Psalm 80.1-2, 9-end
OT Reading: Jeremiah 23.23-29
NT Reading: Hebrews 11.29-12.2
Gospel : Luke 12.49-56
Text: Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division! (Luke 12.51)
Do you think I have come to bring peace to the earth? Well, actually, yes; I did. Did not the angels welcome your birth with songs of glory to God and peace to his people on earth? In the Sermon on the Mount, did you not say: Blessed are the peace-makers, for they will be called children of God (Matt 5.9). So, yes, I struggle with verses that paint Jesus in such very different colours. What does he mean? How are we to reconcile this self-portrait of Jesus as the source of conflict and division, even within the family, with the Jesus whom we see mediating God’s mercy and love to so many troubled people, as he heals their mental, physical and spiritual infirmities, making them whole, bringing them peace.
I think we need to look first at the context in which Jesus uses such divisive language. He is on his way to Jerusalem, where he senses that he will find himself at the centre of a crisis that will be decisive not just for himself, but for the little band of his disciples, and for the Jewish people.
First then in relation to himself. I came to bring fire to the earth, he proclaims. Fire is frequently used in the Old Testament as a metaphor for judgment, no doubt because fire tests a building. Only the strongest materials will withstand a fire. And then he speaks of baptism – I have a baptism with which to be baptised, and what stress I am under until it is completed. The imagery of baptism is associated with death and resurrection, since at baptism – at least in Jesus’ day – the candidate went down into the water and came up again into new life. We do not know how well Jesus could anticipate what was going to happen to him, but he clearly sensed that as he set his face to go up to Jerusalem, he was walking into the crisis that would determine the outcome of his mission. And now that it was almost upon him, he wanted to get it over. What a very human reaction! Exam time is coming, or the driving test, or perhaps the hospital has given you a date for the operation you fear, even though you know you need it. You are as ready as you are ever going to be, and you just want the day to come, so that you can do it and get it behind you. No wonder Jesus would provoke the crisis when he got to Jerusalem, first by deliberately fulfilling the Messianic prophecy about your king coming to you riding on a donkey, and then by overturning the tables of the moneychangers in the Temple courtyard. He was ready, and he didn’t want to wait a moment longer for the action to take place.
Then there was the little band of his disciples. What a motley crew they were, failing at almost every turn to understand what he was about, squabbling among themselves, manoeuvring for position in the Messianic government they dreamed of. But he judged they too were as ready as they were ever going to be. However confused their understanding of the nature of his Messianic destiny, when he asked who they thought he was, Peter had declared that he was the Christ, the Son of the Living God, and Jesus knew that impetuous Peter was only half a step ahead of the others. When he offered them the chance to turn back, it was Peter again who spoke for them all as he replied: To whom else would we go? You have the words of eternal life (John 6.68). They too were as ready as they were ever going to be for the crisis that would thrust them into an unexpected new role as leaders and teachers rather than disciples.
And finally there was the Jewish nation itself, God’s chosen people. The mission of John the Baptist had shown that there was a hunger for a new start. Their leaders were trapped in a long-established vision of themselves and their future, in which they would finally break free from foreign rule, and become once again a great independent nation. Jesus wept over Jerusalem on the day of his triumphal entry, because they could not see what would make for peace, but they too were as ready as they were ever going to be. They might not yet understand their new role as the nucleus of a more inclusive people of God, but their synagogues would offer a perfect network of god-fearing communities open to the first Jewish Christian missionaries, as they travelled through the whole of the known world under the relative security of the pax Romana.
With the benefit of hindsight, we can see, as perhaps Jesus could see, that the whole world was ready for God’s decisive act of redemption. Jewish literature from the centuries between the Old Testament and the New is full of descriptions of the ‘woes’ which would overwhelm the world as a prelude to the establishment of God’s kingdom. In that respect Jesus’ prophecy of a fiery day of judgment is not new. But there had never been any suggestion that the Messiah must himself pass through these deep waters. In these agonising verses Jesus reveals his conviction that God’s plan for the redemption of the world requires him to bring upon the earth the fiery baptism of judgment, not by inflicting it on others but by undergoing it himself.
The truth of the matter is not that Jesus sets about deliberately sowing dissension, but that his call demands a response to which the answer has to be Yes or No. Once we have spent time in his company and got to know him, he confronts us with the same question he put to the disciples at Caesarea Philippi: Who do you say that I am? On another occasion, Jesus asked Peter an even simpler question: Do you love me? And Peter responded: Yes, Lord, You know that I love you.
Each one of us has to answer those same questions, and Jesus is right; they are deeply divisive. As we make the decisions – large and small – which shape our lives, we are influenced by so many other considerations – love of money, fame or ambition, loyalty to family, party or nation, the pressure to succeed or to be respected. Loving Jesus more than any of these is not a recipe for peace. It may require us to do something that will take us way out of our comfort zone; it may require us to take a stand which we know will lead to trouble. In God’s kingdom there is peace, but to-day’s gospel warns us that the road we have to travel to get there may indeed take us down into the deep waters of stress, of conflict, of division, through which he himself had to pass.
Are we up for the challenge? It’s a tough call, and it’s not for the faint-hearted, but Jesus himself knew a peace in the depth of his being which no stress or conflict could unsettle. His was the peace which came from being of one mind with his Father, even in situations of the greatest stress and conflict, even on the cross. It is not peace as the world knows it, but in St John’s gospel Jesus says of that peace: Peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you (John 19.27)