Sunday, August 18, 2013

Where did kind and friendly Jesus go?



Sermon preached on Sunday, August 18 at the Church of the Ascension, Munich
Jeremiah 23:23-29, Hebrews 11:29-12:2, Luke 12:49-56

If you type ‘Jesus’ into Google Images® then most of the pictures of Jesus that you are offered show a kind, friendly, welcoming (and very European) figure: often with his arms outstretched, hugging someone, or holding a child, or a lamb. They show the Jesus we call the Prince of Peace, the Jesus who said ‘blessed are the peacemakers’ (Mt. 5:9), who commanded us to love not only our neighbor, but also our enemy (Lk 6:35), to turn the other cheek (Lk 6:29), and to forgive a brother or sister who sins against us not just seven, but 77 times (Mt 18:21). After all, isn’t Christianity, especially the Episcopal version, all about love, forgiveness, reconciliation, and inclusiveness? “God loves you, no exceptions” is the text of a popular Episcopal bumper sticker and poster at the moment.

So where on earth does the Jesus of today’s gospel come from? The one who says he has come to bring fire to the earth and who wishes it was already blazing, the one who promises not peace, but division and even strife? Well the answer is that he has been there all along. This is the Jesus of righteous anger who overturns the tables of the moneychangers in the temple and who calls the Pharisees fools and hypocrites. For the love that Jesus teaches and demonstrates is not something fluffy, soft, or comfortable, but robust, sometimes aggressive, and often downright dangerous.

For some time now, ever since Luke started to describe Jesus’ final journey to Jerusalem at the end of chapter 9, our Sunday gospel reading has been about how Jesus uses this journey to instruct his followers in both the nature, and in the demands of discipleship, on what it means to follow the Way of Christ. In parables and narrative we have heard how Jesus’ disciples are to proclaim the Kingdom of God in word and deed, to heal, to show compassion, to help the stranger, to give to those in need, to trust in God, and to follow him without reservation. In doing so they also experience rejection and hostility, and Jesus warns them that more would follow. Following Jesus means not only being willing to change oneself, but also society as a whole; that is what striving for God’s kingdom means. Yet rejecting the status quo, and calling those short who want to protect it and their own positions of wealth, power, and influence, is not without danger. Both of these messages, the need to change and the consequences of change, are also what today’s gospel passage is about.  

When Jesus says "I came to bring fire to the earth” we are probably supposed to recall what John the Baptist said about Jesus at the beginning of Luke’s Gospel (3:16):  “I baptize you with water. But … he (Jesus) will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.” Little tongues of fire were of course what appeared on the disciples when they received the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. But fire also stands for something that cleans or purifies, just as fire burns away the dross leaving only the pure metals behind. Jesus wants this process of change to begin as soon as possible: it begins for each of us when we accept and welcome the transformation that God’s Spirit works in us.

“I have a baptism with which to be baptized.” The baptism Jesus is referring to here is his death on the cross. He knows that it is what awaits him in Jerusalem at the end of his journey and he knows that it is necessary to demonstrate just how robust, limitless and powerful God’s love is. This image of Baptism is one that St. Paul also picks up when he asks “don’t you know that all who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?” (Ro 6:3)

Jesus goes on to ask “do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division!”  There are of course different sorts and meanings of peace. It can just stand for the absence of conflict, for a state of tranquility, or for harmony, concord, and security. Peace in this sense can be bad if it is a means of securing an unjust status quo, of maintaining the prosperity of a few and imposing a harmony that masks inequality. That peace is not what Jesus brings. God’s peace is much more: it is health, well-being, and wholeness for all, for the whole world and never for one individual, or group, or country above others.

So, instead of a limited peace at all costs, Jesus warns that there will be division and that his followers must be willing to risk division even in their own family. Now that doesn’t sound so frightening to us. At least in my family father and son, and mother and daughter do not always agree: whether about politics, religion, or just the need to tidy up a bedroom…. And disagreements between mother- and daughter-in-law are very much part of our comedy culture. But that was not the case in 1st century Palestine. Obedience to one’s parents, especially to one’s father, and a sense of solidarity within the family were the standard of the day: Just think of the fifth commandment to honor one’s father and mother! So like many other things he had to say, this statement by Jesus must have sounded scandalous: Following me can bring division right into the heart of your family.

Finally Jesus addresses the crowds: Recognizing the need for change, seeing that society is in crisis and cannot continue as it is, should be as easy to recognize as is the weather he tells them: “You know how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky, but why do you not know how to interpret the present time?”  That’s a very timeless question.

The Jesus of today’s gospel reading must be just as much an example for us, as the kind, friendly, welcoming, loving, and forgiving Jesus. Proclaiming God’s love can and sometimes must cause division. That God loves everyone without exception is divisive to those who believe that God only loves those who keep to their standards of morality or their way of worshiping. Preaching equality regardless of gender, race, sexual orientation, wealth, or education is divisive to those who believe that their group has been singled out for special attention and favor. Preaching against idolatry, against putting the love of money, power, nation, or weapons above the love of God and neighbor is divisive to those who worship these idols. Welcoming the stranger, in today’s terms the refugee, into our midst is divisive to those for whom that refugee is perceived as a threat to their security and prosperity and for those who exploit people’s fear of the stranger to their own advantage.

We have no choice but to be divisive if we really want to bring about what we pray for at every service, that God’s kingdom come, on earth as in heaven. Given the choice between witnessing to the Good News or aiming for peace and quiet, given the choice between following the Way of Christ, or striving for harmony, we who have been baptized into Christ Jesus must choose the Way, regardless of the consequences! That’s what Jonathan Daniels, an Episcopal Seminarian whose death we commemorated this last week, did when he went to Selma, Alabama at the height of the civil rights struggle. He risked and gave his life for another because, in the words of the collect written for him, he would not make peace with oppression.

This morning’s reading from the Letter to the Hebrews also has a lot to say about the consequences and the cost of discipleship and faith. In that author’s long list of Hebrew heroes and what they have achieved through faith, he does not fail to mention those who “were tortured, … suffered mocking and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment … were killed by the sword (or were) destitute, persecuted, or tormented.”

That reminds me of an anecdote about the 16th century Spanish mystic St. Teresa of Avila. In one of her visions she is supposed to have asked God why she had to suffer so much. God’s response was: “This is how I deal with my friends.” “Well” she replied sharply, “in that case you shouldn’t be surprised if you don’t have very many friends!” 

Christianity once had a lot of ‘friends,’ when it was part of the status quo, when it didn’t seem to threaten prosperity and power, when instead the Church was often the source of prosperity and power. That is not what we promise now, thank goodness. We believe that God wants change and promises a new and better world, and we believe that we have a role in bringing this about, as Pope Francis said in his Easter message:  “Let us become agents of God’s mercy, channels through which God can water the earth, protect all creation and make justice and peace flourish.”[1]

As Jesus’ followers, we are called to witness to the Good News of God’s love for all in our lives, however divisive and dangerous that may be. That is, in the words of the Letter to the Hebrews, the race that is set before us that we must run with perseverance.” For just as we believe that death leads to new life, so we must also trust that any division is only temporary as a path to the genuine and all-encompassing unity and harmony of God’s peace. Shalom and Amen


[1] http://franciscusi.wordpress.com/

Sunday, August 4, 2013

Lasting treasures



Sermon preached on Sunday, August 4 at the Church of the Ascension, Munich
Readings for Pentecost 11: Ecclesiastes 1:2, 12-14; 2:18-23, Colossians 3:1-11, Luke 12:13-21

Having had to prepare this brief sermon at very short notice – over breakfast this morning – I am grateful to the lectionary composers for their choice of readings. There really is one common theme that runs through all three readings:
·         What are our priorities?
·         Possessions, wealth, knowledge and power?
·         Or God’s values and priorities such as love right relationship with one another and with God?

Ecclesiastes is one of the books that nearly didn’t make it into the Hebrew Bible. Too pessimistic, too much ambiguity and not enough God! One reason it did make it in was that it was attributed to King Solomon, based for example on one of the verses we heard today: “I the teacher when king over Israel in Jerusalem.”

But it’s a good thing it did make it into the canon. For one thing our language would be poorer without it; we would miss phrases such as ‘vanity of vanities” or “everything under the sun.” But also because of the realistic attitude of its author. He describes life with all its frustrations and ambiguities and also reminds us that those things we sometimes think are most important such as wisdom, power, careers, wealth often only seem make us worried or anxious. We lose sleep over them although they are vanity or perhaps better translated as transient, fleeting, worthless, and temporary or literally like breath or vapour: certainly not something we should be building our lives on!

Jesus has a similar message. His parable could even be a paraphrase of Ecclesiastes, and why not. He knew his way around scripture!

While Ecclesiastes complains that “one must leave all to be enjoyed by another who did not toil for it” Jesus says “the things you have prepared, whose they will be?”

Now of course we need possessions, food, and drink. We need them to survive, we do good with them, and we perhaps even support our children with them. Jesus is warning us against excess, against possessions becoming the end rather than the means, against greed. Jesus warns us against false priorities, against worshipping these material things as false gods.

They will not make us happy and they will only remove us and distance us from the one real God and from God’s love.

Again: this does not mean that this world is not important or that we can just ignore what goes on “down here” and instead wait for some better life in the hereafter. The earth is as much God’s world as is heaven. What it means however is that we are called to live by God’s values in this world, in fact we are called to help bring them into effect.

Paul’s metaphor in Colossians is that we have already died through our baptism. Our new life in Christ has already begun in the here and now. In our new selves we must learn to abandon the greed and anxiety of this world, fleeting and vain as they are, and instead strive to live as followers of Christ in right relationship with God and one another and by God’s values and priorities.

These are the real and lasting treasures, ones worth us storing up because they will always be ours. No one will take them away.
Amen