Sermon Pentecost 13 August 18, 2013

Sermon:

Text:

Grace and Peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ who asks us to create divisions.

            Whenever you have visitors you want to make sure everything is nice and done well, and so when I found out that my parents, an aunt and uncle, and another aunt were going to come visit I was excited and you want to make sure that you look good, so leading up to this week I was thinking, ok, make sure that this weeks sermon is really good. Then Tuesday when I got around to looking at the texts for this Sunday I read the Gospel that I would read when my family is visiting.

            “Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division! 52 From now on five in one household will be divided, three against two and two against three; 53 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.”

And so, Dad if you would step out please.

It’s really a very interesting text though, because it is so different than what we often see from Jesus. Not peace, but division?

Division is hard for us to talk about, because well, we don’t like conflict, or at least most people I know don’t like conflict, so we go out of our way to avoid it.

But, here Jesus is talking about that not only will division occur, but it will occur because of him and his message.

            But, why does Christ’s message divide? Because we’re human, and that’s part of why this text is so interesting, because it shows Christ in a human state. We have this idea that Christ is always this super calm, nothing bothering him kind of person, we don’t think about that fact that he is human just as much as he is God, and here he states that on this trip to Jerusalem, he’s stressed. “I have a baptism with which to be baptized, and what stress I am under until it is completed!”

            We divide between each other because we ourselves are stressed, we stress over money, it’s the number one reason for divorce in this country, we stress over our jobs, our houses, we stress about our children, our parents, our neighbors.

            And we stress about religion. All across our country and world, there is division of denominations and even within churches, national and individual all because we stress from how we interpret different things.

            I think we can find a big reason in our Hebrews passage. We run with perseverance the race set before us. We all run, and we run and run and run. And we all end up taking different paths and trails, we start heading in different directions and we start yelling at each other, you’re going the wrong way! When we are as well.

We are under such stress that we don’t look out for others first. We look out for ourselves. We run not Christ’s race, but our own and through that we get lost and we divide.

            This gospel text is hard because it just ends at that division, it ends at the law, we’ve been condemned for only being concerned about ourselves and not thinking of others, of letting our own personal understanding of mission divide us from others.

            To understand this text we need the whole gospel. We spend so much time looking at where Jesus is in our story, he’s on this path to Jerusalem, that we forget that he’s already reached it. Jesus’ line from our gospel was “what stress I am under until it is completed!” Guess what? It is completed. Jesus has gone to the cross and taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God.

            That line in Hebrews continues, “let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, 2 looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God.”  The key is not running, but looking to Jesus, who has gone to the cross for us.

            When we look at this text we see that we don’t finish the race on our own. In fact, the race has already been finished through Christ. Christ is the pioneer, the one who begins, who starts and heads out forging the path for us. And Christ is the perfecter, the one who finishes, who makes it complete.

            We need to run the race, and we need to know division will occur, but let’s make it a division that matters. Let’s make it a division between those who think only for themselves and those who look to Christ, who think about the other first.

Why did Christ die? Because he upset the religious norm of the time. They liked their rituals and rites, rules and laws, and Christ disrupted it all, he created the divide between caring for yourselves and caring for others. He interacted with those you weren’t supposed to, he ate with sinners, talked to beggars, sat with the outcast, healed on the sabbath. And the leaders couldn’t deal with it so they killed him and he said no, you still don’t win. And he rose from the dead to show us how to live our lives as servants rather than consumers.

            So this week go out and create division. Create division between those who care for money first and those who care for service first, a separation between those who think profit over mission and those who care for the least no matter the cost. Let’s make a divide between those who think Christianity is making sure you do nothing wrong, and those who make sure those labeled as wrong aren’t given nothing. Eat with those push aside, talk to those ignored, sit with those who are alone.

            Go run the race, keeping our eyes on Christ, so we don’t get lost.