Sunday Sermon - 17 August
When I was a young priest, I was told by my experienced priest mentors that a homily should be uplifting and joyous. That it should make your parishioners happy and leave them feeling cheerful (except in Lent of course).
I think of this advice, especially now in these dog days of summer when I think it takes a bit more effort to come to church. It’s a nice morning, if a little overcast, and it would be so easy to roll over in bed or have an extra cup of coffee and sit outside enjoying a gentle start to the day before it gets too hot and muggy to enjoy. You put effort into coming here and deserve to be rewarded with a sense of God’s joy and happiness in your life. Then what happens - you get to church and blam, these are the readings for today. Seriously? What’s with these readings?
I want to come to church and read happy passages from Scripture. I, too, want to be uplifted and leave our worship celebration feeling cheerfully fulfilled but when I read these readings earlier in the week, I was like: you’ve got to be kidding me!
Let me explain a bit. Last weekend our cottage association’s Facebook site started blowing up. We had a wildfire that was creeping closer and closer to our lake and by Sunday night it was reported as being only 6km away from our lake and cottages. On Tuesday morning, I read today’s readings to prepare for this service and this Gospel:
Jesus said, "I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!
God, are you kidding me right now?!
Before I go any further, by Thursday the fire near our lake was officially deemed “Under Control” with no expansion or further threat to our lake area but, as I’m sure you all know, there are still many wildfires burning throughout our province and country that are not yet under control and we pray for those who are threatened.
One of the fascinating conversations that started on our Facebook site and got unnecessarily amplified was about evacuation. People were posting questions like: “Are you going to evacuate?”, “How do we know if we have to evacuate?”, “Can they make us evacuate?”
A debate started. You know how Facebook chats can be - everyone has to express their opinion on a matter and arguments can easily break out.
That got me thinking again about today’s Gospel and readings.
Luke is presenting Jesus as frustrated. Frustrated that his followers cannot see the obvious situation that is upon them. He even goes so far as to rebuke the crowd: they can read weather patterns, but cannot discern “this present time” — the urgency of God’s kingdom breaking in.
Jesus says He came to bring fire to the earth, a fire that symbolizes purification, judgment, and the refining work of the Spirit. He also explains that His “baptism” is not water and we know Luke’s referring to His impending suffering and death upon the cross.
Jesus acknowledges that His mission will cause division, even within families — not because He delights in conflict, but because the decision to follow Him is radical and will create sharp lines between belief and rejection. The point being, God’s coming to us as the incarnate Jesus is decisive, it demands a response, you can’t stay neutral - you have to make a choice, we have to make a choice and we have a duty to act on the choice that we make.
Just like when a fire is coming near, you have to make a choice and act upon it. Are you going to stay put or are you going to evacuate? You have to make a choice and live (or die) by the consequences of that choice.
Luke is telling us that our encounter with Christ inherently creates crisis, and the response of the people will cause conflict. Faith will create a division within the people - and he uses a family division, a family conflict, to illustrate his point.
Jesus’ reference is to division within a household - the five who are divided are the father, the mother, the son, the mother-in-law and the son’s wife. Three against two and two against three, but let’s look more closely at how Jesus explains it. The father against the son, the mother against the daughter, the Parent in-laws against their Children in-laws. Jesus describes a generational conflict; the father, mother and mother-in-law vs. the younger son and his bride. The old age vs. the new age.
Jesus, as He refers to his coming as like the coming of fire and illustrates it with the example of generational conflict within a family, is trying to make the point that His identity as the Messiah, as God, should be obvious. The times have changed and the choice should be clear. Regardless, we are still given the choice. God gives us the choice and thus, because we are gracefully given this choice, there will be inherent conflict. We won’t agree - just like the familiar family squabbles between the young and old - the past and the future.
Many Christians interpret these passages, our readings for today, as permission for judgment. Permission to judge those who make different choices than you, judgement that creates conflict. It’s been forever thus throughout history. I’ve just finished reading a book called “A World Lit Only By Fire” by William Manchester. It’s about the evolution of the medieval mind, the Reformation and the birth of the renaissance. The moving from the past to the future, the old to the new.
A large part of the book is about the challenge and change within the Catholic Church, the Reformation, and the religious choices and institutional judgement in response to those choices. It discusses the Inquisitions, the burning at stakes and the other violent persecutions of those whose choices were judged by the ‘religious and political leaders’ and monarchies of the day. It’s passages like today’s that are twisted by those who abuse their power and ‘in the name of God’ judge others even unto death.
That is not what today’s readings are about. We are not to judge. We have no right to judge the choices of others. Jesus makes the point that, in the midst of the crisis that is created by the coming of Christ, a crisis that only arises because of our God-given right to choose and the conflict that creates, it is God who is the judge and God only. Isaiah makes this very clear to us today in the passage that is referred to as ‘The Song of the Vineyard.’
This passage speaks of a farmer who does everything to care for his vineyard and to ensure that it grows great and wonderful grapes. Despite all of his hard work and protection, the vineyard fails him and grows wild (which can also be translated or understood as rotten).
Isaiah is very explicit in this prophetic song. It moves from the Farmer’s loving care to firm judgment. God is the Farmer. Why does God judge? The answer is in verse 7:
“For the vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel, and the people of Judah are his pleasant planting; he expected justice, but saw bloodshed; righteousness, but heard a cry!”
The vineyard is Israel and Judah, the “good grapes” who should have been full of justice and righteousness, but instead God finds bloodshed and cries of distress. God expected from his people justice and righteousness, moral living in communal harmony - love. Instead, they gave him empty ritual and bloodshed. God then judged them and it is only God who has the power to judge.
This morning, then, we are reminded that it is not our place to judge, it is our place to choose. To live by the consequences of our choices and to accept the judgement God, and God only, has for us in the life that is beyond this one.
We are here this morning because we have made our choice, at least for today, and we have the God-given right, actually, a God-given duty, to make this choice every day, every moment, every minute, every situation that happens upon us. God has given us the right to choose who we are as people, as human beings in this world we live in.
Our choices inform our duties and they are pretty clear. If you’ve chosen to be a Christian, a follower of Christ, we have a duty to respond to Jesus and I’ll sum up our duty up in three ways:
As Christians we have a duty to respond: We must choose whether to follow Jesus with full commitment and allegiance. Loving our neighbour as ourselves - just as Jesus asks of us in the Great Commandment.
As Christians we have a duty to witness: to point, lovingly - not judgmentally - others to God, in truth and with love.
We have a duty to discern: to use our God given intellect, to recognize what is of God and what is not. In other words, we have to be humble, keep our prayerful wits about us and not be taken in by religious charlatans or superficial and selfish charisms. This discernment is made more understandable when we leave to God, that which is God’s.
As I’ve said, it is God’s prerogative to judge, for as Samuel says, God alone sees the heart (1 Sam. 16:7). It is God’s prerogative, and God’s only, to condemn and it is God’s prerogative to, as Jesus speaks of today, distinguish the faithful from the faithless.
This is all very serious stuff and I don’t think I’ve left us with much joy this morning and I’m sorry about that. If I can’t leave you with joy let me leave you with comfort, comfort in knowing that the choice you made this morning was a good choice. The choice you made this morning to come here, instead of having that extra cup of coffee or sleeping in just a little longer, was a good choice. I’m not judging your choice, I am honouring it as yours to make. I also respect the choice of those who chose otherwise, for it’s their’s to make.
This morning, you chose to set aside this time for God. You chose to gather here, together with us, God’s people, to hear His Word, to pray, to worship, and to be restored, forgiven, and to share this Eucharist together, in thanksgiving. You chose to be refueled with spiritual energy and embrace the love that comes from being together celebrating our shared faith, experiencing His love.
Our choice, to choose something as simple as coming to church on Sunday, may not seem like a big dramatic choice - with life or death consequences - like choosing whether or not to evacuate when faced with an impending wildfire, but it is still deeply significant.
Every Sunday that you come here, you are — in a small but real way — saying: “I’m here God. I thank you, God. I’m doing my best to follow Jesus.”
If you do that week after week, as regularly as you can, it shapes you. It keeps your eyes on Christ, it strengthens your faith, and it helps you be ready when those bigger, harder, perhaps divisive, life-defining choices need to be made.
Coming to church doesn’t save you — only Jesus does that - but choosing to show up to worship gives us the strength to follow Jesus and to share His love with this ever changing world.
Amen.