My Labrador Retriever, Diego, turned 14 on Weds. Old dogs, like wine, get better with age. We have an understanding now. He’s decided he’s going to exercise the right as many older people to selectively hear only the things he wants to hear, like the sound of the refrigerator door opening. We’ve been jogging on trails together since he was one, but lately, he’s decided he’d rather smell things than jog. When Diego takes his time to smell, Eric calls it getting the news. He’s getting the news. But he’s also slowing me down. And he can still jog. So we’ve compromised. We’ve figured out a way to accommodate both our needs and I’ll go on ahead and then eventually circle back around so we can see one another and then go on ahead. And now we have developed a sense of just how far behind he’s allowed. Occasionally he gets so stuck on a smell he’s too far out of my sight and takes too long, so when I double back I’ll put on my mad face, and motion for him to come and he will outright ignore me because he’s figured out that I’m gonna love him no matter what he does. So in his old age, he’ll continue his right to selectively hear what he wants to hear and ignore me when I get mad unless of course, his safety is involved and then I get really mad, and he instinctively knows the difference, that I mean business and he’ll listen. I too have been accused of selective hearing a few times in my life, and if we’re being honest, we can probably all cop to not hearing what we don’t want to hear or face or do.
And I think, generally speaking, this is true for our perceptions of Jesus. We have no problem thinking about Jesus as the prince of peace, or the good shepherd, the lamb of God, the light of the world. When we think of Jesus, we think of love, we tend to imagine unconditional acceptance. What we don’t think of very often is angry Jesus. But this morning, if I’m reading this scripture correctly, I’m pretty sure that’s what we get. Listen again-
I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled! 50I have a baptism with which to be baptized, and what stress I am under until it is completed! 51Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division! 52From now on five in one household will be divided, three against two and two against three;53they 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.”
54He 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. 55And when you see the south wind blowing, you say, ‘There will be scorching heat’; and it happens. 56You hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky, but why do you not know how to interpret the present time?
The verse that stands out for me is this one-
Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division!
In Luke’s gospel, when Jesus was born, didn’t the angels sing out about peace on earth?
It’s easy for us to domesticate and romanticize Jesus because it makes it easier to follow him. And we, who have selective hearing will often choose easy over hard.
Brene Brown, in the video I sent you in the weekly, said; we’re so afraid of hard things that we automatically go to unicorns and rainbows when we imagine love.
For those who didn’t get the weekly email, and even if you have I think it’s worth watching again.
(after video)
The sentence that made me think about this morning’s scripture was this one-
Love is hard and messy and dirty, and if you really love, fierce big love, you’ll become dangerous to people…Which is just what happened for Jesus and as he moves closer to Jerusalem he knows what will happen, what has to happen, which includes his own death. But before the cross, comes division which includes disrupting the status quo, standing up to authority, speaking out against injustice, threatening those in power with subversive teachings.
I imagine the crowd is asking for him to tone it down a bit. Jesus, can't you accomplish your mission without preaching politics? Can you just keep reminding us that we’re loved no matter what? Can’t we just keep feeding the hungry and forget about the inflammatory injustices that divide us? Your upsetting people. And if you’re upsetting the people with power, and we’re following you, then you put us at risk too, and I’m not so sure this is what I signed up for.
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A few weeks ago, I pointed out (Look back for the quote) that sometimes following Jesus means walking away from the dinner table, biting your tongue for the sake of peace. And at other times, it means speaking up, for what’s right and just, and speaking up for what you are for, which can put you in direct opposition with the family member across the table. In the last year, I’ve heard more people than ever tell me they’re not going to be with family at Thanksgiving anymore. Jesus names the family as the place division will occur because, in the first-century world, the household is the fundamental building block for society. What happens in the home becomes a microcosm for what happens in the world.
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Last Sunday the San Quentin village association had a potluck over at the Marin rod and gun club. And after 4 years of not attending this annual event, I decided this year it was time to meet some of my neighbors. I walked into the bar and was kindly greeted by the bartender who wore a cross, and another man who had a beautiful tattoo of a cross, and a third man also with a cross, so I commented on all the crosses and asked if they go to church. And one of the guys said, Hang on, we have only two rules here at the club, we don’t discuss religion or politics. And I said, well you know, there is a way to do so respectfully, and he said, yea, sure it always starts out that way.
Jesus was not sacrificing the difficult topics of religion and politics for the sake of peace. He was embodying a way of life, love made flesh, that spoke directly to both religion and politics, without separating the two, Jesus spoke in the face of both, loving and living dangerously through a fierce conviction for God’s justice lived out.
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For three or so weeks in the pulpit now, I’ve been reflecting on what's happening around us in our country as a spiritual crisis. And last week I named briefly that my personal experience of crisis is one where God eventually breaks through and resolves the crisis for good. The crisis of the cross, brings with it resurrection, recreation, new life. That’s our journey individually and collectively.
We’re divided and In many ways, we could argue that we’ve always been divided and nothing is new. But something is new. Statistically, we trust one another less, and this is even truer for the younger generations of millennials that it is for us old folk. Suicide among children in our country is at an all-time high, addiction is at an all-time high, we have a crisis. In addition to the personal, we’re witnessing a surfacing of the incendiary problems that have been affecting this country and this world for centuries. Racism, homophobia, xenophobia, anti-semiticsm, white nationalism, and white supremacy.
Staying silent, pretending there is no problem, is our biggest threat. We’re meant to name what is happening, as Jesus did, and speak up and do what we can to help resolve it. Because ultimately peace follows conflict.
Solidarity in love doesn’t mean to beat your enemy over the head. It means to stare them in the eye with a fierce love, and name the hard truth of what has risen to the surface in our culture, in our country, in our world and allowing the fire of baptism to cleanse the old, and bring forth new life through the redeeming love of God.
If we’re addicted anything it’s feeling good, spiritually bypassing the hard stuff of love. As anyone recovering from addiction will attest, hard truths are the ground upon which real hope stands. Honesty about brokenness is a necessary preface to healing.[1]
Hard truths are those truths we’d rather not look at. truths about ourselves, about our loved ones, about our political affiliations, the value we place on money, on individual security, over and above what we know to be right for the greater good, for our neighbor, for the ones that Jesus, again and again, embraced as lovable when everyone around him complained they were not suitable to eat with, to touch, to be near, to love.
Hard truths are more than just naming what they are. It’s about wrestling with them, beating them down, setting fire to them.
Cole and Mikki are going to come up and sing a song about just that. Letting the old things die. When I think of the old things personally I think of insecurities which are based in fear, not being good enough, smart enough, thin enough, healthy enough…I've been battling these since as far back as I can remember and I have diaries going as far back as 8 years old to prove it. And just when I’m sure I’ve got insecurities or fear licked, they re-present themselves later in life, dressed in new clothes as a disguise. The same is true for the fear-based insecurities of our culture. Racism, materialism, antisemitism, white nationalism, dress themselves up in new clothes and continue to re-present themselves. But when they’re talked about, faced, wrestled with, we begin to undress them, and understand them as that same core fear, that we are not enough, and have to place ourselves above and over the other in order to maintain control.
The more we speak love, the more we follow and embody the teachings of Christ, the more we kindle a fire in our souls and in the world. The other side of division is a resolution. The division allows for the light of the Gospel to breakthrough. The more we can face and take responsibility for the ways we are complicit in the old ways, the more fertile our souls, our land, our ways become for God to re-create in us the ways of kinship, of spiritual community, of being one in love made flesh.
Maybe it’s time to let the old ways die-
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[1] https://www.christiancentury.org/article/2013-07/sunday-august-18-2013?code=JWjWVpus9rsVfAiHuX9v&utm_campaign=3ef2249fa3-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2018_09_11_08_32_COPY_02&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Christian+Century+Newsletter&utm_term=0_b00cd618da-3ef2249fa3-86220231