August 17, 2025

 My apologies if you’re here with your family this morning!  I was just thanking God that this wasn’t the Sunday when all your family members were sitting in the second row, worshipping in the Lutheran Church for the first time!  This is one of the most difficult texts to digest, preach on, and understand.  Many preachers choose this time to be out of town.  I don’t tend to look at the readings before I plan my vacation, but I usually miss this one anyway.  But I am also a big believer in the Bible, that the harder a scripture is, the more important it is to face it and face whatever it is within us that resists it.

            We’ve just spent the last two weeks with the scripture that life doesn’t consist in the abundance of possessions, to sell what you have, give alms, make purses that hold an everlasting treasure and share it.  What we are talking about are the priorities of God’s Kingdom, which remember is near, very close in Jesus, urgent, and at hand.  We are seeing where God’s Kingdom priorities and the priorities of this world diverge, where they are different.  Jesus is establishing very clearly how the priorities of God and the priorities of the powers of this world differ,  He is helping us chart a course, as followers of Jesus, we will be taking a different route than that of most people. 

            At our baptism, we begin the process of laying out our priorities and how they will follow the path and priorities of Jesus.  We renounce certain things in our baptism.  Do you renounce the devil and all his empty promises?  We renounce them!  Do you renounce all the ways of sin that draw you from God? We renounce them!  Do you renounce the powers of this world that rebel against God?  We renounce them! 

Why do we reject and renounce all this?  We renounce them because they are values of our society.  Our society loves empty promises!  These are the empty promises: money will make you happy, your life will be improved the more you own, pharmaceuticals can fix all your problems, you owe ultimate allegiance to your family.  These promises come up empty.  The ways of sin that draw you from God are all the other priorities that distract you and keep you from going to the cross with Jesus—the love of comfort and pleasure, seeking approval from family and friends, selfishness, greed, and so on.  The powers of this world that rebel against God—do you renounce power that makes the rich richer and punishes the poor. Do you renounce the military forces that starve the children of Gaza?  Do you renounce the federal dollars taken from hungry and differently-abled children in the United States?  Do you renounce the powers that hurt people who are vulnerable and lift up those who already have earthly power?  Do we refuse to use power this way?  Do we refuse to elect people who use power this way?

In our baptism, we are starting to define ourselves and our priorities differently than others.  This is the kind of division that Jesus is talking about when he says he comes to not to bring peace but a sword.  Now it is a bit confusing when The Prince of Peace says he doesn’t come to bring peace.  He does bring division, but not all division is bad.  We make a division when we split up a pizza, for instance.  Ok, some for you and some for me.  We make a division when we make a decision to go a certain direction, to follow certain values.  When we are Christians, we are following Jesus, who has picked a path against the empty promises of this world and for the poor and neglected.  So we find ourselves divided with others who don’t hold the same values.

When it comes to family, it is hard to say if we worship family more, or money and possessions.  It is a question of where we owe ultimate allegiance.  Many of our churches sprung up as a way to pass down our values to another generation, of teaching our children and grandchildren our customs and faith.  Family has often seen us through difficult times and helped make us who we are.  But Jesus says he has come to bring division, even in families.  Sons and fathers will be divided, and daughters in law against her mother in law.  Of course at the time Luke wrote this Gospel, this is what he saw in his congregation.  Some family members were choosing to follow Jesus and others were disowning them.  Luke describes a situation close to his congregation’s hearts—sometimes family doesn’t understand.  Sometimes family has another path they are on, other priorities.

One of the most beautiful aspects of the life of Christians is that we become one body, that we are adopted as heirs of Christ, so we become siblings to one another.  That can be bad news if you have poor relationships with your family, but it is good news if you need a bigger safety net.  There is the family you are born into and then there is your chosen family, who you come together with at holidays if you are far from home or you’ve been rejected by your family.  These are people you can count on to know you, where you can be yourself.  The Christian family is one where you can share your hopes and fears, where you can live your values of following Jesus and serving those in need.  This is a different kind of family that goes beyond genes or nationality or race or language.  We are all one family in Jesus.

In this Gospel reading today, Jesus is heading to the cross.  He’s feeling the pressure.  He’s feeling the stress, the urgency of the moment.  He wants his followers to define themselves, not by being a peace and doing whatever mom or dad or grandma would do, but by looking to Jesus and following his way.  His was a longer road to peace that went through the countryside and lakes, through many storms, up mountains and down to valleys, to people complaining, people hurting, people in need.  It didn’t feel peaceful at all.  But Jesus brought them along one by one and made them into family, and although many of them dispersed at his darkest hour of pain on the cross, they came together again to support and care for each other in the upper room, they walked on the road together and discussed the happenings of that most Holy Week.  They found themselves family, with different values.  So that when Jesus appeared to them again alive, they were filled with the Holy Spirit to live a different way going forward, the Kingdom way, with an expansive definition of family, truly alive, with a true and lasting peace different than the peace the world gives.