Rector's Reflection: Did Jesus really come to bring division?

Jesus came out swinging this past Sunday in our Gospel reading from Luke!

"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." (Luke 12:49-56)

In my sermon, I quipped that maybe Jesus was having a bad day. While that’s certainly possible and points to the humanity of Jesus, it should not be used to dismiss the seriousness of his message. This notable shift in tone in Jesus’ teaching is likely meant to produce a sense of urgency, lighting a holy fire under our “you know whats.”

It’s reads like a similar tone to the one Jesus used in proclaiming “the Kingdom of God is near!” There’s an urgency in the need for Jesus’ followers to get busy preparing for the coming Kingdom. Our work is to prepare by taking up our cross and following him, and the need is urgent. In seminary, we called this urgency the “eschatological imperative,” which essentially means the same thing as the zealot’s sign on the street corner reading “The End is Near.”

So, for Jesus, there is no time to waste because the end could come at any moment. It’s like the ancient wisdom of treating every day as if it could be your last, with the added impact of standing before the Judgement Seat of Christ on that day. The necessity of getting to work is evident in Jesus’ prediction that it will produce division among families.

That division is, perhaps, the starkest element to this reading. It’s hard to accept that Jesus would, intentionally, separate families. Of course, the separation of families is one of our supercharged political issues, so Jesus’ words resonate with divisions in our time. Yet, even this stark prediction fits with the eschatological imperative. The work of the Kingdom is so urgent that it means dropping everything for it, including family attachments. Elsewhere in this Gospel, Jesus tells of a man who was ready to follow him but just needed to go and say goodbye to his family. Jesus says that there is even no time for that!

Let’s be honest. All this talk of urgency and detachment makes us uncomfortable, and we’ve mostly excused ourselves from this imperative. No reasonable person would ask someone to leave their family behind to join a church, citing the necessity from this passage alone. I certainly can’t see that happening in any Episcopal church I know.

And yet, we do have examples in our community of individuals who have chosen to break away from their families for the sake of some religious pursuit beyond that of the family. Sometimes that looks like changing denominations (which can be a huge deal, especially in families with multi-generation commitments to one denomination). Sometimes it looks it looks like an individual breaking away from a family’s religious tradition altogether, becoming an atheist, an agnostic, or just non-practicing, the latter being the most common in the Episcopal church and other mainline denominations.

So, all of this leaves us with a question. Where do we stand in relation to Jesus’ urgent message to work in preparation for the Kingdom of God?

I would argue that the work is no less urgent. If sin and injustice remain in our lives (individually and collectively), we have work to do. The good news is that our work is to spread the Good News and to be guided by those two commandments to love God and love our neighbor! The work itself is ministry, and the fire that is kindled is the inspiration for us to change the world “from the nightmare it so often is, to the dream of love that God has for it,” to use Bishop Curry’s language.

Paradoxically, the divisions that are necessary in this time which can mean breaking away from any ideologies which go against the love of God and neighbor will, ultimately, bring reconciliation in the end. The mission of the church, as stated in our Book of Common Prayer, is “to restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ” (BCP, p855). That mission is not shared by all people, let alone all Christians. Yet, it is the Episcopal Church’s interpretation of the urgent work Jesus calls us to in order to prepare for the Kingdom of God. That work may produce division on this side of heaven, but, ultimately all divisions will cease in Christ!

At least, that’s the way I see it. What do you think?