After Thoughts: Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost

Luke 12:49-56

Luke 12 begins with Jesus talking about the hypocrisy of the Pharisees and ends with Jesus calling the crowd ‘hypocrites.’ The word comes from the Greek ‘hypokrite’ which referred to an actor, someone who played a role on a stage for the benefit of an audience and for their own acclaim. It was a person who took on a mask, a costume, a persona, to play whatever part was required in a story written by someone else.

Just before calling them hypocrites, Jesus told the crowd how he has come to bring division, not peace. He goes on to say that this division will be father against son, son against father, mother against daughter, daughter against mother, mother-in-law against daughter-in-law, daughter-in-law against mother-in-law. This is disruptive theology. Where’s the Jesus of peace and love? Who is this guy bringing on conflict?

Let’s dig a bit deeper, especially about those family roles that Jesus names. Rules about relationship within families and within society were quite specific in ancient Rome, just as they had been in ancient Israel. Earthly relationships – things like birth order and gender – dictated matters of economics, discipline, and power. People were confined to live out a ‘role’ imposed upon them from the outside. This is what the Pharisees were trying to do – Jesus says they load the people with burdens hard to bear, and do not lift a finger to help ease them. The ‘laws’ gave the Pharisees justification for discrimination, injustice, prejudice, and misogyny.

Earlier in Luke, we read about the younger brother who appealed to Jesus to make his brother circumvent the law so that he could inherit the family fortune. But Jesus didn’t come to enforce the law. He came to fulfill the law and to “be the end of the law so that there may be righteousness for everyone who believes.” (Romans 10) So it wasn’t just the leaders who were not getting it. Even the crowd, the ordinary folk, who were able to read the signs of nature, so important in their agrarian society, failed to comprehend the message that Jesus was bringing.

What was this message? Well, I’m not able to comprehend that, let alone put it into words, but I think there is a clue is in verse 31. Strive first for God’s kingdom…then everything else will fall into place. That is, take off the mask. Refuse to play the role. Seek to be who and what God created you to be. That begins with acknowledging Christ (v. 8). From that starting point, we are free to be who we are, children of God, the people of God, joint heirs with Christ.

This is when the pretense can fall away. As humans in relationship, it is easy to have expectations of one another if we keep each other in those roles. Parents have expectations of children. Husbands and wives have expectations of each other. Friends, colleagues, in-laws – all of these human roles come loaded with what we want and need from the other person, what we expect them to do for us, how we expect them to treat us. But Jesus makes it clear – there will be division, conflict, arguing, disappointment – in those human roles. Because they are earthly constructs.

Bonhoeffer explains this so well so let’s defer to him. “The call of Jesus teaches us that our relation to the world has been built on an illusion...Now we learn that in the most intimate relationships of life, in our kinship with father and mother, brothers and sisters, in married love, and in our duty to the community, direct relationships are impossible. Since the coming of Christ, his followers have no more immediate realities of their own, not in their family relationships nor in the ties with their nation nor in the relationships formed in the process of living. Between father and son, husband and wife, the individual and the nation, stands Christ the Mediator, whether they are able to recognize him or not. We cannot establish direct contact outside ourselves except through him, through his word, and through our following of him. To think otherwise is to deceive ourselves…We are separated from one another by an unbridgeable gulf of otherness and strangeness which resists all our attempts to overcome by means of natural association or emotional or spiritual union. There is no other way from one person to another…Christ stands between us and we can only get in touch with our neighbors through him.”

Wow! Read that again. Is that profound or what? I cannot do it. You cannot do it. Only Christ can do it. Just as he brought the division by opening our eyes to the illusion we are living, he also brings the means to re-union – through him – by giving up on earthly constructs, by dying to self, and by arising anew to live through Christ.

Although not included in the lectionary reading, the closing verses of Chapter 12 are interesting. Jesus recommends that we try to find a way other than rules, regulations, and laws to settle things. In Jesus fashion, he poses a question. “And why do you not judge for yourselves what is right?” When we do that, when we remember who we are, when we stop playing our roles, and start looking to Christ, it can get tough. We have to stop pretending to be someone we aren’t and, at the same time, and perhaps even harder, we have to let go of putting others into neat little boxes of well-defined roles and responsibilities.

Back to Bonhoeffer who sums it up beautifully. To be a follower of Christ “…in one way or the other we shall have to leave the immediacy of the world and become individuals, whether secretly or openly. But the same Mediator who makes us individuals is also the founder of a new fellowship. He stands in the center between a neighbor and myself. He divides, but he also unites…Though we all have to enter upon discipleship alone, we do not remain alone.”

Listen deep to hear God’s call. Pray constantly to do His work. Seek fervently for His kingdom. Give thanks that God created You. Yes, YOU. Everything about you is His handiwork. Embrace that. All of it, the parts you like and the parts you try to keep hidden in the dark. God already knows all about that. So just be you. And make space and grace for others to be who they are created to be.

May we live worthy of our calling, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. (Ephesians 4)