What follows is the second in a series of reflections on one of the most challenging passages in the Gospels:
Jesus said, “I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled! I have a baptism with which to be baptized, and what stress I am under until it is completed! 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.”He also said to the crowds, “When you see a cloud rising in the west, you immediately say, `It is going to rain’; and so it happens. And when you see the south wind blowing, you say, `There will be scorching heat’; and it happens. You hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky, but why do you not know how to interpret the present time?”
(Luke 12.49-56, NRSV)
The second thing to note about the words of Jesus is that his message is about the most basic decision that we can make and that is why it is marked by urgency.
It probably doesn’t look like it from the outside. But I have a complicated relationship with social media. I got involved in it originally because publishers insisted that you have what they euphemistically call “a platform”. I say euphemism because what they want to know that you have a place that you can market a book that they won’t market. In between books sometimes it is a place for conversations no one needed to have.
Recently, I had one of those conversations with a former student on whom I obviously had no influence. Troubled by my observation that the great mystics of the church relied on the truth of the Creeds, she offered the observation that my insistence on mentioning Jesus, over and over again, was obviously the product of some deep emotional defect, a twist of the mind, or just professional self-preservation.
But it isn’t any of those things. I have a lot of failings but the one thing that I have been diligent about is the quest to discover just exactly what life is about, deep down where everything else falls away, because – in fact – everything does eventually. And what I discovered years ago was the truth of the Gospel and the love God in Jesus Christ. I also learned that – If you find the way, the truth, and the life – you either follow that path or you wander off into a place where you lose all three.
This is the reason that Jesus is so definitive. The reason he says that this choice will be a parting of the ways is because the choice itself is just that basic. There is a God, or there is not. Jesus is God incarnate, or he is not. The Kingdom of God is here, or it is not. Choose. Be baptized or not. And from those choices, everything else flows. The language of baptism is just that binary. Choose evil or renounce it. Choose Christ or renounce him. Die — or die and rise.
So, what about the whole business of division, pitting not just friends but family members against one another.
First, let’s set aside the mistaken notion that Jesus is talking about division for division’s sake. Or division as a point of pride.
Some years ago, I talked to someone who was convinced that was just what we are called to do. She had taken offense to something I said, again, on social media. And rather than thrash this out on Facebook, I suggested we get a cup of coffee.
We talked through the issues, and I thought that we had arrived at an understanding. But she sighed and observed, “Well, I have a vocation to righteous indignation!”
I will admit, I almost broke out laughing. But, instead, I said – in as neutral a tone as I could muster – “That must be a terrible burden.”
To which she responded, “I’m actually really good with it.”
Little did I know that this mindset would become a social contagion and that today, there seem to be a lot of people with that vocation.
What I am trying to say is this: Jesus is not inviting you to seize a vocation to righteous indignation as an end itself. This is not about telling your parents where to head in. It is not about an ego trip based on the claim to be the most socially aware, theologically strict, or personally moral of all your friends. It is not about telling other people how to live or about passing legislation to make people live the way that you think you should. In fact, your progress on the journey into the path made available to us in the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Christ has zero to do with you monitoring the lives of others.
What Jesus is trying to say is this: If we choose to follow him that may prompt others to reject you. In Jesus’ day that was the case, and it still is in some quarters of our world.
My wife, Natalie, and I have a friend who was Jewish, chose to be a Christian, and has become one of the foremost theologians of our day. She didn’t reject her family, but her family rejected her and said Kaddish (Jewish prayers for the dead) over her. But, as painful as that can be, that cannot matter.
The Christian life is not about pleasing people, nor is it about provoking them. It is about faithful discipleship. It is about spiritual freedom that speaks for itself. And when Jesus talks about the prospect of division he is talking about the power of his message to both attract and repel others.
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