With this speech, Jesus certainly grabs our attention. “Do you think that I have come to bring peace on earth? No, I tell you, but division.”
It’s not exactly what most of us come to church on Sunday morning hoping to hear.
To a large extent our families are what make us who we are, where we learn the difference between right and wrong, where we develop the basic framework of the outlook on life that we will carry with us always. For many of us, our families are where we first learned about Christ and his church. Good, bad, or indifferent, family ties are some of the most significant relationships in our lives. We read about family conflict in the newspaper, watch it on TV, and struggle with it in our own homes. The Bible too? Since when is Jesus a proponent of family discord?
Jesus is the Prince of Peace, the Bread of Life, the Living Water.
In this passage, shouldn’t Jesus be saying, “Do you think I have come to bring peace on earth? Yes! I have come to comfort families. I have come to bridge the chasms of silence that separate fathers and sons. I have come to heal the wounds of regret that drive apart mothers and daughters.”
It would make sense for the passage to say this. Luke’s Gospel has all sorts of miracle stories about Jesus healing individuals and restoring family relationships.
Perhaps that’s what the passage should say. Perhaps that’s what many of us would like the passage to say. But it doesn’t. Like it or not, this passage talks about division, not reconciliation.
In this passage, Jesus is not talking about the small and large rifts in the fabric of the family that happen as a result of the natural wear and tear or the unexpected trauma and tragedy of life—situations where his reconciling love and grace and forgiveness have been known to work miracles.
No, in this passage, Jesus is talking specifically about the division that happens as a direct result of a decision to follow him.
It’s still a hard word to hear. It sure doesn’t sound like good news. Especially since Jesus doesn’t simply imply that division can occur as a result of him, but he emphatically states that division will occur because of him.
With this speech, Jesus certainly grabs our attention. But is it a new word? Has Jesus suddenly turned up the intensity of the message?
If Jesus’ mother were in the crowd that day, I don’t think she would have been surprised by his words. She knew from the beginning that he would be controversial. Before Jesus was even born, Mary knew that he was the key to God’s plan to bring down the powerful from their thrones and lift up the lowly, to fill the hungry with good things and send the rich away empty. (Luke 2:52-53)
And there was that day in the temple, when Jesus was just a little baby. Old man Simeon had held the infant Messiah in his arms, relishing the moment that he had waited for so long. Then he had looked Mary in the eye and said, “This child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be spoken against, so that the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed. And a sword will pierce your own soul too.” (Luke 2:34-35)
And Mary had heard all about his first sermon, confirming her fear—her expectation—that her son would have a turbulent ministry. Luke’s account of Jesus’ ministry begins in his hometown synagogue in Nazareth. Jesus read from the prophet Isaiah that day, and the congregation was so comforted by his peaceful words that they drove him out of town and tried to throw him over a cliff. (Luke 4:16-30) The preaching and teaching of Jesus, Prince of Peace, routinely brought about division.
No, Mary would not have been surprised at Jesus’ dramatic words or his apparent lack of regard for family loyalties. He had already denied her, his own mother, in public on at least one occasion. You remember the time Mary and Jesus’ brothers came to see him. The press of the crowds around him prevented them from reaching him. When he was told that they were waiting to see him, he responded, “My mother and my brothers are those who hear the God’s and put it into practice.” (Luke 8:19-21) Already Jesus was redefining family. Already Jesus was demonstrating, in his own life, the primacy of the call to discipleship over any other relationships—even family relationships.
Jesus came to bring fire to the earth! To make all things new! Friction is inevitable when the New Creation encounters and confronts the same old world.
Dallas Willard writes that the world “thinks of justice, peace, and prosperity in negative terms. Justice means that no one’s rights are infringed. Peace means no war or turmoil. Prosperity means no one is in material need.” (Willard, Dallas, The Spirit of the Disciplines, Harper Collins, 1988.)
Defined in this way, peace is pursued through violent means. Internationally, conflict is avoided or delayed by the threat of war. In our communities, harmony is sought by building walls—gated communities for some sectors of the population and more and more prisons for other sectors of the population.
In the New Creation, peace is defined, not as the absence of conflict, but as the fulfillment of the promise of the Kingdom.
In a book called The Blue Mountains of China, Rudy Wiebe put it this way:
“Jesus says in his society there is a new way for [people] to live:
you show wisdom, by trusting people;
you handle leadership, by serving;
you handle offenders, by forgiving;
you handle money, by sharing;
you handle enemies, by loving;
and you handle violence, by suffering.
In fact, you have a new attitude toward everything, toward everybody.
Toward nature, toward the state in which you happen to live, toward women, toward slaves, toward all and every single thing.
Because this is a Jesus society, and you repent, not by feeling bad, but by thinking different.”
(Wiebe, Rudy, The Blue Mountains of China, McClellan and Stewart, 1970.)
Luke’s Gospel also makes clear that the peace of the New Creation is not just a matter of personal attitude. It is a structural reality where the lowly are lifted up and the hungry are filled. (Luke 1:52-53) Where there is release of the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, and where the oppressed go free. (Luke 4:18) Where blessed are the poor and the hungry and those who mourn. (Luke 6:20-21) Where God’s people love not only their friends, but also their enemies; where the other cheek is turned; where shirts are given as well as coats; where lending is done without expectation of return. (Luke 6:27-35) The peace of Christ, which comes through the cross of Christ, is powerful, because strength is found to come from weakness, and greatness from submission, humility, and service.
The New Creation is upside-right. Looking from that perspective, the world around us is upside-down. Maybe that’s why this text is so hard. Because it reminds us that the decision to follow Christ is not a walk in the park. It is not just being nice, and polite, and minding our own business. To follow where Jesus leads is to be picked up and turned upside-right. When that happens its going to be painful at times, and people around us—maybe even our own families—are not going to understand. There’s going to be friction. There’s going to be division. Jesus is just telling the truth—that following him wasn’t meant to be easy or comfortable.
It’s not easy to walk upside-right in an upside-down world. By the face of God, we are invited and empowered to do it.
The peace of Christ is not about opposition. The peace of Christ has only one agenda—to make all things new in accordance with the promise of the Kingdom. Following Christ means living each moment of each day with Christ at the center. To say that Jesus Christ is Lord is to say that Caesar is not! That our modern day idols—whatever form they may take—are not!
When Hitler and the Nazi party came to power in Germany in the 1930s, Dietrich Bonhoeffer had the opportunity to leave Germany. He chose to stay and resist. “Christians in Germany,” he wrote,” will face the terrible alternative of either willing the defeat of their nation in order that Christian civilization may survive, or willing the victory of their nation and thereby destroying civilization. I know which of these alternatives I must choose; but I cannot make this choice in security.” Bonhoeffer chose to follow Christ, and it brought him into conflict with his world. He vocally opposed the Nazi regime and its policies, spent two years in a concentration camp, and was executed a few days before the Allies liberated the camp.
When the Nazis occupied Holland, Corrie ten Boom was a middle-aged woman who lived with her father and sister and worked with them in the family watch shop. She made no particular decision to become a part of the underground. She made lots of little decisions, though, to follow Christ. She helped to place hundreds of Dutch Jews in hiding in the countryside. Soon there were several Jews living and hiding in her home. Corrie ten Boom chose to follow Christ in the face of the occupation. Eventually, she was imprisoned, first in Holland and then in a concentration camp in Germany. She survived, though her sister and her father and her nephew did not. Only one of the people who had been hiding in her home was ever captured; the rest survived the war.
Thousands of other Christians, whose names we will never know, in Germany and other parts of Europe, made little decisions to follow Christ, accepting the cost, and it made a difference. What if more had?
In this country, Rosa Parks made a little decision to follow Christ when she refused to move to the back of the bus. A storm ensued as the upside-right ways of the New Creation scraped up against the upside-down ways of a segregated society.
It’s tempting to think that the call to discipleship only comes to the select few under extreme conditions of war or civil strife. But Jesus calls each one of us every day. We make decisions every day to follow or not to follow in how we spend our money and our time, how we relate to the people around us. In our time and place, the cost does not often go so far as imprisonment or death, but that doesn’t mean that the little decisions are any less important.
Martin Luther once wrote: “If I profess with the loudest voice and clearest exposition every portion of the truth of God except precisely that little point which the world and the devil are at that moment attacking, I am not confessing Christ, however boldly I may be professing Christ. Where the battle rages, there the loyalty of the soldier is proved. To be steady on all battle fronts besides is mere flight and disgrace if he flinches at that point.”
Barbara Brown Taylor tells of an old-time preacher named Ernie Campbell who essentially made the same point in a lot fewer words by asking: “If I’m following Christ, why am I such a good insurance risk?” (Taylor, Barbara Brown, Bread of Angels, Cowley Publications, 1997.)
If the cost of discipleship is potentially so high, if the decision to follow Christ inevitably leads to division, why follow? Why did the disciples leave everything behind and follow Jesus at the sound of his call? Why did the early Christians suffer persecution and death to follow Christ? Why, throughout the centuries, have there always been some who willingly accepted the cost of standing up for the upside-right ways of the kingdom in an upside-down world?
There are few tangible rewards. There is no promise that life will be smooth. The decision to follow is not made with hope of reward, but because of the identity of the One who calls. Because there is no greater joy than relationship with Jesus Christ.
The call of Christ overrides any other loyalty, and other commitment, any other relationship. The call of Christ overrides logic. The joy of relationship with Christ overrides any fear.
Jesus’ disciples answered the call to follow Christ. They learned the joy and the cost of discipleship. There’s a hymn that summarizes it well:
“They cast their nets in Galilee just off the hills of brown;
Such happy, simple fisherfolk, before the Lord came down.
Contented, peaceful fishermen, before they ever knew
The peace of God that filled their hearts brimful, and broke them too.
Young John who trimmed the flapping sail, homeless, in Patmos died.
Peter, who hauled the teeming net, head down was crucified.
The peace of God, it is no peace, but strife closed in the sod.
Yet, brothers, pray for but one thing—the marvelous peace of God.”
Jesus is the Prince of Peace, and the good news of even this difficult passage in Luke’s Gospel is that Jesus came to turn the world upside-right, and that the call of Christ creates a community that has something more important binding it together than just shared genes.
