Jesus Wants Justice

 Luke 12:49-56

August 17, 2025

 

Aww. Jesus was so nice last week.

Don’t be afraid little flock.

God wants to give you the Kingdom.

And then we get this.

Jesus has come to bring division to this world.

We usually think of Jesus as the one for peace, love.

I mean I’ve told you that Jesus says “do not be afraid” like

21 times in the gospels and that’s second only to

the imperative to “love” which he says 125 times.

 

But not right now.

Yes, Jesus final objective is love and peace.

But Jesus reminds us that doesn’t always mean quick peace.

Not at first. To get to peace, Jesus is going to bring division.

 

Honestly, in this reading today, Jesus sounds stressed out to me.

He even kind of says he’s stressed out right at the beginning.

 

I don’t know if I’m completely comfortable with

the idea of a stressed out Jesus.

Jesus most often seems calm as a cucumber, above the fray.

In control of things, but he basically says he’s stressed here. He says:

“Let’s get on with the whole thing, because it’s stressing me out!”

 

And there’s a good reason for Jesus to be stressed out.

 

So, we’re in chapter 12 of Luke right now.

In Chapter 11, Jesus is invited to dinner at the house of a Pharisee

and while he’s there, Jesus neglects the,

religiously mandated hand washing ritual to prepare for his meal.

The Pharisees see this and start grumbling about it.

  

And then instead of making nice, Jesus starts to berate the Pharisees

“You are worried about how clean the cup and the dish are,

but your insides are filthy”

Which would have been enough to get his point across,

but Jesus goes on for 20 verses

(which is really a long time in terms of scripture )

“Woe to you”, Jesus says, “You give money,

but you neglect justice and the work of God.”

He criticizes them for their hypocrisy

and tells them that they’re not doing their job.

And he’s doing it pretty loudly and forcefully.

 

And then when the religious lawyers in the room said,

“Well, Jesus, when you say that, you’re insulting us too.”

Then Jesus starts in on the lawyers

“Woe to you lawyers too!”

“You load people with burdens and don’t’ lift a finger to help them.”

And “you are responsible for killing God’s prophets.”

Then apparently, Jesus left the dinner party.

Right at the end of the last chapter.

Jesus just took on a group of the most

powerful and influential people in Jewish society at the time,

he berated them, and then just dropped the mic and left without

even eating with them or making nice.

 

Then in Chapter 12, Jesus goes out to a crowd of a thousand people

that’s gathering around the Pharisee’s house and tells them,

“Watch out for the hypocritical Pharisees”.

 

Jesus is pushing the prophetic envelope here.

He’s stirring the pot. He’s calling out the bad behavior

of some of the most powerful people around him.

Basically, he’s just set into motion

the things that will eventually get him crucified.

No wonder he’s stressed out.

Then, after, he warns the crowd about

the Pharisees, he starts this conversation with the crowd

that we’ve been hearing for the last few weeks

He says:

Don’t be afraid of the religious leaders and politicians

don’t fear those who kill the body,

but can’t do anything else to you.

 

Don’t store up useless treasures on earth.

Don’t waste the time you have.

 

Don’t worry about your life

The lilies in the field and the ravens are fine

and they don’t worry.

And then, what we read last week,

Don’t be afraid little flock.

Just be prepared when God needs you.

 

Then we get the stressed out Jesus we read today:

“I’m not here to make nice. I’m here to stir some things up.”

Which he has. Very well.

 

To me, it’s almost as if in this part, Jesus talking to himself,

like he’s trying to convince himself and deal with the sudden

realization of what he’s set in motion at that dinner party.

He’s getting a picture of what his destiny is,

and he knows that his life is not going to end well.

There will probably be a lot of pain involved.

 

Remember, Luke is the same gospel that has Jesus

sweating blood in the garden of Gethsemane,

asking for God to take away this cup that

God wants him to drink.

Stress.

 

Now, Jesus said those things to the Pharisees and lawyers

because he has compassion for the people.

The normal people without power.

The ones that they were supposed to serve but were neglecting

and putting great burdens on.

 

When we say that “Jesus loves us”, we usually think of hugs,

and hand holding, and the Good Shepherd finding the lost sheep.

We want that Jesus. We want the puppies and kittens Jesus.

Not the Jesus that calls out religious leaders at their dinner parties

and walks out. But that is love too.

 

Cornel West, the modern American philosopher rightly said

“Justice is love in public.”

Jesus is love incarnate, the love of God come down to earth.

And sometimes God’s love needs to be hard and difficult.

It’s the love that comes in the form of truth, and honesty.

It’s the love that comes through justice and change.

This is the love that comes through the cross.

As a famous theological writer, Frederick Beuchner wrote,

“The Gospel is always bad news before it is good news.”

 

Jesus is not here just to have people get along and put on a happy face. 

Jesus is here to fix things, to change us, others, the world,

the systems of the world, our churches, our relationships . . .

Not just cheap peace, but real peace.

And that causes upheaval, and division, and stress.

 

We’ve all seen how cheap peace works.

If you’ve ever had a quietly tense Thanksgiving dinner

with your family, you know what cheap peace feels like.

Everyone smiles and eats and talks about innocuous stuff.  

There’s deep disagreements, but too much water 

has gone under the bridge to talk about in front of all these people

or it’s too painful to bring up again.

We eat and get indigestion and go home and complain 

about each other and do it again next year. That’s cheap peace.

 

As the Church of Jesus, we can do cheap peace.

We could all put on smiley faces

and hold hands and sway back and forth and

just have a Coke and a smile.

We can ignore what’s going on

and the sin that is running rampant.

That’s not real peace. That’s not the peace that Jesus brings.

 

Real love, doesn’t stop at cheap peace.

Real love -- the transformation and reconciliation

that God is intent on -- requires real truth and change and

that often causes real pain and real division to get there.

 

We want the puppies and kittens Jesus all the time.

But that’s the end of the story,

that’s the end result of a lot of work.

But when we’re in the middle of God’s work it

doesn’t always look so beautiful and sweet.

We always have to go through Good Friday to get to Easter Sunday.

We are not at the end of the story yet.

 

Some think that the church should not be controversial at all.

That we shouldn’t bother or annoy anyone with our message.

But we are at a time now, where the most innocuous stuff

is controversial. If we tried to avoid everything that is

divisive, we would quickly lose Jesus message.

 

I recently posted this picture of myself  

on the church facebook page.

These were a couple comments –

not from anyone at Christ Lutheran.

 

-        “Christ Lutheran and the ELCA have gone too far.

I’m glad I found this other church I’m going to.”

-        Someone else said, “which immigrants? Legal or illegal?”

And another: “Why the need to post and bring divide to a community? 

We do love immigrants!

Churches should be uniting and bring people together.

Politics has no place in churches.”

Since when has a pastor saying that we love people

been controversial?

I guess all the time when I think about it.

(And by the way, thanks to everyone who came to support

me and the gospel on the page.)

 

We are in a time when just bringing up the basic

gospel and teaching of Jesus can be a point of contention.

This is a time when we have to decide who we will

be loyal to: the way of Jesus or the way of cheap peace.

Do we want to make everyone happy and comfortable,

or do we want to make Jesus happy.

We have to choose between the puppies

and kittens Jesus and the real Jesus.

 

“Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth?

No, I tell you, but rather division.” 

 

Now we can have peace in our hearts and actions even

when the world is raging and on fire.

And I believe that there will be a promised peace finally, in the end.

But we are no where near the end.

 

And I think if you’re a person of faith and you’re at peace

with the way things are right now, you’re cashing in

Jesus message for something else.

And silence from us right now is just aiding and abetting.

I would like to just like to preach puppies and kittens,

and not get called out on facebook and nextdoor,

but the Spirit just won’t let me do that.

 

God is looking and hoping and working for real change in this world.

Jesus will not leave us alone.

Jesus will not leave us comfortable in our sin.

Jesus wants to change us and our society from the inside.

And that is necessarily political and uncomfortable.

Jesus hasn’t comet to bring peace first, but division.

 

Lots of you have gone through renovations in your house.

And it’s messy, and it dusty, and stressful and people

argue and disagree, and yell at each other

And the color of the walls isn’t right,

and you don’t know where the can opener is,

And then if they find some water damage or termite

damage, then they have to do more digging and removing

and replacing and it’s more costly and more stressful.

 

And you just want to get to the end, but you

have to go through all the trouble and stress

to get  to the other side, there’s just no two ways around it.

 

So it is with the sin of this world.

God is not just trying to make a cheap peace or simple repairs.

God wants to renovate everything.

God wants to get to the bottom of our hatred,

greed, prejudice, racism, sexism, homophobia, our love of power,

our neglect of those in poverty.

God wants to renovate the whole house.

And that creates upheaval and a lot of dust.

 

I do believe all of everything that we’re seeing

and experiencing right now is God renovating

things that have needed to be overhauled for a long time.

 

We pray to God for peace.

And I’m sure we’re thinking about the time when

no one is fighting or disagreeing.

But when we pray to God for peace, watch out!

God is going to do it the right way.

We’re praying for renovation.

 

But still, don’t be afraid little flock.

Don’t worry about your life.

The lilies in the field and the ravens

are fine and they don’t worry.

 

Don’t store up useless treasures on earth.

Don’t waste the time you have.

And don’t fear the powers that be.

They can’t take what’s really important.

 

So let us continue to be Jesus hands and feet.

To bring, truth, light, hope –

and yes justice to this world.

 

And let’s continue to share the love of Jesus

with the world too.

 

The love that comes through struggle and hard work.

The love that is controversial.

The love that stresses us out before it heals.

The love we see on the cross

 

The love that brings true peace.

Our Special Friend at Midnight

 Luke 11:1-13 7-24-16

 

On his final trip to Jerusalem,

Jesus is teaching his disciples about ministry.

And the disciples ask Jesus to teach them how to pray

Just like John the Baptist taught his disciples how to pray.

I wonder what John the Baptist’s prayer was like?

My guess is that it was very different from Jesus prayer.

 

The prayer that Jesus teaches his disciples,

is just about the same one that we pray every week.

There’s a little more of it in Matthew

but it’s just about the same.

 

Jesus prayer is more of an outline than a full-blown prayer.

It sets out the things that we should be praying for:

-That God's name would be holy,
-That God’s kingdom would come to us.
-That God would give us what we need to live every day
-That we be forgiven.
- And that our time on earth is would not be too hard.

That’s pretty much it.

It’s beauty is in its simplicity.

 

I struggled to find anything interesting to say

about this prayer because it’s so familiar to us,

It’s almost a part of us.

 

But what I got stuck on was the second part.

The first part is about what Jesus taught the disciples to pray

is how Jesus told them to pray: Persistently.
Don’t give up. Don’t stop. Don’t take a break.

Keep doing it. Jesus says:

 

“Ask and it will be given to you.

Seek and you will find, knock and the door will be opened.

Everyone who asks receives.”

 

This piece of scripture has always given me trouble.

And I know I’m not the only one.

 

Now I know that many people throughout history,

many in this room even, have had prayers answered.

Miracles. Things that should not have happened

and prayer is the only reason.

 

But there are also many prayers that have not been answered.

 

People have knocked their knuckles bare,

asking for the illness to go away and their loved ones to live.
And still people die.

 

People have prayed to overcome addictions. But so many never do.

Or that they would be able to make the rent.
And yet people become homeless.

There are people who have prayed end their abusive relationships,

and it just doesn’t happen or they end in death.

 

For thousands of years, Christians have prayed for

justice, but once one problem is solved,

it seems like another springs up somewhere.

And countless people have prayed for peace.

People around the world have been praying for the

people of Ukraine and Gaza and Syria and for the wars

and violence there to end, but still they keep going.

 

Lots of good, honest, genuine prayers that really seem in line

with God’s will for this world have not been answered.

All of us at times have wondered what God was doing .

All of us have asked for an egg,

and it feels like God gave us a scorpion.

  

And to suggest the prayers that don’t get answered

are just not done with enough persistence or faith

or that their not the right type or quality of prayers,

is kind of cruel and not the point.

 

Even Jesus, in this very Gospel, fervently prayed that God would

take away the pain and death that he knew was coming to him in his

crucifixion, and God did not.  But still Jesus tells us to pray.

 

It’s always important to remember the question that was asked,

and this question was “how do we pray?”

The basic answer Jesus gives is “all the time.”

 

Jesus tells them the parable:

“Suppose one of you has a friend and you go to him at midnight

and say to him, 'Friend, lend me three loaves of bread

for a friend of mine has arrived and I have nothing to give them.”

 

So do you often knock on people’s doors at midnight?

If you did have to knock on a door at midnight,

you think it would be about a fire, or a medical issue, right?

Would you do it to ask for some bread to entertain guests?

I know times have changed, but even back in Jesus time,

I think that knocks at midnight were reserved only for emergencies.

Three loaves of bread to entertain some people is not an emergency.

I would be uncomfortable and very apprehensive to do that.

That is unless they were a very, very, very good friend.

 

Then I would know that I could knock on their door at midnight

and have a silly request and they wouldn’t call the police on me,

or gossip about me the next day with the neighbors,

or think any less of me in the morning.

 

That would actually have to be a best friend, a family member,

a parent even. One who would see all my problems—

big and small – as their problems.

 

  

So the best gift of Jesus story would not be actually

getting the bread for entertaining guests.

The best gift would be knowing you had a friend

who’s door you could knock on at midnight, right?

And that is the best gift of prayer.

 

So many of us only wait to pray until

we experience those terrible crisis situations.

We only come to God with our most desperate problems.

We ONLY knock on that door at midnight and hope to get an answer.

 

But prayer is the ongoing conversation between us and God

and conversation is vital to any good relationship.

It’s not just coming to God with emergency needs

(Have you ever had one of THOSE friends?

Who only come to you when they need something?

 

Prayer is us telling God our thoughts and hopes,

our worries and concerns, our joys and delights.

Prayer is sharing our secrets with our friend.

And it’s also God sharing God’s dreams and hopes with us,

God sharing God’s reassurances and forgiveness with us.

It is how God reaches us and teaches us loves us.

 

And prayer is something that we share with each other too.

No matter what denomination, or religion,

no matter what our political ideas or opinions,

prayer is something we share with every person of faith—

and a lot of people without faith too.

We pray to remind ourselves that we are God’s children.

 

We might never get the satisfaction of knowing why or

prayers didn’t get answered, but the more we pray, the more

we have the satisfaction of knowing that God is with us.
Even through the most challenging times of our lives.

  

Elie Wiesel was the Jewish writer who survived

the Holocaust and was at Auschwitz.
He remembered that while he was in the camp,

some of the older prisoners created a rabbinic court of law

and the purpose was to indict God.

They were mad at God for not saving them.

 

Their charge was that they had been faithful,

they had prayed, they had done what God required,

 and still they were suffering unimaginable pain and anguish.

 

The trial lasted several nights.

Witnesses were heard, evidence was gathered,

and a unanimous verdict was reached:  

They declared God guilty of crimes against them,

creation, and humanity.

 

Wiesel said, “Then after a long silence, the Rabbi there

looked up at the sky, and said 'It's time for evening prayers,'”

And so they all went and prayed.

Even though they were angry and found God guilty,

They still recited the evening prayer service

as they had done every night.

They prayed because it was time to pray.

 

We pray in joy, we pray in sorrow, we pray in anger,

we pray because we have no one else to talk to.

We pray quietly, loudly, in desperation, and just because.

We pray at the appointed time in our worship.

We pray before meals, and in the morning, and at night.

We pray sometimes because there is nothing left to do.

We pray even though we don’t always feel like it.

Sometimes we pray just because it is time to pray.

40 Nights
Jorge Cocco Santangelo

 

And, in the end, prayer changes us.

It doesn’t always make the situation different,

it makes us different.
It effects our beliefs and our actions.

Prayer is us, making that space,

and inviting the Spirit in to work on us.

 

Pope Francis said,

“you pray for the hungry,

and then you feed them.

This is how prayer works.”

 

I’m guessing the biggest difference between the prayer that

John the Baptist taught his disciples and the one that Jesus taught,

and Jesus prayer would be the first line of Jesus prayer:

“Our Father.”

The disciples knew that Jesus had a special relationship with God,

But in this prayer, Jesus is telling them, and us, that we do too.

 

God is that one we can trust with all our problems.

All our hopes and dreams and disappointments.

The one that we can go to at any hour of the day or night.

 

God is our special friend at midnight,

 

Martha, Martha, Martha

Luke 10: 38-42   
July 20, 2025

 

Does anyone here relate to Martha?

Are any of you here do-ers?

Do you like to get things done and be productive?

Do you like to keep yourself busy doing things?

One Thing
Mollie Walker Freeman

Do you like to make and complete a to do list?

Do you enjoy taking care of
people and being a good host?

Do you like serving others with helpful tasks?

Making a difference? getting that check list done?

In other words, turning your faith into action in solid and real ways?

Good.

 

Some pastor somewhere is going to say that

this story is telling you that you should stop that

and be more contemplative and spend your time in prayer.

But I’m not.

And not just because the church would collapse

without all the helpful people that are here.

It’s more than that.

 

If you’re a “Martha” your service is valued, and necessary.

God needs our work and tasks.

I don’t think Jesus was at Martha’s house to

scold her for being so busy and task oriented.

 

We serve a God and a Messiah who was incarnational.

Whose love wasn’t just an airy fairy kind of statement of love.

It was real, it was solid and practical.

The Word became flesh and lived among us

and our words are expected to become flesh too.

 

We say that love is not just feelings or sentiment.

Love is shown in day in, day out actions.

Making meals, giving hugs, taking out the garbage.

We just got finished with Jesus parable of the Good Samaritan.

Being a neighbor is stopping to help, tending wounds,

and lifting someone out of the dirt.

It’s not just saying “God loves you, but I’m going

to hear a lecture on Jesus, so I don’t have time for your problem.”

So Martha putting together an olive and cheese platter

and sweeping the floor was not just idle busy work,

it was her way of showing her love and respect for a special guest.

 

It was also very much her job and duty,

and not completely a choice she made.

In Martha’s time, women were not expected

to sit and talk to guests.

They were expected to be up and doing stuff,

making the meal, getting what guests needed, cleaning up.

 

Martha is doing exactly what is expected of her.

She is filling the role that women had filled for almost ever.

 

And frankly, we’re not too far away from that mindset.

In my last church one of the major objections of opening

up their child-care center in 1980 was that, in doing so,

the church was encouraging women to work outside the home.

 

In Martha’s time and beyond, women did all the home

stuff so that men could run the business or go to work,

and also so the men could be the spiritual guides for the family.

 

The man was to attend and participate

in the prayer services, he was to go and spend

the afternoon at the synagogue and listen to the teachers,

and contemplate God’s will for everyone

and then come home and teach his family.

The men were the ones who were supposed to sit at the teacher’s feet.

The men were disciples, the women were supposed to

tend to their homes so that the men could do that.

 

So then we come to Martha’s home.

And it’s referred to as Martha’s home, which is very interesting.

and she’s doing exactly what is expected of her.

She’s doing the “right thing”.

She’s filling her duties, she’s earning her keep

She’s doing what is necessary to keep the system running.

 

 

It’s Mary who is changing up the equation.

Mary is not doing, she’s just sitting and listening.

She probably looks lazy and presumptuous by a lot of

people’s standards those days.

Certainly, she’s not doing what was typical for a woman to do.

 

So Martha demands that she help.

But I think that Marthat’s actually got this under control.

What I think Martha mostly wants is for

her sister to come back and be normal again.

She wants Mary to fill her expected role.

And she wants Jesus to back her up on this.

“Jesus, are you just going to let her be crazy like this?

You’re the teacher, tell her to get back to what she should be doing.”

And the first hearers of this story would probably have been with Martha.

Mary is acting weird. Jesus, tell her to stop it.

 

But Jesus won’t. Jesus actually says that

Mary has made a good choice.

This is exactly what Mary should be doing.

This is exactly what women should be doing.

And maybe Martha could do that sometimes too.

Come and sit at Jesus feet and hear words of

love and forgiveness and not worry about the world,

not worry about the world’s expectations,

or about the role that she’s supposed to fill.

 

I don’t think this story from Luke’s gospel

is a statement from Jesus about how the church

should be weighed towards worship and learning

instead of hospitality and service to the outside world.

Although some preachers have tried to do that.

 

And I don’t think that Jesus is scolding the doers of the world,

the social workers, the service project people,

the habitat for humanity, or food pantry people,

the Sunday school teacher, or anyone who is moved

to do the work that needs to be done

this is not Jesus telling everyone to just sit down

and pray and read the bible.

And I don’t think the world is divided into Marthas and Marys

We’re not divided into busy workers and contemplative thinkers

and this is not Jesus saying “yay” for the Marys of the world

and “nay” to the Martha’s.

I think the truth is that we’re all Marthas and Marys.

 

We all have that Martha side of us.

We are driven by our need to fill our role

We live under the pressure of what the world

wants and needs us to do, at home, at work, at church,

in our communities.

 

We stress about our to-do list and get frustrated and distracted.

We set out to accomplish what the world expects us to accomplish,

and when it doesn’t happen, we get filled with anxiety,

and self-doubt and we wonder whether

we are worthy of Jesus company.

 

But also have that Mary inside us.

That part that often needs to be coaxed out.

To be reassured to be told that

just sitting and being is good enough.

 

Sometimes when we’re the one who is running distracted,

Jesus reminds us “Martha, Martha.

You’re trying to do too much.

I don’t need you to do everything.

Your presence with me is enough.”

 

Jesus reminds all of us at times,

it is enough to just sit at Jesus feet,

and hear the word of God --

 

The word that says that we are loved

not for what we do and accomplish,

but just because we are God’s.

 

It is enough, sometimes, just to sit and be with Jesus.