Jesus -- That Troublemaker!
Sermon
Rejoicing In Life's 'Melissa Moments'
The Joys Of Faith And The Challenges Of Life
His loyalty to Jesus got him into one predicament after another. Don West rode up and down the highways of Georgia on his Indian Chief motorcycle more than a half century ago associating himself with revolutionary causes. He was born in the mountains of north Georgia among the poor people he loved and served for a lifetime. He was one of a small group of radical Christians in the South who yearned for a new order that would unite the races and deliver the destitute from oppression. West had the sensitive soul of a poet and the zeal of an Old Testament prophet. He learned the social gospel in the divinity school of Vanderbilt University, eventually earned a doctorate, and taught at Oglethorpe University.
Yet this poet, prophet, and preacher was chased from one town to another and tormented by factory owners, politicians, and newspaper editors. He was seen as a dangerous threat to the existing economic order -- and he was. Yet all he wanted was justice for the poor. West found his inspiration in the teachings of Jesus. "Somehow," he said, "I can't help but preach the only Jesus I know, and he is a very bothersome fellow, and he gets me in Dutch time after time. Sometimes my wife may wish that I'd meet that other Jesus, the one most of the churches have up in the stained glass. But I just missed him somehow, and got tangled up with the one that stirred up the people. He's a powerful interesting guy, but bad medicine for a pastor in modern churches, or ancient ones either I reckon."1 Don West tried to follow Jesus, and it got him into trouble.
Jesus seems to have anticipated that his followers might get into difficulty if they took him seriously. The text for today points in that direction. Jesus says, "Do not think I have come to bring peace on earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword" (Matthew 10:34). He goes on to say that he has come to set family members against one another. Loyalty to him must come before allegiance to mother and father or son and daughter. Those who are not willing to put him first even at the expense of alienation from family are not worthy of him. In the parallel text in Luke, Jesus says that he has come to cast fire on earth and to bring division among people (Luke 12:49-51). These are hard sayings indeed. They contradict what we would most naturally expect. Did not Jesus come to bring reconciliation, to unite people, to spread love and peace? Here he appears to say the very opposite. He brings not peace but a sword, not unity but division, not reconciliation but fire. What can these words possibly mean?
It is hard to believe that Jesus is expressing his direct and deliberate intention. Hence, I will play the role that preachers often assume and speak as if I know the mind of Jesus! My suggestion is that we can only make sense of these words and reconcile them to his total message and ministry if we assume that Jesus is speaking paradoxically. He appears to be offering a contradiction, yet his words contain deep truth. Jesus is not saying that his fundamental aim is to bring fire, division, and a sword. Rather he is acknowledging that his mission will inevitably set people against one another. Telling the truth, promoting goodness, loving to the fullest will lead to an outcome we wish to avoid but cannot. The opposite of what we hope for will happen. Jesus is aware that a positive mission can have negative side effects. And he dreads to see that come to pass.
He indicates this by his own words. "I came to cast fire on the earth; and would that it were already kindled! I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how I am constrained until it is accomplished!" (Luke 12:49-50). He is saying that some terrible things are going to happen. He wants to get it over with. What he does not intend will follow from what he does intend. This will be a painful experience that he dreads. How can it be that Jesus will produce the opposite of what he sets out to achieve? How can this be?
We can first simply observe that people were divided against each other in response to the ministry of Jesus. Some people thought he was the Messiah and followed him. Others not only refused to accept him as the Messiah but set about to kill him -- and succeeded. We can readily understand how some might reject him or doubt him or just have nothing to do with him at all. But why would they kill him? Why would people kill a person who taught love, who preached good news to the poor, who went about doing good, who healed the sick, and who in every way sought to make life better?
Several centuries before Jesus was born, Plato, the Greek philosopher, offered an allegory that throws light on the subject at hand. Imagine, Plato said, a large cave. Inside, people are chained so that they can only see the rear wall. They cannot turn around to face the entrance. They have been there all their lives. The sun shines through the entrance to the cave and casts shadows of anything that passes by. The shadows dance on the back wall of the cave. During their lifetimes the prisoners get very good at making out the shadowy figures cast on the wall. They find a certain order and regularity in the movements and come to believe that what they see is the whole of reality.
Suppose one of the captives gets loose and turns around. At first he will be blinded by the light. He may even be afraid of what he sees. Suppose he manages to make his way toward the entrance to the cave. He will see that what he believed to be real is only a shadowy illusion. The genuine things in the world are those moving figures themselves. He had only seen their shadows on the wall. Moreover, he will see that the source of all light is the sun itself. It is the reason anything can be seen at all. The sun is so bright that it takes a long time for his eyes to adjust. All his life he had lived in near darkness and illusion. Yet he thought he knew what was true and real. Having been liberated from this shadowy world of appearances, he will appreciate the truth and the light. He will take special pleasure in the sun that is their source. In the New Testament the experience of turning from illusion to reality is defined as being "born again" or of being born from above (John 3).
Having seen the light, the liberated and transformed prisoner will want to go back into the cave and tell the remaining captives what he has found. Upon returning, he finds that he is not very good at judging the shadows on the wall anymore. His eyes, having become accustomed to the light, cannot see in the dark. The people in the cave are much better at making out what they see on the wall than this enlightened convert. When he tries to tell his companions what he has found outside, they do not believe him. Why he cannot even make out the shadows on the wall! How could he possibly have knowledge of a realm of light and truth beyond? Having been born again, he is no longer at home in the darkness of the cave. So the prisoners reject him as a madman who has no sense at all. They get so angry that some want to kill him.
Plato's allegory of the cave gives us insight into the sword and fire and division that Jesus brings to earth. Jesus comes with a message of light, of love, of truth. He tells of a coming kingdom in which the poor and the outcasts will be liberated. His message is from above, but many prefer the shadows on the wall that they have always lived by. They think the shadows are the reality. So Jesus is denounced. Some want to kill him. They do not believe that he brings a message from beyond the darkness they live in. They plot to get rid of him.
In April of 1968 another good man was killed. A sniper's bullet ended the life of Martin Luther King, Jr., on a motel balcony in Memphis, Tennessee. A previous attempt had been made on his life. He had already survived a stabbing with a knife. On the flight to Memphis, the pilot came on the intercom system to say that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was on the plane. Special safety precautions had to be taken. He hoped the other passengers would be understanding and patient with the necessary delay this would cause. This Baptist preacher was the one who had stood up in Washington to speak of his dream. What was that dream? It was that all people would one day live in peace and harmony. Everywhere he spoke of justice and love. Everywhere he urged those who sought redress of grievances to do so non-violently. And everywhere somebody wanted to kill him. When someone finally succeeded, there were many who said that it was a shame that somebody had shot him. But he was, after all, a troublemaker. For having a dream of justice for all and for preaching non-violent resistance to oppression and for upsetting the shadowy truths by which a segregated society had lived, he was hated and despised. His ministry brought a sword, caused division, and set fire upon the earth.
Clarence Jordan of Americus, Georgia, was another who brought fire and sword by advocating justice and living by love. He established a small community of non-violent people who lived in full equality, ignoring the accidents of class, race, nationality, and creed. I along with others from Mercer University visited Koinonia Farm one day. Clarence showed us the holes made by bullets fired right over the place where some in the community slept. Like Jesus and King, Clarence Jordan had seen a great light. Those who continued to live by the shadows on the wall thought he was crazy. Those who lived by the worldly wisdom of the age were quite good at making out the patterns they saw on the back of the cave. They simply could not understand what Clarence was talking about. He was an accomplished student of the Greek New Testament. He offered to study the Bible with his opponents. They could only see him as a dangerous influence, a threat to decency and order. The bright light of truth not only makes people who live in darkness turn away; it also makes them angry. It makes them violent. The shadowy deceptions by which an unjust society lives cannot stand the truth that exposes their illusions.
Jesus did not come with the deliberate intention of causing the sword to be drawn, of provoking families to split, of bringing fire upon earth. Yet the inevitable outcome of his mission to bring light, love, and truth was just that. Hence, we see irony in his words: "I will preach peace, but I will stir up conflict; I will teach love, and people will hate me for it!"
People still divide against one another when they confront Jesus. Madalyn Murray O'Hair was an atheist. Some years ago she brought a suit against prayer in the public schools. She said it was unconstitutional for her son to be forced to be present when prayer was offered. She won the case. Her son was then a teenager in school. He was the person in whose behalf Madalyn O'Hair brought the case. The son grew up and became a Christian. She remained an atheist. Mother was set against son. Their relationship was strained.2
People over the centuries have fought each other over who is the true representative of Jesus on earth today. Protestants and Catholics have persecuted each other in the past, each group believing it alone possessed the way, the truth, and the life. In Northern Ireland Protestants and Catholics still kill each other. In our own country Christians divide over abortion, over civil rights, over prayer in schools, over national defense, and over practically every other issue that has a moral dimension. Fundamentalists and liberals accuse each other of betraying Jesus.
During the turmoil over racial issues in the 1950s and 1960s churches were split into warring factions. Some pastors were forced out of pastorates for suggesting that segregation might be contrary to the will of God. Some time after the Supreme Court decision of 1954 outlawing segregation in the public schools, a group of socially liberal church people from all over the South met in Nashville. Their purpose was to coordinate their efforts to move toward racial equality. They had such a good time together that they decided to celebrate their unity and commitment to justice with a communion service. Well, that's when the fight began. As I recall, they finally were able to overcome their disarray by using a Canadian order of service. Here was a group of good Christians united in fighting injustice who exposed their own conflicts over who is authorized properly to break the bread at the Lord's Table. It is a strange world we live in.
Jesus was right when he said he came to bring division, a sword, and fire. He wants to see peace on earth. He knows that peacemakers are often the cause of wars. He wants to see love embodied in human relationships. He knows that those who love most fully stir up hatred among those who cannot face their own hypocrisies. Jesus wants to see people believe the truth. He knows that truth-bearers often bring pain to eyes so accustomed to darkness that they cannot tell right from wrong. Jesus sought to bring love, peace, and unity. The result was hate, conflict, and division. No wonder he wished it did not have to be that way. No wonder he wanted to have his baptism over with.
What can all this teach us today? It leaves us with a paradoxical truth about life. We cannot always have goodness and truth without painful side effects. Love can generate hate, and hate can generate hate. Peacemakers can stir up trouble, and troublemakers can cause turmoil. Bearers of truth can start a fire, and liars can kindle flames. That is the way it is.
Beyond that we need to look at another passage in the larger text. Jesus speaks of discerning the signs of the times. As believers, we have the task of interpreting what is going on in the world and deciding what it all means. So let us be as wise as we can be in discerning the signs of the times. If we are to be numbered among those who bring fire, sword, and division, let us make sure it will be because we are disciples of Jesus and not among his enemies.
____________
1. Quoted in Anthony P. Dunbar, Against The Grain: Southern Radicals And Prophets, 1929-1959 (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1981), pp. 211-212.
2. This account is based on an interview with Madalyn O'Hair and her son I heard in 1980. I do not know what happened between them since or what the present situation is. Later, she disappeared, and suspicion arose that harm may have come to her.
Yet this poet, prophet, and preacher was chased from one town to another and tormented by factory owners, politicians, and newspaper editors. He was seen as a dangerous threat to the existing economic order -- and he was. Yet all he wanted was justice for the poor. West found his inspiration in the teachings of Jesus. "Somehow," he said, "I can't help but preach the only Jesus I know, and he is a very bothersome fellow, and he gets me in Dutch time after time. Sometimes my wife may wish that I'd meet that other Jesus, the one most of the churches have up in the stained glass. But I just missed him somehow, and got tangled up with the one that stirred up the people. He's a powerful interesting guy, but bad medicine for a pastor in modern churches, or ancient ones either I reckon."1 Don West tried to follow Jesus, and it got him into trouble.
Jesus seems to have anticipated that his followers might get into difficulty if they took him seriously. The text for today points in that direction. Jesus says, "Do not think I have come to bring peace on earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword" (Matthew 10:34). He goes on to say that he has come to set family members against one another. Loyalty to him must come before allegiance to mother and father or son and daughter. Those who are not willing to put him first even at the expense of alienation from family are not worthy of him. In the parallel text in Luke, Jesus says that he has come to cast fire on earth and to bring division among people (Luke 12:49-51). These are hard sayings indeed. They contradict what we would most naturally expect. Did not Jesus come to bring reconciliation, to unite people, to spread love and peace? Here he appears to say the very opposite. He brings not peace but a sword, not unity but division, not reconciliation but fire. What can these words possibly mean?
It is hard to believe that Jesus is expressing his direct and deliberate intention. Hence, I will play the role that preachers often assume and speak as if I know the mind of Jesus! My suggestion is that we can only make sense of these words and reconcile them to his total message and ministry if we assume that Jesus is speaking paradoxically. He appears to be offering a contradiction, yet his words contain deep truth. Jesus is not saying that his fundamental aim is to bring fire, division, and a sword. Rather he is acknowledging that his mission will inevitably set people against one another. Telling the truth, promoting goodness, loving to the fullest will lead to an outcome we wish to avoid but cannot. The opposite of what we hope for will happen. Jesus is aware that a positive mission can have negative side effects. And he dreads to see that come to pass.
He indicates this by his own words. "I came to cast fire on the earth; and would that it were already kindled! I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how I am constrained until it is accomplished!" (Luke 12:49-50). He is saying that some terrible things are going to happen. He wants to get it over with. What he does not intend will follow from what he does intend. This will be a painful experience that he dreads. How can it be that Jesus will produce the opposite of what he sets out to achieve? How can this be?
We can first simply observe that people were divided against each other in response to the ministry of Jesus. Some people thought he was the Messiah and followed him. Others not only refused to accept him as the Messiah but set about to kill him -- and succeeded. We can readily understand how some might reject him or doubt him or just have nothing to do with him at all. But why would they kill him? Why would people kill a person who taught love, who preached good news to the poor, who went about doing good, who healed the sick, and who in every way sought to make life better?
Several centuries before Jesus was born, Plato, the Greek philosopher, offered an allegory that throws light on the subject at hand. Imagine, Plato said, a large cave. Inside, people are chained so that they can only see the rear wall. They cannot turn around to face the entrance. They have been there all their lives. The sun shines through the entrance to the cave and casts shadows of anything that passes by. The shadows dance on the back wall of the cave. During their lifetimes the prisoners get very good at making out the shadowy figures cast on the wall. They find a certain order and regularity in the movements and come to believe that what they see is the whole of reality.
Suppose one of the captives gets loose and turns around. At first he will be blinded by the light. He may even be afraid of what he sees. Suppose he manages to make his way toward the entrance to the cave. He will see that what he believed to be real is only a shadowy illusion. The genuine things in the world are those moving figures themselves. He had only seen their shadows on the wall. Moreover, he will see that the source of all light is the sun itself. It is the reason anything can be seen at all. The sun is so bright that it takes a long time for his eyes to adjust. All his life he had lived in near darkness and illusion. Yet he thought he knew what was true and real. Having been liberated from this shadowy world of appearances, he will appreciate the truth and the light. He will take special pleasure in the sun that is their source. In the New Testament the experience of turning from illusion to reality is defined as being "born again" or of being born from above (John 3).
Having seen the light, the liberated and transformed prisoner will want to go back into the cave and tell the remaining captives what he has found. Upon returning, he finds that he is not very good at judging the shadows on the wall anymore. His eyes, having become accustomed to the light, cannot see in the dark. The people in the cave are much better at making out what they see on the wall than this enlightened convert. When he tries to tell his companions what he has found outside, they do not believe him. Why he cannot even make out the shadows on the wall! How could he possibly have knowledge of a realm of light and truth beyond? Having been born again, he is no longer at home in the darkness of the cave. So the prisoners reject him as a madman who has no sense at all. They get so angry that some want to kill him.
Plato's allegory of the cave gives us insight into the sword and fire and division that Jesus brings to earth. Jesus comes with a message of light, of love, of truth. He tells of a coming kingdom in which the poor and the outcasts will be liberated. His message is from above, but many prefer the shadows on the wall that they have always lived by. They think the shadows are the reality. So Jesus is denounced. Some want to kill him. They do not believe that he brings a message from beyond the darkness they live in. They plot to get rid of him.
In April of 1968 another good man was killed. A sniper's bullet ended the life of Martin Luther King, Jr., on a motel balcony in Memphis, Tennessee. A previous attempt had been made on his life. He had already survived a stabbing with a knife. On the flight to Memphis, the pilot came on the intercom system to say that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was on the plane. Special safety precautions had to be taken. He hoped the other passengers would be understanding and patient with the necessary delay this would cause. This Baptist preacher was the one who had stood up in Washington to speak of his dream. What was that dream? It was that all people would one day live in peace and harmony. Everywhere he spoke of justice and love. Everywhere he urged those who sought redress of grievances to do so non-violently. And everywhere somebody wanted to kill him. When someone finally succeeded, there were many who said that it was a shame that somebody had shot him. But he was, after all, a troublemaker. For having a dream of justice for all and for preaching non-violent resistance to oppression and for upsetting the shadowy truths by which a segregated society had lived, he was hated and despised. His ministry brought a sword, caused division, and set fire upon the earth.
Clarence Jordan of Americus, Georgia, was another who brought fire and sword by advocating justice and living by love. He established a small community of non-violent people who lived in full equality, ignoring the accidents of class, race, nationality, and creed. I along with others from Mercer University visited Koinonia Farm one day. Clarence showed us the holes made by bullets fired right over the place where some in the community slept. Like Jesus and King, Clarence Jordan had seen a great light. Those who continued to live by the shadows on the wall thought he was crazy. Those who lived by the worldly wisdom of the age were quite good at making out the patterns they saw on the back of the cave. They simply could not understand what Clarence was talking about. He was an accomplished student of the Greek New Testament. He offered to study the Bible with his opponents. They could only see him as a dangerous influence, a threat to decency and order. The bright light of truth not only makes people who live in darkness turn away; it also makes them angry. It makes them violent. The shadowy deceptions by which an unjust society lives cannot stand the truth that exposes their illusions.
Jesus did not come with the deliberate intention of causing the sword to be drawn, of provoking families to split, of bringing fire upon earth. Yet the inevitable outcome of his mission to bring light, love, and truth was just that. Hence, we see irony in his words: "I will preach peace, but I will stir up conflict; I will teach love, and people will hate me for it!"
People still divide against one another when they confront Jesus. Madalyn Murray O'Hair was an atheist. Some years ago she brought a suit against prayer in the public schools. She said it was unconstitutional for her son to be forced to be present when prayer was offered. She won the case. Her son was then a teenager in school. He was the person in whose behalf Madalyn O'Hair brought the case. The son grew up and became a Christian. She remained an atheist. Mother was set against son. Their relationship was strained.2
People over the centuries have fought each other over who is the true representative of Jesus on earth today. Protestants and Catholics have persecuted each other in the past, each group believing it alone possessed the way, the truth, and the life. In Northern Ireland Protestants and Catholics still kill each other. In our own country Christians divide over abortion, over civil rights, over prayer in schools, over national defense, and over practically every other issue that has a moral dimension. Fundamentalists and liberals accuse each other of betraying Jesus.
During the turmoil over racial issues in the 1950s and 1960s churches were split into warring factions. Some pastors were forced out of pastorates for suggesting that segregation might be contrary to the will of God. Some time after the Supreme Court decision of 1954 outlawing segregation in the public schools, a group of socially liberal church people from all over the South met in Nashville. Their purpose was to coordinate their efforts to move toward racial equality. They had such a good time together that they decided to celebrate their unity and commitment to justice with a communion service. Well, that's when the fight began. As I recall, they finally were able to overcome their disarray by using a Canadian order of service. Here was a group of good Christians united in fighting injustice who exposed their own conflicts over who is authorized properly to break the bread at the Lord's Table. It is a strange world we live in.
Jesus was right when he said he came to bring division, a sword, and fire. He wants to see peace on earth. He knows that peacemakers are often the cause of wars. He wants to see love embodied in human relationships. He knows that those who love most fully stir up hatred among those who cannot face their own hypocrisies. Jesus wants to see people believe the truth. He knows that truth-bearers often bring pain to eyes so accustomed to darkness that they cannot tell right from wrong. Jesus sought to bring love, peace, and unity. The result was hate, conflict, and division. No wonder he wished it did not have to be that way. No wonder he wanted to have his baptism over with.
What can all this teach us today? It leaves us with a paradoxical truth about life. We cannot always have goodness and truth without painful side effects. Love can generate hate, and hate can generate hate. Peacemakers can stir up trouble, and troublemakers can cause turmoil. Bearers of truth can start a fire, and liars can kindle flames. That is the way it is.
Beyond that we need to look at another passage in the larger text. Jesus speaks of discerning the signs of the times. As believers, we have the task of interpreting what is going on in the world and deciding what it all means. So let us be as wise as we can be in discerning the signs of the times. If we are to be numbered among those who bring fire, sword, and division, let us make sure it will be because we are disciples of Jesus and not among his enemies.
____________
1. Quoted in Anthony P. Dunbar, Against The Grain: Southern Radicals And Prophets, 1929-1959 (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1981), pp. 211-212.
2. This account is based on an interview with Madalyn O'Hair and her son I heard in 1980. I do not know what happened between them since or what the present situation is. Later, she disappeared, and suspicion arose that harm may have come to her.
