Sermon manuscript:
Jesus says in our Gospel reading “Do you think that I
came to bring peace on the earth?” The answer is unexpected: “No, I tell
you, but rather division.” Jesus did not come to bring peace. He came to
bring division.
In order to properly understand Jesus we must understand
that he is not talking about being divisive about all things. Being divisive
about all things would be ridiculous. For example, every time someone says one
thing, you have to say the opposite. To every yes, you would say no. By
necessity we would repel one another, unable to agree about anything. No, this
certainly isn’t what Jesus is saying when he says that he has come to bring
division. Elsewhere he clearly says that we should be agreeable.
But the one thing that we as Jesus’s disciples must not give
ground on is God’s Word. This is where there has always been division and will
continue to be division. The division has existed right from the beginning. God
said “Don’t eat from this certain tree.” That was his Word. Adam and Eve
should have kept it. Neither one of them should have been moved from it. As it
turned out, they both fell. But that was worth maintaining division over.
After the fall into sin God gave his promise of redemption
and forgiveness through the Seed of the woman. That was God’s Word. The
descendants of Adam and Eve need to hold to that Word no matter what. The first
human being born in the natural way, Adam and Eve’s son Cain, was a murderer.
He murdered his believing brother Abel. That was a tremendous division over God’s
Word.
If Abel would have sided with Cain, even if Abel had said
that Cain was fine, that God’s Word didn’t really matter, then there wouldn’t
have been any division or any murder. But there also wouldn’t be any Gospel, or
any Kingdom of God. All that would be left would be the devil’s kingdom and his
lies. That first family in the garden already experienced division. Jesus’s
words in our Gospel reading where already true then.
Subsequent history has continued to bear this out. Last week
and this week in our Epistle reading we have been hearing this refrain: “By
faith.” By faith Abel offered his sacrifice. By faith Enoch was taken up. By
faith Noah built an ark. By faith Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob lived in the
promised land as strangers. What all of these people had in common was faith in
God’s Word, in God’s promises. God’s Word cannot be given up by us Christians
if we want to continue to be Christians. Otherwise we will no longer be living
“by faith.” We will be living by unbelief in what God has said and belief in
something else.
So what is meant and what is included in God’s Word that we
must not give ground over? The answer is the Scriptures. The Scriptures are
God’s inspired Word. Nobody has the right to change or ignore what has been
revealed by God to the inspired writers. We are bound to what God has said in
the Scriptures.
As you know, there are many things that can be discussed and
disputed when it comes to the Scriptures. We often get the idea that it’s
mainly the fine points that cause divisions—obscure teachings. No, in fact
there are divisions over the most essential teachings.
The Ten Commandments teach us how we are to behave. The Ten
Commandments are just as serious as that first commandment God gave in the
garden concerning the tree with just as far-reaching of consequences. The Ten
Commandments teach us to believe only in God, to use his Name correctly, to
hear his Word, to obey your parents and other authorities, do not murder, do
not commit adultery, do not steal, do not lie, do not covet.
Think of the division that takes place over this Word from
God. How common it is for people to think they can believe in whatever or
whomever they choose. They do not feel as though they are required to pray from
the heart. They do not think they have to hear God’s Word or receive Christ’s
sacraments. They do not feel as though they need to honor their parents, their
boss, or whomever is in authority. With all ten of the commandments there will
be people—and we, ourselves, frankly—who will deny that these need to be kept.
However, it is our duty—faith demands—that we do not run
away from these commandments so as to please those who want to ignore them or
break them. That will create division. But that’s alright. God’s commandments
are good, right, and holy. Those who argue otherwise are no different than the
serpent who got Adam and Eve to believe that this commandment wasn’t given to
them for their good. They argue that we would be happier if we broke the
commandment and followed our own will.
There is division over how we should live according to the
commandments God has given. There is also severe disagreement about who God is.
We confess in the Creed that God has made me and all creatures. You know full
well that there are tons of people who disagree very strongly on that point.
The popular myth these days is that we are the product of chance and the
selection of the fittest.
The Creed confesses that Jesus Christ is Lord. He was born
of the virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was
buried. He descended into hell. The third day he rose again from the dead,
ascended into heaven, and sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty.
From thence he will come to judge the living and the dead.
Here is the very heart of our faith as Christians. Jesus is
the Seed of the woman who crushed the serpent’s head. He has redeemed us by his
holy, precious blood and by his innocent suffering and death. Jesus is the
great revelation of God’s will towards sinners—that he does not wish for us to
be left in our sins, estranged from him, but adopted through baptism into his
only-begotten Son. When Jesus says in our reading that he has come to cast fire
on the earth and that he has a baptism to undergo, he is talking about this
work of salvation that he will go on to do.
His salvation is also what brings about the division that he
speaks about—division that goes all the way down into the home: three against
two and two against three; father against son, son against father; mother
against daughter, daughter against mother; and so on.
This division is very serious. It is between good and evil. That
can sound pompous when it is understood incorrectly. It can sound as though we
are naturally good and unbelievers are evil. No, we are not good. We are all
evil, without exception. Only Jesus with his kingdom is good. It is also not
the case that we had the good sense to choose Jesus. Jesus chose us to lift us
out of our otherwise helpless and evil condition. Without Jesus we are enslaved
to sin just as much as anybody else. Jesus, who is the truth, sets us free. By
his Holy Spirit he begins to work on us now to fight against our flesh, and he
promises complete healing in heaven.
Division comes about because we cannot deny Jesus. We cannot
deny this saving truth. He is sinners’ only hope. If we give up on Jesus, then
we are necessarily siding with Jesus’s enemies. The fire that Jesus has come to
cast upon the earth, the baptism with which he was baptized—this was to fight
against and conquer our corrupted bodies and souls, to redeem us, to set us
free from the devil’s lies. If we give up, then there won’t be division
anymore, but there won’t be God’s Kingdom anymore either. God, with his Word
and Holy Spirit, wrestles mightily with us to bring us continually to
repentance and faith. This is a fight, a war. There will be pain, and even
casualties. That’s how it’s supposed to be.
Please take note of that point. We haven’t taught this point
very well for a long time, and that has caused us great harm. Jesus says that
he has come to bring division. Paul says that there must be divisions even
within the church. Strife will be present even within the household—the very
worst kind of strife. This is what the Kingdom of God looks like. People are
going to get upset.
This is what the Scriptures tell us will happen. We also see
it in the history that the Bible records. Think of how Paul was treated by both
Jews and Gentiles. It is only by many afflictions that we may enter the kingdom
of heaven. That’s how it is always going to be because Jesus’s enemies haven’t
given up. These enemies want us to give up.
Since this is the way the Christian life necessarily has to
go—not a bed of roses, but a fight to the death with our flesh, the world, and
the devil—isn’t it terribly harmful when Christians are led to believe that the
Christian life is easy and peaceful and inoffensive? What if soldiers were
trained in such a way where they were led to believe that they would receive flowers
and chocolates on the battlefield instead of a hail of bullets? That would be
some very poor training indeed. So also we Christians must understand that
living the Christian life creates division.
This is why it isn’t necessarily a bad thing when you find
strife and conflict in a congregation or school. A congregation can be as
peaceful as a graveyard, but you don’t find much life in a graveyard. A
congregation can be peaceful because nobody cares or everybody’s just given up.
There’s no fight going on between the Holy Spirit and the flesh that we all
have. Instead in such a congregation it’s like everybody’s just boxing the air.
No blows are being landed, which hurt. A pretend fight is going on instead of
one where real folks are brought to real repentance because of real sins that
they would rather not have to give up. But that’s where real forgiveness
happens too.
Fighting probably doesn’t sound like much fun, but realize
that it is also by fighting that progress is made. Hopefully you have discovered
some of this progress in your own life of faith.
I hope that you have already had the experience where God’s
Word comes to you and you really dislike it. It makes you angry. It makes you
angry at the one who said it. That’s very often where our fury gets directed:
“How dare he say that?” “How dare she judge me?” We’re not that different than Cain. He didn’t
murder God. He murdered Abel. So it is also with God’s Word. We don’t storm
heaven and fight God. We fight the messenger whom he has sent. We figure that
the messenger is at fault for how we are feeling.
I hope, I say, that you’ve had this experience, but that you
have not been a casualty—that you haven’t gone off like Cain, alienated from
God, but that you have instead eventually come to your senses. This experience
is very educational. It’s good training.
If you’ve had that experience, then you won’t be surprised when
others do it to you. You’ll be thankful for that messenger who told you what
you didn’t want to hear. Then you will open your mouth and confess God’s Word,
and you won’t be surprised when a hail of bullets come screaming back at you in
the form of angry words, angry faces or coldness. We all have evil in us that
doesn’t want to be kicked out by the finger of God. We all tend to howl when
the blow hits home, when the painful splinter is being extracted. That’s how it
goes. That’s what we should expect. Those are the Christian growing pains.
So we must not get distracted by schemes for quick and easy
growth without any division. Such schemes can hardly be preaching the Gospel
that Jesus is talking about in our Gospel reading. Instead we must recognize
that growth in faith has always happened the same way from the very beginning.
It has happened against our will, so to speak. We get assaulted—or, rather, the
evil in us gets assaulted. We have to be pulled out from the bushes and
confronted by God. Only then are we truly terrified for our sins. Only then do
we understand that the Seed of the woman is our only hope. His goodness is the
only way to escape our evilness.
If it weren’t for Jesus we would all be left in the devil’s
kingdom with his lies. As it is, though, Jesus fights for us to save us from ourselves
and the devil’s lies with his truth and the Holy Spirit. Thus we must not be
ashamed of the division Jesus causes and his words. To be ashamed of that would
mean that we are ashamed of salvation itself.
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