Christ, Peace and Division

13 Pentecost, Cp15, August 14, 2016
Jeremiah 23:23-29  Psalm 82
Hebrews 12:1 – 14  Luke 12:49-56

 Lectionary Link

  Jesus said, " 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."

   How do these Gospel words attributed to Jesus jive with your other more favored notions of Jesus?  He was declared to be the Prince of Peace.  His preferred greeting was "Peace be with you."

   So how do we make sense of these seemingly contrarian words of Jesus?  How can we understand them to be inspired and relevant within an actual human context and within our situation today?

  First, I think we need to learn how to read the Gospel or the bald commonsense cruelness of the words might turn us off.  As if families needed Jesus to cause them discord and division.  Most of the time, we can manage to find things other than Jesus to divide our families.  Why add religion and Jesus as the reason to be divided?

  I would like for us to ponder how the members of the early churches understood how the Risen Christ communicated to them.  I would call the method of communication as the method having access to the oracle of Christ.  The Gospel writers understood that they acted, spoke and wrote in the Name of Jesus.  This meant that they believe their deeds, words and writings were to be regarded as actual words of Jesus, as though he was still physically with them.  You remember St. Paul wrote that he had the mind of Christ and that his words came directly from God's Spirit.

  How many of you have ever been to a Pentecostal or charismatic church?  Within these churches they practice the continuing oracle of Christ in their liturgies.  In their worship, one of their gifted and inspired members will offer a prophetic utterance.  Such a person will actually preface their utterance with this disclaimer: "Thus says the Lord.....or Our Risen Christ says to us....."  So the inspired prophet denies authorship of the words by saying these words come directly from Jesus.

  The early churches were charismatic churches.  They spoke in tongues and they prophesied in the name of Jesus and they regarded those words to be the actual words of Jesus.  And these words were written down and they became a part of the Gospel as the words of Jesus, even though they were the oracle words of Jesus by prophets within the early churches.

  So how is it that all of the charismatic ministries of the church seemed to get discontinued by the institutionalization of the church into the fourfold ministries of laity, deacons, priests and bishops?

  The churches found that there were difficulties with a completely charismatic notion of ministry.  It became obvious that Jesus was inspiring people in one place to think and believe things differently and even in contradiction from other places and times.  As the church grew, the church could not be consolidated with contradictory inspired utterances of Christ in different gatherings.  The institutional church had to copy the organizational methods of the Roman government and military to bring uniformity and standardization to be able to evangelize and spread the Christian message.  Totally charismatic institutions do not seem to connect with each other geographically; they tended to be isolated geographically.  So, one can understand how a more standardized form of Christianity was compatible with the kind of uniformity which characterized the government and military of the Roman Empire.

  Charismatic churches work well for isolated community; but not too well for unity across the geography of the world.

  The Gospels represent the standardization of Christianity, but they also record the charismatic moments of the oracle of Christ within the early churches.  And by writing these oracles down, the words became voted by the church to be a final standard in the church's textbook, the New Testament.

  So now we return to the literal significant of these difficult words of Christ within the early churches. 

  How might we understand a literal context for the words which we have read?  An extended Jewish family might have members who were Pharisees, Zealots, followers of John the Baptist and followers of Jesus.  Those who followed Jesus would have been ostracized by family members who did not follow Jesus and so Jesus was not bringing peace to the families; the experience of the Risen Christ was bringing division.

  Can we understand how descriptively true and accurate this "word of Jesus" becomes once we pierce the literal context from which this oracle derived.  It make complete logical sense.  This oracle of Christ was delivered within a community where division was occurring and it expresses the truth of every paradigm shift.  When old answers do not provide meaning for new life questions, sometimes a person has to move on to the new paradigm and members of the former paradigm will feel jilted and rejected.

  Yet the call of living a faithful life sometimes mean making decisions of creative advance for the benefit of one's life.

  If you are not a cradle Episcopalian, it means that you have probably gone through various paradigm shifts in your life of faith.  Sometimes the members of faith communities which you have left may be disappointed or angry and even call you traitors or heretics.  All of this is part of the creative advance of the life of faith.

  The message of Jesus within Judaism was a major paradigm shift, particularly because the followers of Christ no longer were required to honor the ritual purity of Judaism.  There was much anger and division over this paradigm shift, but this is the honest witness to the birth of Christianity out of Judaism.

  The further oracle of the words of Jesus asks us to learn how to read the signs of the present time.

  A chief task in life is to read and interpret the paradigm within which one lives.  The paradigm of one's life are all of the meanings that one just takes for granted without questioning.  But why do we begin to question certain meanings in our life?  They no longer provide for valid and relevant answers to new arising need.

  So the oracle of the Risen Christ is relevant to us today.   Paradigm shifts will cause division between people.  Does one go forth to new answers or does one stay behind to please the people who want to keep one within the familiar answers of the past?

  You and I need to know how to interpret the signs in our lives.  We need to know when we are being called to make a creative advance in excellence in our lives of faith.

  The oracles of the Risen Christ can still call us to many new things and one of the reasons that I am an Episcopalian is because our faith gives us room to grow into many new expanding paradigms of faith, which means we can disagree with each other but still appreciate the different stages of faith that people are in.

  I believe today the Episcopal Church is a place where we can reconcile both the peace of Christ and the division caused by new callings of Christ.  Let us not get "stuck" when the beckoning call of Christ is inviting us to creative advance in further excellence.

  I admit that I have always been a person named Phil Cooke and yet I understood God in different ways at 6, 16, 21, 35, and 50 than I do today.  Over time I am at division with myself but I live at peace with myself because I have grown into new meanings about God.  Some transitions have been rocky and some have been smooth.  My own family of birth has been a religiously divided family, but there has been love within the division.  There has been peace of personal conscience even when there has been significant disagreement.

  To follow the Risen Christ is not a static experience, it is dynamic.  The words of the oracle of Christ are true to the human experience of growth.  Today let us be true to the Risen Christ by embracing spiritual transformation and what that might mean for the kinds of decisions we might have to make, even if we might have to disappoint others.

   Let us learn today that the division which happens because of obedience to a new insight is compatible with the Peace of Christ.  Amen.