13th Sunday after Pentecost--Proper 15C

13th Sunday after Pentecost—Proper 15C August 18, 2013 Luke 12:49-56 Jesus said, "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! 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." He also said to the crowds, "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?" Let me just start out by saying that I do not like this reading from Luke’s gospel today, and I really did not want to preach on it. I do not like to think of a Jesus who is invoking fire and promising division and conflict. We have enough division and conflict in the world, in our everyday lives, Jesus, thank you very much! We come to church in search of peace and harmony! Just what are you trying to do to us? Well, let’s think about this for a minute before we get all panicky. Maybe Jesus has a perfectly good explanation for being so snarky! In this portion of Luke’s gospel, Jesus has ‘set his face toward Jerusalem.’ He knows where he is going and what is going to happen there. As we say in our modern way, “He is stressed!” He is wrestling with the subjugation of his will and desire for survival to God. He is surrounded by people who just don’t get it, and he is preparing to place himself in the intersection between fear and hope, between hatred and love. He knows that it will be incredibly painful and heartbreaking and lonely. When Jesus talks about the conflict that following him brings to families, he is undermining the most basic fabric of life in his time; the household or family is the most deeply valued social unit, around which all of society is ordered. By claiming to bring division and conflict instead of peace to that sacred institution, Jesus is threatening to undermine and obliterate the current social status quo. You know all those people who bemoan the undermining of traditional family values? Well, that is exactly what Jesus is about in the gospel reading for today. So what is a preacher with a husband and two kids, a rector who is charged with the care of the household of the church supposed to make of this troubling passage and this troubling Jesus? My dear ones, we in this parish find ourselves to be in one of these conflicted times that Jesus predicts for people who follow him. (Interestingly enough, I have discovered that these conflicted times most often occur here in the height of hurricane season, when people here are at our most anxious.) Over the past-almost four-years that I have been your priest, we have seen tremendous changes. Our average Sunday attendance, the best predictor of church growth has been steadily climbing and is higher now than it has ever been. Our giving has been steadily increasing, and last year saw the first year since 2007 that we ended the year with a budget surplus as opposed to about a $20,000 deficit, and that is thanks to your gratitude and generous response in your giving and thanks to a new creativity among the vestry that I have never witnessed or experienced in any other church I’ve been a part of. We are doing more things, offering more programs, formation offerings and opportunities to engage in ministry than at any other time in the life of the church. New people are coming; some are just showing up, being led here by the Holy Spirit; others are being invited by you because you are excited about being a part of this faith community and you are offering the words to your friends that harken all the way back to Jesus’s words of invitation to his first disciples, “Come and See!” I strongly believe that we as a church are growing more and more into who God is calling us to be. Yet in the midst of this change and growth and new life, we are experiencing conflict. Change is hard for many people; while some rejoice as St. Peter’s by-the-Sea becomes a more diverse and inclusive community, others feel challenged and conflicted in encountering people who are different from them. What once felt like a closely connected family for some now feels alarmingly unfamiliar (and maybe more than a little scary and even dangerous). So a handful of people have left—both recently and over the last couple of years. And it is heartbreaking and maybe a little frightening to see people leave who are our friends, people who have worshipped in these pews with us and broken bread with us and given money and untold hours of their lives in ministering beside us over many years; they are people who I both love and respect. Sadly, it was their choice to leave, and they have all been told that the doors here will always be open to them if they choose to return. I long, just as much as many of you, for this church to be a place of peace and harmony and to just be one big happy family. But perhaps those are not the most important aspects of who we are called to be as a community of faith and followers of Jesus. I read a quote from the former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams where he was asked about spirituality and the life of faith, and he replied, “‘Speaking from the Christian tradition, the idea that being spiritual is just about having nice experiences is rather laughable. Most people who have written seriously about the life of the spirit in Christianity and Judaism spend a lot of their time telling you how absolutely bloody awful it is.’ Williams argued that true spirituality was not simply about fostering the inner life but was about the individual's interaction with others."i So even while I find Jesus’s words today to be a source of deep discomfort for me, they are also indicating that here and now, we are bumping up against the gospel, the good news. Jesus reminds us that the work of the Christian life and the work of the church is not toward peace and comfort and contentment. He reminds us that we are baptized not into a family but into his body—the very body which he prepares to hand over to be crucified—killed, murdered, dead—so that all may experience the transformation and the new life that can only come with resurrection. My brothers and sisters in Christ, we are not called to be a family. We are not called to be peaceful; we are not called to be happy; we are not called to be content. We are called to be transformed! And transformation often includes a refining fire that burns off the parts that hold us back, make us impure. It may not be easy or comfortable, but it may very well be the most life-giving, Spirit and grace-filled work that we ever do together here. We are called to be the body of Christ which means we are not all the same. We come from a variety of backgrounds, bringing a variety of gifts. Some of us have been Episcopalians our whole lives (or at least it seems that long) and have a deep ownership in this church, having helped rebuild it from the rubble; some of us have been so deeply wounded by other churches that we can only marvel that we have been able to find a church where we feel at home. And some are somewhere in between the two. We have so much to learn from each other, and there is room for everyone at God’s table. I read an interview recently with the Rev. Lillian Daniel who has recently written the book When Spiritual But Not Religious is Not Enough. In the book and the interview, she is going after people who talk about being spiritual but not religious, but her words are also an important part of the life of the church and an important reminder of the reality of why we gather week after week to worship together. She says, “Any idiot can find God alone in the sunset. It takes a certain maturity to find God in the person sitting next to you who not only voted for the wrong political party but has a baby who is crying while you’re trying to listen to the sermon. Community is where the religious rubber meets the road. People challenge us, ask hard questions, disagree, need things from us, require our forgiveness. It’s where we get to practice all the things we preach.”ii My brothers and sisters, we need to practice what we preach, here and now. It is time for us to stop talking about each other and to talk to each other. I wrestled with God mightily about whether or not I was going to preach this sermon, and well, I guess you see who won… It is my hope that rather than serving to emphasize division and conflict among us, this may be the beginning of an opportunity to have honest, open, respectful conversation about how we, all together, will be the body of Christ and do his work of loving, healing, and reconciling in this place. I.http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/aug/15/rowan-williams-persecuted-christians-grow-up ii.http://jonathanmerritt.religionnews.com/2013/08/13/answering-the-spiritual-but-religious-an-interview-with-lillian-daniel/#sthash.BYS1QeYk.dpuf