If you’ve ever owned a cat… you know how fickle
they can be.
They’ll jump in your lap… looking at you with
loving eyes. Maybe they’ll head butt your chin to get you to start petting
them… scratching behind their ears… the scruff of their neck… perhaps that spot
between their shoulders.
All is well.
All is purring and happiness.
And then—rrrrROW—they’re biting that hand that
was petting them…slashing your flesh with their claws… jumping to the floor
with their tail thrashing about and looking at you as if you’re the worst
offender of their personal space ever!
I feel as if Jesus was a little bit like a cat
in our Gospel reading this morning.
Most weeks… we hear and experience a man who
wants us to love one another,
He demonstrates what love in action looks like.
He uses parables and stories to make a point
about how to behave.
He heals people of their illnesses.
He comes alongside the person overwrought with
worry.
I think it’s fair to say we all love the
gentle… placid and purring… Jesus.
Now he’s talking of fiery baptism… bringing
division to families… and calling out people as hypocrites for failing to
interpret what’s happening right in front of their eyes.
This is demanding Jesus.
Just as cats are complicated creatures that we
don’t always understand…Jesus will bite us if we get lulled into a place of complacency…
and just doting on him.
Whenever Jesus enters the picture… any old set
ways of doing things will get disturbed and disrupted.
That includes the familial structure of the
ancient world.
The son… usually the eldest son… was expected
to inherit the property of the father.
The daughter-in-law would be expected to move
in with her husband’s family but often would remain more on the periphery of
the family until she gave birth… and especially to the birth of a son.
Even though affectionate love could be present
in these arrangements… they were still more duty-bound relationships formed by
the culture of the time.
It’s such duty-bound rigidity… and unquestioned
norms that Jesus predicts will crumble with his arrival.
The in-breaking of God incarnate turns
everything upside down.
Or…from a Godly-perspective… it right-sizes
things by placing God at the center and not self.
Given that Luke’s Gospel is written in a time
of post-resurrection… we know that there was a lot of division that occurred in
societal structures.
The original hearers of this would have been a
people who had seen their temple… the center of their worship… destroyed by the
Romans.
Once very solidly Jewish followers of Jesus are
discovering that his message resonates with their Gentile Greek neighbors.
All of this poses tensions between the
religious and ruling authorities… and intrareligious conflicts that would
contribute to the development of Christianity as a separate sect.
Conflict… division… animosity within families
and friend groups is nothing new. We see it on the macro level with war… and on
the micro level with divorce.
It seems weirdly providential that we have this
lesson about conflict after a week in which we have seen unprecedented things
happening in the country.
A warrant to search a former president’s home… uncovering
top secret documents…and now we
have threats leveled at federal agents.
There was a video I saw posted online from a
man who identifies himself as a pastor in Tifton, Georgia… encouraging those
watching him to take up arms against the government and law enforcement.
A man lost his life because he went to an F-B-I
field office in Cincinnati and fired a nailed gun at people.
The author Salman Rushdie is in a Pennsylvania
hospital fighting for his life having been stabbed in the neck and abdomen
before a speaking engagement.
Rushdie has been living with a death threat
hanging over his head for his 1988 book “The Satanic Verses.”
His speech was to praise the United States for
being a safe haven for exiled writers.
The city of Charlottesville, Virginia, this
weekend is marking the sobering moment five years ago when white nationalists
marched and rallied in their otherwise-quiet college town.
A weekend that ended in a young woman getting killed
by a man who ran her over with his car.
To our west… my colleagues from our diocesan
Racial Justice and Healing Ministry are in Alabama this weekend to join with
that diocese in remembering the death of Jonathan Myrick Daniels.
Daniels was an Episcopal seminarian from New
Hampshire who had been arrested as he attempted to register blacks to vote in
1965.
Mysteriously… after almost a week in jail… the
group arrested was released.
Daniels and a Roman Catholic priest…both of
whom were white… accompanied a black teenager named Ruby Sales as they walked
around the corner to a package store for a soda.
A man stepped out onto the porch of the store
and aimed a rifle at young Ruby.
Daniels pushed her away… and took a bullet in
the chest… killing him instantly.
That man was never convicted of the crime.
These events… these clashes which fuel anger
and hatred… provoke the demons within us rather than the better angels of our
nature.
They’re the eruptions coming from the disunity
that’s been with us for a very long time.
It stems from that sin of “othering” which has
its roots in the centering on the self.
And when we become self-centered and not
God-centered… we see “others” as a potential threat or danger.
Self-centeredness has led to the “othering” of
native people’s… Africans… Asians… Jews… Italians… Irish.
Throughout history… we’ve engaged in some
practice of “othering” of people that has denied freedoms and limited their
humanity.
It makes the words of the psalmist so poignant
and true:
“Restore us, O Lord God of hosts, show the
light of your countenance and we shall be saved.”
It’s this
type of human-imposed hierarchy and stratifying of people that Jesus’
fire has come to destroy.
No one person… no one group… is better than
another.
No one gets to confer greater rights and
privileges based upon race… or wealth… gender… or identity.
The mission and message of Jesus is one in
which he is always endeavoring to lower mountains and lift up valleys… and to have
everyone on an equal level.
There are no “others” in God’s society.
Jesus is about liberating us… and getting to
see each other as beloved children of God.
And as he looked around that crowd listening to
him in this Gospel lesson… he knew his words were falling on some deaf ears.
Some either couldn’t grasp his message or maybe
didn’t want to hear it because it threatened that sense of self. That need to “other” in order to feel
important.
This is the tension that eventually would lead
him to the cross.
And it’s really not that different than the tension before us in our own time.
There are forces that benefit in keeping us
apart… fighting with one another… turning away from each other… and refusing to
do the work we need to do to
heal and mend the many breaches in our society.
These are the forces that perpetuate the
violence which stems from that self-centered rather than God-centered approach
to society.
Our challenge… as we look at the times we’re in… is the same one that has
been with us forever:
Will we choose a path that leads to death or
life?
Will we live into our Baptismal Covenant…
resist evil… turn in a God-ward direction… and work for justice and peace and
respecting the dignity of every human being?
Will we only pay attention to nice Jesus… or
will we follow the disruptive one who laid down self for a greater good?
In the name of God… F/S/HS.
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