The Jesus of Division Jeremiah 23:23-29, Hebrews 12: 1-14, Luke 12:49-56 August 15, 2004, 11 Pentecost, Proper 15  The Rev. William V. Livingston, Rector Church of the Resurrection, Starkville, Mississippi Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division! Now how many of us have this verse posted on our refrigerator? This is not the Prince of Peace, the cuddly baby Jesus we want to hold and feel good about ourselves. The Jesus today's Gospel offers feels more like an angry toddler throwing a temper tantrum at the store. People don't like this Jesus. Yet, the Jesus born in a manger, who held the children in his lap while teaching, who healed the sick, who wept at Lazarus' tomb, who offers easy yokes or light burdens, is the same Jesus who brings division. And, if we are to be Christians, imitators of Christ, then we must embrace both the Prince of Peace-Jesus and the Jesus who brings division. Both have to do with shaping ourselves as people by living faithfully with God at the absolute center of our lives. When we put the two together, we get one message =96 a message that has to do with telling the truth; and with living not for ourselves alone, but for one another, to do with holiness of life and with a passionate concern for the poor and to do with the way we take care of the stuff and the people God gives us. We get one message that brings wholeness but also disrupts our comfort zones and confronts our complacency and inconsistency. We get the message reflected in the movie A Long Walk Home about the Selma, AL, bus boycott in which a young white housewife risked imitating Jesus by getting to know her black housekeeper as a fellow human being. As she did, she felt called to assist: first by transporting the housekeeper to work and home so she would not have to walk those many miles while boycotting the segregated buses and then similarly helping others in the boycott. As the movie progressed, her imitation of Jesus brought her into increasing conflict with her bridge group, with her neighbors, with her husband's boss, ultimately resulting in division with her husband and children. Anyone who lived in Mississippi in the early 1960s experienced how divisive the message can be. If, today, disruption and confrontation are not easy images for us to associate with Jesus, could it be because we have allowed Jesus to be used as a campaign button in politics but never imitated, because the slogan of being a Christian nation supersedes the call to be the light of Christ in the world, because Christianity has been taken hostage by a culture that wants nothing to do with the really difficult tasks of being an imitator of Jesus but uses Christianity only as a means of beating up on those who disagree with them? How wonderful life would be if every story had a happy ending and all loose ends were tied neatly into a bow at the end of the day. But life is not like that; and the Christian life is not always peace and reconciliation. Since Diane is absent today, I can talk about her in a sermon. Those who know Diane well know she always finds something positive in every situation. As I commented to some at out post-Healing Service lunch on Thursday, sometimes I say to her, "Even a Pollyanna approach won't make some problems better." Our taste in movies further reflects these differences. While I prefer movies that make us wrestle with the difficult questions of life, Diane prefers only those with happy endings. In this unpleasant footnote, Jesus reminded his followers that a commitment to Christian values sometimes have troubling endings: strained or broken relations with those we love. In doing so, he reminds us there is no halfway, no halfhearted Christianity. If we make a commitment to Christ, it challenges everything we do and conflicts with the world. As one translation puts it, "I came to make people choose sides." The writer of Hebrews offers the same choice: "Let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely" and choose instead to follow Jesus. The message confronts any attempt to compartmentalize our lives: to confront when what happens on Sunday doesn't transform what happens every other day, to confront a stewardship that concerns itself with only how much we drop in the alms basin and not with everything we have and everything we are. What does this commitment mean for us in today's real world? Some people only want to be committed to a personal, private relationship with Jesus and avoid the church and Christ's mission in the world. Such people quietly think to themselves, "It's me and Jesus, having our little prayer life together. Just the two of us. Reading the Bible and talking to Jesus. We have our sweet little time together in the morning and the night. That's what devotion is, isn't it?" Some people unconsciously minimize their personal relationship with Jesus or minimize the mission of Christ in the world. Such people emphasize how important the church is to their personal existence. The church exists for their social and pastoral needs. They think to themselves "I will come to church and see all my friends before and after worship, and I'll go out for breakfast/lunch with the gang. To have your primary friends and social patterns be through the church and to have the priest come by when you're sick. That's what church is, isn't it?" To be an imitator of Christ is to be committed not only to Christ and not only to the church but also committed to the mission of the church as well. In this mission, we must risk division. The mission of the church is to recognize that for the world to see Jesus today, it must look at us. It is challenges to live our lives in such a way that if someone walked ten feet behind us, they would find a more reconciled world than if they walked ten feet ahead of us. The great temptation of Christianity is always to have sugar coated Christianity with fancy crosses we wear to worship in well decorated churches that offer a gospel that expects nothing of us. Our personal temptation is that the cares, riches and pleasures of this life become more important than the call of Jesus Christ. And so the security of family and friends and jobs and homes and vacations become more important to us than Christ and his mission. The result is watered down wine; it is middle class Christianity; it is complacent Christianity; it is comfortable Christianity. We do not often dwell on this passionate and seemingly divisive side of Jesus; it is usually overlooked or downplayed since it doesn't match the docile image often attributed to him. But Jesus is perfectly clear in these readings and others: The gospel is divisive, and many people have much to lose from its realization. Insisting upon kingdom ideals such as justice for the outcast was no more popular then than it is now. For this reason, the anger and passion evidenced by Jesus is vital to our own ability to identify, renounce and work for justice in all that we do. Now, it is important that we keep clear about something here. God does not give us this vision of how human beings should live so that God can sit up there with a checklist keeping score on how we do and gleefully sending us to hell if we get too many wrong answers. And none of these warnings about behavior and discipline have to do with whether or not God will continue to love us. That is a given, and God's refusal to love us is never the message. The text concludes, "You know how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky, but why do you not know how to interpret the present time?" Today, he'd more likely say, "You have prepared well for your retirement years, but how is it that you do not recognize what is important here and now?" We congratulate ourselves for a good worship service, but Jesus screams out, "Interpret the present time!" This present time! How many hurting souls did I drive by this morning? Who was I too busy for today that needed a word of encouragement? Where is there hunger, oppression, injustice, just minutes from my house, work or church? Forget about the 'end times,' forget about someday, quit focusing on Jesus' return: Jesus says, "Interpret the present time!"