“The Christ of Conflict and Peace”

Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost

Sunday August 15, 2010

Isaiah 5: 1-7

Psalm 80

Hebrews 11: 29 - 12: 2

There are many, these days, who lament that there is too much conflict in the church. 

And there are good reasons for such laments.  We see conflicts within congregations; conflicts within denominations; conflicts between denominations; conflicts between the church and our wider society.

But even as we lament those struggles and conflicts, it might actually be argued that there should be more conflict in the church rather than less.

In fact, one of the greatest dangers that the church must avoid, in every age, is that of misrepresenting Christ as a nice, safe, pleasant, popular fellow, or misrepresenting the church as a place where no conflict should ever be expected or allowed.

Such misrepresentations occur in many ways.  We talk about Jesus’ love, peace and forgiveness as if there are no demands or expectations attached to those invitations.  We design slick advertising campaigns which sell salvation as a marketable commodity that will make a person’s life completely free from stress, struggle or sorrow.  We imply that joining the church is a fun, comfortable, easy pastime -- a way to find a bit of relaxation from the various stresses of life.  In the name of relevance, in the name of accessibility, in the name of tolerance, and out of the fear of opposition, we try to suggest that the path of following Jesus Christ can be casually undertaken, free of struggle, free of nuance that demands wisdom, free of any form of complexity at all.  We therefore defer to the quick, easy, black and white certainties which give us assurance -- all the while lamenting the presence of conflict, without giving sufficient thought to whether conflict may, in fact, be a sign of health, vitality and faithfulness.

In so doing, we try to make ourselves feel good, even though we simultaneously run the risk of emptying Jesus’ own words of their meaning, their message – and their true power. 

This tendency to make the call of Christ more pleasant, more palatable, perhaps more easy to accept, has been around for a very long time.  Today’s reading from the Gospel of Luke even seems to imply that there were those, in Jesus’ own day, who were misunderstanding what he was calling them to do.

We read, “I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled! I have a baptism with which to be baptized, and what stress I am under until it is completed!  Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division!”

In order to come to a deeper understanding of such words, it is necessary, first, to consider them in their original context. 

The Gospel of Luke was compiled into the form that we presently have it a number of decades after Jesus’ death and resurrection.  The church had begun to grow and to spread, but the levels of conflict had also begun to arise.

One of the significant conflicts in the early church was with the Jewish people themselves.  Paul was not unique in his own pre-conversion activities of seeking to find and persecute the followers of Jesus.  And such conflicts even occurred in families.  A younger member of the family might be led to realize that Jesus was the Christ, the Messiah, and that decision would lead to conflicts with devout and faithful parents who might questioned the wisdom or the truth of their child’s new spiritual commitment. 

We are naïve if we think that such conflicts, within families, do not continue to occur.  Children mock the faith of their parents; parents smile condescendingly at the spiritual enthusiasm of their children; some brothers and sisters roll their eyes when a sibling who is more actively religious visits, while those brothers and sisters do their best to encourage faith in the lives of their non-religious siblings.  And, lest one think that it is only ‘religious’ people who are responsible for attacks on other people’s spiritual commitments, it is interesting to note that many of the most vicious and aggressive modern attacks about religious issues are mounted by those who are opposed to religion altogether.

Jesus’ words, “from now on five in one household will be divided, three against two and two against three; they will be divided: father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law” continue to demonstrate a profound and enduring truth.  

Many of us find it difficult to relate to these words, particularly if we grew up in families in which faith was practiced.  I remember an occasion, when I was relatively young, when my parents took my sisters and I, one Sunday night, to a local Baptist church for their evening service.  The guest preacher, that evening, was a man from a different part of the world who spoke about the fact that his decision to become a Christian had not only been unpopular, but dangerous.  He had, in fact, been afraid for his life.

To me, this seemed like a rather odd idea.  During a question period at the end of his talk, I got up and asked why his family wouldn’t protect him and keep those who wanted to hurt him away?

He smiled, and responded in a way that I was not expecting.  He stated that there were members of his own family who would not stand in the way of those who were out to hurt him.

Whether or not we have ever encountered such opposition to our beliefs, it is important for us to remember, as we read this passage today, that the call to follow Christ continues to bear, within it, the potential for conflict and opposition.  

After all, the only way for the way of Christ to be free of opposition is if the world has been perfected.  And we all know that such is not the case.

We continue to live in a world in which injustices are allowed to go unchecked; a world in which so many of God’s beloved children suffer and die from a lack of adequate access to the resources of God’s creation; a world in which we continue to accept the strange notions that violent means will establish peaceful ends and that the unchecked acquisition of wealth will overcome poverty; a world in which God’s love, God’s peace and God’s justice are not fully known.

When we accept that the world is not as it should be, we begin to realize that Christ’s vision for the world leads us into conflict, with the way that things are. 

Of course, it is important for us to state that Jesus’ words should never be used to justify the use of terrible violence or militant engagement in order to achieve the vision that he has set before us.    

To the contrary, the way of Jesus calls us to a radically different path towards the healing of the world.

The way of Jesus commands us to respond to poverty and hunger not with anger towards the rich and the greedy, but to share what we have out of compassion for the rich as well as for the poor. The way of Jesus commands us to respond to evil with the dangerous power of goodness and kindness, all rooted in the confidence that God’s justice will, in the end, prevail.  The way of Jesus commands us to forgive, if we hope to be forgiven; to love, even as we have been loved; to respond to opposition with the open hands of servanthood rather than with the closed fists of vengeance.

When we begin to realize that the Christ’s vision may lead us into levels of conflict with the world as it is, we also begin to realize that there is a greater spiritual threat than conflict – and it is a threat that is as real in the gathered community of the church as it is in our own lives.  It is the threat and the danger of complacency.  If we allow ourselves to be lulled into a state of indifference, into a tolerance of the world as it is, into a cynicism that doubts whether anything can be done to change the world, we run the risk of giving in to complacency. 

The danger of complacency has been articulated by many throughout the tradition of the church.  One of the most recent reminders of the dangerous consequences of complacency was articulated by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in many of his speeches, sermons and writings, including in a particularly memorable sermon entitled “A Knock at Midnight”, when he wrote,

If the church does not recapture its prophetic zeal, it will become an irrelevant social club without moral or spiritual authority.  If the church does not participate actively in the struggle for peace and for economic and racial justice, it will forfeit the loyalty of millions and cause [people] everywhere to say that it has atrophied its will.  But if the church will free itself from the shackles of a deadening status quo, and, recovering its great historic mission, will speak and act fearlessly and insistently in terms of justice and peace, it will enkindle the imagination of [humanity] and fire the souls of all, imbuing them with a glowing and ardent love for truth, justice, and peace.  [Those] far and near will know the church as a great fellowship of love that provides light and bread for lonely travelers at midnight.

For that very reason, it might be suggested that the Church of Jesus Christ should always be a place of conflict.  It should be a place that does not opiate or encourage complacency about the state of the world; it should, instead, be a place that inspires, within us, a different vision of how the world should be – and a passion to strive towards the fulfillment of that vision.  Of course, many of the conflicts that beset the modern church are not conflicts that are rooted in Christ’s vision, but rather in human pride.  The presence of conflict is not necessarily a sign of faithfulness. 

But in order to discern what is worthy of engagement, we must be sufficiently grounded in the vision that Christ sets before us, sufficiently attuned to the ways that he is directing us, sufficiently discerning about the ways that situations in which we find ourselves are, or are not, in line with the principles and values of his kingdom.  We must, as he himself commended in this passage, be able to understand our contexts and our cultures if we are going to make a significant difference in this world – and fight for what is worth fighting for.  He pointed out that his followers needed to develop the ability to understand and interpret the consequences of the events that were unfolding before them, even as people learned to predict the weather. “When you see a cloud rising in the west, you immediately say, ‘It is going to rain’; and so it happens. And when you see the south wind blowing, you say, ‘There will be scorching heat’; and it happens. You hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky, but why do you not know how to interpret the present time?”

These words did not mean that Jesus intended to give his followers the ability to predict the future.  Rather, he was simply encouraging them to discern the moral, ethical, spiritual and social consequences of the events of their times.

That calling to discern the consequences of the events of this world had been a part of Jesus’ own spiritual heritage for centuries.  The stories of Jesus – in line with the entire biblical prophetic tradition – made it quite clear that if God’s people turned a blind eye to injustice and oppression; if they closed their hearts and their communities to the strangers, the orphans, the widows, the poor, the excluded; if they became more interested in religious purity than in open-hearted compassion; in short, if they came to believe that faith was about peace at the cost of compassion, and passivity rooted in complacency, then they were completely misunderstanding the purpose of God’s call, and the reasons why Christ had come to them. “I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!” Such words remind us that conflict will be a part of the journey of faithful discipleship.

So where is the good news to be found in Christ’s fiery words?

It is found in this – Jesus life demonstrated that he was not unwilling to challenge the warped use of power – in religious institutions, in political settings, and in social contexts.  His death demonstrated that there are times when those religious, political and social powers conspire to seek to eradicate such opposition.   But his resurrection demonstrated, once and for all, that the power of God will not be overcome by the powers of this world.  Yes, there will be conflicts between the ways of God and the ways of this world.  There will be times when the call to faith will come into conflict with the power of cynicism and fear; when the call to hope will come into conflict with the power of doubt and despair; when the call to love will come into conflict with the power of oppression and hatred.

But the good news is that the resurrection assures us that these conflicts will not be in vain.  The resurrection assures us that faith, hope and love will prevail.  The outcome of those conflicts is assured.  Let the powers of injustice, of evil, of hatred and of violence be warned.  The reign of God’s justice, God’s love and God’s peace has come, in Jesus Christ; and it is coming.

As we long for, and struggle for, and work towards the coming of that justice, that peace, that compassion, we do well to remember the old apocryphal story about judgement day.

The story goes that a person was standing before God, accounting for the ways that they had lived their lives.  They explained how much they had enjoyed their life, how they had tried to be a nice citizen, and a pleasant person.  After a period of time, God finally spoke up.  “And where are your wounds?”

The person stated that they had no wounds.

And then, standing on his nail-pierced feet, with his nail-scarred hands outstretched with love, Christ simply looked the person in the eye and asked, “in a world like that, was there nothing worth fighting for?”