Teaching Nonviolent Atonement
A sermon based on Luke 12:49-56
I’ve always loved Billy Joel’s song We Didn’t Start the Fire. I was 10 years old when it was released in 1989. I remember singing the song, trying to keep up with the lyrics, specifically the names of 20th century icons that Billy Joel sang faster and faster. The first stanza goes like this,
Harry Truman, Doris Day, Red China, Johnny Ray
South Pacific, Walter Winchell, Joe DiMaggio
Joe McCarthy, Richard Nixon, Studebaker, Television
North Korea, South Korea, Marilyn Monroe.
At the time, I just loved the song, but now I think I understand a deeper meaning that Billy Joel was getting at. You see, throughout the song, he lists people from the 20th century. He juxtaposes figures who inspired hope and even love with other figures who inspired fear, hatred, and violence.
That’s the essence of the song We Didn’t Start the Fire. Hope and love are like fire. They can be kindled and spread quickly. But we also know that hatred, fear, and violence spread and burn like fire, too.
But this fire wasn’t started in the 20th century. The song’s refrain and says,
We didn’t start the fire
It was always burning since the world’s been turning.
Near the end of the song, Billy Joel gets apocalyptic by adding these verses:
We didn’t start the fire
But when we are gone
Will it still burn on, and on, and on
I think Billy Joel is giving us a choice. We can either live into the fire that spreads with hope and love. Or we can live into the fire of hatred and violence that will eventually consume us all until we are gone.
And Jesus says in Luke chapter 12, “I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!”
Now, there are certain Christians – God bless them, I love them, but they are wrong – who would have us believe that when Jesus says, “I came to bring fire,” that he came to bring the fires of hell to the earth. They call this the apocalypse. Again, let me tell you that they are wrong. They have stolen and corrupted the meaning of the word apocalypse and it is time for us progressives to take it back.
Apocalypse doesn’t mean end of the world destruction. Please, get that connection out of your heads. Wipe it away. Apocalypse comes from two Greek words, “apo” and “kalypto.” Put those words together and apocalypse actually means “uncovering, unveiling, or revealing.” In the New Testament, the true apocalypse is not the end of the world. The true apocalypse is the person Jesus. Jesus is the apocalypse because he is the unveiling; he is the revealing of two things. First, he reveals what it means for God to be God. And second, he reveals what it means for humans to be human.
The New Testament claims that Jesus reveals who God is. In last week’s sermon, we heard Jesus says, “Do not be afraid, for it is God’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” The kingdom of God has nothing to do with bringing a fearful end of the world destruction of fire upon us. No, as Jesus teaches, God is not some destructive force that we have to fear, for it is God’s good pleasure to give us the kingdom. The apocalypse of Jesus reveals that God is marked, not by violent destructive fire, but by hope, love, generosity, and even pleasure.
The second thing Jesus reveals is what it means to be human and the choices that are before us. We can choose to participate in the kingdom of God’s hope, love, and generosity. Jesus called his disciples to follow him, and the more people who follow Jesus the more his love does spread like a wild fire. But we don’t have to follow him. God doesn’t force us to do anything. We can live into the fire that spreads hatred, violence, and greed. And if we do, the apocalyptic warning, the revelation, is that we will bring the fires of hell on earth. Because, you see, God doesn’t create hell. Humans create hell and drag one another down into its depths with acts of violence, hatred, and greed.*
But I don’t want to be naïve about this. Jesus certainly wasn’t naïve about it. Because there are consequences to living into the fires of love that is the kingdom of God. Jesus knew that when the kingdom of God’s love enters into a world hell-bent on violence, the fire will burn us. There will be division. There will be conflict.
In one of the most difficult passages of the New Testament to interpret, Jesus, the Prince of Peace, asks, “Do you think I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division!”
In another New Testament passage, Jesus says, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.”
I’d like to put these seemingly contradictory statements together. Jesus came to bring peace, but not as the world brings peace. Jesus makes a clear distinction between the way he brings peace and the way the world brings peace. How does the world, or we humans, bring peace? Throughout history, we have usually attempted to bring peace by finding the threat to peace. Then we unite ourselves against a common enemy. Once that enemy is excluded or murdered, we gain a sense of peace. But it’s only temporary, because violence might help in the short term, but it doesn’t solve the problem of violence. Tragically, it usually adds to the problem as it spreads the flames of hatred.
In other words, we fight fire with fire, which only adds to the fires of hell that threaten our world.
Jesus came to give us an alternative way to peace. Yes, stand up for justice. Do not avoid conflict, enter into conflict with the truth, but also with love and compassion. And when we do, Jesus warns us that not everyone will accept the Kingdom of God. In fact, many will reject it. Family members, friends, and neighbors will be divided because of the kingdom of God.
Jesus warns that,
father (will be divided) against son
and son against father,
mother against daughter
and daughter against mother,
mother-in-law against daughter-in-law
and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.
Paradoxically, the apocalyptic revelation of our text is that the fire of love that is the Kingdom of God might actually invite the fires of conflict.
Jesus discovered this revelation during his very first sermon. He referenced Old Testament stories where God healed a widow from Sidon and a general from the army of a nation called Aram. Sidon and Aram were not Jewish nations. In fact, Aram was an enemy of Israel. Why did Jesus emphasize that God was healing people of other nations in his first sermon? Because he wanted to open our eyes to the fact that God’s love has no boundaries – it was spreading uncontrollably like wildfire. We often think that the Old Testament God is bad and the New Testament God is good. But, Jesus interpreted the Old Testament differently. He told specific stories to show that God’s love is so expansive that it includes everyone, even those outside our religion, even those we call our enemies.
And do you know how his audience responded? They tried to kill him by throwing him off a cliff! Talk about division. But you know this division is true.
I have family members who think Donald Trump is the greatest thing. And I want to cause some division by screaming “No!”
And I have family members who think that Hillary Clinton is the greatest thing. And I want to cause some division by screaming, “No!”
When Christians stand up with lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer folks, to claim that they are already included in God’s kingdom, it may cause conflict with some family members or with other people. So be it.
Because when we do stand up for God’s all-inclusive love, Jesus warns that the fire might burn us. It burned Jesus and his disciples. It burned Martin Luther King. It burned Oscar Romero, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Gandhi, Malala Yousafzai, and the women and men at Emmanuel AME Church in South Carolina. Christianity does not guarantee safety or success. In fact, Jesus’ apocalyptic warning was that there will likely be division. And truthfully, sometimes I just want to avoid it. I don’t like getting burned, and unfortunately, when I’m in a conflict with a family member, I have never convinced them that I am right and they are wrong.
And that may be part of my problem. Sometimes I go into these kinds of conversations with more than a bit of arrogance, thinking that I hold all the answers and that the other person is an opponent to be converted, not a fellow human being to be loved.
That arrogant mentality is not the fire of love that is the kingdom of God. In fact, it may be that the kingdom of God needs to burn that part of me away. And admitting that can be painful.
But to paraphrase our friend Billy Joel, we didn’t start this fire. The fire has always been burning.
So, may you burn with the fire of the Kingdom of God.
May you know, as Jesus warns, that division may come.
And may you participate in the love of God that is for us, and for all people.
Amen
*For more, see Rene Girard’s The Scapegoat, page 134.
Image:Copyright: trezvuy / 123RF Stock Photo
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