Stressed-Out Savior

August 18, 2013

Luke 12:49-56

⁴⁹"I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled! ⁵⁰I have a baptism with which to be baptized, and what stress I am under until it is completed! ⁵¹Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division! ⁵²From now on five in one household will be divided, three against two and two against three; ⁵³they 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."

⁵⁴He also said to the crowds, "When you see a cloud rising in the west, you immediately say, 'It is going to rain'; and so it happens. ⁵⁵And when you see the south wind blowing, you say, 'There will be scorching heat'; and it happens. ⁵⁶You hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky, but why do you not know how to interpret the present time?

Sermon: “Stressed-Out Savior”

You really don’t want to invite Jesus anywhere: there’s no telling what that guy might say! 

Case in point: I was once at a worship service in which a baby was being baptized.  You would think Jesus would fit in well there, right?  Well he did, when someone read these words from Matthew, “Jesus called a child, whom he put among them and said, ‘Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.  Whoever becomes humble like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.”

And we were all sitting there with gentle smiles on our faces, thinking, “What a nice thing to say, Jesus.  Beautiful.”

Unfortunately the person reading scripture didn’t end there…Jesus went on to say, “If any of you put a stumbling block before one of these little ones who believe in me, it would be better for you if a great millstone were fastened around your neck and you were drowned in the depths of the sea.”

That sweet smile on our faces turned to an awkward frown.  That’s a little intense, isn’t it Jesus?  He sounds more like the Godfather than the Son of God!  Like I said, you just never know what Jesus is going to say.

Our scripture reading this morning is another doozy.  Now, I’m not sure if Jesus just didn’t get enough coffee that morning, or if someone cut him off in traffic as he rode his camel, or if he accidentally put salt in his cheerios.  But he is grumpy!  This whole section of Luke sounds like a divine temper tantrum:

Jesus gets invited to the home of a Pharisee for supper and goes, but refuses to wash his hands first. 

When the Pharisee politely points him towards the bathroom, Jesus goes off.  “Now you Pharisees clean the outside of the cup and of the dish, but inside you are full of greed and wickedness!”  Awkward.  You can bet he didn’t get asked back to dinner.

He spends quite a bit of time calling people “fools” at this point.  And then he tops off all of that grumpy speech with, “I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!  Do you think that I have come to bring peace upon the earth?  No, I tell you, but rather division!”

And then he says what should never be the Bible reading at a family reunion, describing that division as father against son, mother against daughter, mother-in-law against daughter-in-law and vice-versa. 

Man, you can’t bring this guy anywhere!  He’s not safe at baptisms, creates a scene at dinner parties and stirs up ill-will at family reunions.

So, what is all this division talk about anyway?  Isaiah promises a Messiah who will be called the Prince of Peace.  Luke’s Gospel begins by telling us that Jesus will “guide our feet in the way of peace.”  When Jesus healed the sick, he wished peace upon them.  He told his followers, when sharing the good news in towns and villages, to give the peace of God to them.  And at the end of this Gospel, when the resurrected Jesus appears to his disciples, he doesn’t say “You fools!” but instead, “Peace be with you.” 

Well, as with all scripture, a look at the original language helps.  English has very clear understandings of peace and division: in Greek, his words lose none of their intensity, but are a bit more clear. 

At this point in Luke, Jesus’ “face is set toward Jerusalem”: he knows what he must do, that this mission of his will move from words and sermons to painful actions and sacrifice, and quick.  He has no time to waste, so he does not mince his words.  This is not the time to gently goad people into being faithful.  This is the time to shock them into joining a movement that will change their world (and everyone’s world) forever. 

Jesus begins, “"I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!  I have a baptism with which to be baptized, and what stress I am under until it is completed!”

A stressed-out Savior.  Except, (throwing my sermon title into question), there wasn’t exactly a word for “stressed” in Greek.  What Jesus did say is that he was “sunechomai,” pressed together, barely held together, felling like he could fall apart at any moment.  It is really important that he used this word, because I believe this whole passage centers around the idea of being held together or breaking apart.

He goes on to say that most troubling phrase, that the English Standard Version unfortunately translates as, “I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.”  Funny how we always remember the most shocking translation of Bible verses, even if they’re not true to the original language.

Jesus said nothing of a sword.  What he said in Greek was, “I did not come to bring eirene,” which is to mean, things held perfectly together in wholeness.  “I came to bring division, things broken apart.”  Remember that Jesus had spent an awful lot of energy speaking to the religious folk who were more intent on teaching him the orthodox truth that would keep him from going too far in his claims about God and himself, on keeping him safely boxed in so he couldn’t change their religious tradition.

And so this word is for them, as much as it is for us, “I did not come to keep things nice and neat, to bring whole, easy answers, to baptize your life with comfort.  I did not come so you could put me in a nice, predictable box.  I do not enjoy being pressed together in that way.   I came to bring the fire of the Holy Spirit, to divide your life, to split open all of the simple ways you have thought of me.  I came to break open this world with something bigger than you could ever imagine: bigger even than family connections, y’all.”

Then he talks about the weather (but not in a small talk sort of way).  He says, “You see clouds, and you know rain is coming.  You feel a hot breeze, and you know you better get that iced tea ready.  But the fabric of the universe is shifting beneath your feet, and you don’t even notice!” 

Jesus speaks about “interpreting” the present time.  But that English word isn’t quite right, either.  In Greek, he calls them to examine the present time.  To see the ways the world is being broken open—divided—by God-With-Them.  To see that Jesus didn’t just come to heal and talk.  He came to split open a simple and self-righteous understanding of religion.  He came to break the power of sin and death forever.   In this sense, we can most certainly say that he did not come to bring wholeness, but division.

I think we are much like his audience that day, wondering if this so-called Savior was cracking under the pressure of so much public speaking and healing. 

Our entire lives, entire societies, are built around the idea that we should be whole: We follow the paths laid out for us, careful not to stray away from what society and our families tell us is safe and good.  We compartmentalize our lives so that we are capable of swallowing all of our pain and doubt and still functioning.  We put God in the box we need God in, because we really don’t have the time or energy to think in a new way.

When we reach this point of thinking the story of Jesus coming is just a nice fairy tale, or worse, something we fully grasped years ago and so have nothing new to learn of it, Jesus comes.  And he comes with awkwardly shocking language.  He comes telling us that nothing is safe, not even fathers and mothers, sons and daughters.  All is within the realm of this coming Kingdom.  And all will be broken open.

You see, for Jesus this was a matter of life and death, and life again.  It still is.  There’s no time to waste with simple platitudes and easy answers, with compartmentalized pain and tamed hope.  Jesus comes to break open our vision, so that we can examine the fabric of this world shifting beneath our feet, and rather than fearing it, boldly follow where God is going.

If we think that our lives and this world fits neatly together in a comfortable state of peace, all it takes is one explosive protest, one shocking phone call, one word spoken without thinking, one number on a lab report, to turn it all upside down.  We all know this.  So does God.

And so we are given a Savior who can handle our fractured lives, who knows that complete wholeness is an illusion, and who doesn’t fear moments of conflict, anger and division, but instead turns them into resurrection.

Jesus may not be safe at dinner parties, baptisms or family reunions.   He might make us examine the ways we feel barely held together, and how others do as well, and then embrace our divided selves as he does. 

He might make us examine the ways this world only pretends to be held together, while persistently being on the brink of falling apart.  He might make us examine how we have made faith a treadmill we doggedly walk upon, never daring to step off into the unknown.  Because of this, he is exactly the sort of wild Savior we need.

Thanks be to the God who holds this fractured world completely, to the Savior who does not promise us security but instead promises us his very self, and to the Spirit who is bringing a breaking-in Kingdom, even now.  Amen.