The Lord be with you,
And with your spirit.
Reading from the Holy Gospel according to Luke.
Glory to you,
O Lord.
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.
For from now on a household of five will be divided,
Three against two and two against three.
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.
And yet we call him the Prince of Peace.
The Bible is full of such little curveballs,
Isn't it?
We think we know exactly,
Exactly what is going to happen,
And then we get a section like Luke 12 where the Prince of Peace says,
Well,
Sorry for you.
I'm coming to bring division rather than peace.
Do you suppose that I am here to bring peace on earth?
No,
I tell you,
But rather division.
How does this equate to anything,
Anything,
Anything that we want to believe in our expression of Christianity?
How does this translate into what we believe Christ came to do?
I stand here day after day,
Sunday after Sunday,
When people join,
Saying that Christ came to through his death tear down the walls or the image or the misconception that we are separate.
And now I'm standing here today with a proverbial egg on my face because Jesus says that's not what he's here to do.
What are we to make of this passage?
Jesus says in other parts that we are the body.
We are all one body and that the eye cannot say that I am worthier than the foot.
And I think this is what Jesus is telling us here.
Because interesting thing,
He goes back to the focus on the family,
Division in the family.
We are encouraged to grow up and to live lives of conformity.
That is the way society at the moment raises up people.
Conform.
Be part of the mass.
Be unique,
But don't be too unique.
Otherwise we will shut you down.
We will cancel you.
Beautiful cancel culture.
Such a powerful thing of control,
Of celebrating that people can be unique until they are too unique and then they are out.
Each of us have a unique understanding of God.
And that understanding,
I believe,
Is perfect.
The way that I experience God,
Nobody else will ever experience because that is the way that I,
This expression of God,
Is experiencing God.
Just in the same way that no other person will experience God in exactly the same way.
Even if you are in the same congregation,
In the same religious fraternity or religious group,
No one person will experience God in exactly the same way.
And that,
I think,
Is what Jesus is trying to tell us here.
That we will not all have access to the same peace.
That we will not all have access to the same health.
Because we do not all have access to the same experiences and the same thoughts.
We are not clones.
Each of us,
Each of the parts of the body of Christ,
The sister,
The father,
The son,
The mother-in-law,
The sister-in-law,
The daughter-in-law,
Each of us have a unique and a different vision of the holiness of God.
It is almost as if,
Let's go back to family.
In the good old days,
People would get together,
And I know many of you still do,
And sit around the dinner table.
If we have several dishes on this table,
What is in front of me is not going to be in front of the other person,
Right in front.
I might have the potatoes in front of me.
Somebody else might have the spinach in front of them.
But it is all part of the same meal.
But if you ask everybody around the table,
What is in front of you,
And they go into specifics and they say,
Potato and spinach and carrots and whatever.
See no meat in this one,
Maybe.
We see the individual things in front of us,
Rather than taking a step back from the table and saying,
I see the meal of the family in front of me.
And that is where we are divided.
Christ came to teach us that the division that we experience is an illusion.
And I firmly believe that this disconnect that I have with any other person is merely an illusion because God is all.
God is the feast.
We just see the different aspects of the feast in front of us.
And one day,
Maybe if we are lucky,
We will become like God.
And we will see the feast for what it is.
And we will forget that this one has been hogging the gravy.
We will forget that that one is full of nonsense,
And they don't want to try a new dish.
Oh,
Pictures that we are sharing today,
Isn't it?
Not wanting to try a new dish,
Not wanting to share our dish,
Or insisting that everybody should be eating the exact same dish,
The thing that is right in front of me.
Maybe I don't like carrots.
It doesn't mean that I'm not partaking of the feast.
Maybe I do not agree with the expression that somebody has of divinity of God.
But it doesn't mean that I have the authority or the right to tell them,
Your meal,
Your God,
Your expression of divinity is wrong.
So my prayer for everybody this week is that we will get together and look up from the dish that is right in front of us.
And we will realize that there's a whole family sitting around the table,
And that each family member is unique.
And that each family member is part of something holy,
Is part of God.
And that divinity will reconnect,
We will all reconnect at some time and forget about everything that divides us.
Amen.
