Jesus Didn't Come To Bring Peace

 Luke 12:49-56

August 14, 2022

 

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.

Stephen B. Whatley
The Glory of Christ

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

I told you that Jesus said “do not be afraid” 21 times

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. At first, Jesus usually brings division.

 

Really, in this reading today, Jesus sounds stressed out.

He even 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 either.

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

In control of things, but right now he’s

telling us he’s stressed. 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 Jesus starts to berate the Pharisees

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

but your insides are corroded”

Which would have been enough to get his point across,

but Jesus proceeds to go 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,

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

and tells them, to “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 monologue

that we’ve been working on 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.

 

It’s almost as if chapter 12 is 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.

 

Jesus is love incarnate,

the love of God come down to earth.

But this love is not the happy, puppies and kittens kind of love,

This is the hard, difficult love.

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.

We’ve all had to smile around someone we’ve had major,

deep disagreements with 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’ve all had to make nice around someone because 

they were just too powerful because they could do what you wanted to get done, 

and if you didn’t they were likely to fire you, or have you fired, 

or ignore you, or do the opposite of what you wanted, or worse.

 

I knew a brother and sister who spent years

keeping cheap peace and putting on their happy faces

for the sake of their parents who they both loved.

Then when we were planning the funeral, one of them

chose the wrong hymn and they stood up screaming at one another.

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

 

When we look for God’s work in the world,

Lots of times, we only look at the good news.

The joy after years apart, the people hugging, and helping.

That’s the feel good story

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

doesn’t always look so beautiful and sweet.

God’s work can look and scary and stressful.

Even Jesus was stressed and even scared when he was in the middle of it. 

Jesus is not here for simple repairs.

Jesus is here for renovation.

Lots of you have gone through renovations in your house,

and we went  through one in our church that ended just last year.

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

argue and disagree, and then the pew cushions are bright purple

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 we 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.

 

We pray for peace all the time.

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.

 

Whenever I see struggle, unrest, protests, arguing,

a lot of dust being raised in our country and our world

and I wish it would just end, I comfort myself

with the thought that God is doing a lot of renovating.

God is digging up those beams eaten by termite and rot

and really getting to the bottom of all our problems.

Jesus came to bring peace, but we will probably see division first.

 

But 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 in this world.

To bring justice, truth, light, and hope to this world.

and to share the love of Jesus.

The love that comes through struggle and hard work,

like the love we see on the cross.

The love that stresses us out before it heals.

The love that brings true peace.