A Sermon Based Upon Luke 12: 49-59
By Rev. Dr. Charles J. Tomlin, DMin
Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership
Pentecost 13c, August 18th, 2013
"I came to bring fire to the earth, and
how I wish it were already kindled! (Luk 12:49 NRS) "
“In Garrison Keillor's fictional boyhood
home of Lake Wobegon, Minnesota, air conditioning (A/C) was placed in the same
category of suspicion as "dishwashers, automatic transmissions, frozen
dinners, and liberal theologians." As
air-conditioning came about, “fire and brimstone” preaching went out the window
with the heat. Jim Somerville
writes: “During the days before Air
Conditioning we had lots of it.
Preachers used to face a regular problem with the heat, especially in
the South. Even with the windows up and
the funeral home fans flying, a southern summer Sunday morning could sap the
attentive powers of an entire congregation.
A wasp bumping lazily across the ceiling would be enough to distract
them. A dramatic pause in the sermon and
half of them might drop off to sleep.
Naturally, the preacher began to raise
his voice, just to wake them up, and for a while that was enough ("...and
MOSES saith unto PHARAOH, 'Let my people GO!'"). But people get used to things, and they eventually
got used to loud preaching. So the
preacher began to punctuate his sermon by pounding on the pulpit ("...and
MOSES [Bam!] saith unto PHARAOH [Bam!], 'Let my people GO!' [Bam!
Bam!]"). But they got used to that,
too. Until finally the preacher had not
choice but to preach on matters of life and death, Heaven and Hell
("...CAST them [Bam!] into the FURNACE [Bam! Bam!] of FIRE [Bam! Bam!
(and) BAM!!]"). And that
worked. That kept the congregation
awake. And it was in that context that
one of the great homiletical punch lines of all time was developed: "You
think it's hot NOW!..."
Pastor Somerville continues: “But then
along came A/C, and suddenly those same people who had been dozing off before
were sitting upright in the pews, wide awake, with eager, attentive expressions
on their faces. As you might imagine
that was the end of fire and brimstone preaching, and evidence enough that
there is a closer connection to A/C and liberal theology than you might guess. As Garrison Keillor says about some of the
people who move away from Lake Wobegon: ‘They get A/C first thing and crank it
up to Cold. They drape themselves over
it. Then they find a church where God is
the gentle mist rising from the meadow and the smile on a child's face.” "They don't want to get sweaty anymore
if they can help it."
JESUS
IS THE FIRE THAT DIVIDES
What happened to ‘fire and brimstone’ preaching might be a just little more
complicated. When Jesus says that he
has come to “send fire on the earth”
and not to ‘bring peace’, but to
bring “division” there are plenty of
other reasons people don’t want the fire.
What kind of fire does Jesus bring? Jesus says, first of all, that he longs to
bring a “fire” of ‘division.’ This sounds rather strange, coming from the
prince of peace who calls us to be peace makers, doesn’t it? But when you follow Jesus, and I mean REALLY
follow Jesus, with all your heart, soul, and mind, the outcome is not always
what you expect. Yes, of course, the
gospel is ‘good news’---the good news of God’s amazing grace, but even ‘good
news’ can challenge, bring unanticipated results and cause people hurt. If you wonder what I mean, compare it with
someone who has won the lottery or come into a large sum of money. We’d like to have that kind of ‘problem’,
wouldn’t we? And at first, it seems
like a wonderful blessing---to have all your bills and mortgages paid off and
not to ever have to work again. Then,
the tax collectors come, the relatives come, and then all the temptations come
with all that money. Most people who win
the lottery do not prove to be able to handle it. It is a blessing that quickly becomes a
burden, and if you are not careful, it can become a curse.
Most of us don’t have to worry about
winning the lottery, but we do have to think about what we do with God’s love
and grace. The good news about God’s
love is that, first and foremost, we have been given a great blessing. It is ‘blessing’ that can change our
lives. But this great blessing can also
become a challenge to us, and maybe even become a burden—a burden we must
bear. If you still have trouble
understanding, consider the story of Jesus’ ministry according to the New
Testament. Jesus goes around healing,
helping, caring, and sharing the love of God with outcasts and giving grace to
sinners. That’s the blessing. But the established, traditional, religious
leaders don’t like what he’s doing. It’s
not just that they don’t like people getting a ‘free lunch’, so to speak, but
they see Jesus as a threat to their taking own “lunch”. If you recall, there’s even a gospel story
about Jesus getting a young boy to give his ‘lunch’ away. Thus, in the preaching and ministry of
Jesus, in order to receive God’s love, you must also be willing to share. In order to really ‘share’, you have to let
go of some things, like perhaps your control of what happens, or you might have
to give up some of your wealth, or even let go of some of your own personal views
on things. This might come as a
surprise, but one of the core lessons Jesus was trying to teach the Pharisees
is that it’s hard to be ‘right’ all the time and still be a Christian. Learning
that all of us are wrong and sinners was at the heart of the good news.
Well-established people just did not
want to do this. So they turned against
Jesus. They turn against him because his
words, deeds, and saving activity upset their own ‘apple cart’---that is, their
own understanding of God as it relates to how they are living their lives. Jesus
is a fire-thrower. He has thrown a whole
new understanding of God into the mix of their lives. He turns everything upside down: The ones
who are in, are now out. The ones who
are safe, are now in danger. The ones
who were in danger are now receiving the great blessing of God. How did such a thing happen? How did Jesus set the world on fire? Jesus forgives sins on the spot, which they
thought only God could do. Jesus even
shows that those who think they have no sin, are committing some of the worst
sins of all. Jesus also touches the
untouchables, which is very risky business not just for Jesus, but for the
whole community. Finally, Jesus heals
people even on the Sabbath day, foregoing the traditional, legalistic rules of
religion that had been kept for generations.
By doing things like this, Jesus shows that the religion of his day had
lost touch with reality. By following
the rule of love rather than the rule of law, Jesus upset everything. He set the world on fire. All this radical newness brought confusion,
debate, and division. Everyone thought all
the rules were written and could be controlled by their own interpretation of
things, but according to Jesus, the spirit of love remained free, liberating,
uncontrollable and unconfined by all human conceptions. The heart of God can’t be controlled by
human thoughts and is now burning like a fire, setting ablaze all kinds of
debate, division, conflict and strife.
Has the ‘truth’ of God ever upset your
own ‘applecart’? Has God ever
interrupted your life for an “emergency broadcast bulletin” of what you should
stop and what you should start doing?
Did you listen, or did you change the channel? People changed the channel of Jesus. They silenced him. They drowned out his words. They hung him on a cross. They made sure that they could keep doing
what they were doing and would have no interruption. The truth of Jesus and the truth from Jesus was
too radical, too divisive, and too upsetting to how people wanted things to be
and to remain. Jesus view of God and
love for sinners was the ‘fire’ people didn’t want burning up the way things already
were.
When Clarence Jordan founded the
Koinonia Farm in south Georgia, an interracial Christian community, his attempt
to live out his call as a disciple of Jesus and his challenge to a segregated
south led to his excommunication (division) from his local church! As he tells it, "The little country
church to which I belonged invited me one summer to hold a revival meeting.
They had heard that I had graduated from the Baptist Theological Cemetery-uh,
Seminary. So I accepted, and I preached
to those people. I preached the word of
God in south Georgia and I didn't think that I would survive the ordeal. I thought of how Jesus went back to his
little hometown to preach not a revival but just one sermon on Sunday morning and
they caught on to what he was saying before he even got to his closing
point. So they took him out to the end
of town to dash him over the hill.” "Well,
I expected to be in that dilemma, but I wasn't; much to my amazement, when I
got through preaching, these dear ole deacons came by and said, 'That was a
sweet sermon, and I wondered where they were during that sermon! They again
asked me to preach and again I tried to make it clear. I supplied for the pastor time and again but
somehow I could never make myself be heard. But gradually, as Koinonia took shape and the
word that had been preached to these people became flesh and they could see it,
then they caught on. Not only was I not
asked to preach to these people anymore, I was excommunicated, along with all
the rest at Koinonia, from the membership of that church. At last, the sermon had been delivered and
understood." Finally the fire set
something ablaze. (Cited
by Dallas Lee, The Substance of Faith and other Cotton Patch Sermons by
Clarence Jordan (Association Press, 1972), 32-33.)
JESUS
IS THE FIRE THAT BRINGS DISCERNMENT
The reason the truth of Jesus brings
‘division’ and struggle is because the truth of love brings ‘discernment.’ Discernment is not a word we use, because it
scares us. It’s a word that requires us
to think. It’s a word that challenges
our mind and heart. When Clarence Jordan
came to ‘discern’ that God does not just desire ‘civil rights’ but that God
desires that we all live in a community where we actually do love and care for
each other, such discernment was,
and still is, too much for some people.
And we all know that people can’t handle too much truth. We like the kind of ‘truth’ we can handle,
but we don’t like for the ‘truth’ to get a handle on us.
What kind of ‘discernment’ did Jesus
bring that brought so much division among people? Was it not the ability to discern
‘love’? At the core of everything Jesus
was about, at the very center of all the conflict and division that surrounded
Jesus, was the golden rule of love, which says, “Do unto others what you would
have them do to you?” (Matt. 7:12). This was what Jesus was doing with sinners,
with outcasts, and with all kinds of people touched by illness and disease,
even with those caught up in sin. If
Jesus had not reached out to these folks, they would have had no hope. The
love Jesus was able to discern for them, even while they were still sinners, is
exactly what Jesus calls us to discern.
As the apostle Paul himself discerned, “But God proves his love for us in that while we still
were sinners Christ died for us” (Rom 5:8 NRS). Jesus wants us to keep discerning how important it is
to love people who don’t and who can’t measure up to God’s rules or laws. Jesus doesn’t want us to build walls that
keep people out, but to tear down walls to let people in. Jesus did just that as he discerned the need
for God’s love that goes beyond law required, not refuting it, but fulfilling
it, meaning that love is what God intended all along. In this way, Jesus discerned God’s truth
beyond the specifics of rules, so he could help us all discern what is most
important in God’s heart. To gain the
ability to discern how we can ‘love’ strangers and sinners is still what the
world needs most today.
I was very thankful for this ability to
discern a ‘larger’ perspective when I was in Turkey many years ago. Our
family made a day trip from Greece to visit the ruins of Ephesus. Immediately after we got off the boat in
Turkey, I realized we had stepped into a very different culture when the
‘speaker system’ announced the daily call to Muslim prayer. Turkey is a ‘secular’ nation, but it’s most basic
religious practice is Islam which still dominates daily life. All
this ‘culture shock’ made me feel out of place.
I felt even more nervous when the tour guide on our tour bus asked me
what I did. I was not ashamed of my
faith, but I was reluctant to tell him I was a Christian pastor, because I
thought he might develop an immediate prejudice against me.
In that moment, I felt like many people
feel must feel when they encounter a world outside of who they are. I felt alone.
I felt that I would not be understood.
I felt that he would be negative toward my faith in God. But
when I did explain to him that I was a Christian and a pastor, he surprisingly smiled. He did not argue with me about my
faith. He told me that he was Muslim,
but since there was only one God, he declared, that although we may have
different religious practices, we worshiped the same God. I was shocked at his appreciation for my
faith. I was glad that he found a way to fit me into
his scheme of faith and belief. It made
me feel safe, respected and accepted.
Such understanding and tolerance of
others ought to be one of the most basic rules we need in human life. We need to be able to love like Jesus loved
and we need to rise above our differing views for the sake of love. This does not mean that we have to agree on
everything, see everything eye to eye, but it means we need to learn how to
discern the need for love, grace, and understanding, even within our
differences. When Jesus confronted the
woman who was caught in adultery, the law required her to be stoned. Jesus did not agree with her adultery, but
he also did not believe that she needed to be stoned. He did commend her not to sin any more, but
he also did not condemn her as a sinner.
Jesus ‘discerned’ love. But this
is what the religious leaders would not do.
They would not ‘tolerate’ anyone who did not measure up. They wouldn’t tolerate Jesus’ discernment
for giving love and grace to the sinner.
They would not entertain any new
ideas, new interpretations, or any exceptions to the law at all. In
order to do this, they would have to give up some of their thinking and trust
God as the final judge, and they would also have to open themselves up to
Jesus’ radical new approach to putting love above the law. This was too hard for them. They were not used to entertaining any
reasonable ‘exceptions’ at all. They would
not discern love and this is why Jesus said their nation, their religion and
their Jerusalem was doomed for coming destruction.
JESUS
IS THE FIRE TO DECIDE AND TO
ACT
Now we conclude where the fire of Jesus
burns really hot, even today. The truth
of Jesus’ fire is this: “If we do not learn discern love in the midst of our
own confusing times, we suffer emotional, mental, physical and political
destruction. In order to avoid the
‘fire’ of destruction, we must discern the burning ‘fire’ of love.
In July, ABC News ran a news report
about a 21 year-old New Jersey woman, who hired a hit-man to kill her
husband. What she did not know was that
the hit-man she was trying to hire was an under-cover agent and their whole
discussion was being recorded. The most
shocking part of the interview was not that a woman wanted to kill her husband,
but it was the reason she stated for wanting her husband killed. During the interview, when asked ‘why’ she
speaks without tears and in a very settled and secure voice. She says that her husband is not mistreating
her. She even says that things are going
fairly good in their marriage. So why have him killed? She says she is not happy in her marriage and
that having him killed seems a lot easier than getting a divorce. It would be better to kill him, she says,
because she did not want to worry about the ‘judgment of her family or about
breaking his heart.” http://worldnewsviews.com/2013/07/09/video-former-nj-woman-tries-to-hire-hit-man-to-kill-husband-says-its-easier-than-divorce/.
Looking into story of such a ‘cold’
heart is like looking into a destructive fire of what happens in people and in
a culture that loses the ability to love.
It is a very hot flame full of death and destructiveness. But there is a flame that burns hotter than
this, and it is a flame that Jesus wants to bring on the earth. It is not the flame of destruction, but it
is the purging fire of discerning love.
Let me ask you: Have you ever looked into a fire and found the blue and
white flame? Even hotter than the discerning fire of love
is the ‘burning’ desire to decide to act upon and live out the love we have discerned.
If the culture that surrounded Jesus had
one great deficit, it was not only their inability to discern love, but it was
also their failure to decide to act upon that love. This can be seen in the verses that
immediately proceed. In Luke 12: 47, it
is the ‘servant’ who “knew what his
master wanted” but did not “do
what he wanted” who “receives the
worst beating.” Even before that
Jesus says, “Blessed in that slave whom
his master will find at work when he arrives.” (Luke 12: 43). But what kind of ‘work’ is Jesus speaking of? In this parable Jesus is not speaking of
employment, hobbies, or everyday chores.
What Jesus is speaking of the ‘burning’ neighbor love which the Good
Samaritan had (Luke 10: 25-37). This
was the kind of love than ended in the merciful decision to ‘go and do likewise’; not simple to ‘see’ (discern) and ‘walk by on the other side’ (to decide to do nothing, Lk. 10:
31-32). The burning fire of Jesus then,
and now, is to decide to do the work of love that is before us.
What does it mean for us to bring the challenging
fire of Jesus into our own lives right now, and to decide to do the work of
love we need to do? It can mean many
things, can’t it? Perhaps the most
important thing for us, as it was for those Pharisees Jesus’ addressed, is to
start by getting our priorities right?
This is most basic ‘fire’ at the heart of our passage. Jesus’ fire in his own life, accept his own
‘baptism’, which is to do God’s will, no matter the personal cost to him. His task is to do God’s will, whether it
brings peace or division. If only other
people would ‘judge for (themselves)
what is right’! (Lk. 12.57). If people would only accept the ‘fire’ of
discernment and decide to do what is right, they could avoid the destructive
‘fire’ of judgment that is coming to the earth. What cannot do, according to Jesus’
concluding word, is decide to avoid the fire.
It will come, one way or another.
If we try to avoid what we are supposed to do, then, as Jesus says, we
will be thrown in ‘a prison’ and can ‘never get out’ until (we) ‘have paid the
last penny.” The point here is
obvious. It’s practically impossible to pay
your fines and dues when you are in prison.
Once you fall into the trap of not doing what you are supposed to do, it
is practically impossible to work your way out.
The point is this; that the ‘fire of Jesus’ that calls us to do the hard
work of discerning and deciding to do the work of love is nothing compared to
the ‘fire’ of judgment that comes when we lose the ability to “judge” and to do
“what is right”.
Back in 1961 an English woman named Viv
Nicolson won the national Lottery, which would now be equal to something around
$12 million dollars. A big deal was made
of the new priority in her life that came with all those riches, to “spend, spend,
and spend!” They even made a musical
and film about her winnings and how her life was instantly changed. But since that time she has been married 5
times, and eventually became a Jehovah’s Witness. Most recently, Mrs. Nicolson said that now
she wishes that she had not had the fortune of winning all that
money. “We had a wild life, and I did
enjoy it. But it drove a wedge between
me and Keith. He was drunk all the time
and always out, and we started to fight and drift apart. One night, when about half the money had
gone, Keith was killed after his blue Jaguar skidded across the A1. Before the money we had nothing, but we loved
each other and got on with things.” (From a sermon by Julie Woods, “Things Above Earthly Things”, in The Expository Times, Vol. 124,
No. 10, July 2013, p. 494).
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