Longing to Burn

A sermon on Luke 12:49-59
by Rev. Chris Bohnhoff

Friends, will you join me in prayer? God of rainclouds and sultry winds, of refiner’s fire and cleansing water. There is so much in this sacred story – in this world – that unsettles. Hold us gently as we practice presence to the challenge, to the pain, to the possibility of story. Grant us insight, we pray, and wisdom that we can bring to an anxious world. Amen.

This past week, I went to see The Moth Story Slam for the first time. Are you familiar with The Moth? Here’s how it works: the organizers announce a theme – last week’s was “Childish.” You show up to the show, and if you have a story to share, you put your name in a hat. Ten names are drawn, and each person gets five minutes to tell their story, no notes, no script. Sometimes, magic happens.

“Childish” was a great theme, prompting memories of horses and cowboys, and summer camp, and bike stunts that the teller was probably lucky to have survived. But it also brought to mind adult experiences that the teller admitted were childish: their reactions to people in line at the store who don’t keep moving forward with the line, for example, or petty but super intense neighborhood fence wars.

As I think back on those ten stories, I think a good subtitle to the “Childish” theme would have been, “Things I realize now were kinda stupid, or immature, but that I did anyway.” Isn’t that at the heart of many childhood memories? The experience of doing something even though we had no clue that there would be consequences, good or bad? Just living in the moment with our own instincts and self-interest and sense of invulnerability? As parents and grandparents and aunts and uncles, we can look back at our own childhoods and think, wow, it’s amazing that I’m still alive. But those experiences also shape our values, our sense of cause and effect, our sense of safety in the world.

In the passages leading up to today’s reading, Luke records Jesus speaking to a range of childish behaviors. Like thinking that your clothes, house, and grain storehouses are somehow the best measures of a life’s value. Or thinking that God doesn’t think about you, either causing anxiety and a sense of danger, or causing a sense that the teacher is away and you can get away with something.

Right before our passage, Jesus tells a parable about trustworthiness: two uncles, trusted to watch over a family in a father’s absence. One cares for the family, one abuses them. Which one will be trusted and brought into the family’s home in the future, he asks? The disciples respond by asking, Jesus, is this teaching aimed at us or at everyone? Are we in trouble?

And Jesus responds, well, if you know what is wrong and you do it anyway, that’s really bad. If you don’t know what is wrong and you do it, that’s not as bad. Or in other words, if you’re a child and you act childishly, these things happen. But if you’re an adult and you act childishly, that’s really not cool.

Then we get to our reading for the day, and Jesus kind of loses it. He goes full-on prophet. “I came down from above to ignite a fire on this land, and how I long for it to burn!” he says. “Do you look for me to bring peace to this land? No! I tell you, first there will be great conflict. The message I bring will pierce like the blade of a long knife.” (12:49-52)

What happened to, They shall call him Prince of Peace? And My peace I bring to you, my peace I leave with you? And Blessed are the peacemakers? Is Jesus for peace or is he a lighter of fires?

The top scorer at last week’s Moth slam told the story of how he had one goal when he started college: to find a wife. He described how, as a child, he had planned out his perfect three-day wedding; how he dreamed of how it would all begin, walking down the library aisles, reaching for Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice at the very same moment as his future wife. He went on to tell how he started college and quickly met a beautiful, brilliant woman. They started a relationship, but it didn’t feel right, even though it was almost exactly how he had always dreamed his life would be.

He told that what he came to realize was that he wasn’t at all attracted to women. He was gay. I’m sure that the process of coming out and living into his authentic self felt at times like the blade of a long knife. But the peace that he clearly felt as he told his story in hindsight, and the happy ending of going to graduate school with a new goal of finding a husband – that peace required him to enter into the disruptive space of burning down a long-held belief about his own path so that true peace could emerge.

In our sacred stories, as Jesus nears Jerusalem, he rachets up his call outs of those whose words and deeds didn’t match up. And it was those folks, those who walk the walk until they think nobody is looking, they’re the ones who need purification in the fire of Jesus’ teaching.

But here’s the thing: those folks, the hypocrites, the ones who know better but still hurt people while going with the flow, or looking out first for themselves, or trying to convince themselves that the outdated picture of themselves they cling to is still their goal? If we’re honest, I think we would agree that we, and every person ever born, is “those folks.” We all get caught up in maintaining our delicate, partial peace, because the disruption needed to get us to our full peace is just too scary.

What’s the thing in your life that could use a little burning? What do you need to admit that you were wrong about and accept the consequences? What disruption might bring you closer to your capital-P Peace? My friends, may we in the days to come allow ourselves to be disrupted so that we may find the peace to which we are called. May we be bold, may we be brave enough to let go of the dull ache of the devil we know and follow Jesus in word and action. May it be so. Amen.