Luke 12:49-56

"Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division!”

The words of Jesus from this week’s gospel reading are quite confronting. They do not reflect the notions of God we have cultivated in our progressive Protestant churches, which prefer a God who is ‘nice’, and a Jesus who is meek, mild and humble. Luke’s Jesus is having none of this sort of thinking. Instead, he offers something of what it will mean to redeem a world that is anything but nice.

It is evident from the many things that trouble our world, things such as war, famine, and oppressions, that we are not yet living in the kingdom of God where goodness, beauty, and just and life-giving opportunities are there for all. Our world is instead broken and scarred, offering death rather than life to many people and many other living things. Our structural systems are exploitative and non-sustainable. Luke’s Jesus is saying that redemption can only happen when such systems are confronted and destroyed by apocalyptic fire, as this is necessary for new life to emerge. Jesus comes not to stir up a nice world but to shatter the disturbing and death-dealing structural systems of a world that stifles life.

It is no wonder that Jesus' call for redemption stirred up division during his time. How do we hear this call today? What are the ‘signs of the times’ we should be looking for today in a world that is not only battered and broken, but that also increasingly rejects the church?  

The words of this Lukan Jesus remind us that it is only when we set fire to the old that the new can emerge. It is only when we challenge the traditions, structures and habits that no longer serve us all well that we can start to change what is wrong.  Change is only possible at the edge of chaos, and perhaps this is what Jesus meant when he spoke of bringing fire and division to the earth. Jesus came to cause chaos and change because business as usual was no longer an option for ensuring all would have life.

Many of us today are materially rich and spiritually poor. Money and power continue to obscure what should be the important values for humanity. A world which relies on exploitation and oppression to run its economy at the expense of others' basic needs is a world that needs the disrupting influence of the gospel.

In a world whose systems do not encourage a flourishing life for all, the chaos brought by the chaotic words of Jesus might just constitute good news. This gospel passage calls us to be witnesses to this good news, and to the chaos that represents God’s consuming and compelling presence.