Not Good News?

No wonder neither A.J. nor Carolyn wanted to preach today! Here we are on a lazy summer day, about to enjoy a lovely picnic, and we’ve just heard some of the hardest lessons of the liturgical year. Honestly, what were the crafters of the lectionary thinking when they set these lessons for the summer? Winter maybe, but not warm, lazy summer, and especially when our groaning potluck table beckons!

But we are part of a tradition that respects Scripture and has given us a broad three-year system of Scripture readings to be heard in public worship. And hear these lessons we must, for our spiritual health, and for our growth as followers of Jesus.

Unquestionably, the lesson from the prophet Isaiah is hard to hear. Through the prophet’s voice we first hear a love song, in which God describes all the tender care that God has lavished on Israel. The prophet then lets us hear God’s profound disappointment when Israel does not live up to God’s expectations. Did you hear the poignancy, the infinite sadness, in God’s “Why did it yield wild grapes?” Did you hear the grief in God’s decision to abandon Israel to her own ways? Our psalm echoes the same themes, but it ends with a promise both we and the psalmist know that Israel will never be able to keep: “And so will we never turn away from you….”

Our lesson from the Letter to the Hebrews isn’t a lot better. The writer gives us examples of people who were faithful to God’s call. But what did many of them get for their faithfulness? Torture, mocking, and imprisonment. And the writer’s counsel? Look to Jesus – who endured all that and more! Really God?

Our gospel lesson is perhaps the hardest of all to hear. We’re in the middle of the gospel of Luke. As we heard in chapter 9, Jesus has “set his face to go to Jerusalem.” While Jesus is no doubt already focused on the events that will happen in Jerusalem, in the narrative we are on a road trip with Jesus and his friends. This and the following chapters, approximately through chapter 17, are only loosely structured in terms of story, time, and place. They seem to be more a collection of Jesus’ sayings, as the earliest community of Jesus’ followers remembered them. It’s as if the writer wanted to make sure that everything the community remembered was included. So these chapters have a cobbled-together feeling, with some sayings addressed to closer disciples, and some to wider crowds. Thus in today’s reading, the saying about conflicts within families is addressed to the disciples, while the saying about interpreting changes to come is addressed to a wider audience, perhaps curious villagers who gathered around Jesus as he passed through their area.

Even so, it’s important for us to hear Jesus’ words here. First, it’s important to hear the passion and sense of urgency in Jesus’ voice, as he wishes for his work in Jerusalem to be finished. It’s also important for us to hear what those who take his message seriously may face, those who seek to follow his example of loving self-giving, those who seek to welcome all, especially the poor and those on the social margins, and those who seek to produce good fruit and work for the justice and righteousness that God so clearly expects.

Jesus’ warning is clear: those who take the gospel seriously and seek diligently to follow him will inevitably face conflict with those around them. Certainly, Jesus’ followers will face conflict with the powers that be: the rich and powerful never want to hear that God loves the entire cosmos, all of creation, and that God especially has a preference for the poor and marginalized. And more: Jesus’ followers will also face conflict within their own families. It is not that Jesus desires that family members be at odds over following him. It is more that Jesus is realistic – and wants his followers to be realistic – about the real costs of taking the gospel seriously. So consider yourself warned!

And why should his followers face such conflict? Here and elsewhere in Luke’s gospel we hear Jesus’ reminder that he is calling together a new kind of community, not one based on blood ties and the unequal social structures sustained by traditional patriarchal family roles. Rather, Jesus is calling together a new kind of community, a community that is united not by devotion to clan or tribe, but a community that finds its identity solely in Jesus, a community where everybody matters, a community that looks “to Jesus” as it pursues its commitment to follow him and work for the coming of God’s reign.

We know only too well that our commitment to Jesus’ way and our attempt to work for God’s justice and righteousness lead to conflict, even conflict with beloved family members. We also know that when we commit ourselves to a particular faith community, we may have to leave behind our families and all that was once comforting and familiar to us.

There are so many stories of the cost involved in our faith commitments. In many stories from the early church, we encounter those who faced martyrdom. Perhaps no such story is more heart-rending than that of Perpetua and her maid Felicity. Perpetua was a high-born Roman matron in third-century Carthage whose family begged her to turn her back on the strange new religion of Jesus and return to them. Instead, Perpetua left behind her newborn infant and, with Felicity at her side, bravely faced death. A thousand years later, Clare of Assisi, whose family traced its lineage all the way back to the Roman republic, heard St. Francis preach. Although she was probably betrothed, she defied her family, left behind her riches, and joined Francis’s mission, later founding her own order, now known as the Poor Clares. During the English Reformation, family members were also deeply divided. Some, like Thomas More, refused to break with the Catholic Church in England, and was the only one of his family to be put to death. Others, to the dismay of their families, eagerly embraced the new church. And there are so many others. Here are just a few more. Elizabeth Seton, who left behind her proper Episcopalian family to join the Roman Catholic Church, eventually founded both the first Catholic girls school in the US and the Sisters of Charity. Samuel Isaac Joseph Scherechewsky was a Russian Jew, whose family expected him to become a rabbi. Instead, he found the Church of England, eventually became Anglican bishop of Shanghai, and translated the Bible into Chinese. Alice Paul, a champion of women’s suffrage, endured force-feeding in prison when she attempted hunger strikes. As we know only too well, Martin Luther King, Jr. was a martyr to the cause of civil rights, while his followers endured unspeakable hatred and violence in their segregated communities.

And with all that, we also know that sincere Christians – or members of any faith community – can wind up on different sides of religious, social, and political issues. Witness the many families in this area who wound up on different sides of our Civil War. I have just finished a book about Americans who joined the Spanish Civil War. There too, families were deeply divided. Today Republicans and Democrats – uneasily perhaps – coexist in the same family.

And so then, what are we to do? As people who profess to follow Jesus, who are willing to hear the hard words of today’s Scripture readings, how are we know how to produce the good grapes that God calls us to produce? How are we know whether to continue on course, despite conflict with family members and the wider community, or whether to heed the words of those who would pull us back? In effect, how are we to discern whether it is truly God who is leading us, and the path that God calls us to follow?

The answer to those questions is the one given by the writer of Hebrews: look “to Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith….” In practice, that means regularly engaging in worship and prayer, letting ourselves be nourished in Word and Sacrament. It means intelligently reading Scripture, with both some understanding of the history and context of any particular book or passage, and openness to letting Scripture address us where we are. It means thoughtfully and prayerfully engaging with the issues of the day, knowing that even reasonable people can disagree. And it means admitting that, in order to remain true to the call we hear from God, we may have to disagree with those we love, over the way we express our faith, and over the way we seek to bring in God’s reign.

Yes, today’s Scriptures are not easy to hear. God often challenges us to hear what we don’t want to hear. As followers of the one who gave his life as a ransom for many, we stay open to new ideas, even as we pursue our visions of justice and righteousness. We seek the truth in ideas with which we disagree, recognizing that none of us has a corner on truth. And still, with Jesus, we continue on our journey, trusting God’s transformative work in our lives, and knowing that, despite our own imperfections and limitations our futures are always in God’s hands.