In the name of God: Father, Son,
and Holy Spirit. Amen.
The peace of God it is
no peace, but strife closed in the sod. Yet let us pray for but one thing, the
marvelous peace of God.
Sometimes
the hymn writers just get it, and that is certainly true for William Alexander
Percy, the author of today’s sequence hymn. Today we get a view of Jesus that
is unsettling. This isn’t Jesus as the shepherd of our souls, or Jesus the
friend of sinners, this is a far more aggressive and angry Jesus than we’re
accustomed to. This is a challenging Jesus, perhaps a Jesus that we wish would
just keep his mouth shut. This Jesus makes us uncomfortable with words such as “Do
you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but
rather division!... father against son and son against father, mother against
daughter and daughter against mother.”
This
episode shows us perhaps one of the more authentically human moments that Jesus
ever had. Two Sundays ago, when preaching on the Lord’s Prayer, I asked you to
consider what you are a fundamentalist about. What is so essential to your
being that you can’t give it up? For Jesus, the answer to that question is
found back in chapter 4 of Luke. As Jesus began his public ministry, he read
from the scroll of Isaiah and said that his task was to “bring good news to the
poor, to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” Even
Jesus’ mother, Mary, in the words of the Magnificat
claimed that God “has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted
up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away
empty.” Jesus was a fundamentalist about bringing the justice and mercy of the Kingdom
of God to earth as it is in heaven.
But
despite his teaching, despite the miracles and the healings, it doesn’t seem to
be sinking in. Jesus has shown them the way of love, trust, and reconciliation,
and yet people don’t seem to be going down that road. He calls them hypocrites
who know how to interpret the weather, but they can’t even see what is right in
front of their noses- that the Kingdom of God is among us. And we’re ignoring
it.
If
Jesus walked through the doors of this church today and said “You know how to
interpret the appearance of earth and sky, but why do you not know how to
interpret the present time?” what would he be talking about? What signposts
have we overlooked? What injustices have become so normal that we no longer see
or feel them? Why can’t we see things the way that God does?
Whatever
it is that we’ve missed, whatever the reason for our blindness, it was
something that those around Jesus were plagued with as well. Jesus has begun
his trek towards Jerusalem, and he knows that if he keeps preaching his message
of radical mercy and compassion that it will get him killed. He knows that his
days are numbered, and there isn’t much time left to get people on board with
the Kingdom of God. And so Jesus gets annoyed and frustrated. He says that he
wishes the fire was already kindled and says that he is under great stress to complete
his mission. Do you ever get that way?
I
know that I do. When I’m working on something important it can be easy to get
impatient and frustrated when it doesn’t happen. Or even if you’re looking
forward to something such as a picnic in the park, and it gets rained out, you’re
annoyed because you were so looking forward to it. And this is the place we
find Jesus today, except he’s not talking about a picnic, but rather the
dignity and well-being of those who are being trampled by the economic, religious,
and political systems of the day. Jesus deeply yearns for love to start beating
out hatred, for community to rise above selfishness, for the Kingdom of God to
be first in our hearts instead of the kingdoms of this world. But it isn’t
happening, and so we see the zeal of Jesus for his mission on full display.
Why
is it that we tend to prefer the kingdoms of this world over the Kingdom of God?
Let’s turn to Jeremiah, who prophesies on behalf of God, saying “Am I a God
near by, says the Lord, and not a
God far off? Who can hide in secret places so that I cannot see them? says the Lord. Do I not fill heaven and earth?
says the Lord.” In other words,
God is saying, “I’m in your face, I’m right in front of you. You’re not getting
away with anything, I see everything you do. I care too much to stand on the
sidelines and just watch. I am always with you, even the middle of your strife,
and I am calling you to something greater.” The prophet laments that “They plan
to make my people forget my name by their dreams that they tell one another,
just as their ancestors forgot my name for Baal.” They plan to domesticate God
and make God convenient to their lives. It’s far easier to live by the rules of
“survival of the fittest” than it is to live by the mantra “just as you did it
to the least of these, you did it to me.”
David
Brooks recently wrote a piece in the New
York Times about “The A-Rod Problem,” discussing the rise and fall of
baseball star Alex Rodriguez who was recently suspended for a record 211 games
for his use of steroids and the ensuing coverup. He concludes the article by
saying “At every step along the way, Rodriguez chased self-maximization, which
ended up leading to his self-destruction.” And the same will be true for us. It’s
far easier to live for self-maximization, whether it’s cheating to maximize our
results, finding tax loopholes to maximize our bank account, running a red light
to maximize our time, or turning the other way when we see injustice to
maximize our ability to wear rose-colored glasses. Self-maximization will lead
to our self-destruction. And this is a truth that Israel was learning as well.
They were turning to other gods, they were ignoring call of God to do justice, love
kindness, and walk humbly with the Lord.
They, just like us, had a hard time remembering that we are to “seek ye first
the Kingdom of God.”
And
this is because living for God is tough stuff. Eliminating global poverty is a
massive undertaking, and it’s going to take all of us paddling in the same
direction. Making sure no child goes to bed hungry involves systemic issues
such as education and capitalism. How do you move a stone that large? When
someone slaps us in the face, how in the world do we turn the other cheek
instead of clenching our fist? When a loved one dies, how are we supposed to
carry hope in our hearts? When it seems that all the tv news ever reports are
stories of tragedy and crime, how are we supposed to build a just society?
By
faith. As the author of Hebrews reminds us this morning, “By faith Noah built
an ark to save his household…By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to set
out for a place that he was to receive as an inheritance…By faith the people
passed through the Red Sea as if it were dry land…By faith the walls of Jericho
fell after they had been encircled for seven days…By faith Rahab did not perish
with those who were disobedient.” It is by faith that we can do these things.
Why
is it that Jesus seems so insistent on accomplishing his mission, why does he
seem so eager for the day of judgment to come? Let us remember that judgment
always comes at the service of justice, and this is about God’s redeeming, not
God’s anger. Jesus is eager for the day to come not because Jesus wants
destruction or punishment, but because he is calling us toward a new way of
being, a higher road to travel. When God enters the picture, things necessarily
change. It has been said that God loves you just the way you are, but also
loves you too much to leave you that way. And this reality is seen in Jeremiah.
God loves us, but God is calling us to something bigger. Jesus wants to kindle
the fire; not to destroy us, but to fire us up.
And
as Hebrews suggests, it is by faith that we can do these things. Now I’ve said
this before, but it is worth repeating. Faith is not about what you believe in
your head, it is about what you do with your hands and mouth. Faith is not
thinking that God exists, faith is acting as if God does exist. Faith is not a
piece of clothing that we add over our other layers of being, such as family, political
views, or philosophical ideas; instead faith is to be at our core, it is
building block upon which the rest of our life is to be built. The way “faith
as action” got confused with “belief as thought” comes from the issues of
translating a Greek word into Latin, and then into Old English, and then into
modern English, with a Scientific Revolution thrown in for good measure. But
the takeaway is that belief and faith used to be the Latin word credo, meaning “I give my heart to.”
And
if we are to live for the Kingdom of God, it’s going to take more than simply
thinking that there is at least a 51% chance that God exists. It’s going to
take some blood, some sweat, and tears. Or as Jesus puts it, it’s going to take
some division and conflict. And to be clear, this passage is descriptive, not
proscriptive. It is not that living for God means that we have to fight with
our parents or children. The Kingdom of God isn’t about conflict, it is about
peace. But we must remember that peace is not the absence of conflict. Peace is
about shalom, it is about things
being full and complete, the way they should be. And sometimes that’s going to
cause conflict. Sometimes we’ll disagree about what it means to live for the Kingdom
of God. Sometimes the values of the Kingdom of God are simply not compatible
with the kingdoms of this world. And so there will be conflict.
I
want to share a powerful story with you. This past week, we celebrated the 48th
anniversary of the death of Jonathan Myrick Daniels. He was a seminary student
in Cambridge, Massachusetts, when he heard of Martin Luther King’s call to join
him for a march in Selma, Alabama. Daniels wrote in journal that after being at
Evening Prayer one night singing the Magnificat
that he “found [him]self peculiarly alert, suddenly straining toward the decisive,
luminous, Spirit-filled ‘moment’...[and] knew then that [he] must go to Selma.”
And so he did.
But after
missing the bus on the return trip, he and a friend decided to stay in Selma
for the rest of the semester because they didn’t want to appear as just one of
those “northern white folks” who just came down for the day. In his time there,
Daniels attended marches, rustled some feathers, and spent some time in jail
cells. One particular day, he and some friends walked into a shop where a man
greeted them with a shotgun and told them to leave. The man then pointed the gun at a 17 year-old black girl,
so Daniels pushed her to floor and caught the full blast of the gun and died
immediately. And not to leave you wondering, the shooter was eventually acquitted
of manslaughter by an all-white jury.
Not long before
his death, Daniels wrote “I lost fear in [Alabama] when I began to know in my
bones and sinews that I had been truly baptized into the Lord’s death and
Resurrection, that in the only sense that really matters I am already dead, and
my life is hid with Christ in God.” Let us give thanks for his witness and pray
for those whose faith in Jesus Christ compels them to give up their lives for
their dream of a better world. And let his life and death be a reminder to us
of not only the conflict we might find in pursuing the Kingdom of God, but also
the great power of what we can do by faith.
Jesus’
harsh words remind us that Jesus came not to validate our social norms and
values, but to inaugurate the Kingdom of God with a compassion, mercy, and
justice that shatters the status quo. Jesus is a zealot for the Kingdom of God;
his mission of fulfilling it is fundamental to him. And so when that mission is
being impeded by our blindness, he shows some frustration. It is a frustration that
God expressed through Jeremiah to the people of Israel who were choosing self-maximization,
which led to their self-destruction. It’s easy to do though, because living by
faith, is a tall task. Living by faith will take more than our intellectual assent;
it will require the whole of our being. And as we live this faith, seeking to
building the Kingdom on earth as it is in heaven, we will run into conflict;
not because the Kingdom is about conflict, but because it conflicts with the
broken ways of our world.
Jesus
is fired up though, and he wants to fire us up to live by faith, to do
ministry. The peace of God is our calling. Bringing God’s Kingdom to fruition
is a good task, worthy of our whole lives. But this peace will not come through
a peaceful journey, but rather as Jesus suggests, through inevitable conflicts
with those who refuse to see the reality of the Kingdom that is all around them.
The peace of God it is no peace, but strife
closed in the sod. Yet let us pray for but one thing, the marvelous peace of
God. Amen.
