14 th August: 13 th Sunday after Pentecost

Unsettling

Conflicts in the family can be very unsettling. Who does not fear the disruption caused when families start to break up, parents divorce, teenagers rebel? It’s natural for us to feel insecure when these things happen. So how do we feel when we hear Jesus’ socially disruptive words?

Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division! From now on five in one household will be divided, three against two and two against three (vv. 51–52).

And Jesus continues by highlighting divisions between fathers and sons, mothers, and daughters, and even mothers-in-law and daughters-in-law (v. 53).

We can feel so unsettled by these words that we’d rather not hear them in church—wishing they were bracketed out of our lectionaries, even edited from our bibles. After all, these words are unsettling, and if you don’t feel uncomfortable hearing them, then have you really heard them? No doubt, anti-family agitators or anti-status-quo anarchists may welcome Jesus’ words. But for most of us, they are problematic. Why does Jesus say he is bringing division? It sounds like bad news; what can it have to do with the Gospel, which is always good news?

First of all, let’s be clear, these words are descriptive, not prescriptive. There is no mandate here to disrupt the family or break up the home, even if cults have used these words to bid that recruits separate themselves from their families. So how do we, family-loving, non-cultic-thinking, supporters of community cohesion cope with a text that describes the breakdown of family, of society? What has this got to do with Jesus Christ?

Well, the unsettling that Jesus talks about begins with himself: Luke 12 talks of a testing, purifying fire that Jesus himself has to go through (v. 49); a submerging (or baptism) into the depths of evil that has to undergone (v. 50). Jesus’ language of division (v. 51) is described as a ‘sword’ in Matthew (10:34): a judgement that distinguishes right from wrong, good from evil—a judgement that Christ’s presence inaugurates as people respond to him and his message of the Kingdom. Inevitably, the coming of Jesus causes confrontation, because: “He comes into collision with sinful attitudes, wrong structures, and vested interests”. ¹ And so, ordinary life is unsettled; the seeming peace of our lives is disrupted towards a greater peace. As the prophets remind us, it is easy to proclaim peace where there is no peace, to justify the order of things even when that order means injustice to those not at the centre of that order.

Although we may benefit from peace and order in the UK, it is a lesser peace because many citizens, not counting millions around the word, do not know peace and order in their lives and communities. How can we be settled poised and at ease—when our world is so unsettled? Although our lives appear settled, it’s a lesser peace. Often we only feel settled because we are protected and cushioned from the unsettlement felt keenly by others. Obviously, if we are insulated from the fires that others have to go through, then this text doesn’t engage us: we cannot hear it speak, cannot face either the challenge of the judgement on our lives and commitments, or the promise of a greater peace than the lesser peace we know.

Today’s text is difficult for us not only because we find it unsettling, but also because it is remote—it doesn’t appear to address us. What can we do?

Whenever a text is difficult and unsettling, we need to examine how the passage fits within the biblical book and how the text is designed to function towards its intended audience. After all, although it was not written directly for us, it was written for real, flesh-and-blood people. Who were those people, what realities were they facing, and how is the biblical author speaking to them using the stories and words of faith? The context of Luke 12 is one of resistance to Jesus and his message, with decisions leading, for him, to the unsettling of families—not that family life should be upset, but this was what was happening in practice. For Luke’s audience, too, the decision to follow Christ was both life-changing and life-threatening—disrupting normal social bonds and placing the believer at risk where they might find themselves submerged, undergoing the fires of purification and testing that Jesus went through himself (cf. Matthew 10:17ff.).

Also, whenever we are unsettled by a text that doesn’t speak to us, we need to discover those who know that it addresses them. Who are the Christians for whom Luke 12 speaks seriously, existentially? The answer is not hard to discern: it is Christians under persecution in our day who resonate with this text and are its best interpreters—not biblical scholars in their studies nor prayer groups in their homes, but those for whom the text is real on the deadly streets of their lives.

Make no mistake, many of our brothers and sisters around the world know—know deeply—how unsettled our world is and how peace, true peace, seems far off as they face violent persecution: bombing of churches, killing of priests, people massacred simply for being Christian. This is no theoretical argument about division in society—it is a deadly and daily reality. Are they for Christ—and prepared to go through the fire—or do they opt for a lesser peace by siding with the unjust and true disturbers of order? It is an existential question for many, as it is not for us.

So today’s text—that we find so unsettling—is fundamentally for Christians who are being persecuted: who know what it is to face the fire—sometimes literally. For all of us not directly facing persecution, a text like Luke 12 will always seem unduly unsettling; but, of course, it’s not speaking to us but to those in a context of injustice, violence, and disorder, where it is inevitable that a radical choice for Christ brings division. This is what happens in a sinful, disordered world when brought face to face with God’s Christ.

So, let us not succumb to mealy-mouthed bracketing of the text from our lectionaries or arrogant editing it out of our bibles, for this text speaks directly and existentially to many of our sisters and brothers today in Syria and Iraq, Pakistan, Nigeria, and elsewhere.

The big question for us today is whether we are more unsettled by Jesus’ words about division within family and society or by the actual division and break up of families and society as Christians are persecuted today for following Jesus Christ. How we answer that question will say a lot about us—and we may find that the most unsettling thing of all. We began with an unsettling biblical text and we end with a big unsettling question addressed to our souls.