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

Luke 12:51

As Donna and Steve Williams can tell you, we looked at it first a couple of weeks ago in our worship planning meeting so as to start thinking about hymns and music for this week. After only a few minutes of reflecting on this passage, I bailed out on the process. I wanted some time to think about alternate texts we might use for today.

I was just not prepared to deal with what seemed like the same kind of polarizing language from Jesus that has more recently divided our country. I have not come to bring peace to the earth but rather division. I just couldn't face it initially.

But I looked at the text again this week, and I realized, as so often happens, that these so-called hard sayings of Jesus are among the most important of his sayings. I was reminded that if we work up the courage to look squarely at these hard texts, and the courage to let them look back at us, we might see profound things we otherwise might miss if all we ever do is read stories about lilies and sparrows and little lost sheep.

But to be sure, it is a hard text and it does require some courage to explore it. Right away you get the sense that something unusual is going on, and you get that sense staight from Jesus himself. "What stress I am under," he says, by way of a preface to what follows.

It's a startling admission from one who seems so durable, so unafraid. One who walks out into roiling seas in the middle of the night, unafraid of the waves; one who stares down demons when he meets them face to face, unafraid of evil embodied, one who simply does not shy away from anyone or anything.

What stress I am under, he says. I don't know about you, but in those words Christ has never seemed more human to me. He's never felt more like I sometimes feel when crunch time is coming and I can feel the stress of expectations and deadlines bearing down on me.

For that's what the issue is here. It's crunch time. He's put his message out there. He's challenged both church and state. He's preached peace; he's advocated for the poor and the marginalized, and insisted that God's Kingdom was near and that you didn't need a fancy, elitist priest to let you in the door.

And he's backed up that radical talk with all sorts of boundary-breaking shenanigans. Everywhere he's gone he has healed and loved and ministered in startling new ways, ways that undermined the established order and threatened the status quo.

Turns out that Jerusalem can't handle his message or his tactics any better than Rome does. And so the beast is about to bite back. The religious and political institutions that benefit from privilege and exclusivity are about to flex their muscles at his expense.

It's crunch time and he knows it. Not surprisingly all the sweetness has gone out of his voice. His confrontation with the authorities is looming just over the horizon. And so gone are the references to lilies and sparrows and little lost sheep; that soft, cozy language now replaced by talk of stress and fire and division.

He says here that he's not come to bring peace. But in point of fact he has. The prophets foretold it - the lion and the lamb shall lie down together . The angels heralded it - peace on earth, good will to all God's people!

His teachings and his practice confirm it, time after time. Peace, peace, peace. He says it again and again. In facts commands it early and often, nearly as often as he commands his followers to love one another. Clearly it's one of the keys to understanding his identity and purpose.

And that is precisely the problem. Not everyone wanted peace. Right from the start powerful and important people opposed the idea, beginning with Herod, who sent soldiers to find the newborn Christ in the hope of snuffing out this great light before it had a chance to shine in the world's darkness.

And so of course he would bring division. Social, political and theological reform always brings division. And he knows it.

You hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky, but why do you not know how to interpret the present time? Why do you not realize how much the world needs this messages, he seems to say.

I am haunted by those words. Haunted by how true they are today. Haunted by how comprehensive the church's failure has been to interpret the present time.

For the hard and disconcerting truth is that not everyone wants peace in our time, either. The day Karl Rove announced his resignation I heard him praise the president for putting this country on a so-called "war footing," as though this were a virtue.

That churches by the thousands, churches all across this country, bought into Mr. Rove's deeply unbiblical propaganda is a sad testament to his political and rhetorical skills.

It is also a testament to how far Christ's church has strayed from its mission, how unperceptive we remain with regard to interpreting the times, interpreting the scriptures, interpreting God's purposes for humanity.

Let me quickly say that it's not the good people sitting in the pews who bear the lion's share of the responsibility for this failure of interpretation. Rather it's the people who lead them who do. However much they may have been manipulated by fear or by misplaced patriotism, it's pastors share the bulk of this responsibility.

It's pastors - ministers of the Gospel - who have not taught people to distinguish between the interests of the state and the principles of the Kingdom of God. Millions of church-going folk across this country have no familiarity at all with the biblical narrative of empire, or of the Bible's deep suspicion of human political institutions.

The teachings of Jesus are even clearer on the subject. We are meant to make peace, not war; we are meant to love our enemies not kill them.

Yes, that's hard. Of course it's hard. It demands our best thinking and courage that rivals Christ's own bravery. But for those of us who wish to follow this way, it's not optional.

Sadly this is not the message that America's pastors have conveyed to their flocks.

And so thousands of well-meaning parents sent their children off to save the world not as mission workers who might have built hospitals or schools in rural Afghanistan. Not as peacemakers who went out to build bridges of understanding between Muslims and Christians.

Instead they sent them off as Marines or as infantry. And now those children are returning home by the thousands in coffins that the State Department will not the country see, or they are returning home alive but bearing wounds that will never heal.

And so our country is divided because we are fighting a war that is not just, that is at odds with the imperatives of the Gospel. Instead of making peace and loving our enemies, we are waging a war in a country that did not attack us, and in the process we are making enemies, creating more of them by the day it seems.

But leveling those kinds of judgments is all too easy. It's easy to be against things. Easy to find fault. Easy to criticize, especially after the fact.

Certainly I wish more pastors had been more discerning about such things. I wish more Christian leaders had come out early and often against the war.

But that still leaves the harder question unanswered. What are we for?

I came to make people choose sides, Jesus says, as one version translates verse 51.

When you chose to follow the way of Jesus, you do make a choice. When you chose to follow the way of Jesus, you come out on the side of peace and against voices calling on us to invade a country that did not attack us.

When you chose to follow the way of Jesus, you come out on the side of the poor and against structures and policies that make people poor, or keep them poor.

When you chose to follow the way of Jesus, you choose to see the world differently. You see human beings, not enemies. You see the Kingdom of God, not empire.

However badly as the church has misplayed its role in recent history, however far as we have strayed from the mission given to us by our founder, I still believe the church can also be, must also be, a part of the solution.

And it starts with interpreting the times.

Some of you will know the name William Stringfellow. He was a brave young lay theologian who lived and worked toward the end of the last century. After college Stringfellow served honorably in the U.S. Army. He then attended Harvard Law School and after graduation moved to Harlem and lived and worked among poor African Americans and Hispanics.

These varied experiences led him to proclaim that being a faithful follower of Jesus means "to declare oneself free from all spiritual forces of death and destruction and to submit onself single-heartedly to the power of life" (Wikipedia).

But how does one do this? "The discernment of spirits" he wrote, "is inherently political [but] in practice it has specifically to do with pastoral care, with healing, with the nature of human life and with the fulfillment of all of life."

It is our job, in other words, to speak out prophetically. But we must not stop there. We must speak the truth about our world, and about the political situation of our day, yes, but ours must not be voices of anger but of love.

That is the call of the church in our time. Not just to be against war, or against corporations and interests that profit and benefit from it.

But to be for life. To let our love led the way. To light the world's darkness with joy.

Jesus saw the signs of the times in his day. He knew how to interpret them. He knew the world was in crisis and things were about to change. He knew something new was about to be born.

I believe we're in another one of those times, a moment when something new is about to be born. But it will take a church that understands its role in history and culture to realize this dream.

It will take a church that reclaims its mission and its power. A church as Walter Brueggeman puts it, that practices liturgical resistance and disciplines of distinction.

A church whose worship is about something besides entertainment, whose worship is not a diversion but a moment of liturgical consequence. When we affirm our believe in a God who is larger than the gods of this world. When we affirm our belief that love is more powerful than hate, that peace is more powerful than violence.

When we affirm our love for life. When we practice the distinctive disciplines given to us by Christ, loving our enemies and praying for them, even as we love ourselves.

For in the end it's not just a matter of interpretation. It's a matter of identity and practice, and the chance to shine the light of God's love and mercy for all the world to see.

Amen