If you had come into church earlier this week you would have found the vestry door wide open and the lock to the door lying in pieces on the floor. Thankfully, the cause was not a second attempted break in (as was the case not so many months ago) rather, the Yale lock has been playing up and needed to be replaced. So ‘who’re you gonna call?’ The answer, of course, was our multi-talented curate who, alongside lectures on the Old and New Testaments had clearly found time to attend the college course on breaking and entering and applied her talents to getting into the lock with a hair pin, removing it and then replacing it. Sometimes you don’t necessarily need a key…but something that works might be of help.
Today’s gospel reading needs a key to unlock it. At its heart we hear some pretty difficult words from Jesus: 51Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division! 52From now on, five in one household will be divided, three against two and two against three; 53they will be divided:
‘father against son and son against father,
mother against daughter and daughter against mother,
mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.’
These aren’t words that fit easily with many of our conceptions of who Jesus was and what his ministry was about. The thought that one of his purposes was to divide families is not an easy one to reconcile with the gospel message so we need help to unlock the passage.
We are given some clues as to what the passage is about in the verses before us but, more helpful, are the verses that surround our passage in Luke chapter 12 and on into chapter 13.
Our gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John) were written some time after the events that they describe. The shape of the gospel narrative is fairly similar across the piece: Jesus’ birth, his childhood , baptism and temptation and then his teaching ministry in Galilee lead up to his final journey to Jerusalem and the events we associate with Holy Week and Easter. The gospels all have this shape to them. But within this shape the four evangelists exercise their editorial freedom in how they present Jesus’ teaching. Imagine. They have a parable recalled by this community here…another remembrance from someone else there. As the years have passed these stories have been passed down by word of mouth by the first Christian communities before being written down…and so they become detached from the first time they were first heard, or Jesus tells the same story a number of times but with slightly different emphases. In chapters 12 and 13 Luke gives us a collection of parables and sayings that he has pulled together under a common theme in Jesus’ teaching: that theme is the key to our reading this morning and it is the theme of Judgement.
At the beginning of chapter 12 we have a warning that all secrets will be laid bare; we’re then told not to fear those who kill the body, rather to fear the one who has authority to cast into hell; we are given advice about persecution – what to say when crisis hits; we hear the parable of the rich fool (the man who surrounded himself with riches but whose life was poor towards God) and this is followed by a reflection upon what is important in life and putting God’s kingdom first.
These sayings then lead into parables of crisis and decision: Luke gives us a story of slaves being ready to welcome their master at whatever time of the night he might return home; then come a couple of verses about a thief breaking into a house and a parable about servants who are not found hard at work when their master returns and the judgement he metes out on them.
Only then do we get to our gospel verses this morning which begins with Jesus saying ‘I came to bring fire to the earth’ and which includes (in italics in our pew sheets) a quote from the prophet Micah (chapter 7 vs 6), verses which, in that prophecy describe the disintegration of society that has come about through Israel’s failure to obey God.
The verses that end our passage – knowing the signs of the times- and on into chapter 13 make it clear that the thrust of our passage is about God’s judgment. And the next thing to notice is that this judgment is brought about by Jesus. Those parables about the master coming home, the thief breaking into the house, the servants being punished – their message is taking place now, as Jesus makes his way up to Jerusalem. As he journeys from Galilee up to the Holy City the Day of Judgement is coming ever closer and his hearers have a decision to make: will they welcome Him…or not?
Just before I went on holiday I spoke a little about the ‘word of God’, how it has a life of its own, how it creates and brings something into being. You might also remember that I mentioned how this divine ‘Word’ becomes embodied in the life of some of the prophets: the Word is not just spoken but lived. (Hosea’s marriage to an unfaithful wife would be a case in point…or some of the acted out parables that Ezekiel performed). Jesus is God’s Word. He doesn’t just talk about God’s judgement – he doesn’t just ponder out loud about it in the abstract- no, he is living it. He is bringing God’s judgment into being. Judaism had projected forward into a distant future ‘the Day of the Lord’: a day when God would reveal Himself, all the wrongs of the world would be righted, the righteous rewarded and the wicked would get their just desserts. Jesus’ ministry brings that judgment into the present. Luke makes this clear in the words that follow our passage. These tell us to ‘make friends with our accuser before we get to court.’ ‘Get your life sorted now…for you are running out of time.’
What do we do with these thoughts? Here are three suggestions.
Firstly, we have to remind ourselves that Jesus’ actions are those of God Himself. As the apostle Paul put it: God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself. Jesus isn’t just talking about God or pointing us to God: He is God. His ministry is a disruption of how Israel and Judaism imagined history to play out. He pulls the future into the present. Through the judgment that he pronounces God, in Christ, acts to bring about a new reality. He makes possible a route into the Kingdom of God: forgiveness for all who turn from living for themselves and place His kingdom (His Lordship) at the heart of their lives.
Secondly. For all its negative connotations we need to remember that the word ‘judgement’ is a positive thing – after all God is the judge! God’s declaration of what is right and what is wrong is surely a positive thing. Do we not want to hear God’s blessing upon the hungry, the lonely, the sick, the abused. Do we not want to see him lift up those who have been crushed by warfare and violence, those whose lives have been scarred or worn down by others’ cruelty and heartlessness. Do we not want to see evil restrained? Righteous judgement is a good thing…’and shall not the judge of all the earth do right?’
Which leads on to a third and final thought, which is that we must all respond to this message of judgement. Looking back, we now know that God’s judgment of the world took place at the cross of Christ – the ‘baptism’ that Jesus speaks of in verse 50 is a reference to His death. How we respond to the crucified Messiah is the greatest decision a person can ever make. If this is God, our Lord and Judge then we must cling to him and seek his protection from all that the broken world without Him might throw at us. We must live by the values of His kingdom confident that the cross is not the end of our faith but opens up a new beginning for us, a new future, life lived in God’s presence.
One last thing: I mentioned that our passage contained a quote from Micah chapter 7 within it. Whilst we have been pondering the context of our gospel passage it struck me that it might be worth looking up the verses that follow Micah’s prophecy. So hear these words, and hear them read mindful of Jesus’ ministry, of his humiliation at the cross and his sense of being abandoned by God. As society collapsed around him, as families turned against themselves Micah wrote:
As for me, I will look to the LORD, I will wait for the God of my salvation; my God will hear me.
8Do not rejoice over me, O my enemy; when I fall, I shall rise; when I sit in darkness,
the LORD will be a light to me.
9I must bear the indignation of the LORD, because I have sinned against him, until he takes my side and executes judgement for me.
He will bring me out to the light; I shall see his vindication.