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