering and dying is the model for all true and real existence in this world.

The earliest Christians were very commonly persecuted, but they were rarely persecuted because they held a particular doctrine or dogma or teaching. They were persecuted because they exercised a way of life that the world found dangerous if not totally intolerable to the way of life with which they were best acquainted and in which they lived. That is why they were called “people of the Way” rather than “Jesus people” at first. (Acts 9:2, 19:23, 22:4, 24:14)

The fire that burned within Jesus caused him to walk a Way that not only created opposition but that actually led to dying. When and if we walk that Way there is no guarantee of anything other than the possibility – even the likelihood – that the world will taunt us and bring embarrassment and / or shame upon us. There is even the possibility that it could bring on outright harassment.

While we are not called to go out of our way to deliberately bring such denunciation upon ourselves, we are called upon to exercise our heavenly citizenship with delight and dignity right in the face of the kingdoms of this world. That a division between ourselves and the world will take place when we do so is undoubtedly true. But the world’s peace will never do for us. The only peace that counts is the peace we experience in the Kingdom of God.

In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Lutheran Pastor, Retired Hubert Beck
Austin, TX
E-Mail: hbeck@austin.rr.com

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