Readings for this week.
Luke 12:49-56
If this were a real sermon this week it would have a title "In which Jesus breaks the 11th commandment: Preachers shall not loose their cool." Yeah, Jesus truly looses his temper. He has had enough.
Up until now its all been pretty good if you're hanging around Jesus. He has been healing the sick and the possessed, he has been preaching great sermons about new ways of living together and loving one another. He's charismatic and exciting; a really good distraction from all the tedious stuff of life like fishing and farming, baking bread and washing up. But we all know the unwritten 11th commandment. Rabis, preachers, priests, pastors, whatever we call them; they aren't allowed to loose their temper! Its just not seemly, it makes people uncomfortable. Aren't they called to be better than that? Don't our processes weed out the "unstable" people? Aren't these people trained?
Yeah, Jesus looses it. He's not sitting quietly here talking about lambs and shepherds. He's yelling about fire and strife and violence! He has resorted to name calling! How does he expect to keep followers if he looses his temper like that? Doesn't he know its just not done?
Jesus wouldn't have been a popular Episcopal priest, he didn't belong to all the "proper" social organizations, he didn't have a stable family, he dissed the way things had always been done, he mouthed off to authority figures. But worst of all, he wasn't afraid to make people uncomfortable. And he made a special effort to point out the differences between God's way and the way humans do things. Most of our expectations, aren't the same as God's. God isn't interested in making nice, or playing games, or putting a good face on things. God is interested in the truth. God doesn't lie to save someone's feelings or stay silent because what He needs to say might upset the status quo. And neither does Jesus. He has a message to preach, things to say, and he is going to say them. The world around him was full of injustice and hypocrisy. It was overflowing with suffering. Just as it is today.
I would love to stand up here and talk about how wonderful this parish is, what a good job we are doing. I would love to pat you each on the back and watch you smile back at me and have us all leave feeling just a little (or maybe a lot) better about ourselves. But I can't. Because Jesus is talking to all of us, today, and we need to listen. Jesus is loosing his temper with all of us, today. We need to listen.
Does the gospel today make you a little uncomfortable? It should. If it doesn't you probably weren't listening. Jesus says:
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!Those aren't comforting words. They are not meant to be. I used to squirm a bit when I heard this lesson read in church. It just didn't make sense to me. Why would the same guy who was preaching forgiveness of sins and a glorious new reality with God be talking about division and burning? Where was the Jesus I knew from Sunday school, cradling a little lamb in his arms and smiling sweetly?
Jesus had been preaching and teaching for a while by now. He had quite the reputation and he was drawing crowds. But he knew something about those people who came to see him. He knew that a lot of them were there just to see him perform a "trick." Some of them just wanted to be able to tell their neighbors they'd heard him speak. Some were there to find things to argue with him about. Some of them wanted to hear what "the other side" was talking about so they could form their counter arguments.
Were they really listening? Are we? Do we really hear the Word of God? Or do we hear what we want to hear? Does the Word penetrate our hearts and sink into the center of our being and change us? Or do we just come here on Sunday morning out of habit; or because we like the hymns; or for the friends we've made; or heaven forbid, the preacher.
Jesus lost his temper with his audience, and with us, because he understood human nature. He did come to kindle a fire on this earth; one lit by the Holy Spirit. A new way of life, a new path for God's people, all people. But Jesus looked out across the crowds and into our faces. Did he see blank faces staring back, or hostile eyes? Crossed arms, frowns, boredom? Did he see open listening hearts, or ones made of stone? He saw us. He knew that we would fall short, and he lost his temper.
He knew that we would divide ourselves in his name. It isn't God who splits churches and families, it is mankind. In the name of Jesus, or of being right, we create division. My parents got up and walked out of this place with half the congregation and a former priest. Many of you knew those people, some of you, like me, grew up with them (or watched them grow up). Did God split this parish, or did we? Did God split my family, or did we? God unites but mankind divides, and we have the gall to do it in God's name. Jesus knew that. He saw the schisms and the arguments. He saw into the stubbornness of human hearts and knew that we would grasp greedily at his words and claim them as our own. He knew our hearts would turn hard and obstinate and that we would prefer to turn our backs on one another before we admitted that our way might not be the only way.
Jesus saw all that in the faces spread out before him and he lost his temper. He understood God's frustration. Jesus knew today's reading from Isaiah:
(Isaiah 5:1) ... My beloved had a vineyard on a very fertile hill. 2 He dug it and cleared it of stones, and planted it with choice vines; he built a watchtower in the midst of it, and hewed out a wine vat in it; he expected it to yield grapes, but it yielded wild grapes. [...] 4 What more was there to do for my vineyard that I have not done in it? When I expected it to yield grapes, why did it yield wild grapes?God did everything possible to set humanity up for success. Not once, but over and over again. And each time when God asked us to live as his people we said "no." We, humanity, turned and went our own way. Instead of sowing peace in the world, we created war. Instead of loving and caring for one another we abuse and exploit our fellow men and women. We spit in God's face, we rejected God's offer of a good life together with God. Is it any wonder that God looses his temper?
Isaiah 5: 5 And now I will tell you what I will do to my vineyard. I will remove its hedge, and it shall be devoured; I will break down its wall, and it shall be trampled down. 6 I will make it a waste; it shall not be pruned or hoed, and it shall be overgrown with briers and thorns; I will also command the clouds that they rain no rain upon it. [...] he expected justice, but saw bloodshed; righteousness, but heard a cry!We are continually blind to our awesome, divine potential. God knows it, Jesus sees it. And yes, they both loose their tempers. We are a stubborn people, a frustrating people.
When it comes to the things that we think really concern us we pay plenty of attention. I can tell you its going to rain by the way the leaves on certain trees turn over. I can tell its time to leave the freeway and take the back way home if traffic is backed up at a certain spot. I can tell a friend is angry at me just by the sound she makes walking across the floor. We can all do those things, right? You can probably think of a hundred more little signs you pick up on around you.
So why can't we seem to see the kingdom of God that is all around us? Why do we, year after year, produce only bitterness? Why do we continue to refuse God's offer of a new way of being? God is making the offer, its been good since time began.
We knock down the vineyard walls with our refusal to accept the garden God has prepared for us. We divide families and communities with our stubborn insistence that we must be right. And we continue year after year after year to ignore God's call to be something different in the world. The Hebrews in Isaiah's time fell short, and in Jesus' time, and so do we. Is it any wonder Jesus raised his voice? Is it any wonder he shouted? I'm sure there were people in the crowd that day who turned to one another and said "who does he think he is?" Or who got up and walked away while he was still speaking. God is speaking to us in the reading's today. Whether we want to hear it or not.
The truth is, we don't want to hear the "good news," because it is not easy. We want the miracles and the cheer leading sermons. We want to listen to a charismatic leader pat us on the back and tell us how good we are. We want Jesus to smile gently as he holds a little lamb in his arms. We don't want to hear him as he condemns our divisive behavior, our deaf ears, and our blind eyes.
Sinead O'Connor sings a song based on the Isaiah reading today. I'd like you to listen to it:
What more could I have done in it
That I did not do in it
Why when I ask it for sweetness
It brings only bitterness
...
And sadness will come
To those who call evil good
And good evil who present
Darkness as light
And light as darkness
Who present as sweetness
Only the things which are bitterness
The readings today are hard, they make us uncomfortable when what we probably wanted was to come here and escape for a little bit. But God isn't offering us escape, and he isn't offering us a chance to be right. He is offering us a place in a new kingdom. One built not on the ways of the world, but on His ways. Are we willing to listen?
0 comments:
Post a Comment