We will be challenged

Readings:

Jeremiah 38:4-6, 8-10
Hebrews 12:1-4
Luke 12:49-53

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Today’s message is one that, frankly, is uncomfortable. It made me uncomfortable to prepare it, and it may make some of you, maybe everybody, uncomfortable to hear it. But it is what it is. It can’t be avoided. The key thing that I want to focus on today is Jesus’ statement in the Gospel. He says, “do you think that I have come to establish peace on earth? No, I tell you, but rather division.” This is a powerful, though a disturbing message. We often think that because the Gospel message is one of love, that it’s also a warm and fuzzy message. Everybody’s comfortable. Everything’s fine as it is. But that’s not what Jesus says. Remember for a minute, Jesus is the one who overturned the tables in the Temple, and whipped the moneychangers. Jesus was not a warm and fuzzy guy. He was not liked by everybody. That’s why they killed Him. He offended lots of people, and ultimately they killed Him. In his message today, He says, “there is a baptism with which I must be baptized.” And He knows what He’s talking about: His death. Imagine for a moment, being Jesus, and being aware that you have come into the earth to be tortured to death and that’s what’s going to happen to you. That is your life’s mission. Wow! He did not mess around, and He did offend lots of people.

If the Gospel is the center of your life, some people will not like you. If you read the Gospels, you will find things that make you uncomfortable. Jesus did not come here to make us comfortable. He says, “I have come to set the earth on fire and how I wish it were already blazing.” He came to foment change. He came to change the earth. He didn’t come to tell us everything is fine as it is, He came to tell us it was not fine as it is. Think about this for a moment, and this is something to do on your own, not to do with other people, at least not initially, maybe not at all: think about the world in which we live, 21st century American secular culture. Look at any department of life and the cultural norms of the world that surround us, and see if you can square that with what the Christian faith teaches us. I would suggest to you that in no department of life is 21st century American secular culture coterminous with the Christian faith. It is not. Jesus came into the world to set it on fire and He came, not to bring peace, but to bring division.

If you take a stand on anything, some people will not like you. In my day job I teach politics, and one of the things I teach my students is this: if you listen to politicians, they know that if they take a clear position on any issue, some people will like it, and some people won’t. So they are going to lose votes any time they take a clear position on anything. So what do they do? They try to avoid taking a clear position on anything. They don’t want to do that, because they don’t want to lose votes. They have to spend money and struggle for every vote they get, so they try to please everyone. Jesus did not come to please everyone. He’s saying here, “I came to set the earth on fire.” He didn’t come to please everyone. He said, “I came to bring division into the world.” The Christian faithful don’t take popular and prevailing culture as their guide. We have one guide: Jesus Christ. That is our guide. Nothing else is our guide. He came to set the world on fire. He came to set us on fire. This is not a warm and fuzzy message. He is telling us that we, as Christians, will be challenged. We will be challenged by the world around us, and we will be challenged by the teachings of Jesus Christ. We will be challenged by these things.

Our Old Testament reading today was from Jeremiah, chapter 38. This is a famous story about Jeremiah being thrown into the well. The way it fits into our message today is this: one of the things Jeremiah said, he was telling the people that they should not fight the Babylonian Empire, and should rather pay tribute to the King of Babylon. This was not a popular message. You could say he was politically incorrect at that point, and he was. So they talked the king into throwing him, or lowering him, into a well. We read that he stuck in the mud in the bottom of this well. He makes it out. They decide to take him out of the well. They changed the king’s mind about this. Jeremiah, in his career as a prophet, suffered rejection. He was rejected over and over again by people. That’s one of the interesting things about Jeremiah, as a person, that he was on a mission from God. He knew he was. He was a prophet. And they wouldn’t listen to him, and it really hurt him. He suffered emotionally as a result of the people not listening to him, but he continued on. He always felt he was a failure. But he wasn’t. He’s one of the major prophets – that’s why we read about him today. He didn’t fail. He did what God commanded him to do. He had one guide and that was God. Not the people around him, not the cultural norms, not the political leadership. He had one guide, and that was God. He followed God faithfully.

In our Epistle today, we read from Hebrews. The authorship of Hebrews is not certain. It was almost certainly a Jewish Christian, who was writing this letter to other Jewish Christians. The key thing I want to point out here is one part of the passage in which he says the people should “have endurance, persevere, stand firm in your faith.” This is what he’s telling the people to do. He’s saying, “let us rid ourselves of every burden and sin that clings to us, and  persevere in running the race that lies before us, while keeping our eyes fixed on Jesus, the leader and perfecter of the faith.” And then, I’ll skip a bit, he says, “in your struggle against sin you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding blood.” He’s saying, endure, persevere, keep trying. Don’t give up. You’re going to be surrounded by challenges to your faith and challenges to following Jesus. Don’t stop. Keep trying. If you falter, get up and keep on going. If you’re a Christian, you’re taking a side. The world may not like you, and you may be uncomfortable at times. Sometimes you’re not going to feel good about yourself. You’re going to have to turn again to your one guide: Jesus Christ.

I’m reminded of something that happened in my day job, with a student of mine. This is a wonderful, young person. She came to the United States from Vietnam, and told me that her father was a Communist Party official. She’s very bright. When l first met her, early in her college career, she was still learning the language, and figuring out how to be a college student in the United States. I never did figure out why she came here, but here she was. She was personable, very determined, and hard-working, an impressive young person. I was her academic advisor as well as one of her teachers. I said, you really ought to go and do something like foreign affairs, intelligence, something like this. With your zeal and curiosity, you should be something like that. In one our conversations, I could see she was reflecting while we were chatting. She talked about her home, how important it was to her, how much she loved her family, and how much she loved being in the United States, and how much she had come to love the United States. She looked at me and said, “I guess, sooner or later I’ve got to pick, don’t I?” And I said, “well, if you want work for the federal government, yes. Sooner or later, you have to make a decision.” About the time she graduated, she came to tell me she had gotten an internship with the United States Department of State. Really impressive, great opportunity, and the perfect thing for her. She reminded me, “do you remember that conversation we had? That was a real turning point for me.” I tell you, that’s one of the things I love about teaching and dealing with young people, is to hear stories like that. It makes me feel like what I’m doing matters. What she does, matters. I’m just kind of there to make suggestions. But – she had to pick a side.

That’s what Jesus is telling us, we have to pick a side. You can pick the world, or you can pick Christ. They’re not the same. You have to take a side. And you may suffer for it. You may suffer in your heart and soul when you realize, oh, I keep failing, and I’ve got to keep trying. You’ve got to persevere like the author of Hebrews said. You may not be liked by other people. Jeremiah wasn’t. But you’ve got to take a side, one way or another. Even if you don’t make a decision, you’re going to wind up taking a side.

Remember what Jesus said to those who expressed their faith in Him. Over and over, He says they will be with Him in the kingdom of heaven. Jesus won’t leave us alone. He won’t. We’re never alone. We take a side. If our side is Jesus Christ, we are never alone. So what I’d like for all of us to do as the week goes by, is think about this: Have I taken a side? Have I made a decision? Have I made that decision? Have I taken a side firmly? And am I persevering to stick with that decision? These are tough questions. These are the kinds of things that make us uncomfortable. Again, Jesus said, “I came not to bring peace, but to bring division. I came to set the world on fire.” If you answer those kinds of questions yourself, honestly, forthrightly, thinking about them, then Jesus will set you and your life on fire.

Amen.