Broadway Christian Church
Columbia, Missouri
Morning Worship
August 15, 2004

Prayer of the Day

Come Holy Spirit; come into our lives, our families, our church, our nation, our world.  Come to change us that we may become the people we are meant to be, remembering that Christ is for us and with us!  Amen.

Scripture - Luke 12:49-59

[Jesus said,] “I have come to bring fire on the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!  But I have a baptism to undergo, and how distressed I am until it is completed!  Do you think I came to bring peace to this earth?  No, I tell you, I came to bring division.  From now on there will be five in a family divided against each other, three against two and two against three.  They will be divided, father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.”

He said to the crowd: “When you see a cloud rising in the west, immediately you say, ‘It’s going to rain,’ and it does.  You hypocrites!  You don’t get it.  You know how to interpret the appearance of the earth and the sky.  How is it that you do not know how to interpret the signs of the times?  

Why do you refuse to see what is right?  Don’t you know if you meet your accuser on the way to court, you are suppose to try to settle the matter before you reach the judge?  If you wait, all that is left is to be sentenced.  And you won’t be free again until the last penny is paid.”

Message
A Wrecking Ball Outside
Rick Frost

Today’s text comes from the lectionary.  The lectionary, as some of you know, is the Church Universal’s choice of Scriptures for the Church all over the world to consider at the same time.  It is said if we pay attention to the lectionary and do it faithfully, in a three-year cycle we will hit all of the major themes found in Scripture.  We don’t always do that at Broadway, but today’s text happens to be one of those.  It is one I would not have chosen for today.  My guess is it may be a text you would not like to hear, but it is the text that is offered.

You can see why I wouldn’t have chosen that one.  Right?  It is a tough text.  It is a hard text.  It is one of those texts many people wish Jesus had never said.  How do we get into that?  Let me see if I can help you?

Jan and I love it when our family gets together.  Now, as you know, most of them live all over the place, but it is really a hoot when our gang gets together.  It’s a fun time.  Some of them are pretty good cooks, and they enjoy getting together and rolling out the feast for the family.  I’m a little prejudice, but the kids are witty, and they are quick.  They love to tease each other.  Does that happen with your kids?  I have found they somewhat exaggerate stories about their childhood and the things they remember about the past.  Somehow I don’t quite remember it the way they tell it nowadays, but anyway…   Someone always seems to come up with a game we can play, like Texas Hold’em.  I don’t know if you’ve done that or not.  Or maybe there is an activity we all enjoy.  We rent a movie, get the whole gang together, and we sit around and make hilarious comments about the characters and the scripts.  It is nothing like being quiet at the movies.  It is just a fun time to get our gang together, and we enjoy it.

But… I bet almost all of us in this place today have been at family gatherings and wished to high heaven we were somewhere else.  I know I have.  Has anybody else had that experience?  You know what I’m talking about?  You’ve been there, haven’t you? 

You know from your experience there are certain subjects you do not bring up at the family table.  Is that right?  Most of us do not go to the family reunion or to the holiday gathering and talk about the war in Iraq.  We don’t talk about same-sex marriage.  We don’t bring up the subject of the plight of the poor, or the economic forecasts for the people of this country.  We do not spend time talking together about the availability of jobs, or the health-care system in this country, or the number of people in this world who want very much to kill us.  We just don’t talk about those things.  It’s like fire.  It brings division.  There are different opinions around the table, and families find themselves set one against the other.

But… None of those topics, folks, and those like them create any more of a crisis than Jesus.  Do you really want to shut down a family gathering?  You just say something like this: “So how do you all feel about Jesus as the Christ, the Son of the Living God, and that he is Lord and Savior of this world.”  Oh, man!  Bingo!  Pin drop!  Or worse, ducking for cover.  You have those families.  You know what I’m talking about.

Jesus, in our text today, speaks a hard truth.  It is a tough truth.  It is a truth that sometimes we would rather not hear.  Millions prefer if it had never been said.  Millions more are avoiding it like the plague.  Jesus said, “I come, not to bring peace, but division.”  As if our world, our culture, our community, our families, Lord knows, don’t have enough problems already.  All most of us want is to live together harmoniously in peace, tranquility, quiet, and everybody just getting along.  We just want to get along with people living happily ever after together.  How wonderful that would be.  We want that badly.

Many think that Jesus is suppose to be one who helps our families, not divide our families.  He is the one who is supposed to be the glue that keeps things together.  After all, “The family that prays together; stays together.”  Right? 

Yet here in Luke’s gospel, as well as in Matthew, Jesus says “I have come not to bring peace, but division.”  It is a hard truth to hear.

Years ago, Francis Bernardone was a young soldier.  He found himself fighting for his country.  He was a brave, courageous person.  He had the looks.  He had the family fortune waiting for him in the wings.  He had a fabulous future waiting for him.  His father was so proud of him – so proud of his son.  But there was this problem.  You see… young Francis kept going to church.  When he went to church, he prayed.  He kept asking God what God would want him to do.  Over time, young Francis became convinced that God did not want him to be a soldier.  God did not want him to take over the family business.  God did not want him to become the most eligible bachelor in his country.  No. 

What God wanted him to do was to become a follower, a disciple, of Jesus, which for him involved a life of serving the poorest of the poor.  Francis had heard some Scripture somewhere that said, “Go and sell all that you have and give it to the poor.”  Francis, being young, naïve, and the idealist that he was, said, “OK.”  And he did.  He sold everything he had, and he gave to the poor. 

Now back home, Daddy was not pleased.  His boy had given away the things his Dad had given him.  Dad had absolutely no inclination to take the sayings of Jesus literally.  In fact, he was so riled up, according to history, that he had Francis literally thrown in jail and sued him.  He took him to court.  That led young Francis to counter publicly with these words, “No longer is Pietro Bernardone my father.  From now on, my Father is in heaven.” 

Of course, you know, young Francis became the great St. Francis of Assisi, one of the greatest followers of Jesus of all times.  It can happen.  It does happen.  Jesus can and will set a parent against a child, a child against a parent. 

Some of you in this room know this.  You’ve had this experience in your own family.  Jan and I have.  You get excited about knowing and serving Christ, but your kinfolk – maybe a parent, maybe a child, maybe a sibling, maybe a spouse – just don’t get it.  They just don’t understand.  It can become painful for you.  It is painful.  You wish you could do something about it, but you can’t. 

According to the gospel, it is more than that.  According to today’s reading of Scripture, the very presence of Jesus – the very presence of the Living Spirit of Christ – creates a crisis.  It is suppose to create a crisis.  As the Gospel of John says, “Jesus is the crisis of the world (John 12).”  He said it this way: “Now is the time for judgment on this world.  Now is the time for the prince of this world to be driven out.  But I, when I am lifted up from this earth, I will draw all people to myself.”

Do you see what’s going on here?  The presence of the Living Christ, by its very nature, folks, creates a crisis.  I looked up the word “crisis” this week.  It does not mean what I usually associate “crisis” to be.  I usually hear people say, “We’re having a crisis.”  What they mean is, “We are having an emergency.”  That is not what the word means at all.  The word “crisis” means “that critical moment, that turning point, that pivotal decision, a decision that really, really matters.” 

Think of it this way.  Two raindrops strike the gable of a house, and that very moment could conclude with both of them being literally oceans apart.  To be placed in a situation of decision is critical.  Why?  Because you know and I know if we are ever going to turn toward one person, that means we have to turn away from some others.  If we are ever going to turn toward certain goals in our life, that means we have to not turn in the direction of other goals.  That means if we are ever going to embrace a particular set of values, we have to turn our backs to other sets of values. 

According to Luke and Matthew, God is creating a crisis in the world in the person of Jesus of Nazareth.  His very presence in Spirit causes everyone to make a decision.  Not to make a decision is to choose.  Not to choose is to choose, even within families.  That choice that everyone has to make sets the course for your life.  According to Scripture, it is not only the course for your daily living for as long as you happen to be gifted to live on this earth, but for eternity.  Wow!

“The people,” said Jesus, “are so good at forecasting the weather.”  Didn’t we see that this week?  We knew two or three days in advance that Hurricane Charlie was heading toward the Gulf Coast of Florida.  People were warned about what was coming.  Approximately one and a half million people evacuated their coastal homes, took shelter, and saved their lives.  Some of them stuck around; they didn’t make it.  “People are good at forecasting the weather,” said Jesus, “but they are blind to the signs of God.” 

According to the Scriptures, the time of God is now.  It is urgent.  It’s important.  It’s so important that you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to know that everyone needs to attend immediately to his or her relation with God. 

“Wise people,” says Jesus, “settle accounts before they reach the courthouse.”  Reason?  Because once the judge takes charge of a case, it’s done.  Ask anybody who has followed the National Benevolent Association recently.  It’s done!  It’s in the judge’s hands now.  All that is left now is the sentencing.  Wow!  In other words, give attention to your life before God now, because if you delay it to the end, all that remains is the sentencing.

How do you do that?  How do we give attention to our life before God?  The simple answer that has come down through the tradition of the Church through the ages is this:

1.      Make a decision.

2.      Open your heart.

3.      Invite the Spirit of the Living God into the deep places of your life.

There’s nothing new about that.  We’ve been hearing that forever.  Now, I need to warn you to do that is no small thing.  We are not talking about surface stuff.  We’re not talking about trivial, innocuous things here. 

Sometimes, folks, we think we are going to invite God into our life, and God’s going to come into our life and look around, and God is going to see that you and I need maybe a new floor, or a maybe a little new furniture, or maybe a little cleaning up.  So we go along for the first six months and we’re thinking how nice it is to have these improvements.  Then one day, you look outside, and there is a crane with a dog-gone wrecking ball.  It turns out, you see, that God thinks you and I need a whole new foundation.  Our foundation is shot.  We have to start over from scratch.  So, if that happens, get out of the house.  Let the wrecking ball do its work.  Let it demolish anything that holds us back from God.  Then let your life be rebuilt on the only foundation you and I know that gives new life.  What is that foundation?  Our only one foundation is Jesus Christ our Lord.

This is not new.  But it’s hard to hear sometimes, isn’t it?  So… I invite you… I encourage you to welcome the fire.  Welcome the division.  As Barbara Brown Taylor says in one of her books so beautifully, “I hope that none of you rest until you have felt the Holy Spirit of God blow through your life, rearranging things, opening things up, setting your head and your heart on fire.  Now there is nothing you can do to make that happen except pray.  Do you know what the prayer is?  It has been around in the Church for 2000 years.  The prayer is simply this, ‘Come, Holy Spirit, come.’  Come.  Now, if you don’t want things to change, then for heaven’s sake don’t pray that prayer.  But if you are that type of person who likes to stand out on the deck when there is a storm moving through, so that you can feel the power pushing the trees around, you are probably a good candidate for the ‘Holy Spirit Prayer.’ 

Is that your prayer today?  It’s up to you.  It’s up to me.  “Come, Holy Spirit, come on, come.”

And we all say together… “Amen.”

Benediction

Restoring God, you want to complete amazing works in each of us.  Sometimes that means tearing down what we pursue in our limited vision.  Give us faith and peace that goodness and mercy flow from your heart to ours.  Give us courage and confidence to move forward with your amazing grace.  Amen.