Disturbing the Peace

 A sermon preached at Old South Congregational Church, United Church of Christ, Hallowell, Maine, August 19, 2007.

Text:  Luke

The Rev. Susan M. Reisert, Minister

            Getting to know Jesus, through the reading of the stories contained in the Gospels, is a little like assembling a puzzle.  Each story provides a piece, a little clue, about who Jesus might have been as he walked and preached, as he lived a human life early in the first century.  After awhile, we—consciously or unconsciously—put together something of a picture of Jesus, an image, all of those stories, all of those pieces of the puzzle starting to come together to provide something of a coherent view and perspective on Jesus.

            Ultimately, though, our view on Jesus, as we assemble this puzzle, often leans too far on the two-dimensional side, as if Jesus really and truly is just a jumble of puzzle pieces that we piece together in our lives of faith.  The contemporary take on Jesus often reflects little of the actual, though significantly limited in and of its own self, information that is provided by the Gospels.  And the Gospels themselves are problematic enough, offering a decidedly theological, rather than a historical, portrait of Jesus.  But, when it comes right down to it, though we may try to assemble our puzzle, we often find ourselves in our contemporary setting preferring a picture of a Jesus who, though at times is challenging, is predominantly “nice”—blessed are the poor and all that.

            Perhaps, this is the Jesus that we really want.  Perhaps this has something to do with the fact that the Gospels really don’t provide the kind of coherent three-dimensional picture of Jesus—even as a real, live human being who walked and talked and made his way among first century communities mostly in the countryside outside of Jerusalem.

            Within each Gospel, Jesus is not altogether a coherent figure.  And, certainly, looking at the Gospels closely as a whole, the picture of Jesus that we get is far from consistent.  So, again, we end up taking our few pieces of puzzle and putting together this image of Jesus that mostly “nice”—supportive, encouraging, nurturing, etc.

            Today’s scripture lesson certainly helps to muddy the waters even more.  The Jesus we encounter today is certainly more than a little challenging and really not in any way “nice.” 

Today’s little story is from the Gospel of Luke.  Who remembers the fancy, technical word for a little story from the Bible that we learned a few weeks ago?  [pause]  Pericope

            This morning’s pericope from the Gospel of Luke offers an altogether jarring and perplexing view on Jesus, as Luke offers these unsettling words from Jesus:  “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!  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; they will be divided:  father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother. . . . “

            What do you mean no peace?  No peace?  Are you kidding?  Is Luke telling us about a little joke that Jesus was playing on his disciples?  What happened to the man of peace, the Prince of Peace?  Don’t we sing those words every year at Christmas-time?  What do you mean that you came to bring division?  We thought that we were supposed to be together, unified, you know, getting along, that they may be One?

            Whether we like it or not, this morning’s story—if we are to take it seriously—demands that we develop a fuller image of Jesus.  In addition to the Jesus who ate with tax collectors and women, the Jesus who lifted up the poor and turned the tables at the Temple, the Jesus who washed the feet of his disciples, the Jesus who sometimes got frustrated with one of his closest follower’s inability to understand what was going, there was a Jesus who sought to point directly at injustice, directly at those places where the ways of God were not being followed, and to speak up about them—even if that meant division and conflict.

            The message of this morning’s story is a reminder that Jesus told his disciples—and us as well—that there are things in this world worth breaking, there is division worth having, there is conflict that is worth the discomfort.

Sometimes, it is not just that division is appropriate, but that we are sometimes called to create division to point to and name those things in this life where the ways of God are not being followed. 

We may have some disagreement about those places, but our lives of faith are not just about getting along, about finding the path of least resistance.  Our lives of faith are not about ignoring those places of disagreement, of injustice, of misery and agony, and pretending that they don’t really matter or that we can’t really do anything about them, that we cannot be agents of change.

There are things in this world worth breaking.  There are things in this troubled and difficult world worth getting involved in, even if that will create division and conflict.

If this world were nothing but a place of created goodness and profound beauty, a space of flourishing for all, just and life-giving for all in God’s creation, then Jesus’ challenge would be deeply troubling.  If, on the other hand, our world is deeply marred and scarred, with so many living lives of misery and anguish just on the edge of death, with created systems of meaning that are exploitative and manipulative, then redemption can come only when those systems are shattered and broken.  Life cannot emerge in all of its fullness without confrontation. 

This is the basis of the conflict that Jesus envisions.  It is not about creating meaningless division.  It is about pointing to, naming, and breaking those places that bring destruction, misery, injustice and death.  Jesus comes not to disturb a “nice” world, but to shatter the disturbing and death-dealing systems of meaning that stifle life and keep the love of God at a distance.

The vision embedded in Jesus’ stark words is not one of conflict for conflict’s sake, but one of fragmentation for the sake of wholeness.  Someone who came to understand the latter was Dietrich Bonhoeffer.  As he struggled to live through the challenges of his own life faithfully, Bonhoeffer wrote from his prison cell in 1944 that he saw his life “split . . . into fragments, like bombs falling on houses.”  The violence of an inhuman war that he witnessed had shattered any sense of wholeness in his life.  Yet out of this painful experience came a profound insight:  “This very fragmentariness may, in fact, point toward a fulfillment beyond the limits of human achievement.”  As the world around him descended further into chaos, Bonhoeffer wrote:

“The important thing today is that we should be able to discern from the fragment of our life how the whole was arranged and planned, and what material it consists of.  For really, there are some fragments that are only worth throwing into the dustbin . . . and others can only be a matter for God, and so they are fragments that must be fragments.”

[“Disturbing the Peace,” by Teresa Berger, available at www.religion-online.org.]

There are things in this world worth breaking.  There is division worth pursuing.

Just yesterday, I received a letter forwarded to me from one of the members of the Open and Affirming Committee.  This letter was sent to a family member, in response to an article that that family member had forwarded to people on his e-mail list.  The article, written by the President of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Kentucky, sought to dismiss any attempt to read the Bible in any that does not condemn homosexuality.  In fact, the author clearly seems to assert that those who try to “interpret” the Bible—he seems to indicate that he only “reads” the Bible, rather than interpreting it—away from traditional notions are going straight to . . .  well, somewhere the opposite of heaven.

One of the people who received this article was someone from this congregation, who serves on the Open and Affirming Committee, which is exploring the possibility of assisting this church congregation in offering a full welcome to gays, lesbians, bisexual and transgendered people.  The letter of response that she wrote to this family member was polite and thoughtful.  It was also firm in taking a very different approach to Biblical texts and taking issue with the author’s belittling of people with whom he disagrees:  “The article you sent . . . promotes name calling and belittling of people who may think differently than the author.  It casts doubt on the genuine faith of those who believe that all people are made by God and to be welcomed into the full fellowship of the church.  It substitutes rejection for reasoned discussion.  It promotes bigotry and discrimination, not the love and acceptance which I believe is the message of Jesus’ life.”

Whether it is Open and Affirming or the War in Iraq or the genocide in Darfur or the persistence of hunger and homelessness right here in Central Maine, there are systems worth breaking—at least worth the attempt at breaking.  There is division worth pursuing.

Peace is not simply the absence of war.  Peace is not simply a cocoon of comfort that we create for ourselves, far from the agonies of those who experience injustice and misery each and every day of their lives.  Peace cannot be throwing our hands up or turning our backs on systems that seem too big to change, too far beyond our comprehension or the limits of our busy life.  Peace cannot be found in ignoring the world around us or clinging to the ways “it used to be.”  Peace cannot be found in dismissing those with whom you disagree, or sitting in judgment against those who seem different.

We may not agree as a church community, or as committees, or even in our smaller family groupings, but that doesn’t mean that we should refrain from speaking up.  It is not that we speak from our own sense of complete authority and truth, but that we seek to speak up, to engage, to enter into those things that ignore the paths of justice and righteousness—to enter into them, not only that they may be changed, but that we ourselves may be changed.

There are things in this world worth breaking.  There is division worth pursuing.  And, that really begins right here in our own hearts and minds.  And, seeking the path that the Holy Spirit lays out for us--  in love, in justice and in hope.

In that division, in that conflict, in that fragmentation, though there is discomfort, there just may be life, new life, life as we have never experienced it.  That is the Good News.

May it be so.  Praise be to God. 

Amen.