Witnessing to a Divisive Lord

Sermon for the 13th Sunday after Pentecost, August 13-14, 2016. Preached at St. Peter Lutheran Church, in Greene, Iowa.

This week’s lectionary texts are Luke 12:49-56 and Hebrews 11:29-12:2.

Also, note that last weekend was my official installation as pastor at St. Peter, so Pastor Steve Brackett, Assistant to the Bishop in the Northeastern Iowa Synod preached the sermon.

Sisters and brothers in Christ, grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

As I just told the children, we’re going to be doing a new church directory this fall. Why do we do church directories?

One reason is obviously to help connect names and faces. I’m really eager to have a current directory, because meeting several hundred people at once is a challenge for me, as you’ve probably noticed!

But more than that, church directories help us see where we’ve come from, our history. When I started, one of the first things I did was to read through the 100th and 125th anniversary history books that had been left for me in my office.

I looked through the directories from those years, and I found pictures of a few of you who were here in 1971. You look a little different today!

Looking through those directories and knowing how God has brought us to this time and place matters to us today. Those who have gone before us have left great treasures to us. Their faithfulness is an example for us today as we seek to continue following Jesus Christ and living out our own faith.

The writer to the Hebrews describes our life of faith as being like running the race set before us, surrounded by a cloud of witnesses.

I’ve spent much of my free time this week watching the Olympics, and it’s really cool at some events to see the previous champions there cheering on the competitors. They understand probably better than anyone else what the athletes are going through.

I watched just a few minutes of table tennis, and the commentators were talking about a Chinese athlete who was dominating his matches, and they said the tradition of table tennis in China is so strong that this competitor was not just focused on winning, but on whether he could win in such a way that he would stack up against the great competitors of the past.

Now, our faith is not a competition. There aren’t winners and losers.

Hear that loud and clear. Our faith is not a competition!

All of us fall down and fail at this journey, and all of us are lifted up by Christ, the only one who can run this race. We’re working with each other to follow Christ’s example. But there are some similarities, like the cloud of witnesses supporting us.

This passage from Hebrews functions like a church history or directory from the past, or maybe like some of those television segments they play between events, recalling the greats of the past.

Chapter 11 here is all about portraits of faith, reminders of what our ancestors have endured as they sought to follow God. And it’s fascinating to look at these examples, because there are two different types here.

Some of them are great, inspiring success stories, like conquering kingdoms, miraculously defeating enemy armies, quenching raging fires, being delivered out of seemingly impossible situations.
But a bunch of these examples are also terrible. Being tortured, mocked, imprisoned, destitute, even the most graphic: being sawn in two.

This directory of martyrs bears witness to their faith. In fact, did you know the word martyr literally means “witness?” Their dedication—even in suffering and death—helps us to stay strong in our faith.

One of the lessons in both of these readings is that faith isn’t always easy. There’s a cost to following Jesus. Having faith doesn’t get rid of the tough times, in fact, it’s in the tough times that faith becomes most important.

Jesus doesn’t say following him is going to be easy or make everything all better. Today’s readings say the opposite. Following Jesus is controversial. It can lead to suffering, and to division. That’s what Jesus is talking about in the Gospel reading.

I have to say, every week as I’m preparing my sermon and thinking about what message God wants us to hear from our Bible passage, I try to think about how different people will hear what I’m saying and what the text is saying.

And part of it, to be perfectly honest, is not wanting to offend people. So many people in our world today are so turned off by the church already, and I don’t want to say things that will be offensive.

There are two topics that many of us were taught to avoid at the dinner table: Politics and religion. There’s plenty of conversation and arguing about politics right now. We all know people who have extremely strong, immovable positions on lots of issues, as I’m sure many of you have. People get angry about politics. I’m not touching that.

But sometimes, I start to act like I’m trying to protect us from the text. Like the other week, when Jesus talked about possessions. There’s already this myth that all the church wants is your money, so I don’t want to focus on Jesus talking about the need to give away wealth, even though giving is a big part of following Jesus.

Today, it’s division. The church should be for peace, and getting along, right? I don’t want conflict in our congregation. The last thing I want to do is to come in as a new pastor and make people upset by changing things. I don’t want division.

And then we get to today’s Gospel, and there’s pretty much no way around it.

This stuff is controversial.

I love to talk about how much Jesus loves you, about times when Jesus calls for peace and justice, times when he heals people, feeds people, forgives people. And then he says here, “Do you think I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division!”

But…why is Jesus divisive? How could anyone be against peace and justice? Who doesn’t like healing and feeding people? Who doesn’t like forgiveness?

Well, it turns out doing good and following Jesus is surprisingly controversial. Peace is great, unless you’re the one who’s been attacked. Feeding my neighbors is wonderful, as long as there’s enough for me first. Or what if giving someone food makes them lazy and dependent on my charity?

Being forgiven and forgiving others is fine, but surely not our enemies. What if we forgive and they don’t change? What if we seek peace, but they keep attacking?

In our world today, what would happen if we took Jesus more seriously when he says stuff like sell your possessions and give the money to the poor? He didn’t really mean for us to do that, right?

Pretty soon this religion starts to sound like the other taboo topic of politics, and we don’t want to go there. You see how Jesus can bring division?

If you follow this stuff far enough, it often does lead to division. Being a Christian and really trying to follow Jesus is countercultural, because it means questioning the status quo and working for the kingdom of God. It means seeing even our enemies as people whom God loves. Having faith means living differently. We live in a culture where Christianity is overwhelmingly the majority religion, and it’s still hard!

Again, there’s a cost to following Jesus. The very idea of faith doesn’t make sense to the world. Faith isn’t rational, or provable. It gives meaning, but it’s hard to define. Martin Luther once wrote, “Faith is permitting ourselves to be seized by the things we do not see.” That goes against a culture that says we need to be in control.

Faith is about trusting God, about daring to take Jesus seriously and working for the kingdom of God. It’s tough work, and there will be opposition.

But we’re not alone. In faith, we follow the example of Christ, and we do it together. How many of you have a parent, or a grandparent, or another relative or mentor who has been an example of faith for you? Many of us have someone who has shown us how to live a Christian life. Maybe you are that example to someone else right now. Maybe someone in this room has been an example to you.

May we at St. Peter right now be examples of faith to those who will come after us.

Hear again the last two verses from Hebrews.

Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God.

And may the peace of God which passes all understanding keep our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus as we run this race of faith.
Amen.