Jesus the Homewrecker

David Orendorff · Luke 12:49-53 · August 19^th, 2007

I find today’s passage troubling and I wonder what folks who argue for “Christian family values” do with it.  To quote Bob Holmes 1 A retired pastor from St. Paul’s, this is one of those things “I wish Jesus had never said.”  But, being the fool I am, I am going to go bravely forward.  May God and you forgive me.

Robert Frost exposes our conflicted beliefs about family in his poem “The Death of the Hired Man.”;  Silas, the hired man of last harvest, has returned to the farm of Mary and Warren.  Earlier in the day Mary found Silas curled up by the barn door.  As she tells this to Warren she senses a moment of tenderness:

‘Warren,’ she said, ‘he has come home to die:…
‘Home,’ he mocked gently.

Mary responds -
‘Yes, what else but home?
It all depends on what you mean by home.’

And Warren responds -
‘Home is the place where, when you have to go there,
They have to take you in.’

(to which Mary says)
‘I should have called it something you somehow haven’t to deserve.’ 2 Robert Frost, “The Death of the Hired Man,” Selected Poems of Robert Frost, (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc., New York, 1966), 25

So is home the place where they have to take you in, or is it the people who grant undeserved grace?  We generally agree with Warren.  We believe that blood is thicker than water; that families stay together no matter the weather; that we may argue amongst ourselves but let no outsider speak against us; and if we are dying, they have to take us in.

We usually think of Jesus as someone who in his life and ministry was supportive of families, encouraged their unity and peace.  We know that Jesus encouraged his followers to be obedient to the Ten Commandments, one of which is to honor fathers and mothers.  However, there was another side to Jesus.  As in today’s scripture there is a side in which Jesus seems to be against our most important family values.

And just to demonstrate that this is not some small lapse on Jesus’ part, but a consistent part of his message, hear the following:

In Mark 1:16-20, James and John walk away from their father Zebedee in the middle of work because Jesus told them to.  In Matthew 8:21-22, Jesus tells a prospective follower who wants to first bury his father to “leave the dead to bury their own dead.”  In Matthew 10:34 Jesus says, “I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.  For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother (and so on).  And in Mark 3:31-35, when Jesus’ mother and brothers come to visit him he denies they are his family.

For Jesus, evidently, we don’t have to take our family in, even when they are dying.  Why would Jesus take such family values away from us?  Why would he come to divide us?  In his book The Life You’ve Always Wanted, John Ortberg writes:

Jesus consistently focused on people’s center.  Are they oriented and moving toward the center of spiritual life (love of God and people), or are they moving away from it? 3 John Ortberg, The Life You’ve Always Wanted, (Zondervan, Grand Rapids, MI, 1997), 37.

Though Jesus cared about families he cared first and foremost about the center of a person’s life and soul.  He knew, and shocked others into knowing, that the goal of life is not an undivided family but an undivided world.  He knew and shocked others into knowing that the goal is not peace but compassion and justice.  And he shocked folks into knowing that sometimes, perhaps often, division, even maybe a sword, even among families, is the first step toward a genuine peace that can be found in the center of life.

The Canadian psychologist Kazimierz Dñabrowski in his book Mental Growth through Positive Disintegration 4 out of print makes Jesus’ point in modern psychological terms.  Before any of us can grow into a new and more mature self, large parts of our old selves must disintegrate, divide, even die.  This disintegration may even be with our families.  The severe disruption of families was an early part of the Christian experience as new converts moved the center of their lives from biological family to their new Christian family.  And though this disintegration can be very painful, it is often the only way of growing up and so is in fact, Dñabrowski says, "positive disintegration."

Those who over the centuries have tracked the patterns of spiritual growth have discovered the same truth.  To move closer to God, to become more like Jesus in our lives, we will suffer periods of purgation.  In secular language (because words like purgation are not a part of our regular vocabulary) we will know times of suffering and struggle which lead to cleansing.  These times may last a week, a month or even years.  They will be the catalyst that shock us into a new ways of seeing, that cleanse our souls of blind and destructive habits, and redirect our energy toward living love.

Whether you use Jesus word “division”, Dñabrowski’s “disintegration”, or the medieval word “purgation” the meaning is clear.  Trouble always arrives at the beginning of a new thing.  It may be a struggle in our inward parts; depression, confusion, anger.  Or it may be a struggle in our external world with health, a relationship, something at work and even war.  We may be the cause or we may be the victim.  Truly cleansing and healing struggles will always be hard and force us to learn and to do things in a new way.

Sometimes things must truly fall apart before they can be truly put together.  As a freshman in college I lived with my parents.  Life was great.  I was free from High School.  I didn’t have a curfew.  I had my own car.  I had a job that gave me pocket money.  I had discovered the wonderful world of misbehaving.  The only problem was with my parents.  They didn’t seem to appreciate my chosen life style and were sometimes argumentative.

When summer break came I was ready to leave them, and to explore the world.  I sold my car and packed my bags.  I was going to hitchhike to the Promised Land - Casper, Wyoming.  My mom, in pure excitement for my new life, helped me load my stuff into her car drove me to the edge of town, and gave me a fond, but very quick, farewell.

The time of division, of positive disintegration, of purgation, came pretty quickly.  I didn’t find a job in Casper.  I talked an old friend into going to Denver with me.  We found a basement apartment.  It was not very clean.  I tried selling encyclopedias on commission.  After a month I had sold one set and earned sixty dollars.  I quit.  We were broke.  We ate meat and cheese scraps from the corner market.  We smoked cigarettes from the ash trays of hotels.  My life of freedom was not working out like I had planned.  I was very unhappy.

But while this very difficult time was happening, God was doing a new thing in me.  By chance, or so I thought, I began to read Nikos Kazantzakis’ book St, Francis.  Liking it, I found a copy of The Last Temptation of Christ.  I fell in love with Jesus and with being a Christian.  I decided that I wanted to be like Jesus and Francis.  I decided to pray and say "yes" to God.

My friend Rick and I then went to live in a religious tent commune outside Aspen, Colorado.  It turned out to be not so religious.  “Baby Jesus” stole a young high school student’s clothes, tent and sleeping bag, before running off with Brother John to a Navajo peyote festival.  I contracted hepatitis so that no food would stay down or in.  I lost 50 pounds and was literally dying.

The thought of going back to my parents, in the obvious disgrace of my new life, was not easy.  Only the grace of God, hidden in the severity of my illness, could have accomplished the creation of such humility.  I started hitchhiking north.

It was not with Warren’s definition of home ('Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.’) that my parents received me.  They had long ago with another brother decided the foolishness of such a thing.  They received me into the home of Mary’s response when she says to Warren, “I should have called (home) something you somehow haven’t to deserve.”

I did not deserve to be received home.  I did not deserve to be tended or revived to life by their care, or held together by their love; yet received I was.  They left a light on for me as I struggled with life and it saved me.

I wish I could tell you this was the only positive disintegration I have known.  It isn’t.  And I don’t expect to be done with falling apart until I die.  What I can tell you is that every broken piece of my life has been the prelude to a new and deeper joy.  With John Wesley and the saints of our faith I have learned to pray in gratitude for the struggles of my life, even as I pray for them to end.

And I would be lying if I told you that because division, disintegration and purgation have always been the beginning of a new and better life, I am no longer afraid of being broken.  The truth is I hate disintegration.  I hate division.  I hate the times of purgation.  I avoid them, ignore them, and deny them for as long as I can.  I wait for them to go away.  It hurts to make me fear and cry.

But I have learned that in these times God leaves a particularly bright light on and though it is sometimes so distant as to seem invisible, I always find it, or rather, it always finds me.  In this light I am safe no matter the struggle.  And for me, it is truth that the struggle is my life.  I have learned the truth of what Paul writes to the church folk in Rome, “We know that in everything God works for good with those who love God, who are called according to God’s purpose.” 5 Romans 8:28

Jesus makes a promise to Peter which is good for us:

Peter began to say to (Jesus), "Lord, we have left everything and followed you."  And Jesus said, "Truly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands, for my sake and for the gospel, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions, and in the age to come eternal life. 6 Mark 10:28-30

When our biological family is broken by love, God grants us a new family, this family we call church. It is not a perfect family and it sometimes fails in its mission, but when it obeys Jesus it is a loving family.  For if our biological family will not have us when we are dying, a true church family will stand by us not because they have to, but because we have come to a home “we somehow haven’t to deserve.”

Some of us here are in the midst of smooth times.  I pray God keeps you steady.  But some of those hearing me are in the midst of division, disintegration, and struggle.  There are family problems, work problems, health problems, mental problems, world problems and spiritual struggles.  I pray you stay steady to God for God will hold you close, flood into you divine safety and strength while you wait for the new thing being done in you if you will but say “yes” to love of God as we know it in Christ Jesus.

Amen and Shalom.