9th Sunday after Trinity. St. Peter and St. Paul and St. Michael and All Angels, Kettering Luke 12:49-50, Heb 11:29-12:2
Well, I think it must be give the new curate the difficult Gospel passage time…
And what a passage it is, at first glance, hey even at tenth glance, its one that needs wresting with, it’s confusing, even a bit disturbing. This is not the friendly Jesus we might immediately imagine, here Jesus is speaking difficult words. Words of fire. Words of opposition and division. Households divided.
Did you think he had come to bring peace to the earth? Perhaps…
I don’t think it’s meant to be easy to interpret, I think that even at the time, this was difficult stuff. Jesus goes on to speak of interpretation, and how we can’t seem to be able to get it right, we can interpret the easy, earthly signs of the sky, but not what’s happening in our own present, not what God might be saying to us here and now.
This is a difficult passage to make sense of.
To help us, perhaps we should take a step back, and consider where we stand, our wider position, our place in the cloud of witnesses. Look at the bigger revealed picture, both in scripture and over centuries of tradition. And pay attention to the signs of God in our lives.
So what must we hold to – firstly, that God is a God of love, such wonderful love, not of anger, wrath or revenge. God is love. We cannot set this aside even when we read of fire and division. These must make sense within our deep sense of a loving God.
Secondly – that we are the Body of Christ.
All of us, together. Corporately. That Christ’s body here on earth now consists of thousands, millions of individuals, with variety, and uniqueness, yet with unity and oneness.
That we are called to this unity, that one day we will be one.
And thirdly – we must acknowledge that ‘one day –ness’, that this becoming one, becoming whole is a process, and that we exist both in the now and yet not yet time. Jesus has come, he has run the race before us, our pattern and guide, and yet the Kingdom of heaven has not fully broken in. We live in between times.
So, let’s look at ourselves, and this passage in the light of these three – we are the Body of Christ, God is loving and loves us, and we are not there yet.
‘Five in one household will be divided’ – reading this as speaking only of the time of Jesus it seems simple, we know that those who chose to follow the Way faced exclusion, persecution, and worse, and that many households were divided by Jesus’ radical message.
But let’s also look at our own household today, this household, our Churches, Christianity. We do not need to look far to see that we are divided.
Not only by things which separate us from what’s often been called ‘the world’, those seen as outside of the Church, but we also are deeply divided within our own faith groups.
When I was training we used to have termly get-to-togethers with the other training colleges in town, both those representing different Anglican traditions, and those of other Christian denominations. These were often jokingly referred to as inter-faith worship… and it did often seem as though there was a lot which we disagreed on.
Within the wider Church we see this – we seem divided into those who have differing views on so many things – approaches to poverty, the role of women, the meaning and boundaries of marriage… when we zoom out further we have all sort of debates with different Christian denominations. And even on the local level, we in this town might disagree with our Church neighbours, and in each Church itself, people have lots of different views on how things should be done.
And, at all levels, in all these examples, we deal with this with varying levels of passion, and varying levels of grace. We are all human. On body for sure, but a very human one.
So how might we visualise this divided body?
I suggest that perhaps we have more experience of it that we might think. We are somewhat used to divided bodies. Our own bodies can often feel split or divided; perhaps our brains tell us something which we know will not work with the rest of our body, those with allergies or intolerences to foods. As we age, it can seem as though parts no longer work together.
And perhaps most sharply of all, there are conditions of the immune system, auto immune conditions, when the body seems to attack itself completely. It may be that some of us have experienced this – the confusion and downright annoyance of a body which seems to not know what’s best for it, a body in opposition to itself. (I’m one of those people.)
In autoimmune conditions, the immune system believes (as far as it can believe) that it is acting in the best interests of the whole body. In our divided Christian body, we often argue passionately for things which we believe are truly right, and against things which we think will damage the wider body or Church. You may have seen the recent new coverage of Christians debating whether it is appropriate to have a helter-skelter, or a game of crazy golf in a cathedral. Both sides of this bickering, believe that they know the best interests of the Church, and the wider community, and even God.
And yet, still yet, as the Body of Christ we are one, somehow we are called to unity, and somehow we travel through this world communally.
In our Hebrews reading today there is this lovely verse which says – ‘God had promised something better, so that they would not, without us, be made perfect’ – not without us – we need our opposing brothers and sisters. We cannot do without them, as difficult as doing with them can sometimes seem. We will all be made perfect before God, but together.
And it is God who makes us perfect – Jesus who brings this fire that we heard about earlier today. We often think of the fire of judgement, as angry, and wrathful. Yet, earlier in Luke, John the Baptist tells us of the fire that Jesus will bring – one of a Baptism, one of the Holy Spirit, a fire of refinement and purification.
Elsewhere in scripture, fire represents God’s presence, a presence in which unrighteousness, sin, injustice cannot exist. We must all, the Body of Christ, must be purified and made perfect. We are divided, so that we these divisions can be revealed, and dwelt in, however uncomfortable that might be, and ultimately, healed.
We are not there yet, but we will be. We are called to wholeness.
And so, as we approach Jesus today, at this altar, in bread and wine – let us lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, that keeps us divided, and run with perseverance, together, the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfector of our faith.
To Jesus the divider, to Jesus the purifier, and above all, to Jesus, the healer.
Amen
Revd Alice Watson 