sermon

Luke 12:49-56
Restore us, O LORD God of hosts; let your face shine, that we may be saved. Amen.
In theory, I love the fact that we use a lectionary. Each week we read scriptures that are being read by Christians all over the world. Not only is there a wonderful unity in that fact, but it helps to keep preachers honest. We cannot preach week after week on only our favorite passages and themes – at some point we have to confront parts of the Bible that confuse or trouble or anger us. I love that. In theory. Until I get stuck preaching on a Sunday like this one.
All I can say is, I’m glad it’s not “Bring-A-Friend Sunday.” Today’s readings are enough to send even seasoned Christians running screaming from the church. “And now I will tell you what I will do to my vineyard. I will remove its hedge, and it shall be devoured; I will break down its wall, and it shall be trampled down. I will make it a waste; it shall not be pruned or hoed, and it shall be overgrown with briers and thorns.” Isaiah calls that a love song.
The psalm speaks of God’s vineyard, the nation of Israel, being burned with fire and cut down. The writer of the letter to the Hebrews remembers our “cloud of witnesses” – people who have done great things for the faith, to be sure, but also people who have “suffered mocking and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. They were stoned to death, they were sawn in two, they were killed by the sword; they went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, persecuted, tormented.”
This is really starting to sound like a lifestyle you want to follow, isn’t it? Well, thank goodness for the Gospel. You can always count on “gentle Jesus, meek and mild” to offer words of love and comfort, right?
Wrong. “Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division! From now on five in one household will be divided, three against two and two against three.”
This is not one of your more evangelistic texts. What in these words could possibly make a person want to become a Christian? Where is the good news? What is Jesus thinking?
Remember – how could you forget? Father John’s talked about nothing else for weeks – that Jesus has set his face toward Jerusalem. He is headed to a violent confrontation with death. He’s focused on what’s ahead, and he’s understandably a bit stressed. He says to his disciples, "I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!” That’s an interesting thing to say not very long after he’s rebuked James and John for wanting to rain down fire on a Samaritan village. Fire represents judgment, but the judgment comes from God, through Jesus, not through his disciples, and ultimately it will be a judgment of love rather than destruction. But Jesus knows he’s going to have to literally go through hell first, and he wishes he had that part behind him. When he says, “I have a baptism with which to be baptized, and what stress I am under until it is completed!” we again remember James and John, and Jesus’ question to them, “Are you able to be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?” Jesus’ intensity is rising as he gets closer to Jerusalem and the horrors he will have to face.
So the intensity of his teaching is rising, too. He is still, as Father John pointed out last week, talking about priorities, figuring out what we value most and following it. And he wants us to know that this is where the rubber meets the road. If we’re going to follow Jesus, seriously follow Jesus, we can expect to get what Jesus got. The road leads to a cross. That’s the simple truth of the matter.
That doesn’t necessarily mean that any of us will be called to die for our faith, but I can’t promise we won’t. It does mean that a faithful life does not always follow the path of harmony and conflict avoidance. And no part of our lives is protected from that. In Jesus’ culture, kindred and family ties were everything. To be outside of your family was to be completely set adrift. It didn’t get any worse than being divided “father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother.”
One could look at this and think, “Wow, this is scary stuff. I am really not excited about that cross ahead of me. Maybe I’ll just turn around right now.” Or, one could look at this and think, “Jesus knew how hard this would be, and he’s encouraging me to keep at it. Jesus has walked this road before me and is walking it now with me, and promising that it’s all worth it.” Because of course, the cross is not the end of the road. Jesus didn't come to live among us in order to bring division, he came in order to bring us abundant life. But he also knew, and wanted his followers to know, that abundant life doesn't always come easily or painlessly.
Let me tell you about three women who have helped me on my journey. The first I’m sure you all know: Harriet Tubman. She helped more than 300 slaves to freedom through the Underground Railroad. She was still a slave when she married John Tubman, a free man. He was content to leave things as they were, but, for obvious reasons, she was not. When she escaped slavery and began leading others to freedom, her husband refused to go with her and eventually married someone else. But she had found her path and continued to walk it. One biography said that “She always expressed confidence that God would aid her efforts, and threatened to shoot any of her charges who thought to turn back.” This is not a woman who feared conflict in her fight against great injustice, and it cost her.
Perhaps not quite as well known to us, but hugely famous in her own day, was Aimee Semple McPherson. She was a Pentecostalist evangelist in the early part of the 20th century. She built the 5,000 seat Angelus Temple in Los Angeles and led a religious renewal on Azusa Street that included blacks, whites, Latinos and people across all social classes. And she was a show-woman. Her sermons included huge moving sets and live animals. She founded the International Church of the Four Square Gospel, which thrives today in many parts of the country and around the world.
Her personal life was littered with failed marriages, a month-long disappearance which she claimed was a kidnapping, nervous breakdowns, and rumors of an affair with an employee, and she died at age 54 from an apparently accidental overdose of a prescription medication.
Perhaps not a person to hold up as a role model for us moderate Episcopalians. But this woman and her church also fed 1.5 million people in Los Angeles during the Great Depression. For her the message of the Gospel was not simply words, but action. You have to show people how much you love them.
She spent her life doing that, and it cost her. Anthea Butler, an assistant professor of religion at the University of Rochester, said this about Aimee. “What becomes the issue is how much are you supposed to give up of yourself to live for God? I mean, this is always the big question. There’s all these great songs about, 'I surrender all, put your all on the altar' all these sorts of things. And people saying these things, they really mean them. But nobody ever bothers to think of a life like Aimee's. And Aimee just decided to go headlong into all of this. There is a point in which you have to count the cost of what it's going to do. Do you pull back when your family starts to fall apart or your daughter doesn't like you anymore? Do you pull back when your mother turns against you? Do you pull back from it when you've had this accusation against you that you really ran off with the radio operator? Do you pull back? And I think someone like Aimee says, 'No, I don't pull back from it.'”
Did she make the right choices? I don’t know. Certainly the presence of pain and division in one's life is no automatic guarantee that one is doing God's work. I do know that Aimee helped a lot of people, and her commitment to following Christ has not been matched by many.
But one might be Eleanor Josaitis. Does anyone here know Eleanor? She and Father William Cunningham founded Focus:HOPE in Detroit in 1968, after the violence of 1967. Here’s an excerpt from a Focus:HOPE paper about her:
What drove this former suburban housewife, a mother of five, to give up her comfortable life to help save the city of Detroit? One evening as Josaitis watched television, she came upon a channel showing the violence at the civil rights marches in Mississippi. Haunting images of policeman using fire hoses on the marchers caused her to break down into tears. She had an even more intense reaction when she became an eyewitness to the Detroit riots of 1967. “We saw tanks, we saw fire everywhere, we saw people running, and we said we have got to do something.”
Josaitis’ decision to take action caused serious family problems. Her parents did not understand where she was coming from - her mother appointed a lawyer to try to take her five children away, and her father disowned her.
She did not allow this adversity to prevent her from helping the community. Josaitis partnered with Father Cunningham to form Focus:HOPE.
Since then, Josaitis has received a variety of responses from the people of metro Detroit - but she prefers to call all of them “love letters.” One of these notes contained a cutout of her editorial for the Free Press written after September 11. The article begged the community to strive for celebration of diversity - scrawled across its body were the words, “Stick diversity ” – and then some words I can’t say from the pulpit.
In the last nearly 40 years Focus:HOPE has helped thousands upon thousands of people with food and job training programs. For Eleanor Josaitis, following Christ is about love, and where there is need, love requires action as much as words.
Jesus stood up for marginalized people and proclaimed a Gospel of love that was for everyone, no matter what. It cost him his life, and gave us our lives, so that we can follow his example. Paul Nuechterlein writes, “If our peace and happiness is to be bought at the price of ignoring another's pain, then Jesus comes with a truth which will divide us.” When we challenge that false peace and happiness, we will be opposed by those who want to maintain the status quo, and it will cost us.
We need to hear this message with great humility. The possibility always exists that when we make unpopular choices, we're wrong. We have to always be asking the question, "Why am I doing this? Is this what Jesus is calling me to do, or am I off on an ego trip?" And we have to listen not only to our own hearts, but to the wisdom and discernment of our faith community. Nobody is a Christian alone. And then we have to proceed with what we honestly believe is the faithful choice, whatever the consequences.
So where’s the good news? The good news is that there are people like Harriet Tubman, Aimee Semple McPherson and Eleanor Josaitis, and a host of others, who found such joy and fulfillment in the road they walked with Jesus that it was worth the high price they paid. The good news is that there are people like you and me, not famous, not doing spectacular things, but honestly trying, day in and day out, to live out our commitment to the One who is the Source of all joy. The good news is in the resurrection moments we all experience at one time or another. Our J2A group in Jamaica. The youths who went to help Hurricane Katrina victims last year. The many people at Trinity who give of their time, money, and energy for Adopt-A-Child-Size. Our CROP walkers. Jesus comes into each of our lives with the opportunity to know the joy as well as the hard work of service.
The good news is that God is with us in the midst of every difficult choice, every broken relationship, every painful moment, strengthening us and showing us how to love.
Ultimately the love of God is stronger and more permanent than division, violence, even death, and Jesus knew that even as he was facing down the cross. Jesus warned us that it wouldn’t be easy, that sometimes it would be downright awful. But Jesus, and a great cloud of witnesses, walked this road before us, and walk it with us now. There is no other road that is more joyful or more fulfilling.