This passage seems at odds with one of my favorite titles for Jesus: Prince of Peace.  How can we reconcile a passage like this with our understanding of Jesus as the Great Reconciler, Good Shepherd, Prince of Peace?  Can it be that we have failed to see Jesus in a role that we find discomfiting, that we have domesticated him to fit our own purposes and thereby missed his?

          The image of fire is one that shows up often in scripture.  It is a symbol of judgment, of purging the dross from ore that the pure metal may emerge.  When John the Baptizer appeared calling people to repent and be baptized for the forgiveness of their sins, he spoke of one who would follow him who would baptize with the Holy Spirit and with fire, and would have a winnowing fork in his hand to separate the wheat into the granary and the chaff would be burned with unquenchable fire.  Could it be that Jesus is reminding the people of what his cousin John had said?  This is but one of many instances in which Jesus warns his hearers that a crisis moment has arrived, that God’s reign is breaking into history and they need to change their ways and embrace it or else fail receive all it promises.

The first followers of Jesus had to leave what they were doing and travel with him.  I am sure that most of their family members thought they had gone off the deep end, and that more than a few heart rending conflicts had ensued.  Jesus’ own family had difficulty understanding what he was up to, and we read that his mother and brothers who couldn’t get through the crowds to speak to him sent word through them that they were outside and wanted to speak to him. Hearing that, Jesus went on to ask: “Who are my mother and my brothers?   And as he looked at those gathered around him he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers!  Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.” (Mark 3:31-35) That must have stung in the ears of his family, and it isn’t until later that we read that his mother is traveling with him and is at the cross when he dies and is a witness to his resurrection.  James, one of his brothers becomes a leader of the church in Jerusalem, and we think that the little book of Jude was written by another of his brothers.  They ended up doing the will of God and were family to Jesus not only by blood, but by obedience to the will of God.

In tight knit societies with extended families and strong religious and cultural traditions it is very difficult to be different.  That is hard for us transplanted individualistic Californians to understand, but it is so.  Veeda Javaid, who was with us last week from Pakistan, could tell us how risky it would be for a Muslim to become a follower of Jesus as Messiah in Pakistan.  It might result in death.  Many scholars are aware of large numbers of Muslims who are followers of Jesus but who do not renounce their Muslim identity not just for reasons of survival, but because the bitter history between Muslims and Christians makes it difficult for them to take on the name Christian.  But Jesus didn’t tell us to go out and make Christians or tack titles onto people, but to make disciples who will know and do his word.  But when we do that there will inevitably be tension because the words and way of Jesus are at odds with much of what passes as conventional wisdom.

We see that on numerous occasions in the ministry and teaching of Jesus.  When he fraternized with tax collectors like Zacchaeus and with  people who had an unsavory past like the woman who anointed his feet with her tears and dried them with her hair, even his disciples were taken aback.  When he made a Samaritan the hero of a story illustrating what it means to love your neighbor he shocked his hearers.  And when he forgave people’s sins, something that is the prerogative of God alone, the religious leaders were determined to stop him at whatever cost.  Jesus praised a Roman centurion for his faith, which was greater than what Jesus had seen from any of his fellow Jews.  He asked his followers to love their enemies and to pray for those who persecuted them so that they might be children of God whose sun rises on the evil and good and who rain falls on the righteous and the unrighteous. (Matthew 5:44-45) Try putting those words into action and see what happens. 

Clarence Jordan, a Southern Baptist preacher and Bible scholar preached often about brotherhood between the races and no one objected.  But when he invited persons of color into his home for meals and fellowship his congregation went into an uproar.  He organized black and white farmers into a cooperative called Koinonia Farms to market their pecans and almonds, and local people burned down their fruit stand.  Only by starting a mail order business was the cooperative able to survive.  And from that same cooperative came the idea for Habitat for Humanity.  Our good friend, Carol Kaplan, showed us photos from a recent trip which  she took to build simple but safe homes with indigenous people on the shores of Lake Atitlan in Guatemala.  This year the number of such homes built by under the auspices of Habitat in Guatemala will exceed 25,000.

We heard today of a recent mission trip taken by our own Greg Aung to provide medical assistance in China.  Greg’s family and we are proud of him for this commitment, but not every family will celebrate doing something that is risky and costs rather than brings in any money.  William Willimon tells of his experience as a campus pastor at Duke University for twenty years, saying: “In that time I’ve had no parent call me with, ‘Help! My student is addicted to alcohol,’ or ‘Help! My daughter is sexually promiscuous,’ though such are our great problems.  No, I’ve received maybe a dozen, often angry calls, ‘Help! I sent my daughter to Duke to become a success and she’s become a religious fanatic.’  Religious fanatic defined as she is going with the Catholics to Haiti to work in a literacy program.  Jesus is incendiary.”

I remember the summer I graduated from UCLA I took a job at a Christian summer camp working with college students for the princely sum of $15 a week.  I had earned ten times that amount working for my father in his lighting business, and he couldn’t grasp why I would pass that up.  With all respect I tried to tell him that I was feeling a call to ministry and the summer job would give me some first hand experience doing ministry with collegians.  I knew that from that day forward I would be paying my own way.  My decision put a chill on my relationship with my father, but as the years have progressed and he has seen how happy I am and what I have been up to in my work, he has come to accept and even encourage my decision.  I wish I could say that every instance of family members not understanding a decision made in loyalty to Christ will be resolved as happily.  Jesus is honest and wise in saying it will not always be so.  Families will be split: fathers against sons and sons against fathers, so too with mothers and daughters.  He doesn’t celebrate such division, but in love he tells his followers to be prepared for it.

What if you grow up in a home with racial prejudice and as you reach your majority your family speaks or acts in such a way as to demean persons of another race.  What do you do?  Do you remain silent?  Do you go along with the behavior?  Or do you pray for the grace to speak the truth in love and to affirm respect for all persons as created in God’s image and worthy of respect and just treatment?  What if you work in a family business and learn that laws are broken, customers short changed, employees taken advantage of, competitors eliminated through bribery or connections?  Is blood thicker than water?  Or does Jesus ask of us a loyalty to him that supersedes loyalty to family, clan or nation?  When Ted Kocinski’s brother saw the text of the manifesto sent to the New York Times by the Unabomber he recognized the language and the pathology and informed the FBI that he feared his brother was the culprit.  Some would label him a traitor to his brother, but as a person of Christian faith who cared about the safety of innocent persons, I believe he acted responsibly.  Was it easy?  Certainly not.  But what if he had said and done nothing?

Francis of Assisi lived 800 years ago in a time when the Roman Catholic Church was worldly and in sore need of reform.  His father was a wealthy cloth merchant who assumed that Francis would follow in his footsteps, but Francis felt a call from Jesus Christ to serve the poor, and so he took the profits from the sale of cloth and gave them to the poor.  His father did not appreciate that, and I think his father had a legitimate reason to be upset since it was his money.  But when Francis left the family business to serve the poor and to preach the good news and to seek to rebuild and reform the church and enlist others to join with him, it was not a decision that his father applauded.  Martin Luther’s father was not enthusiastic over his son’s decision to become a priest in response to a vow he made when caught in a terrible thunder storm one day and fearing for is life. 

One of the practices of Francis’ day that he felt ran contrary to the way of Christ was the expectation that those living within the area of influence of the local prince would swear an oath of loyalty to that prince to do his bidding.  Many of those princes used this vow in conscripting their subjects for wars in which they sought to expand their realms, and so Europe was beset by constant warfare.  Francis asked his followers to refuse to take such oaths.  You can imagine how unpopular that refusal was with those wanting to enlarge their realms. Adolph Hitler demanded vows of personally loyalty to him from every possible group he could strong arm in his attempt for total control of Germany.  He knew the power of promises made and keeping one’s word in the German psyche.  Dietrich Bonhoeffer and others refused to comply, and as the bitter results of Hitler’s agenda began to multiply he found himself in the agonizing position of praying for the military defeat of his own nation that it could rebuild on a new foundation. 

The words and call of Jesus are like fire.  They purge and judge injustice, they speak truth to power, but always in the service of love to God and neighbor. Jesus gets in trouble for affirming the love of God for outcastes, for enlarging the circle of God’s acceptance, and so should we.  The motto of the Salvation Army is Blood and Fire.  I suspect William Booth had this passage of Jesus in mind in crafting that motto.  He knew that reaching out to the unsavory alcoholics and drug addicts of the East End of London would put him at odds with the respectable church people from which he had come, but didn’t let that stop him.

As we close this service I ask you to use the insert in our order of worship to write out those areas where you have failed to love God wholeheartedly and your neighbor as yourself, and then to crumble that paper and place it in the baskets at the rear of the church as we exit singing our closing hymn.  We will drop those shortcomings into the cleansing flames of God’s forgiveness so that we may serve God more fully and faithfully.