Divine Division

​Before turning to our Gospel reading for this morning, I want to repeat of some of the important things Jesus had already taught his disciples by the time we get to our passage. None of them will surprise you.
 
The great commandment to love God with all our hearts, minds, souls and strength, along with the command like it to love our neighbors as ourselves (Luke 10:25).
 
From the Sermon on the Mount: “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you” (Luke 627-28). A bit later in the same sermon, Jesus added, “Do not judge….do not condemn…. Forgive” (Luke 6:37).
 
From his lesson on how to pray: Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who have sinned against us (Luke 11:4).
 
This is the Jesus we know best, the one who teaches us to love, and to pray, and to forgive.
 
But in our reading for today we see another, fiercer side of Jesus. Jesus says, “I came to bring fire to the earth….Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division!” The divisions Jesus brings will shake families, turning parents and children against each other.
 
This fiercer side of Jesus also has precedent, although you don’t often hear me preaching on it. Jesus had already called a group of Pharisees “fools,” and hit them and their lawyer allies with repeated “Woes to you” (Luke 11:40, 42-52). Not long after our passage, Jesus forcefully drove the merchants and money changers out of the Temple (Luke 19:45).
 
I am drawn to Jesus’ message of love and mercy. I struggle with Jesus’ fiercer side. But both are part of the one we worship.
 
So, what do we do with passages like our reading for this morning?
 
I start with this: nothing takes away from the commandment to love. No matter how fierce Jesus got, always Jesus acted in love, even if it was sometimes a very tough love. And no matter what else we may be called to do or say, always we are called to do or say it in love. The Great Commandment stands.
 
But we, as Christians, are called to be people of conviction. We have to be prepared to stand up for Christian truth as we understand it.
 
I have not often felt the need to take a strong stand. Most disputes in which I find myself are about things that don’t really matter. Christian truth isn’t at stake, just a couple of egos.
 
Other disputes are about things that matter but are genuinely ambiguous. All Christian people should care about the impact of public policies on the most vulnerable among us. But good people can disagree about whether any particular policy is likely to help or hurt the vulnerable. Where the ambiguity is real, we should debate with love, not judgment. Taking hard lines is not usually helpful in these cases.
 
But in our passage, Jesus reminds us that he did stand for something. Jesus reminds us that sometimes we need to stand up for what we believe in, even when it is hard, even when it might hurt feelings or generate opposition.
 
Here’s a very trivial example. On my flight home Thursday a week ago, I was sitting next to a troubled woman. She was recently diagnosed with cancer. She is in the middle of a divorce from an alcoholic husband. And she is an anxious flyer. On our flight, she took enough medication for her anxiety that she was a little out of it.
 
My preference on long plane rides is to read, maybe watch a movie, and nap. But I had told this woman I was a priest, so she wanted to talk.
 
At a break in our conversation, she sang part of a song from Jesus Christ Superstar. I love Jesus Christ Superstar, and I like the song she chose. But given some of the things she had already said, her choice had an edge to it. She sang a song by Judas in which he denies that Jesus was God.
 
I kept reading my book.
 
Then she leaned over and told me that she didn’t think I was listening to her. I knew what she meant. But I was not interested in having a theological debate with a woman on a mind-altering substance beside whom I would be sitting for the next fifteen hours. I kept reading my book.
 
Then she announced that she accepted Jesus as a prophet, but not as God. She was throwing down a challenge.
 
Not so many years ago, I probably would have told her I knew a lot of people who agreed with her, and left it at that. But instead, with an inward sigh and as much patience as I could muster, I responded that I did believe Jesus was God, and that that belief is important to me.
 
I had no idea where that conversation might go. To my delighted astonishment, the woman accepted my statement of faith and left me alone. At least for a bit.  
 
The stakes were low in my conversation with this woman. And it would not have been appropriate for me to get into a hostile debate with her, given all that she was going through. But it did feel to me like one of those times when I needed to state my conviction with gentleness, but also firmly and with clarity.
 
I should probably do that more often than I do. We should all be prepared to do that when the circumstances call for it, and sometimes the circumstances are not at all trivial. That is a big part of the lesson from our Gospel reading for this morning. We are called to be people of conviction.
 
But there is a second part to the lesson as well. The division we see in Jesus’ own ministry was mainly with the religious leadership in Jerusalem, especially the Pharisees. The division at the very end of Jesus’ life was with the Roman political authorities, especially Pilate. But those are not the divisions Jesus emphasizes in our passage. Instead, Jesus talks about divisions within families, divisions in our closest relationships.
 
Divisions within families are the hardest to take. But presumably those are also our most enduring and loving relationships. A son and a father may need to speak hard truths to each other. They may become estranged. But that doesn’t change the fact that they are still father and son, and hopefully love each other, and hopefully work out their differences eventually.
 
Something analogous should be true when we grapple with people outside our families as well. As people of conviction, we may need to say hard things. But we should still remember that we are part of one Church, or one town, or one country, or one whatever group it is that we and the person with whom we disagree are both part of.
 
Years ago, a friend of mine told me he distinguished between truth people and love people. Truth people, he says, insist on telling the truth even when the truth causes pain. Love people are more focused on loving other people, even when they might disagree about issues that matter.
 
But that distinction doesn’t work for Jesus. Jesus was a truth person with strong convictions and the courage to articulate them when he had to. Jesus was also a love person who was always willing to forgive and always worked for reconciliation.
 
That is our calling as Jesus’ followers. May God helps us to defend truth, always with love. In Christ’s name. Amen.