Twelfth Sunday After Pentecost

Year C

August 19, 2007

All Saints’ Episcopal Church, Bentonville

Gospel:

Luke 12:49-56

Jesus said, "I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled! I have a baptism with which to be baptized, and what stress I am under until it is completed! 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; they 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."

He also said to the crowds, "When you see a cloud rising in the west, you immediately say, `It is going to rain'; and so it happens. And when you see the south wind blowing, you say, `There will be scorching heat'; and it happens. You hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky, but why do you not know how to interpret the present time?"

This is one of those gospel lessons that I find difficult to read.  In fact having spent several days relishing the company of my children last week, the notion of father against son and son against father, I don’t just find uncomfortable, but downright disturbing.  Estrangement from our children, from our parents, can be so very painful.  So why would Jesus say these hard words? “Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division”.

My son, Nate, and I are at peace these days, but I can remember a time when it wasn’t so. In those awkward years when a boy is not quite a man, division between father and son can happen quite easily.  Our struggles were simple… really, and commonplace.  I wanted him to do one thing and he wanted to do another. I remember one summer night in particular; when he was a teenage boy, out with his buddies for a night on the town.  He had called me from his cell phone to check in.  He got my voice mail and left me a message telling me who he was with and when I could expect him home – dutiful son that he was.  However, absorbed in the ecstasy of a Saturday night, he failed to fully disconnect his phone and inadvertently recorded on my message machine, the better part of an evening of …let’s call it “frivolity” with his friends. The next morning I summoned my voice mail, handed him the phone and said, “You might want to listen to this.”  I sat beside him and watched as he listened to his antics of the night before, his face turning slightly green.  He tried to dissolve into the sofa and wished he could disappear entirely

Sometimes the tension between the two of us would escalate to the point where we barely spoke to one another, sometimes for hours, and occasionally, because we are both rather stubborn - for long, painful days. 

But we had a common interest.  We both loved baseball.  And after a few days of sulking and avoiding eye contact, Nate would pull out our baseball gloves and a ball, walk over, toss a weathered glove in my lap and say, “Let’s have a catch.”

With the tension still present, we would walk silently to the backyard, space ourselves as far apart as the fences would allow and begin tossing the ball back and forth.  At first, with my son’s anger still simmering, his throw would be hard and wild.  By the time he reached 16 years of age, his anger and the growing strength of his pitching arm, would leave the palm of my glove hand, red and burning. Our hands were often throbbing with pain, but we were both too macho to admit it.  When his aim improved and the velocity of the throw subsided, I knew that his anger had settled, and that the division between us was easing. 

We would start out talking about the game the night before, or highlights he might have seen on Sport Center.  And then as the ball moved between us, crisply snapping inside the webbing of the gloves, the conversation would eventually turn to whatever issue we found too painful to discuss within the confines of the house.  We needed the rhythm of the pitch and the catch and the liberation of earth and sky to allow room for full expression of both our discord and the enormity of our love.  Before long he would be asking, “So what’s for dinner?”  And we could peacefully sit at the table together.

Looking back, I can see that the disharmony between us was essential.  We were way too much alike.  He needed to separate himself from me, be angry with me, argue with me, become who he was meant to be, become his own man.  It is difficult to become who we are created to be without some measure of strife and dissention.

When I stand before you on a Sunday morning, having just held the Gospel Book high above my head, and take my place behind this pulpit, you can see that the ritual is designed to give the voice behind the pulpit some authority.  Your attentiveness tells me that you understand that and that you, as a community, are willing to grant me that authority. 

But I am not the sole possessor of truth, even when I am behind this pulpit, and would never claim to be.  My commitment to you is to study the readings, prayerfully consider what the lessons have to say to us as a Christian community, and, then, guided by my own particular set of experiences in the world, present my interpretation of what the gospel is telling God’s people.

And then all of us, those who hang on every word of the sermon, those who sit in amen corner, those who are troubled by what they hear, those who are annoyed at the person sitting beside them, and  those who are thinking about what’s for lunch, all of us come together at God’s table.  As Christians, we, as a community, are in the business of discerning God’s will.  And then we are brought together, each Sunday, into a new life in Christ – through the breaking of common bread.

Last Monday evening we had so many people attend theology pub that we had to break up into two groups. I sat at a table with one group of 9 or 10 inquisitive minds – a Methodist, a Roman Catholic, a Disciple of Christ with Buddhist leanings, a Presbyterian, a couple of Pentecostals, and a smattering of those claiming no denomination.  It was glorious.  Varying opinions, theologies, and deeply held beliefs were expressed.  The common denominator, the thread that enabled us to sit at the table together, was that no one felt that he or she was the possessor of truth.  Each of us recognized that the pathways to God are many.

Division is often seen as a great evil.  And it is difficult to read a passage from the gospel in which we hear Jesus say that “From now on five in one household will be divided, three against two and two against three”. 

I think what Jesus is saying to us, is that it’s not so much that division itself is a problem.  The problem comes when, confronted with the diversity of culture and religion that surrounds us, even in Benton County, we choose to believe that our way is the only way. 

We are called, as a community, to find our way – to listen to voices among us here at All Saints’ and in the larger community outside these doors.  None of us has a hold the truth – even those who stand in the pulpit and proclaim the word of God.   Behind every pulpit, this one included, stands a man or woman doing his or her best to discern God’s will.  That is the task of the preacher, but it’s also the task of the listener.  And if that pursuit of understand of God’s will leads us in different directions – if through the examination of scripture, if through an exploration of our tradition, if our personal experience in the world, and our God-given ability to reason lead us to different conclusions – then so be it. 

What we are left with in our differences is the table.  It is where we come together, despite our divergence.  We can listen to Jesus say that he has come to create not peace, but division, because we know the outcome.  We know that in our division, through our division, we can grow into a new life in Christ, into a richer understanding of truth.  And come together at God’s table.