Sunday: 12th Sunday after Pentecost 15C
Reading: Luke 12:49-56
Preacher: S. James Steen

Last Sunday The Boston Globe ran a Story about Brian and Bill Murdoch, brothers who are Episcopal Priests. Brian, who is 53 and leads Emmanuel Church in West Roxbury, Massachusetts, is gay. Bill, who is 59 and leads All Saints Church in West Newbury, is so upset about the growing acceptance of gay Christians in the Episcopal Church that he is about to disassociate and come under the authority of the Anglican Archbishop of Kenya. As this change takes place, an undisclosed number of members of Bill Murdoch's current "parish family" will remain in the Episcopal Church and will continue to occupy the current All Saints Facilities, while others will follow Fr. Murdoch to the now empty facilities of nearby Sacred Heart Church, which his faction is purchasing from the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston.

Jesus said, "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." One commentator on that passage asks whether the lack of division within families and communities today is "a sign that we no longer hold to any [countercultural] values with sufficient tenacity to alarm or alienate those who disagree with us?"¹

The person who is raising that question might look more closely at examples like the Murdoch brothers. And it's not only issues of sexuality that are causing division. One of the reasons why traditionalist groups who are leaving the Episcopal Church are affiliating with a variety of foreign jurisdictions involves another division, namely that some archbishops support the ordination of women, while others still do not. And in the United States we see Christian denominations that deny women any leadership role, while others affirm the role of women at every level of church life.

"Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division!" That Jesus could have spoken these words is hard for many of us to accept. We want to be polite. Most of us are conflict-averse. Perhaps we believe it's more Christian to ignore differences than to engage in conflict. How can the "Prince of Peace," "gentle Jesus, meek and mild," claim that he is called to bring about conflict?

If this describes your feelings, you are in very good company. The author of Luke liked to portray Christians as model citizens who respected good order. He was the most gracious and urbane of all the Gospel writers. His message is the most inclusive. The Prodigal Son, the Good Samaritan, and other passages that point to an especially generous God are unique to Luke. Of all the Gospel writers, Luke must have become the most uncomfortable when he came across Jesus' difficult sayings, including those we find in today's passage.

When confronted by such statements, I often ask, "Did Jesus really speak those words, or were they attributed to him by later writers?" But in this instance, the evidence strongly suggests that he spoke these words or others very close to them. His message of a kingdom of God that challenges the values of the kingdoms of this world was bound to raise passions, especially in those who stood to lose power in the economy of this new kingdom. I can hear people saying to Jesus, "I like some of what you're saying, but this radical stuff is causing big trouble in my family. Can't you just tone it down a little?"

The presence of these sayings in Luke tells us that the community of Luke was facing a situation in which families were being split up, as long-held beliefs and practices were disputed by the new Christian movement. The writer had to address these issues, and here he did so by warning his readers that becoming a follower of Jesus is bound to upset the status quo. As one of my mentors used to remind me, "Unfortunately, peace and progress are incompatible." And I would add that it frequently boils down making a choice between becoming the person you authentically are or remaining as your family, your friends, or even your church would have you be. It's a tension that surrounds every one of us.

In first-century Palestine, to a degree that's difficult for us to imagine, the family was the most basic and sacred unit in the social structure. The typical family was multi-generational and extended. People didn't leave to seek a better climate and pursue a career in California. The family was also authoritarian and male-centric, with the father holding much of the power. The social code was designed to protect the honor of men; and in a society where avoiding shame and protecting honor was everything, to experience disrespect was seen as disastrous.

As Crossan puts it, Jesus' message of a kingdom of radical justice "tear[s] the hierarchical or patriarchal family in two along the axis of domination and subordination."² Dominated and subordinated people who heard Jesus' message - I mean really heard it with their hearts and minds, as well as their ears - experienced themselves as free in ways that they could previously only have dreamed of. The fact that those who chose to follow him could be the younger generation rejecting the power of the older or women rejecting the power of men made Jesus' message extremely volatile.

Later on Paul would temper Jesus' proclamation by advising people to remain in their oppressed situation, because, after all, you know that you are free, spiritually, and besides, soon you will have everlasting freedom. And haven't oppressors used similar arguments ever since to keep people in their place. Just look at how other-worldly the Christianity of American slaves became. But this was not the message of Jesus. "Do not think that I have come to bring peace....but division." He might as easily and as truly have said, "Do not think that I have come to make peace with the values of this world. Do not think that I have come in order that you might domesticate my message."

So, how do we, who are mostly very comfortable, find a connection with this difficult passage? Maybe it comes down to this question: "Am I sufficiently committed to cutting across the lines of domination and subordination where I live and work and worship that anyone might be offended?" I hasten to add that offending others is not the point. But becoming sufficiently secure in who we are that we can be true to the values we affirm, rather than being paralyzed by the fear of causing division, is the point.

"Am I sufficiently committed to cutting across the lines of domination and subordination where I live and work and worship that anyone might be offended?" In all likelihood none of us will be able to respond to this question with an unqualified "Yes. But, if we're willing to remain within the life-giving tension between utter failure and total success, it's a question that can move us toward living more fully in the kingdom Jesus proclaimed and toward being less captive to the alluring values of the kingdoms of this world.

Amen.
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¹Greg Jenks, FaithFutures, Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost (http://wiki.faithfutures.org/index.php/Proper_20C#Gospel:_Jesus:_Cause_of_Division)
²John Dominick Crossan, The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant, (HarperCollins Publishers, 1991), pp.299-301.