Jesus said to his disciples,
I have come to bring fire to the earth,
And how I wish it were blazing already!
There is a baptism I must still receive,
And how great is my distress till it is over!
Do you suppose that I am here to bring peace on earth?
No,
I tell you,
But rather division.
From now on,
A household of five will be divided,
Three against two,
And two against three,
The father divided against the son,
Son against father,
Mother against daughter,
Daughter against mother,
Mother-in-law against daughter-in-law,
Daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.
The Gospel of the Lord.
Praise to you,
Lord Jesus Christ.
Dear St.
Luke,
I think we need to write him a letter.
Dear St.
Luke,
How deep were you in the wine bottle when you wrote this part of your Gospel?
How bitter were you when you recalled this part of the Gospel?
Because this kind of doesn't make sense.
In the bigger scheme of things,
It doesn't make sense if you look at what you wrote in this section versus the rest of your Gospel,
Which is so full of compassion and love.
P.
S.
Thank you for keeping it short.
Love us.
Let's accept that perhaps this was not St.
Luke having a moment of extreme cognitive dissonance and wrote down things that really,
But this does not feel right,
Does it?
I am not here to bring peace,
But rather division.
It kind of hurts to read,
Doesn't it?
Because isn't the Christ that we know and the Gospel that we read filled with love and compassion,
Supposedly?
What happened here?
Why is Jesus telling his disciples,
I have come to bring fire to the earth and how I wish it were blazing already.
It's so easy for us to just focus on everything has to be good.
If we believe,
The whole prosperity Gospel approach is if you believe hard enough,
If you give hard enough,
Then you will receive whatever you want,
Whatever you desire,
Whatever you need,
And that includes peace and that includes anything.
It doesn't work that way.
I'm sorry.
Christ shows us here in the Gospel reading that being a follower of Christ,
Following the law of compassion,
Might not be sunshine and rainbows because people might not necessarily understand.
Heck,
I don't think we even understand ourselves what being a follower of the law of compassion and of Christ is most days.
We try,
But it's so easy to be human because that is what we are.
I tell you,
But rather division,
Not peace.
Isn't that where we find ourselves in the world at the moment in the communities that we are in?
I'm not even talking about countries fighting countries and religions fighting religions.
No.
And even within those religions,
Let's now drill down.
Expression of religion versus expression of religion,
Protestant versus Catholic versus Orthodox and all the iterations in between.
And then within that,
Different understanding of the dogma and of the teachings splitting within those communities one another.
And then within that,
Different churches,
Parishes,
What you call them,
Differing in how they see things.
And then within that,
Little cells,
Little groups seeing things differently.
And then within that,
Families and individuals seeing things differently,
Experiencing God differently.
That's what Jesus says here.
Two against three,
Two against three,
Three against two.
The father divided against the son and the families like that.
And every Sunday I stand here and I preach about the illusion of separation that doesn't truly exist.
So then why on earth does Christ put this in?
Maybe to trip me up after five years of preaching again.
Maybe.
God has a wicked sense of humor,
But I don't really think that for hundreds of years this was the gospel reading of the 20th Sunday in ordinary time in year C just for me to stand here and have egg on my face.
Maybe there's something else.
Maybe here Christ teaches us that no one being will experience me the same as the next,
Even if they sleep in the same bed,
Even if they live in the same house.
No one being will experience me the way that the next one does,
Because we all experience God and everything through our illusion of separation,
Through the being that we are,
Through the ego and the filters that keeps this illusion of separation that is the human experience alive.
And maybe this does not have to ring against everything that Christ teaches about love and compassion.
Maybe the baptism that Christ went through and that we need to go through is the acceptance that I will never experience things the same as anybody else.
The acceptance thereof,
Because once I can accept it,
What happens?
I have the opportunity to then also accept that the person standing across from me,
Talking to me in a different dialect,
A different language,
With a different skin color,
A different sexual orientation,
A different religion,
Living on the other side of the planet,
Has as a unique experience of God as I am,
Because everybody has a unique experience.
It means that we are all equal and our experiences of God are all equally unique.
Just think of the power in that.
If I can accept that all have the same experience through the fact that it is unique,
I can stop judging.
I can stop judging and I can open myself to perhaps say,
Through Google Translate,
If this person does not speak the language that I do,
But to ask them,
Teach me about your experience,
Brother,
Sister,
Sibling.
And if you want,
I will share about mine.
Share,
Not convince,
Share.
And maybe we can learn from each other.
Maybe we can grow in our individual understanding.
Maybe there's just this small moment of,
Aha,
Then we can live in compassion.
And even if father is divided against son and son against father,
It is OK.
It is OK.
We can embrace that individual expression that each of us has.
Maybe that is the baptism that we need to go through.
The stripping of the need to be perfectly right for others,
To be,
To have the world perfectly aligned to us.
Because I've got news for us all,
It'll never be aligned.
Because the world just is,
It's not aligned to anybody.
It might seem that way,
Because some people get away,
We think with things that they do and the world is on their side and the world is against us,
As a perception,
I'm sorry.
The world just is.
Things just are.
And if we can move into that space of understanding,
Then perhaps I can start looking at the person next to me in my house,
In my community,
In my country,
In the world,
And I can say,
What can I do to make your day a bit better?
What can I do to show you,
Through my actions,
Through my actions,
The God that I serve?
Because it's through those actions that we share,
Hopefully,
The compassion of the God that we serve.
And my God is a God of compassion.
My experience of God is terrible love.
So terrible that I stand shaking,
Just thinking of it,
How overpowering,
How all-encompassing the grace and the love of God is.
That's the way I understand my God.
I get swept away in that awesome wonder.
And maybe I can try and share that.
Amen.
