August 18, 2019 “House on Fire” – Luke 12:49-56

Luke 12:49-53
“House on Fire”
August 18, 2019 – Tenth Sunday after Pentecost

Our hallway smoke alarm went off in the middle of the night. I was away while friends of our daughter were staying with Beth last year. They stumbled out of their beds while Beth tried frantically to quiet the thing. It was a false alarm. She finally just pulled it off the ceiling and put it in the garage. There it lies because we still have six other working smoke detectors in the house. Whoever built the place was being really careful. And rightly so. Fire is dangerous and frightening.

That is why it is disturbing to find Jesus in verse 49 comparing His coming with fire, a fire He specifically says will burn and cause division even in families. Most of us expect faith in Jesus Christ to unite families, to bring them together. Our churches support family life, teaching us to be good husbands and wives, parents and children. We don’t come to hear a message that will split us up.

Yet that is the word from Jesus this morning, fire and division in families. It is echoed by our text from Jeremiah 23:29. In my head I can hear that verse sung in the heavy bass tones to which it is set in Mendelssohn’s oratorio, “Elijah.” “Is not my word like a fire, and like a hammer that breaketh a rock?” The word of God coming to us in Jesus is a searing blaze and a crushing blow, burning and smashing its way into our lives.

In His words about family in verse 53, Jesus is quoting the prophet Micah, who described the state of son against father, daughter against mother, families divided in general, as part of Israel’s misery in the day of their judgment by God before the Messiah comes. But now Jesus turns those words into a prediction of what happens as His message spreads around the world. It looks like the opposite of Micah’s and of our expectations.

At the beginning of Luke, in beloved words from the Christmas story, we are told that the advent of Jesus means peace on earth. Now here He is, saying that He has not come to bring peace at all, but rather a sad division, a “sword” in Matthew 10, that will cut through the heart of even the most intimate of human institutions.

We twenty-first century Christians need to grapple with these words. We have blithely assumed that Jesus is the preeminent friend of family life. We may think the very purpose of Jesus is to make our families better. Trust in Christ and you will have a healthy marriage. Believe in Jesus and you will be a successful parent. This passage sears us with the reminder that what we think of as “family values” are not what Jesus Christ is all about.

There are only little glimpses of what following Jesus meant for families in the first century, but they are enough to make us wary of portraying Christ as the perfect solution to our domestic problems. In Jesus’ own family we see Him at odds with His parents at the age of twelve. Later on, in Mark 3, after He has started preaching, His family came to get Him because they thought He was insane. In three of the Gospels, His mother and brothers came to where He was speaking and asked to see Jesus, but He ignored them.

James and John left their father behind when they became Jesus’ disciples. As I preached from Luke 9 on Beth’s and my own wedding anniversary in June, Jesus tells would-be followers to forget about obligations like burying a parent or saying good-bye to family. Earthly family is not Jesus’ first priority. There’s no turning back. Even parents, children and siblings are secondary to a commitment to Christ.

In Paul’s writings on marriage we catch a glimpse of what happened in ancient society when Christianity was introduced. Those who became believers were counseled to stay with their non-Christian spouses, but it was also recognized that many of those unbelievers would choose to leave when their partners became Christians. Romans hated Christianity partly because of its effect on the family!

Jews adopted a tradition of ostracizing children who accepted Jesus. That wonderful musical “Fiddler on the Roof” shows it happening. The father Tevye bends tradition to let his daughter Tzeitel marry the Jewish man she loves instead of the man he arranged for her. Tevye again flaunts tradition for his second daughter Perchik when she and a young Jewish revolutionary decide to get married without his permission. You may remember him weighing tradition against love, saying “On the one hand; on the other hand.” Each time he comes down on the “other hand,” letting his daughters follow their hearts.

But Tevye’s breaks instead of bends when his third daughter Chava falls in love with a Russian youth who is a Christian. They are secretly married by the priest. And Tevye will not even speak to her. He starts as he did before, “On the one hand…,” but then he bitterly exclaims “There is no other hand!” His daughter was “dead” to them. Her conversion was more than he can accept. She was no longer welcome as a member of the family.

That same story was told over and over in Jewish homes in the early days of Christianity. It still happens in conservative Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, and Buddhist homes around the world. Christ digs a rift between people that severs the closest human bonds. It even happens among atheists. Writing to her sister, Virginia Wolf the English novelist tells about a recent encounter with the poet T. S. Eliot, who had just converted to Christianity:

I have had a most shameful and distressing interview with poor Tom Eliot, who may be called dead to us from this day forward. He has become an Anglo-Catholic, believes in God… and goes to church. I was really shocked. A corpse would seem more credible than he is.[1]

Jesus creates division. Even among the closest of families, the best of friends, faith in Christ can cause deep separation.

Many of you here this morning know it from experience. A few of you are here while your unbelieving husband or wife or child stays home. Some have a divorce from a non-Christian in your past. Some of us had parents who are not believers. Others of us have children who reject the faith. Our hearts ache for the division Jesus brings. He comes and God sets our homes on fire. Relationships we cherish get scorched.

In the last few verses of the text, Jesus talks about reading the signs of the times, comparing it to discerning when the wind will blow or the heat will be scorching. It’s like knowing when to get out when the fire is coming.

The park around Mt. Pisgah was evacuated because of a fire just last Thursday. Last fall people fled the town of Paradise and areas around Malibu in California. People died because they did not get out in time. People escaped by leaving homes and possessions behind. Fires separated them from things they held dear. Jesus’ fire does that too.

Why? Why isn’t the arrival of the Prince of Peace more peaceful? Why does faith in Christ break down family ties and separate us from people we love? The reason is in verse 50. Jesus was waiting for a “baptism.” He doesn’t mean by water. He had already been baptized by John. “Baptism” literally means a dunking, a submersion. Jesus was expecting to go under at any time, to be submerged in the horror of crucifixion, to be baptized by death. He was anticipating the Cross. Jesus’ Cross is what makes Him such an incinerator of home life. The Cross is the match which lights the fire of Jesus.

Paul wrote of the “scandal” of the Cross. To believe in a Savior who died is embarrassing. Intelligent people find it foolish. Strong people see it as weakness. Good people feel it is a moral outrage. Jesus is rejected because of His Cross. He is attractive as a great moral teacher. But as a bleeding victim, He repels. So the world divides over Him and the division is like a fire, tearing us away from things and people we hold dear.

Yet as I explained to the children, some trees need fire to open their cones and allow seeds to fall and reproduce. As forestry science has learned, fire is a necessary part of a some forests’ life-cycle. And you can go to buttecountyrecovers.org and read how the town of paradise is rebuilding and regrowing. Fire is devastating, but it can clear the way for new things to happen.

The Cross of Jesus Christ is a fire which paves the way for new life. By dying, Jesus made His resurrection possible. And His resurrection means eternal life may take seed and grow in us. But the fire of family division may be necessary for us to keep growing healthy Christian lives. Many times it is only in the heat of conflict and separation that our faith blossoms. It takes fire for us to grasp just how important Jesus is to us.

In his book about the great Yellowstone fires of 1988, Chief Ranger Dan Sholly tells of his own family’s preparations to evacuate their home. After one false alarm they laid in bed and reflected on what they had done as the alarm was sounding. His wife said she learned something from it all.

I learned that there are very few things we own that are truly important. When the alarm was silenced, I looked to see just what it was I had put in the car. I was amazed to find it was little more than Trevor, Brooke [their children], the family photos, some clothes, the quilt Grandma made, and of course Snowball [the pet guinea pig].[2]

Fire restores perspective about what really matters. It’s time to get out with your lives and the lives of those you love. Nothing else really counts. Likewise Jesus wants to kindle a fire that gives us eternal perspective. His fire clears the underbrush and opens our closed minds so His word can fall in good soil and grow up in us. Under fire we recognize just how important it is to trust in Christ, faith in Him over every other concern.

The rub, of course, is that faith in Christ takes precedence even over those concerns that come to the top in a literal fire. Ranger Sholly and his wife put their children in the car first, as their priority. But the fire which Jesus speaks of here is meant to give us a fiery perspective even on those precious ones we hold so dear. If a parent or a child stands between us and the Lord, then the fire burns. Jesus wants to be our priority.

God lets our family houses burn with conflict to remind us that the ultimate significance of our lives is not in those relationships. As good and wonderful and pleasing as it is to be a parent, parenting is not the meaning of your life. As admirable as it is to be a loving and caring child for your parents, especially in their elder years, that is not what your life is about. One and only one relationship takes precedence over them all. It is your status as a child of God, a foster-sibling of Jesus Christ.

As harsh as it sounds, it is really good news. First, consider a childless couple or single person. If human family is not our ultimate good, then a couple who cannot have children does not lack the greatest joy. If marriage is not our primary aim, then a single person has not missed the best in life. As Karl Barth writes about the childless, “Their lack cannot be a true or final lack, for the Child who alone matters has been born for them too.”[3] The awful warning from Jesus about family division is in fact, for many people, the assurance that all the best blessings of God may belong to them as well.

Second, for those who are married, or have children or parents for whom we care deeply, a fiery perspective on those relationships is assurance as well. Our lives does not stand or fall by the behavior of our children. Our purpose on earth does not vanish when parents die. In Jesus we are bound to God in a relationship that outlasts all others. The reason for living is not family. It is the glory and love of God. So we have hope even when home goes sour. In Christ we can be whole, even when human relationships are split.

The third piece of good news in this warning about family division is the possibility of genuine unity in our families through Jesus Christ. If belief confronting unbelief splits a family down the middle, there remains the hope that believing together can heal and restore harmony between parents and children, children and parents. The last verse of the Old Testament, Malachi 4:6, is quoted at the beginning of Luke’s Gospel about John the Baptist, he “will turn the hearts of the fathers to their children.” When the message of Jesus is received by all, then a family may be one in Him.

Families are going to be broken and divided. We visited with our friends Jay and Jan this past week and had dinner with their son Adam and his family. Beth read books to Adam’s 4 year old boy and held one of their 6 month old new twins. Last Sunday Jay and Jan witnessed the baptism of those twins and afterward filled their new house with family and friends celebrating that act of faith in Jesus.

Yet we also talked about how all Jay and Jan’s siblings are divorced at least once and how their youngest son does not believe, just like our own youngest daughter. Our hearts ached together for that which separates us from our loved ones, daughter from mother, father from son, just like Jesus said.

What we also felt and shared together was the faith and friendship that unites the four of us across years and miles. It’s been a couple years since we’ve been face to face, but we just picked up where we left off. We’re not in any way related to each other, yet in Christ we find a unity and connection that feels as strong as family. That’s because it is family.

As Karl Barth said, as Jesus said when asked about His family, the family of faith in Him is the one everlasting family. That’s good news for us all. Single, married, divorced, with a house full of children or no one but you, you have a Family in Jesus. You are or can be part of that Family right here, right now, in the household of God.

Jesus’ Family, people of faith, have hard times. We heard about that in our reading from Hebrews. Mocked and flogged, killed and persecuted, homeless and destitute for their faith. Yet they clung to it, clung to God in all those fiery trials. And by faith, it said, they “quenched raging fire.” You and I may do that too, by clinging to faith in Jesus even when we feel pulled apart from everyone and everything we know and love.

So let me close by saying Jesus loves you whether your family is together or not. Jesus loves you whether you are married or single. Jesus loves you whether your household numbers one or a dozen. That Jesus loves you is the greatest fact of your life. His love is great enough to hold you whether you are loved by a huge family or whether you are all alone. In Him you are part of the best and greatest family, the family of God. May the grace of being a child of God by faith see you through all the fire, in whatever family situation you find yourself. His love comes first. Amen.

[1] Quoted in “Moses and Monotheism: A Response to Dr. Freud,” in Fleming Rutledge, Help My Unbelief (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2000), p. 13f.

[2] Guardians of Yellowstone (New York: William Morrow and Company, 1991), p. 248.

[3] Church Dogmatics (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1961), p. 267.