13
Pentecost, Cp15,August 18, 2013
Jeremiah
23:23-29 Psalm 82
Hebrews
12:1 – 14 Luke 12:49-56
There
are all sorts of bad occurrences in life and if we are fortunate we are able to
have an abundance of good things happen to us that not only even the score with
bad occurrences but also tip the scales in favor of lives where we can have
liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
As people with basic actuarial probability
common sense, we can see in our world what seems to be an uneven distribution
of good and bad occurrences in the lives of the people of this world. In America, we think that we’ve been
fortunate for the most part in that we come to a place in our national
experience where we get more than our fair share of the good occurrences that
can happen to people. We either feel
proud of our heritage or blessed by sheer good fortune.
We know that our country may sometime seem
like a divided family, in political and economic terms. And as bothered as we get in our own country,
we cannot help but feel the divisions on the streets in the Egypt, in Syria,
Iraq and Afghanistan, in various African countries and other parts in our
world. And lest we feel too isolated
from this world pain, we need to remember that perhaps as many as 750,000
Americans died in our greatest family dispute, the Civil War. We dare not be too proud about the ways in
which we have handled our own country’s internal disputes.
It is a fact of history as long as we can
remember that people have disagreed and people have ended up harming each other
for the beliefs which they held to be the most important for their well-being.
We have a doctrine of sin to give us a great
causal explanation as to why people and even families come to internal strife.
Churches, mosques, synagogues, families,
countries and nations all have come to strife.
And we do not really know how to come to meaning regarding the strife
when it happens. Historians with 20/20
hindsight views believe that they can find reasons and causes as to why people have
come to strife with each other.
One of the meanings that people find within
strife is a belief that we are under discipline as students of the God of
life. Painful things happen as lessons
to make us better. Life in part is an
ordeal for growth.
In the early Gospel communities, one could
find people who believed that they experienced an incredible excellent event;
they believed that this teacher and prophet, Jesus of Nazareth, had been
cruelly killed. But they also believed
that they experienced the risen Christ as a reality which created a new community
experience.
Fire is a biblical symbol for
purification. The Risen Christ, as an
oracle within the Gospel communities spoke insights through their leaders about
the situation of the early Gospel communities.
Families were divided by faith, religious
practice, religious beliefs and doctrines.
The Jewish religion had parties that followed the teachings and
practices of various prominent rabbis, scribes and religious figures who had
inherited their teachings from earlier teachers. Each rabbi took from a former rabbi the
teachings and applied those teaching in a way that gained a following or
maintained certain traditions. Rabbi
Jesus had a sort of established school and set of practices within
Judaism. What would the teaching of
Rabbi Jesus become outside of Palestine?
And how would Judaism become altered by the followers of Jesus who were
not Jews? Certain innovations would make
the followers of Jesus unacceptable to the existing strands of Judaism. Dispensing with circumcision and dietary laws
and Jewish feast days, were innovations that would cause family members to to become
divided.
The Gospel communities had to account for the
pain of division within Judaism and from the pain of the separation of the Gospel
communities from the synagogues.
This is the fire; this is the division not
peace that the oracle of Christ gave to the early Gospel communities.
Why is a family divided for religious
reasons? I thought religion was about
peace. I thought that Jesus was the
Prince of Peace; I thought that angels said “Peace on earth” at his birth.
Is this purifying fire a satisfactory
metaphor of explanation for us as to why people are not at peace?
Sometimes
we are naïve about the Gospel and Scriptures.
Since we believe they are inspired we wrongly believe that they actually
cause things to be the way that things are; we should rather believe them
inspired because they are written by persons who looked for profound meaning to
the recurring issue of division within every community that has ever existed.
Let us come to the insight today regarding
division and the purifying fire of life experience. In freedom each of us has arisen in our
situation as unique persons on unique educational paths. And we seem to share some education paths
more closely with some and less closely with others. Unique education experiences mean that there
can be such uneven educational paths in human experience that we truly seem to
be unable to understand each other and we can come to painful disagreements and
divisions.
Faith means that we come to accept the uneven
patterns of educational developments in the lives of people, even to the point
of knowing that pain, disagreement and division are inevitable. What we have hoped for in our country is to
preserve the right of people to be on different religious and educational
paths. I think we have learned this
better in our country than was known by the early Gospel communities; we have
learned it better than when religious
communities have united the sword and interpretations of holy books to force uniformity and persecute
and burn heretics.
Let us appreciate today, the struggle of
faith and honor the uneven development in how people come to know reality of
God and the practice of the insight that God is love. Let us honor the freedom of people being
different in their faith experiences as well as different in all manner of
human experience. Let us honor
difference with laws that protect the freedom of everyone while at the same
protecting the vulnerable and those without the means to protect
themselves. We hope that the fire of
division in our world is a purifying of people learning to be educated away
from ignorance and selfishness which causes the suffering in our world.
In faith we pray again today that suffering
will have redemptive outcomes for people to become better able to practice love
and justice. I believe that the Risen
Christ as an oracle for us today would inspire us to the further practice of
love and justice. Amen.