Rev. Will Rice
Grace United Methodist Church
Corpus Christi, TX
pastorwillrice@gmail.com
Luke 12:49-56
I bet everyone has had it on a poster, bookmark, bumper sticker, t-shirt or something. It is well known, catchy and even true.
It is nice to be important, but it is more important to be nice.
That is a really “nice” expression. It helps us to be mindful of how we treat other people, but… I think I am going to have to add a “but” to it.
49"I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!”
Today’s passage is the assigned reading in the life of the church for today. Preachers all over the country are skipping it or trying to make it a little bit more palatable. Preachers are pretty good at making things in the Bible sound not quite so bad.
49"I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!
Well, fire that could mean all sorts of things. Fire represents the Holy Spirit. At Pentecost, when the disciples received the Holy Spirit, it looked a bit like this: Acts 2:3:
3Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them.
Perhaps Jesus is saying that he has come to bring the Holy Spirit and he wishes it was already here!
50I have a baptism with which to be baptized, and what stress I am under until it is completed!
This fits, sort of, when we consider that John the Baptist, in speaking of Jesus, connects baptism and fire, perhaps the fire of the Holy Spirit in Luke 3:16:
16John answered all of them by saying, “I baptize you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.
Alright, maybe we can make this happy. But then Jesus says:
51Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth?
Yes, Jesus, in fact, most of us do.
Hark! the herald angels sing
"Glory to the newborn King
Peace on earth and mercy mild,
God and sinners reconciled!"
It came upon the midnight clear,
That glorious song of old,
From angels bending near the earth
With news of joy foretold,
"Peace on the earth, good will to men
From heaven's all gracious King."
Its like this Jesus fellow has never heard a Christmas carol when he says:
51Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division!
You know there are times when we just want to argue with scripture. No Jesus, you clearly came to bring peace. We have Christmas carols as proof:
Truly He taught us
to love one another;
His law is love and
His gospel is peace.
For Christ is born of Mary,
And, gathered all above
While mortals sleep, the angels keep
Their watch of wondering love.
O morning stars, together
Proclaim the holy birth.
And praises sing to God the King.
And peace to men on earth.
I mean, come on Jesus get on board.
But, you know what is interesting is that the images we get for these Christmas songs which I have been singing far too early come from Luke’s Gospel, the gospel we are reading from today.
From much earlier in this gospel we get the canticle of Mary, Mary’s song of praise of being blessed by carrying Jesus in her womb. Last advent we sang a song called The Canticle of the Turning:
From the halls of power to the fortress tower, not a stone will be left on stone.
Let the king beware for your justice tears ev'ry tyrant from his throne.
The hungry poor shall weep no more, for the food they can never earn;
There are tables spread, ev'ry mouth be fed, for the world is about to turn.
My heart shall sing of the day you bring.
Let the fires of your justice burn.
Wipe away all tears, for the dawn draws near,
And the world is about to turn.
Which is far less peaceful. Straight from scripture, Mary, the mother of Jesus says,
52He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; 53he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.
So maybe fire means fire.
49"I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!
There is a lot of scripture to support that this is a fire of purification, judgment, separation of the fruitful from the unfruitful.
Luke 3:17:
17His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”
Zephaniah 1:18:
18Neither their silver nor their gold will be able to save them on the day of the Lord’s wrath; in the fire of his passion the whole earth shall be consumed.
51Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division!
Maybe fire means the burning fire of purification, the fire of judgment, the fire of the spirit, the fire of passion, compassion, justice and change.
But this is not the Jesus we are used to. This is not the God we like to talk about in church.
Yes, Jesus loves me.
Yes, Jesus loves me.
Yes, Jesus loves me.
The Bible tells me so.
We want a God, we want a Jesus who is nice. I mean the God John and I preach about every Sunday is a God of seemingly limitless compassion. This is a God who offers us unconditional, unmerited love. God loves us and there is nothing we can do to stop God from loving us. John 3:16:
16“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.
And God clearly tells us to love one another. Matt 22:36-39
36“Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” 37He said to him, “’You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ 38This is the greatest and first commandment. 39And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’
And the apostle Paul sums it up in Galatians 5:14:
14For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
But we, as humans really want to be able to fit that on a bumper sticker.
It is nice to be important, but it is more important to be nice.
Do unto others as you would have done unto you.
Jesus loves you and I am trying.
But when slick the Gospel up enough to put it on a bumper sticker, this is what we end up with:
Be nice.
But when you look up nice in the dictionary, you find words like pleasing, agreeable, pleasant. From that aspect, if you really read carefully, Jesus wasn’t always nice. He was just, passionate, empathetic, etc. but not always nice.
Look at Luke 19:45-48:
45Then he entered the temple and began to drive out those who were selling things there; 46and he said, “It is written, ‘My house shall be a house of prayer’; but you have made it a den of robbers.”
If he were being nice, perhaps no one would have wanted to kill him.
47Every day he was teaching in the temple. The chief priests, the scribes, and the leaders of the people kept looking for a way to kill him;
It actually sort of burns me when I hear someone comment on the action of another and say “That wasn’t very Christian.” Because 90% of the time they mean, “That wasn’t pleasing, agreeable, pleasant. Nice”
As a follower of Jesus, I would, just once, like to hear someone say, “That wasn’t very Christian” and mean “That wasn’t very passionate, just, revolutionary, world changing!” “That wasn’t very Christian. That was nice.”
Jesus was after something way more than nice. I think that maybe “nice” would be ok if we lived in a different sort of world. But we live in a broken, hurting world. I always jump off into genocide and wars and poverty around the world. But let’s stay home. In homes that I could hit from here with a rock, there are people without adequate healthcare. Diabetes in our community is becoming an epidemic and people most at risk really can’t afford healthcare and can’t afford to buy the kind of food that we tell them they should eat to stay healthy.
Our consumer based society is tempting people who are going without to go without even more so that they can have more things that can’t actually sustain them. Television tells them that they are nothing if they don’t have a plasma screen, a four wheel drive and a phone that plays music. Our neighbors are trapped in debt, forced to pay 30% interest on loans they will never pay off. There are single moms and single dads and grandparents raising babies. Right in our neighborhood there are homeless men and women and even in our church people hooked on drugs unable to escape a trap that is ruining their lives and the lives of the ones they love. And so many of these people face all this without even knowing that there is a force greater than them that loves them and that the God of all creation is calling his followers to help them.
Teresa Berger, Professor of Liturgical Studies at Yale Divinity School writes:
“If our world were nothing but a place of created goodness and profound beauty, a space of flourishing for all, just and life-giving for all in God’s creation, then Jesus’ challenge would be deeply troubling. If, on the other hand, our world is deeply marred and scarred, death-dealing for many life forms, with systems of meaning that are exploitative and nonsustainable (sic.), then redemption can come only when those systems are shattered and consumed by fire. Life cannot (re-) emerge without confrontation. This is the basis of the conflict Jesus envisions. He comes not to disturb a nice world but to shatter the disturbing and death-dealing systems of meaning that stifle life.”[1]
49"I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!
If Jesus came to bring that kind of fire then, perhaps, as followers of Jesus, we should be on fire.
I have been out of seminary for around 3 years now. What I always found a little unnerving when I was a student and I find disturbing now is how the passionate fire of those called to preach the gospel is purposefully doused. Great seminary students tend to come out of seminary like wild horses. They are full of passion and vision and truly believe that with the power of the gospel and the Holy Spirit that can bring change to the world. What saddens me is the condescending smirk I see on the faces of clergy and church leaders who say, “Don’t worry, a few years in the church will take care of that.” We will douse those flames.
Not that these young pastors don’t need some guidance and maturity. Not that they don’t need to blend their enthusiasm with some compassion, skill, knowledge and patience. But at the same time, the church should be fanning the fires of passion in these people and following their lead to change the world. Because Jesus didn’t come to make us nice.
People sometimes say to me, “Will in a few years you could be a District Superintendent or even a bishop!” And I think, “No, fortunately, I don’t have that kind of patience.” I hear countless stories of bishops and district superintendents going into churches that are dying and asking, “What are you passionate about?” And the churches respond, “We have really great warm fellowship.” In other words, we are all really nice to each other. The reason I would not make a good bishop is that I might say, “Stop being nice to each other and start changing the world!”
That is what I want you to think about this week as you are praying, as you a working as you are living your life. What spark has God planted in your heart. How is God calling you to be more than polite, but world changing? Is God calling you, or this church in to a type of ministry that isn’t necessarily just nice. And if God is calling you to such a thing, what is stopping you. Are you afraid someone won’t think you are nice?
[1] Teresa Berger, Disturbing the Peace (Luke 12:49-56), The Christian Century, August 10, 2004, p.18. accessed online at http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=3116
