He Came to Bring Division (and That's Not a Bad Thing)

"Jesus said, 'I have come 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 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.'"

--Luke 12: 49-53

I'll be the first to admit that this is a really, really hard Gospel.  Like many of you I prefer to concentrate more on Jesus' promises of love and forgiveness, rather than judgement.  But as Christians we are not suppose to ignore the difficult texts of Scripture or pretend that they don't exist.  Instead, we must sit with them, ponder what they truly mean, and still manage to find good news  n them, even if they ruffle our feathers. 

Jesus said that he came not to bring peace but division, that he came to bring fire.  Fire is often used as a metaphor for judgement in Jewish thought and writings, thus we have Jesus calling for judgement on a generation of people whom he refers to as hypocrites because they can interpret the weather but not interpret that the kingdom of God is in their midst.  This was hardly the way the Messiah was meant to speak; he was suppose to usher in a golden age of prosperity and peace, not bring about the divisions within households.  This was, after all, a culture wherein kinship ties played so crucial a socio-religious role.  Jesus' message would surely have been suspect and would've filled many with fear.  Furthermore, if we think about Luke's Gospel as a whole, we will remember that it is Luke who has the Angels announce peace on earth and goodwill to all way back when Jesus was born.  So why would Luke have Jesus use such divisive, and even scary language?

As Jesus shows, not only in Luke but in all of the Gospels, the realization of God's purpose will inevitably engender opposition from those who serve a contrary view.  Think of all the time Jesus spends with sinners and all the times the Pharisees or others in authority gripe at him for it.  So often he pushes against the social norms--whether it is speaking in public to women, or using a Samaritan as the example of what a faithful person looks like--and those pushes do, indeed, cause division.  Being a witness of God's love and mercy does not always look like standing around a campfire and singing Kumbaya.  Sometimes it looks like pushing against social norms, losing a part of the comforts of your old life, and maybe even losing someone you care about--as many early Christians lost loved ones over issues such as being unable to serve in the military because it went against their Christian principles.  Still, standing in that witness eventually leads to something new being born, a new family emerging, and a new way of thinking and living taking shape.

There is a story I'd like to tell you about how that happened in the Episcopal Church.  It's a story I've blogged about before, but it's the story of one of my favorite saints.  His name was Jonathan Myrick Daniels.  

Blessed Jonathan Daniels.

He was a native of New Hampshire, a graduate of Virginia Military Institute, and a seminarian at Episcopal Theological School (now Episcopal Divinity School) in Cambridge, Mass.  In March of 1965  Dr. Martin Luther King made a public call for folks to come to Selma, Alabama in support of the cause of civil rights, namely voter restrictions that had been placed on African Americans.  Jonathan was in Evening Prayer one night, praying the Magnificat, (from, of course, the Gospel of Luke).  He heard those powerful words:

"My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my savior,

for he hath regarded the lowliness of his handmaiden.

For behold from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed.

For he that is mighty hath magnified me, and holy is his name.

And his mercy is on them that fear him throughout all generations.

He hath showed the strength of his arm.

He hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.

He hath put down the mighty from their seats and hath exalted the humble and meek.

He hath filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he hath sent empty away.

He remembering his mercy hath holpen his servant Israel,

as he promised to our forefathers, Abraham and his seed forever."

And he knew he had to go.  He and a group of students traveled to Selma shortly thereafter.  They intended to stay just for the weekend, but by Divine providence they missed their bus and stayed longer.  He marched, he faced down Selma police, and on Sunday mornings he picked up young black men and women and took them to the local Episcopal Church where they were not met with a great deal of hospitality..  After returning to ETS in time to finish his final exams for that school year, Jonathan came back to Selma in August.  He and others went to the town of Fort Deposit to join in picketing three local businesses. They were arrested and held in the county jail in Hayneville for six days until they were bailed out. (They had agreed that none would accept bail until there was bail money for all.) After their release, four of them, Jonathan included, went to a local shop, and were met at the door by a man with a shotgun who told them to leave or be shot. After a brief confrontation, he aimed the gun at a young black girl in the party named Ruby Sales. Jonathan pushed her out of the way and took the blast of the shotgun himself.  He was killed instantly. Today is his feast day.

Jonathan Daniels, a white man from the north, came to the south and found a new family, a new way of being, because he knew what it meant to stand in the love of Jesus Christ. After his martyrdom the Episcopal Church found a new way of being, too. The Episcopal Church had long been considered the "rich white man's church" (in some places it still is).  The church that once had denied African Americans a place in our General Convention, whose parishes and cathedrals were, many of which, built by slaves, took a long hard look in the mirror and said, 'We were wrong.'  And that admission has not been without division.  The Church has since been on the forefront of social change.  The Episcopal Church ordained the first female priests in North America in 1974, but many were angry and left.  We made Barbara Harris, an African American, the first female bishop in western Christianity, but many were angry and left.  We made Gene Robinson and Mary Glasspool the first openly gay bishops, but many were angry and left.  Yet we have not stopped!  As Presiding Bishop Michael Curry--the first African American leader of the Episcopal Church--reminds us, we are part of the Jesus Movement, and that Movement is never, ever going to stop fighting for the sake of the marginalized, even if it means we have to change or that members of our family may leave, because the Jesus Movement transforms us into something better than we were before.

  

(L) A few of the Philadelphia 11, the first female priests in the US.  (R) The Rt. Rev. Barbara Harris, the first female bishop.

Jesus was exactly right.  His coming into the world shook it to its very core.  Everything the world had known about who was worthy of God's love was turned upside-down.  We shouldn't really be so surprised that he would say that he came to bring division.  That's precisely what he did.  Yet he calls us, even when it seems like the world is crashing around us, to keep standing on our principles.  It may lead to a breakup in our church family, or even our actual blood family, but sometimes that is the price we pay for walking the way of Jesus, the way of one who pushed so hard against the social norms of his own time that those norms finally killed him for it.  Yet even death could not destroy God's promise of love and mercy, and so from his death comes resurrection, and from the deaths that we die daily--both personally and systemically--we are resurrected and born anew as individuals and as the Church.

So there is good news in Jesus' message today, and it is that while Jesus may have come to bring division, it is division that is sometimes necessary so that injustice can be addressed, so that the world may truly see God's love and mercy, and so that our hearts can be changed and we can become more than what we were before.  We cannot expect to follow Jesus and not be spat upon or shouted at or beaten or killed.  To follow Jesus means being willing to stand in the love of Jesus, as folks like Jonathan Daniels did, even if it means losing everything that we have held dear.  Families may be divided, but the Jesus Movement goes on.  We, along with all of those great trailblazers who have stood in the love of Jesus and faced the harsh reality of division, those who have fought for social change and stood on the principle that all are not only worthy of God's love but that each person's experience should be honored, we are a part of that Movement.  Regardless of division, regardless of opposition, the Jesus Movement ain't never, ever, ever, gonna stop!  And that, brothers and sisters, is good news, indeed!