Rev. Jeffrey Spencer
Recently of Tolt Congregational Church
August 15, 2004
Scripture:
We come to our Gospel lesson picking up in the middle of a discussion Jesus is having with his disciples. Since chapter 9, Jesus has been heading toward Jerusalem to confront the principalities and powers with his truth. He knows the consequences of this action. He knows that he will be killed. And, needless to say, this knowledge is stressing him out a little.
Since the end of Chapter 11, Jesus has been tweaking out a bit. He’s lit into Pharisees, lawyers, and his very own disciples. He’s been trying to express how important his work is, how important his truth is. And even his beloved disciples aren’t getting it.
"I came to bring fire on the earth." "Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division!"
What happened to the angels’ promise at his birth? What happened to the songs of peace on earth and good will to all humanity? That’s not what Jesus says he came for. He says he came to bring fire on the earth.
Think for a minute about divine fire in the Bible. There’s the fire that rains down on Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis 19 for their lack of hospitality to the stranger. There’s the burning bush that attracts Moses’ attention. There’s the pillar of smoke by day and pillar of fire by night that leads the Hebrews out of slavery into freedom. And in the 18th chapter of 1 Kings, there’s a wonderful story of the prophet Elijah confronting the priests of Baal. [I told the story, which you can read in 1 Kings 18]
Fire of judgment. Fire of attention and holiness. Fire of safety. Fire of power.
What sort of fire do you imagine Jesus came to bring? Well, he says it’s a fire that going to upset things. Things are going to be shaken up. Even families are going to experience division. But this shouldn’t be too surprising. The church has a long history of families experiencing division because of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Around the year 200, St. Perpetua was denounced by her husband to Emperor Septimius Severus, who had forbidden conversion to Christianity. Perpetua’s father was a man of influence, but all he was willing to do was arrange for her freedom -- if she would renounce her Christianity. She refused and was put to death in the arena in Carthage.
In the 13th century, in Assisi, Italy, St Francis had a run-in with his father. When Francis heard God’s call, he took the scripture "Sell all that you have and give it to the poor," quite literally. His father wasn’t too pleased with this, since most of what Francis sold was actually his father’s. His father had him thrown in jail, then took him to court. Francis said, "No longer is Pietro Bernardone my father for, from now on, my father is in heaven."
At about the same time in another part of Italy, Count Landulf wanted his son to become a priest. But Landulf wanted his son to be a Benedictine. And his son, St. Thomas Aquinas, wanted to be a Dominican. Landulf had Thomas locked up in a tower for 15 months trying to get him to change his mind.
And about 7 centuries later, William and Suzanne Spencer had a hard time when their son, Jeffrey, told them that he was called to ordained ministry. "You should get a real job first," his mother told him. "Why would God call you?" he was asked. They tried to dissuade him, but it was to no avail.
Jesus has, and Jesus does, set child against parent. Jesus does bring division.
It is risky being a Christian.
Let me temper that a bit. Right now, in the United States, it’s not risky to be a civic Christian. The type of Christianity to supports the status quo -- well, the status quo loves that. But the Christianity that calls you to take an unpopular stand ...
You know what I’m talking about. You listened closely to the gospel of Jesus Christ and decide to boldly and clearly proclaim and embody his radically inclusive love. You become an Open and Affirming congregation. And you ended up experiencing some heat. Jesus brings a fire to the earth.
Fredrick Buechner wrote about the importance of taking stand in your faith convictions: "The prophet Deborah wouldn’t have beaten the tar out of the Canaanites by issuing directives from her living room any more than Moses would have gotten his people out of Egypt by writing letter to the New York Times."
If we’re going to be faithful people, if we going to be more than civic Christians, we need to be willing to take a stand, and take the heat that comes with it. But the fire that Jesus brings is more than the heat that is generate in reaction of faithfulness to the Gospel.
You see, we trivialize Christianity if all we seek to change is that outside ourselves. Take a look at our families: We’re struggling, and we’re lost, and the confusion is painful. There are casualties everywhere. We have failures of communication; we are dishonest with each other; there are these unbearable tensions and distances. And we don’t know what to do about any of it. Sometimes we think that we’ll just patch a little prayer on top of it all, and we decide that we’ll have a little family prayer time. We pray for two minutes a day, and it doesn’t work.
And why not? Well, you can’t pray a couple minutes a day, patch that prayer onto an otherwise unchanged life, and expect it to be different. Jesus did not come so our behavior will be just a little bit different, but to that everything will be transformed.
Marianne Williamson put it this way: "When you ask God into your life, you think God is going to come into your psychic house, look around, and see that you just need a new floor or better furniture, and that everything needs just a little cleaning -- and so you go along for the first six months thinking how nice life is now that God is there. Then you look out the window one day and you see that there’s a wrecking ball outside. It turns out that God actually thinks your whole foundation is shot and you’re going to have to start over from scratch."
Jesus and his wrecking ball. Suddenly the image of Jesus standing at the door and knocking is transformed. "Hey, anybody home? I want to knock this sucker down so we can totally rebuild it. You ready for that?"
I recently stayed at a Bed & Breakfast in Wisconsin. It used to be the parsonage for the Lutheran Church in this town. On the wall was a series of pictures of a white, clapboard church burning to the ground. I noticed it, thinking how sad it must have been for the people of that church to watch it burn down. "What happened?" I asked my host. "Yeah, pretty amazing," he said.
He went on to explain that the church building had been purposefully set on fire by the church members. They had decided they needed a radical transformation to empower their ministry, so they arranged with the fire department to burn it down to make room for something new. I thought to myself that that was a gusty move. But it’s what Jesus and his wrecking ball is set to do. Knock it all down to its very foundation. Rip out the foundation if necessary.
Jesus wants to make room for something new.
When I thought about this image of Jesus and his wrecking ball, one of my favorite childhood picture books came to mind: "Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel." How many of you know that book? [Not enough people said they knew the book, so I very quickly retold the story.]
I suppose at some level, the story is about progress and obsolescence and about adjusting to change. But I always saw it as being about something else. I saw it as being about transformation, about finding a whole new way of being. Jesus wants to knock down every part of you that doesn’t reflect God’s realm. God, give me the courage to change. Amen.