Division and Fiery Jesus

 

DEA agents at the Lincoln Memorial (Getty Images/Rolling Stone)

The clash between what's happening in culture and what the lectionary presents us to wrestle with continues to heat up. This time it the Gospel of Luke and Jesus's "baptism of fire" speech.

Honestly, in light of things happening in the country with a hostile takeover and occupation of Washington, DC, by our own federal government, and word that there is a case going to the U.S. Supreme Court to revisit the same-sex marriage decision of 2015, this Gospel felt a little too "present day." 

I also had a week of providing a pastoral presence in the midst of crisis with folks not associated with the church. 

Division was definitely front and center. 

And the more I thought about it...the sense of division and separation that Jesus talked about made more sense when I considered what happens when Love presents itself. It is not always welcomed. 

It also made me recall a story I had read about one of my Episcopal heroes, Jonathan Myrick Daniels, the seminarian killed during the civil rights movement in 1965. 

All of it came together to create this sermon.

See what you think.

Luke 12:49-56

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For a number of years…I was a student…and a co-mentor…and finally a mentor of an Education for Ministry group…or EfM for short.

For those unfamiliar with EfM…it’s a four-year education program designed by the Episcopal seminary at Sewanee to allow those interested to do a deeper dive into the Bible…church history…and theological concepts.

Like going to school…an EfM group meets once a week for a couple of hours over  a nine-month period.

One of the hallmarks of the program is that everyone must present a spiritual autobiography at the beginning of the year….sharing the ways and times that they’ve felt God show up in their lives…or when they’ve felt God decidedly silent and absent.

And every year that I heard the same complaint:

Why do I have to do this again? I did it last year!

And my consistent response: well…you’ve had another whole year of walking this journey; hence you’ve had time to pick up new insights on old experiences while gaining more knowledge of your relationship with God along the way.

The same can be said of what happens when we encounter Scripture.

Our lectionary calendar really doesn’t change all that much. We have the same readings assigned for a particular Sunday.

The church calendar is set up in a three-year rotation…this being Year C where our emphasis is on the Luke Gospel.

And so every three years…about this time…this reading from Luke comes along…giving us a chance to hear it…read it…mark it…learn it…and inwardly digest it…so that we might move a little closer to God through Jesus.

And I might have looked at this reading in the past and thought, “Oh, man! After weeks and weeks of talking about Jesus as this loving…caring…nurturing man…who is this guy who wants to break up families…and baptism of fire?!”

This reading may feel particularly intense right now.

There’s no shortage of news about our divisions in this country.

We now have the National Guard patrolling northwest neighborhoods of Washington DC.

A Kentucky clerk of court is taking her ten-year-old grudge over same-sex marriage to the U.S. Supreme Court.

With all that is happening in the world…we probably are looking for a Jesus who is that Prince of Peace…rather than one who is coming with balls of fire!

Yet…fiery Jesus is exactly the Jesus for this time…and for us to consider today.

Following Jesus…really paying attention to his teachings…and living into our baptism into Christ…will put us at odds with some of those closest to us.

Especially those people in our lives who are conditioned to  accept the belief that wielding power-over others is better than finding power-with others.

It will put us out of step with the folks who have been told that God is a vengeful mean God…a stern father-figure waiting to wrap us on the knuckles.

Following Jesus…being faithful to Love…standing up for those who are the powerless…will make some people uncomfortable.

I know some have already had a taste of this in their own families.

Our toxic and divisive politics in this country have made Thanksgiving dinners a lot more stressful…if not impossible for some households.

Jesus was aware that that this would happen.

His brand of Love was going to challenge the status quo…the people who had power…and those who had figured out how to fly under the radar of the Roman Empire.

We might say that Jesus was a disrupter…a person who spoke truth to power…putting his words and eventually his body on the line for the purposes of showing the world a better way…a loving way of being.

The fire he so desired to kindle in the hearts of everyone was to take the faithful risk to embrace empathy…mercy…and get them to walk humbly with God.

He also knows the fragility of those who are the tyrants and bullies.

He understands that they believe violence is the only way to challenge a system.

But Jesus knows that Love…reckless and relentless Love…is not only disarming.

It can be contagious and it will inspire the song of hope in the throats of the weary.

This past week…we marked the 60^th anniversary of the martyrdom of Jonathan Myrick Daniels.

Daniels…like me…was a native of New Hampshire and was a seminarian at Episcopal Theological School in Cambridge Massachusetts at the time that the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. led the march from Selma to Montgomery.

Daniels went to Alabama…and became involved with registering black voters and protesting against Jim Crow laws.

Charles Wohlers posted this entry from Jonathan Daniels’ diary on his satucket lectionary page.  

Daniels wrote about an incident during one of the freedom marches in Selma:

“After a week-long, rain-soaked vigil, we still stood face to face with the Selma police.

I stood, for a change, in the front rank, ankle-deep in an enormous puddle.

To my immediate right were high school students, for the most part, and further to the right were a swarm of clergymen. My end of the line surged forward at one point, led by a militant Episcopal priest whose temper (as usual) was at combustion-point.

Thus, I found myself only inches from a young policeman.

The air crackled with tension and open hostility.

Emma Jean, a sophomore in the Negro high school, called my name from behind.

I reached back for her hand to bring her up to the front rank, but she did not see. Again, she asked me to come back.

My determination had become infectiously savage, and I insisted that she come forward--I would not retreat!

Again, I reached for her hand and pulled her forward.

The young policeman spoke:

"You're dragging her through the puddle. You ought to be ashamed for treating a girl like that."

Flushing--I had forgotten the puddle--I snarled something at him about whose-fault-it-really-was, that managed to be both defensive and self-righteous. We matched baleful glances and then both looked away. And then came a moment of shattering internal quiet, in which I felt shame, indeed, and a kind of reluctant love for the young policeman.

I apologized to Emma Jean. And then it occurred to me to apologize to him and to thank him. Though he looked away in contempt--I was not altogether sure I blamed him--I had received a blessing I would not forget.

Before long the kids were singing, "I love ---."

One of my friends asked [the young policeman] for his name.

His name was Charlie.

When we sang for him, he blushed and then smiled in a truly sacramental mixture of embarrassment and pleasure and shyness.

Soon the young policeman looked relaxed, we all lit cigarettes (in a couple of instances, from a common match,) and small groups of kids and policemen clustered to joke or talk cautiously about the situation.

It was thus a shock later to look across the rank at the clergymen and their opposites, who glared across a still unbroken "Wall" in what appeared to be silent hatred. Had I been freely arranging the order for Evening Prayer that night, I think I might have followed the General Confession directly with the General Thanksgiving--or perhaps the Te Deum.”

Love made a connection across a protest line.

The fire within Daniels heart burned bright enough…that he had to face his own selfish actions… made clear to him by his opponent…the young policeman named Charlie.

And out of this intense moment… the flame of Love lit cigarettes…and bridged a divide with a song.

Daniels died later that summer in Hayneville, Alabama when a white Alabama highway man aimed a rifle at his black teenage friend and fellow activist named Ruby Sales.

Daniels pushed Sales out of the way and the shotgun blast to his chest killed him instantly.

Standing up for what is right…challenging the status quo…being a disruptor can come with that sort of high cost.

Jesus knows that cost.

Yet he’s still pumping the bellows in hopes to fire up that Holy Spirit within us.

Not only so that we’ll stand for peace and love and live into our baptismal covenant to respect the dignity of every human being.

But to get us to pay attention to our own self-righteousness…and our own sins of “othering”… the ways we are failing each other…and come back to God.

Because that’s his ultimate mission.

Jesus notes we’re able to figure out when the rain and scorching heat is coming.

Jesus now wants us to figure out how to live and love as God has loved us first.

In the name of our One Holy and Undivided Trinity.