What Needs To Be Broken?

Sermon-12 Pentecost-Proper 15-August 15, 2010
The Cloud of Unknowing, "O God, our great companion, lead us ever more deeply into the mystery of your life and ours, that we may be faithful interpreters of that Life to each other, through our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.”
Last Sunday Marlene Dapsi’s family brought balloons to church to celebrate her birthday. It triggered a memory for me that on my first Sunday here in 1986 Marlene’s brother, Kirby, stood up and told the congregation that it was her birthday-and then he told everyone how old she was. I couldn’t believe that he did that (telling everyone her age), and remembering that brought back another memory for me. It was earlier that year and Debby and I had come down to be interviewed by Trinity about being their next rector. I had been through the search process this a few times with other churches and more or less knew what to expect. Until I came here. Most search committees consisted or 6-8 members-Trinity’s had over 30. Most search committees had a series of questions written out that different people on the committee would ask the candidate. Not Trinity. They would turn to the large group of people and say, “what do you want to ask him?” And then someone would say, “Ask him how he likes strawberries????” And then the group would laugh and laugh and laugh. Somebody else would say something kind of off the wall, and everyone would laugh hysterically. And this went on for 2 hours. I came back to our hotel room after the interview and Deb asked, “how did it go?” I said something like, “They don’t need a priest, they need some medication.” And I remember thinking to myself, this is a group that enjoys themselves (a lot)-how will they accept a priest who on occasion has to tell them hard news? Will they laugh it off? Get angry? Ignore it?
Today’s gospel reading makes me wish I had left a week earlier. Daniel Harrington, S.J., is professor of New Testament at Weston Jesuit School of Theology in Cambridge, Mass said in a sermon a few years ago, “The Gospel reading for this Sunday presents three initially puzzling sayings of Jesus. He proclaims that he has come to light a fire on earth, to undergo a baptism of death and to bring division rather than peace. What happened to angels singing about peace on earth and Jesus the prince of peace?”
51Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division! Debby asked me, “Do you think Jesus was just having a bad day?” 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.” This is not the Rodney King version of Jesus , saying “Can’t we all just get along?” This is the tough Jesus, the angry Jesus. Pastor Martha Sterne of Maryville, Tennessee once wrote: In today’s first reading. “Am I a God nearby and not a God far off? Who can hide so that I cannot see them? Is not my word like fire? Is not my word like a hammer that breaks in pieces?” That’s what God said to Jeremiah, who said it to the people. And they didn’t like it at all. They laughed at him and he kept on. They threw him down a well and he kept on. They put him in jail and he kept on. …So Jeremiah kept talking –hollering really-irritating everybody.”
This is what prophet’s do-they irritate, they aggravate, they make you want to throw them down the well. Do you wonder why Jesus’ popularity seemed to wax and wane? You’d think that someone who went around healing people, providing free food, changing water to wine would be very popular, right? Jesus is on his way to ______________(Jerusalem) and every week we hear him teaching on the way. Today he gives the tough teaching (when doesn’t he?) and he says that following him will challenge what people believe, who people are.
At the vestry meeting Monday night we were talking about racism, and I said that I never knew a white person who thought they were racist. It really goes a lot farther than that. I can’t remember a man who ever thought he was sexist, a young person who ever thought they discriminated against the elderly, an able person who ever thought they discriminated against the physically challenged. Every time someone has accused me of prejudice or unfairness I always have fought tooth and nail to say that they were wrong. Every week we admit that we are sinners as long as we don’t have to confess specific sins. James Baldwin once said “Most of us are about as eager to be changed as we were to be born, and go through our changes in a similar state of shock.”
Whether it’s being born again, giving up our lives, or facing the fire in today’s teaching, Jesus doesn’t just try to be nice, he is a truth teller, a sword, a divider-words we never use in our prayers to Jesus. Woodie W. White is Bishop of the United Methodist Church for the Indiana area was preaching on this lesson once and asked this provocative question: “May I ask you, what in your life might need to be broken? Is there some attitude, some behavior, some mode of thinking, some pattern of being that needs to be broken or changed? Surely in our society, there are some things that have become just ways of doing things that need to be changed. We've become a far "meaner" society. It was once said that we are a kinder, gentler society but that is not true. Indeed, it seems that the thing to do is to be mean, to let it all hang out, to say it like it is, to be unkind, and it seems the louder you shout and the crueler you are, the more popular you become. And so we become - and are becoming - accustomed to this kind of harshness, this pattern of behavior ….”
When Jesus says strong words like “I came to bring fire, I came to bring division” or as it says in Matthew, “I came to bring a sword” and you think to yourself, man, was Jesus just a little cranky that day, remember this one question, “what in your life might need to be broken?”
The great mystic and social activist of the 16th century, Teresa of Avila, came to a stream while en route to one of her convents. As she began crossing over, her donkey became startled and bucked her off headlong in to the cold water. Coming up out of the water breathless and shivering, Teresa looked up to heaven and yelled, “do you always treat your friends like this?” Waiting a moment and getting no answer, the saint dragged herself out of the stream and muttered under her breath, “no wonder you have so few of them.”
A prophet’s job isn’t to be liked, or even likeable-it’s to tell the uncomfortable truth and to provoke us to change. It feels like fire, it divides, often times it hurts and we are dragged kicking and screaming into being different. I loved Baldwin’s quote-we start out fighting birth and resist every change from then on. Jeremiah is a prophet, Jesus is a prophet. And we are people who hear this teaching and challenged to ask, “what in my life might need to be broken?”