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August 19, 2007, Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost, All Soul's
Episcopal Church
Friendly Fire
Luke 12: 19-53
In about 3 weeks, we will experience
another anniversary of the horror of 9/11. This remembrance
not only provokes fear and anger. For some of us, it also
induces fear and bafflement
as to how anyone could perpetuate such violence
and destruction in the name of God.
Such a Divine Creator, the source of
love and life, would not endorse such destruction and, of
course, He doesn’t! In fact, Christians recall that Jesus
warned that whoever lived by the sword would die by the
sword. Sadly, however, extremist groups of Muslims are
not the only ones who have justified terrorism in the
name of God. Even our Christian history has twisted the
message of the Prince of Peace into terror, killing and war.
The Crusades in the Middle Ages are perhaps the most blatant
example of people putting the Christian symbol on their
shields and proclaiming their mission to be of Divine
command. The name of Jesus has also been invoked to justify
the burning at the stake of some whose beliefs were called
into question.
One might wonder if Jesus would sue for
misrepresentation if He were to operate in the arena of
these 2000 years since His Resurrection.
Christians by definition are those who
live according to the example and teachings of Jesus. But
Jesus neither exemplified nor taught violence towards
anyone. In fact, He did just the opposite. “Learn from me
for I am meek and humble of heart”. Blessed are the
peacemakers”. “Love your enemies and do good to those who
hate you.” ”What you do unto others, you do unto me.”
But Jesus did not say that it was wrong
to protect ourselves.
Today, we are at war, and we are trying to protect
ourselves. Many men and women are dying in battle honorably
and selflessly because of this fact. We have been
dangerously provoked and are defending our God given
freedom trying to save in many ways our heritage and
civilization as a whole for our children and our
grandchildren.
My friends, I feel that we are now a
new Nation facing new realities. There are those who would
have us believe, once more, that it is possible to abolish
strife in the affairs of man. But until our Lord comes
again, “Thy Kingdom Come”, and as long as man has freewill,
an inheritance acknowledged by Christian theology and a fact
proven by reality, there will always be those who
will seek to over-come, overthrow, and enslave their
fellowman. There will always be those who will plot and
plan to take away the God given freedoms, dignity, and free
will of others. Blaise Pascal, the French philosopher, once
said, “ Men never do evil more completely and cheerfully as
when they do it with religious conviction.” And because of
them, and people like them, there will also have to be those
others who will lay down their lives for freedom, for truth
and for goodness. We, of course have seen this in the
conflicts of the past, and, of course, we saw this in the
horrible death and carnage on 9/11 and the terror attacks we
see daily all over the world.
World War III started many years ago
when the seeds of terrorism started to grow. It was not
defined so much then, but we definitely see the blossoming
of this devilish poisonous weed now. The choice is
not between one culture
and another culture or between belief and ideology, the
choice is between freedom or slavery, dignity or
degradation. Our way of life! What God has given us we must
protect; God depends on us.
So where does this leave us in
attempting to understand the words of Jesus in today’s
gospel reading? In our selection from Luke we hear him say,
“I am come to send fire on the earth.” This is not even a
simple statement. Luke puts it in the context of an
impassioned pronouncement. We even hear Jesus say that he
cannot wait for it to happen. And then he predicts the
division that his teaching will bring. How do we read
this? How do we reconcile a Jesus who said he came to bring
fire with the notion of a loving Jesus? It is vital that
we understanding the meaning of His words today, and that
we hear them in the context of everything else that He said
and did. It might also help to reflect for a moment on the
power and meaning of fire.
Certainly fire is used to destroy.
Ask anyone who lost their home to a fire. Talk to those
who have lived in the ongoing inferno of war in the East.
The graphic details are enough to burn a hole an any
sensitive heart.
But Jesus came to tell us that He did
not come to destroy people’s lives; rather, He came to save
them. Despite the way that the Pharisees treated Him, and
ultimately sent Him to His death, He did not call down
destructive fire on them. Even Pilate, who handed Him over
to a frenzied mob of executioners, was not destroyed. Nor
were those who scourged Him within an inch of His live,
destroyed by fire. The fire of
which Jesus spoke was not destructive.
All of us have been warmed by a
furnace. Many of us have experienced the dark night of a
campsite brightened by a campfire. We know that fire does
so much more than
destroy. In many ways, fire can and does replace the cold
with warmth and the darkness with the light. It can even be
used to cauterize dangerous bleeding and preserve life. Fire
can be used for life as well as death, and the fire of which
Jesus spoke, the fire of the Spirit, is
for life! We might call
it friendly fire.
We speak of the fire of love. We are also
familiar with the Pentecost message in which the Holy Spirit
is said to have come to rest on the heads of the Apostles as
tongues of fire. Even in our own use of the language, we
speak of firing up one’s heart. We put a fire under
ourselves as it were to get us moving in the right
direction. A coach fires up his or her team. Jesus came to
do all of these things.
Think of the fire that must have been
in Jesus’ own heart. Jesus knew what He had to give. He
knew that his message, if it were taken into the hearts of
His hearers, would forever change lives and even the world.
He was passionate about this.
What would happen if those who are so
on fire with twisting
the world to their own way of thinking and calling it “God’s
way”, were to redirect the fire of their passion toward
hearing what God’s way truly is—even when it is contrary to
their own expectations?
You know, the recipe for perpetual
ignorance is to be satisfied with your own opinion and
content with your own knowledge…….in other words to be
totally unteachable.
What would happen if you and I, who
meet here today, were wide open to learning what we do
not know about Jesus instead of insisting upon what we
think we already know about Him? What if we were as willing
to hear those parts of Jesus’ message that challenge our
religious “comfort zones” as we are to filter through our
own prisms those parts of His message that are in accord to
our cherished notions? What kind of fire would we light for
the lives we live and the world we touch, if we were as
impassioned as He was about the power of love? What kind of
a fire could we light!
If we dare to enter the process, Jesus
warns us in part of what will happen. He says that it will
cause division. We have already seen this. While some
groups say they worship God while endorsing terror and the
sword and suicide bombings, most
others condemn it.
We must admit that one of the
greatest scandals within religion is the vociferousness with
which one group vilifies another. Some would have us
believe that the only Christian values are the ones that
feed their comfort zones without
adherence to Biblical truth. the process, the real Jesus,
along with the fire of His message and the morality of His
message, is diminished to a flicker and even smothered.
Yes, Jesus did indeed come to bring
fire. And such a fire it was meant to be! But Jesus did
not come to destroy. If we believe that the Spirit of God
lives within us as
Jesus promised, then we are empowered to
rekindle His fire, a
fire of love, a fire of truth, a fire of justice, a fire of
freedom that must be protected. Whether we are willing to
let God set us on fire with love and a thirst for justice
and, whether we are willing to light
His kind of fire could
not matter more.
The next time we spend some quality
time with Jesus in prayer, we should pray that we allow Him
to fill our hearts and minds with His love ……..that we will
burn with His
fire…………….
In the name of the Father and the Son and
the Holy Ghost
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