The Spiritual Divide

Pentecost 10 Sermon, Year C 2019
August 18, 2019
St. Michael’s Episcopal Church
The Rev. Canon Michael Horvath
Luke 12:49-56

As many of you know, I spent last week in Colorado. If you’ve been to Colorado, you know that it’s a state that is beautiful on a grand scale. Spacious skies, purple mountain majesty, and fruited plains. There’s something about the landscape and topography that evokes both a sense of gratitude and humility in the face of such God-created beauty. But, still, I missed my community here in Bristol and as the week progressed, I looked more and more forward to coming home and to being amongst you all again. I guess love has a certain way of pulling us back right to where we belong.

And then I read today’s Gospel reading. It certainly didn’t jibe with the feelings of love and yearning I had. When I returned to Bristol on Friday, I was filled with one set of emotions that were quickly snuffed out as I remembered the passage on which I had to preach today.

On the surface, today’s Gospel passage is not the most uplifting or inspiring. Whereas the lectionary readings and sermons of the past few weeks have been a rallying cry to figure out how and whether we would choose Jesus and the Gospel values he presents to us over the values of this world, this week’s passage presents us with a stark choice, perhaps even a reminder that it may be too late.

At this point in Luke’s Gospel, Jesus and his disciples are on their final journey to Jerusalem, and as he moved closer to his death, a sense of urgency must have been rising in him. There was so much his disciples still did not understand about the Kingdom he had been born to rule. They were still expecting a Messiah who would be a military champion, an earthly hero who would defeat Rome in a great show of armed strength. They were not looking for the servant leader, the king crowned with thorns and crucified upon a cross.

It must have been very frustrating for Jesus. Here he had been teaching with stories and parables about the way the Kingdom of God works, and they still didn’t get it. Once in a while, there would be a glimmer of understanding, but the disciples would veer off course as they continued to try to make Jesus into an image they had of him. It’s no wonder that by this time Jesus seems as though he is practically screaming at the disciples to get them to understand, only to be confronted with faces which showed no comprehension at all.

Today Jesus reminds them that he brings a fire, not the fire that consumes or destroys wantonly, but a fire that is meant to refine and test. When we hear this gospel passage, it’s easy to assume that Jesus is speaking of a fire that will separate already existing believers and non-believers, but it’s more than that. This fire that Jesus brings is also meant to refine us as individuals. He doesn’t come to bring peace on earth, but division and that division is one that Jesus knows already exists within us individually.

So, I was in Colorado primarily to attend a clergy leadership conference, the topic of which was about how clergy leaders are holding the tension of unity and division in mission in turbulent times (as you can imagine, there was a lot to talk about!). I also had the opportunity to do some sightseeing and on Wednesday, we took a drive up into the Rocky Mountains to see the Continental Divide. On the way up and down the mountains, the road was a two-way road. At any given point during the drive, I was either looking up towards the peaks of the mountain we were on, or looking down a rocky precipice that fell for miles. The room for error on the road was slight, almost non-existent at some points. Life and death were but a car width apart. That car ride was such an apt metaphor for our personal journeys with Jesus.  It's the Spiritual Divide that we are called to bridge.

The fire that Jesus seeks to refine us with is necessary because at any given time in our lives, we are asked to choose either Jesus and the Gospel values that we must live into if we are indeed to find true Life, or the values of this world that seem to take us further away from Jesus. Jesus says that we will not find peace if we think we can follow him and follow the ways of the world. The relational divisions that Jesus provides as examples (father against son, mother against daughter, in-laws against in-laws) are only the product of what we first must affirm in our own lives. Are we followers of the world’s values, or do we follow Christ? Being a disciple of Christ carries with it the cost of forsaking everything else, and the point Jesus is making today is that some of us are willing to make that commitment and some are not.

The grace of it all is that we aren’t carved in stone. We are not, none of us, lost causes. At any moment in our relationships with one other, we can choose to love instead of hate; we can choose to be curious about the another, instead of assuming the worst; we can wrap our arms around each other, instead of bearing arms against each other.

When I said earlier that I missed you all during my time away, I really meant it. I missed this community because it is one in which I experience a breadth of differences, varying levels of opinions and beliefs about the world we live in. Ours is a community that perhaps still harbors painful hurts and bruises from past experiences with one another. At the same time, my heart is regularly full of joy and hope when we are all gathered here on Sunday. To me that means that the Holy Spirit still works diligently through us, asking us to make offerings of reconciliation and love not just to God but also to each other. In coming together in this space, we are making Jesus our choice and sharing that choice of love and relationship with each other.

This is important on a personal relationship level because living a life in Christ can be difficult. Many of us have probably found ourselves in difficult situations this week. I can guarantee that most of us got angry with someone or something this week. I’m sure that we felt frustrated with a particular friend or family member, or even our own self. And in those situations of anger or frustration, did our anger get the best of us? Are we still walking around with feelings of resentment? Or, are we so grounded in our faith and following of Christ that we responded with love, equanimity and compassion? See, it’s in the everyday situations that we can practice what it means to love as God loves us and what it means to hold division and peace in tension. And believe me, it takes practice and discipline.

And this personal practice and discipline of loving as God loves us has a larger effect on the community and the world we live in. Jesus wants to know if we are up to the task of loving on a large scale, because if we are interpreting the times we live in through the lens of the Gospel, then we will find that there is a lot of love that needs to be shared in order for the Kingdom of God to break forth into the world. And if we are interpreting the world as clearly as we interpret the weather, Jesus says, we will then understand that things in our world need to change. Oppression of the weak is no longer acceptable. Greed at the expense of the hungry and poor is no longer acceptable. Idolatry of people and things that are of this world is no longer acceptable. Any thing of this world that prevents all of us from being embodied as the beloved of God has to go.

And we can only achieve this through love. So, let’s steer clear of the edges of the precipice that this world seeks to pull us down into. Instead, let the fire of Christ burn through us and kindle the world we live in so that we come ever nearer to the mountaintop experience of God’s Kingdom here and now. Amen.