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August 19, 2007

Pass It On

Pass It On
Isaiah 5:1-7, Luke 12:49-56

These are difficult words to hear from Jesus—fire, division of families. He asks the people if they thought he had come to bring peace. No, I bring division because the peace you strive for is simply a peace that lacks discord. Not true peace, a peace that surpasses all understanding.

Have you ever been angry at someone but not able or willing to express that anger? You act on the outside as if everything is fine between you but on the inside you have a stomach ache or your mind is constantly taken up with thoughts of this person. While to an outside observer, and maybe even the person you’re upset with, the situation may look like a peaceful. You know it is anything but!

I grew up in a dysfunctional home—our particular dysfunction was alcohol. Many similarities occur in these types of homes. There is tension all through the family, people live on pins and needles but to the casual observer, the family looks “normal.”

Some of the qualities of a dysfunctional family include unmet expectations, one person is the focus of the family and everyone else’s needs are secondary or not even addresses. There is an inability to be vulnerable and ask for what you need. Lies and cover-up are often the norm to save face to the outside world. And often life is either something to be endured or you control everything and everybody so that you can get what you want.

In dysfunctional families, people don’t talk about the large problem in the family, they try to work around it, but it’s always there. And the problem consumes the family’s energy, time, and focus. And the difficult part of the dysfunctional family model is that if it’s all you’ve ever known, you are most likely to repeat the same thing when you have a family.

You don’t have to grow up in a dysfunctional home to know when there is tension in a situation. We’ve all experienced it. And for many of us, we think it’s easier to ignore the tension and pretend everything is peaceful when it is not. Jesus is saying, peace in the sense of lack of discord, is really no peace at all. And so he offers another kind of peace…one that we know to be a peace that surpasses all understanding because it demands that we make a choice. To attain Jesus’ peace, we must be vulnerable, open, and honest in our relationships with each other and in our relationship with God.

The peace Jesus offers is one in which we look to God, not our family, not our job, not the world, for direction and answers to life.

In the Isaiah passage, God speaks about pruning the dead wood and disciplining the wild grapes. Might we consider this God’s way to prune those aspects of our lives that kill our relationship with God?
Likewise, a fire can be used for purifying and the more we seek to clean up our lives from this dishonest, dysfunctional way of living, the better we feel.

As Christians, this honest peace doesn’t stop at our family. It spreads, like a fire to all our relationships. Once we aren’t so consumed with ourselves and our individual situation, we have the opportunity to work on issues that affect other people. We can call into account dishonest or dysfunctional systems in government (our outdated immigration system, our social security system, our health care system). We know from experience that just because everything seems peaceful on the outside, it doesn’t mean that people aren’t being neglected and injustices aren’t happening.

Jesus also speaks about reading the times…And this goes back to the idea that as a person of faith, we speak the truth, but we speak that truth in love. When we speak the truth in love it is about being honest and getting our feelings out, but not because we are expecting anything from the other person. It is about us cleaning up our side of the street, taking care to make our path as honest and open as we can. How that person reacts to us, is not the point. The point is to make peace within ourselves about the situation that had us captured and to seek God’s guidance.

Jesus invites us to read the times and see where His peace is needed. Dietrich Bonheoffer read the times. Dietrich Bonhoeffer was born in Breslau on February 4, 1906. He became a Lutheran pastor in 1931, and served two Lutheran congregations, St. Paul's and Sydenham, in London from 1933-35. He tried to stay out of the conflict, but he could not. His belief in Jesus would not allow him to stand by and do nothing.

In 1934, 2000 Lutheran pastors organized the Pastors' Emergency League in opposition to the state church controlled by the Nazis. This organization evolved into the Confessing Church, a free and independent protestant church. Bonhoeffer served as head of the Confessing Church's seminary at Finkenwalde. The activities of the Confessing Church were virtually outlawed and its five seminaries closed by the Nazis in 1937.

Bonhoeffer's active opposition to National Socialism in the thirties continued to escalate until his recruitment into the resistance in 1940. He was involved in a conspiracy to assassinate Adolph Hitler and overthrow the Third Reich. Bonhoeffer's role in the conspiracy was one of courier and diplomat to the British government on behalf of the resistance, since Allied support was essential to stopping the war. He was arrested in 1943. He was given numerous opportunities to recant his faith and to support Hitler. He never did and on April 9, 1945 he was executed. On April 30 of that same year, Hitler committed suicide.

Bonheoffer is not without his detractors—after all his way was one of violence. However, Bonheoffer did what he believed God wanted HIM to do. And his life and witness touched millions of people’s lives.

At some point in our life, we must be willing to follow the will of God for our lives and to act in accordance with God’s will as we understand it. Bonheoffer’s situation was high stakes and high profile because of who he was and the times in which he lived. At some point in our lives all of us will be faced with a time where we will be faced with taking a stand for our faith or going along with the crowd.

Two things will influence that decision. First, how honestly have we lived our life up to this point? Have we sought God’s will to guide us and tried to follow God’s will even if it was different and difficult? Have we cleaned up our lives so that we are not consumed with ourselves? Second, how much do we want to follow Jesus? Do we believe in his witness and does he live in our heart? I’ve been faced with small decisions in my life and am not sure how I’ll act when the time comes for me. I pray I’ll be ready to step up and step out so that people will see that I am a follower of Jesus.

I think about the struggles in our denomination and in the larger church about reconciliation with our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters. Is it time for you to take a position and stand beside them this year at General Conference? Is there a situation in your family that needs to be talked about right now before a loved one is gone forever and you won’t have the chance? Is it time for you to speak up about a social injustice that has to do with someone you know or one that you are especially passionate about?

A word of caution. This is not about navel gazing, nor is it about forcing others to do God’s will as we understand it. It is each of us striving to understand God’s will for our lives for this particular situation and then taking action that illuminates our decision. Each of us will have a different way to work God’s will out in our lives. Each of us will see things differently because we are different people. But our actions come from this place of seeking God’s peace (God’s truth) for our lives. And that is the place where we can come together to love and respect each other.

We seek God’s peace so we can share it, not horde it for ourselves. Jesus is asking each individual to make a choice to follow him and not be stopped from doing so because of the things of this world. It is only our choice to make for ourselves; we cannot push it on someone else or make that decision for that other person. So we don’t use this passage of division and fire to frighten people to Christ, to Lord it over them that we are saved and they are not, to push our agenda over others because we call Jesus our Lord.

We seek a peace that passes all human understanding within ourselves and in our relationships. We do this so that when the time comes for us to step out; we do so as Jesus did, with humility and conviction. We do so because we believe it’s what we are called to do. To be a follower of Jesus Christ is to live so that our exterior lives become a living example of the passion that burns within us. We do it to please God, to be faithful to our Lord, to become all that God created us to be. We do not worry about other’s reactions nor do we expect anything from them for we are seeking God’s peace in our lives and in this world.

Jesus was constantly inviting people to follow him, but he never forced anyone. We must do the same. And in each of our lives this will look different while simultaneously pointing to Christ.
Whose life do you follow by example? Why?

The mission team who visited us leads us by example. The Nevada Iowa Youth Group came here in the extreme heat of summer, worked on our building with a joyful, uplifting spirit, and brought the good new to us that week. They worked hard with no thought of gift or reward. They came to witness to the love of God in Christ in their lives. And their passionate example shone like a beacon in the lives of those of us who got to know them, and even the strangers on the street.

The other day I was coming into the church and a woman stopped me to ask how the painting was going. On her daily walk around the neighborhood, she stopped to talk to them and was really touched by their witness. Their lives are a shining example of what it means to have a peace that passes all understanding…no one in their right mind would come to a stranger’s church and paint in 90 plus degree weather, without complaint. But this group did it to glorify God, not themselves.

The question now stands before us, what witness will this church give to this neighborhood and our neighbors? How will we pass it on?

Posted by vickie at 10:00 AM