A homily by Fr. Gene Tucker, given on Sunday, August 15, 2010 at Trinity Church, Mt. Vernon, Illinois; and at St. John’s Church, Albion, Illinois (by Mr. Dan Scherer, Licensed Lay Worship Leader)
Proper 15 -- Jeremiah 23:23–29; Psalm 82; Hebrews 12:1–14; Luke 12:49–56
One day, Charlie comes into the back of the church before service, sits down in the last pew, and begins to pray intently, saying, “Lord, please let me win the lottery.”
The week goes by, and there’s no winning the lottery.
The next Sunday, Charlie comes into the church before service, sits down in the last pew, and begins to pray intently, saying, “Lord, it’s me, Charlie….can’t you just let me win the lottery this week?”
The week goes by, and there’s no winning lottery ticket for Charles.
The third Sunday comes along, and once again, Charlie goes into the church before service, sits down in that same last pew, and begins to pray as before, “Lord, won’t you just let me win the lottery this week?”
Almost immediately, the Lord’s voice rings out in reply: “Charlie, work with me a little here….buy a ticket!”
(Now, this joke is not an endorsement of the lottery. In fact, I never win the lottery because I never buy a ticket.)
But I’ll bet most of us have day dreamed just a little about winning the lottery, or about coming into a large sum of money somehow, haven’t we?
And when we do, don’t we imagine how our lives would change as a result?
For the most part, I suspect our day dreaming would consist of all sorts of wonderful things that would happen as a result of being suddenly very, very wealthy. You know, we could imagine retiring or stopping working. We could imagine giving money to support the things we value most. We could imagine making sure that our children or grandchildren’s education was taken care of.
All of those things would be wonderful, wouldn’t they?
But there’s another side to all of this day dreaming, and to illustrate the effects of receiving such a gift, let’s return to our hero, Charlie, to see what some of the costs of having such a gift would be.
For one thing, Charlie might have a whole new set of friends, or long-lost relatives, whose motivation would be to influence Charlie to part with some of his new-found wealth. Put plainly, they’d want Charlie to give some of his money to them!
And, I would guess, many of these new-found friends or long-lost relatives would suddenly come back into Charlie’s life, coincidentally, of course.
But there are other relationships that would probably end. Sad to say, there would be some of Charlie’s acquaintances and perhaps even family members who would cease to have anything to do with Charlie. Maybe they would feel like they no longer had anything in common with him. Maybe they would become angry because Charlie didn’t share his new-found status with him to a level they expected. Maybe Charlie’s new-found interests weren’t ones they had anything in common with.
Charlie’s gift turns out to be a gift that also divides.
“A gift that divides” is a good way to describe today’s Gospel reading.
Here, we hear Jesus describe the division that the gift of the Kingdom of God produces. “Do you think I have come to bring peace on the earth,” He says? “No, I tell you, but rather division.”
A side note is in order here: So much for a gentle Jesus, meek and mild! Sometimes, what the Lord has to say to us is very, very difficult to hear. Sometimes, what He has to say to us qualifies as a “hard saying”. Today’s gospel has its fair share of “hard sayings”.
Returning to our text now…What sort of a division does Jesus have in mind?
To make sure there’s no mistaking the sort of division that’s in view, Jesus continues, “For henceforth in one house there will be five divided, three against two and two against three; they will be divided, father against son and son against father,” and so forth.
So, Jesus is saying that the division that the gift of faith produces will even divide families.
Much like the gift of wealth that produces new relationships, but ends others, the gift of the kingdom
of God will also produce division. That’s Jesus’ point.
Let’s pause for a moment in our consideration of Jesus’ statements to remember that, by the time Luke is recording his gospel account, perhaps in the years 85 – 90 AD, already within the Christian community such divisions were taking place as one or more family members became Christian believers.
Suddenly for these early Christian believers, they found that they no longer had much in common with their own relatives. Discussions about religion became fruitless and pointless as Christians refrained from taking part in the pagan rituals that had been a part of family life before the gift of faith came.
So the very early Christians lived out in their lives the reality of divisions, even within their own families.
But what could prompt those early Christians – and us modern Christians – to endure the ending or curtailing of relationships, because of the gift of the kingdom of God that we receive?
What is it about the kingdom that makes it possible to endure divisions, even within families and close friendships?
I think the answer is in the first part of our gospel text. There, we hear Jesus say, “I came to cast fire upon the earth, and would that it were already kindled! I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how I am constrained until it is accomplished.”
What could the Lord possibly mean by His references to “fire” and to “baptism”?
Jesus’ words are an echo of John the Baptist’s characterization of the nature of Jesus’ ministry. In Luke 3: 16, John tells us that Jesus will “baptize with the Holy Spirit and with fire.”
We would do well to unpack the biblical meanings of both terms, baptism and fire.
We begin with fire:
Fire is a symbol of God’s judgment. Consider the fate of the wicked cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, as an example. Fire consumes both as God’s judgment is poured out (see Genesis 18: 16 – 19: 24).
But fire also purifies. As to the purifying effects of fire, we read in I Corinthians 3: 12 – 13 these words, “Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw – each man’s work will become manifest, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done.”
And fire energizes, as we see on the Day of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit’s presence was made known like tongues of fire, resting on the heads of each person present.
Now, let’s turn to the matter of baptism:
St. Paul, writing in Romans 6: 3 – 9, characterizes baptism as a sort of death. We are buried with Christ in a death like His, he writes, only to be raised to a new life in a resurrection like His. So baptism is equated with death.What could Jesus’ words refer to then, those words which say something about “casting fire on the earth,” and about having a “baptism to be baptized with”?
Perhaps Jesus is referring to His own coming death, a death which
- Demonstrates God’s judgment on the sins of the whole world,
- Purifies those who come, by faith, to claim its cleansing effects, and which
- Energizes believers down through the ages.
- A precious gift,
- A costly gift because it entailed His own suffering and death,
- A generous gift because of the victory over death that His resurrection makes possible.
Thanks be to God, for the costly gift of the kingdom of God, which surpasses all other gifts and all other relationships.
May we, in our own day, value the costly gift of the kingdom of God, just as our ancestors in the faith have done.
AMEN.
