St. Paul’s United
Church Sunday, August 15, 2010
Decision and Division – Rev. David Mundy
Hebrews 11:29-12:2
Luke 12: 49-53
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You may be aware of the name of Christopher Hitchens, the very able and intelligent writer who in
recent years has taken aim at Christianity and all religions for that matter. Hitchens is one of what are sometimes called the new
atheists, or the celebrity atheists. They are shockingly aggressive in their
attacks on religion and Hitchens has written a
best-selling book called God is Not Great: How
Religion Poisons Everything. The “knock” on Hitchens
and other new atheists is that they assume every religious person is a
fundamentalist and attack the worst of religion without much subtlety or
acknowledgement of the positive aspects of faith.
There is another Hitchens, Peter Hitchens, who is Christopher’s brother. He is an
award-winning journalist who has created his own stir lately with a book called
The Rage Against God. Peter was an atheist for a
time, but has become a Christian. He is actually quite an orthodox Christian,
and from what I can tell is much more conservative theologically than I am.
His book The Rage Against God
is not a defence of Christianity so much as an assessment of why so many people
in our culture have become so angry toward religion in all its forms. Peter Hitchens lives in Britain where it is open season on
Christianity, and his willingness to openly profess his Christian faith might
be considered a bad career move, or at least open him up to derision by his
peers, but he doesn’t seem to care.
Needless to say, this has led to an interesting family dynamic
for the Hitchens brothers! For a while they were not
on speaking terms, although that has changed. In fact they debated each other
about their opposing convictions, just once, and decided that it probably wasn’t
going to promote filial harmony. They have read and reviewed each other’s
books, and, not surprisingly, they don’t agree with their premises on many
levels. They have managed to “agree to disagree.”
Can you imagine being divided in your family on the basis of
your religious convictions? Is a decision, a decision of faith, which leads to
division, to draw on my sermon title, good or bad? After all, Jesus was a
wonderful spiritual leader who called on people to live in peace and harmony.
Blessed are the peacemakers, he says in the Sermon on the Mount. And while you’re
at it, turn the other cheek.
Well, were you listening to the gospel lesson today? What a
startling and unsettling and puzzling diatribes out the mouth of Jesus. I have to be honest and admit that when I saw
this “good news” passage it sounded more like a rare bad day for our saviour
and friend. I quickly looked at the other passages for this Sunday to see if
one of them would be a little easier to swallow as a preacher, but the reading
from the book of Hebrews sure isn’t cheerful.
I realized we all need to grapple with the Jesus who didn’t
come to just smooth the waters – and here in Luke he is a regular pyromaniac!
We listened to the New Revised Standard version of these verses, but
Eugene Peterson gives us a slightly different twist in his Message
paraphrase. He begins with:
I’ve come to start a fire on this
earth – how I wish it were blazing right now! I’ve come to change everything,
turn everything rightside up – how I long for it to
be finished! Do you think I came to smooth things over and make everything
nice? Not so. I’ve come to disrupt and confront!
Then Jesus goes on to say that because of him fathers will be
pitted against sons and mothers against daughters and, we would have to assume,
brothers against each other.
This is really tough stuff and if we were given the veto to
remove passages from scripture, surely this would be one of them. It is so
confrontational in tone we would much rather avoid it. Yet we probably all need
the reminders that Jesus didn’t come simply to offer some good advice about
daily living, or to give a version of
“have a nice day.” So much of what he said and did disturbed those
who were in political power, as well as those who were either complacent or
self-righteous in their religious views.
As we make our way through the gospels the sparks fly, and we
are aware of the smouldering tensions with those in authority. Jesus certainly
seems aware and perhaps even distressed by the consequences of the path he is
following, both for himself and for his followers. He is kindling a revolution,
not in the traditional sense but as the beginning of a new and different
understanding God. Eventually he is executed, crucified, not because he is a
swell guy but because his perception of fulfilling God’s reign disturbs the
status quo.
Did you notice that Peterson turn of phrase, “I’ve come to
change everything, turn everything rightside
up”rather
than “upside down?” Jesus is faithful in living out his mission, but
that doesn’t mean that there is a traditional happy ending.
In The People’s New Testament Commentary the authors
share this perspective on these unsettling words of Jesus:
The peace Jesus brings is not an
alternative to decisions and new priorities that bring divisions even among
families and close friends. The peace of God is not an anaesthetic that makes
one numb to the conflicts of the world; it may indeed sharpen them.
So, what does this mean for us as followers of Jesus? Are we
willing to accept that a decision to be Christ’s people could lead to tensions
and division in our relationships, and perhaps invite the scorn of others? Honestly this is difficult at many different
levels.
There are many historical examples of Christ’s message being
distorted and used as a weapon against those who didn’t agree with a particular
approach or perspective, often with miserable consequences. This year the
United Church of Canada celebrated 85 years of existence and the emphasis was
very positive. Of course no one mentioned that church union was such a
controversial prospect that family members ended up in bitter conflict and even
stopped speaking to one another. Surely we don’t want to perpetuate this sort
of nonsense.
Some of us have family members who are part of more
conservative denominations and they may be convinced that we are on the wrong
path, even the road to hell, because our views are more liberal than theirs. We
end up in this rather uneasy relationship because of what is supposedly the
life-giving relationship with Christ.
Of course we may also have friends and family members who are
atheists or agnostics and we simply can’t have a conversation about religion
without it turning ugly. And really, most of us don’t like conflict, especially
conflict over religion. We want to keep things peaceful, but in a fairly
limited version of peace.
All of this said, there will be times when being a Christian
will be risky and uncomfortable business, whether we like it or not. As a
minister who has a public forum for expressing views, whether during worship on
Sundays, or in study groups, or through my online blog, I am always trying to
gauge the impact of what I say and how I say it. The challenge as a Christian
leader is to have the courage of my own convictions and to address what people
need rather than what they want. My experience is that no matter how diplomatic
I try to be with the challenging issues, addressing them nearly always results
in a certain amount of pain and even anger for some.
There was an article in the New York Times this past
week by a pastor who is trying to resist the trend to making everything in
worship shiny and pleasant. He was told by the board of one congregation he
served that he should keep his sermons to ten minutes and make sure everyone
felt good about themselves as they went out the door.
Don’t get me wrong, I would like it if everyone who came to
worship left feeling a bit better about who they are and about their place in
the world. But the gospel “comforts the afflicted and afflicts the
comfortable” and Jesus calls each one of us to take up the cross.
I’m going to suggest to you that our young people have a
clearer sense of the cost of their Christian faith than those of us who have
spent years in the cocoon of the Christian community, where we may have grown
comfortable with our circle of friends.
The leaders of our teen groups have mentioned to me that they
have been part of some really honest and stimulating conversations with our
young people who are often challenged about their faith by their peers, some of
them who are quite antagonistic about Christian commitment of any kind. They are
in a minority at school and in their circles of friends and it takes courage to express their faith.
So the question for us remains, are we willing to make a
decision, even if it will lead to division, or at least discomfort?
To hear a passage such as this one from Luke doesn’t just
suggest commitment, it really demands it, don’t you think? Jesus calls us to
full-hearted rather than half-hearted faith.
Some of you may recall me telling you a few years ago about
hearing a comedian who likes being Jewish, because of the “ish”
part. You tell someone that you will meet at the restaurant “five-ish” and the other person knows you probably won’t be on
time. You suggest that you are forty-ish and it means that you just aren’t willing to tell the
truth about your age. So, this comedian is Jew-ish,
meaning that he sort of follows his faith, when it is convenient, but he doesn’t
let it affect his life too much. Funny.
Well, the message and the wake-up call today is that there is
no Christian-ish. And this is actually good news even
though it may be hard news. The truth is that Christianity has been at its best
when it is counter-cultural, when we are as Christians are the salt and leaven
of the world. We are lights which won’t be hidden under a bushel as an old hymn
says, or in the safety of the church. We may discover in the decades ahead that
being a Christian will be much more costly and that saying we are followers of
Jesus will have a price in terms of social acceptance. The good news, it seems
to me, is that Jesus tells us in the gospels that he will never leave us or forsake us.
There is a prayer that has sat on my desk for many years,
sometimes disappearing into the rubble only to emerge once again to remind me
that our decision for Christ requires courage and commitment.
Lord help us not to be afraid to be
different,
to hold to hard truths and high goals,
and love beyond mercy, and peace, and
fairness,
in all our dealings. Amen.