The Rev. Joseph Farnes
All Saints, Boise
Proper 15C
Not-so-peaceful, comforting words today from Jesus: “I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled! I have a baptism with which to be baptized, and what stress I am under until it is completed! Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division! From now on five in one household will be divided, three against two and two against three; they will be divided.”
He has not come to bring peace to the earth, but rather division? How could this be the same Jesus that we talk about at Christmastime, “peace on earth and goodwill towards all”? What a confusing message! Luke’s Gospel gives us angels singing about glory to God and peace on earth as the shepherds go to check out the newborn baby Jesus, and Luke’s Gospel also gives us this stern and sharp rebuke from Jesus!
When we look at infant Jesus, we see peace and hope. We see a future. We see simplicity and compassion.
When we look at adult Jesus in the midst of his ministry, we see that … and we see more. We see the prophetic, wild Jesus who wishes the fire were already kindled, the Jesus who overturns the tables of the moneychangers and merchants in the Temple. We see the wisdom Jesus who teaches us how to follow God’s law in loving God and our neighbor. We see merciful Jesus who reaches out to the lost and brokenhearted and the sick. We see a more complicated Jesus than we saw in the manger.
It’s as if as an adult Jesus wants to shake off all the things we projected on him as a child. He wants to remind us that he is his own person, not a caricature of a person. He is here for a purpose, and it’s his purpose, not the purpose we have in mind.
What were the purposes that Jesus’ disciples had in mind? What is it that the disciples wanted from their Messiah?
Some of the disciples wanted a warrior Messiah, a new King David who would throw out the Romans and re-institute the Kingdom. So when they heard “Kingdom of God”, that’s where their mind went. They wanted a Kingdom of Israel where not only would the Romans be thrown out, but that these disciples would get to sit at the right hand and left hand of the new King, because why advocate for a change in power without trying to get yourself some of that power!
Some of the disciples wanted a prophetic Messiah, but one who would be like Elijah contending with the prophets of Baal, calling down fire on the sacrifices and summoning Israel to a new fervor against the multitudes of idols. Of course, the effort would be all on the prophet’s shoulders – just like Elijah, who had to go into hiding multiple times because the fervor of the crowds is short-lived.
Some of the disciples wanted a Messiah sage, full of wisdom, proclaiming an inner way to God that bypassed the sacrifices of the Sadducees and the teachings of the Pharisees. The sage would teach the way, and individual enlightenment would be assured to those who followed him. This would make it easier to look away when the needs of the world became apparent, when the hungry and the oppressed cried out – why look around when you can look inward and close your eyes to the world?
But it doesn’t stop with those initial disciples; through the centuries, Christians have projected all sorts of purposes and desires on Jesus Christ the Messiah. Medieval Christians were keen on the hierarchical Messiah, with kings, bishops, and popes fighting with one another as to who was going to be at the top of the hierarchy. Whose hat was the most powerful hat: the king’s golden crown with jewels, the bishop’s pointy miter, or the pope’s triple tiara?
Modern Christians have had their own share, too. There’s the moral crusader Messiah version of Jesus, where Jesus is against vices … but generally only the vices that other people have. Laws must be passed to protect society from immorality … but those laws will always have a loophole for those moral crusaders who fail their own moral test. Or the meek twin of moral crusader Messiah, the socially acceptable Messiah, so famous in the midcentury for assuring Christians that the most important thing about church was attendance to show that you were a moral member of society – belief didn’t really matter, as long as you weren’t the object of gossip at teatime or teetime.
Or the Messiah with lowered expectations – just sing a badly written praise song in his name and put a “He is greater than I” sticker on the back of your SUV, and it doesn’t matter what you do now! Or the Messiah of nostalgia – remember back when things were better, in my rose-colored glasses era?
Jesus is the Messiah, and he has come to bring fire and how he wishes it were already kindled. He has a baptism with which he is to be baptized – and how he wishes it were completed! The baptism he is talking about is not the baptism with water by John the Baptist, because that has already happened. Here, Jesus is talking about his passion and death on the cross. And on the cross, all the false Messiahs that his disciples expected are done away with. From the false Messiahs expected by his disciples then to the false Messiahs expected by his disciples today, all of them are done away with on the cross. That’s how we can tell the true Messiah from the false.
On the cross, the warrior Messiah is defeated.
On the cross, the prophetic Messiah is put to shame.
On the cross, the sage Messiah is ridiculed.
On the cross, the hierarchical Messiah is overthrown.
On the cross, the moral crusader Messiah is naked and exposed.
On the cross, the socially respectable Messiah is abandoned and forsaken.
On the cross, the lowered expectations Messiah is rejected and the nostalgia Messiah is forgotten.
So what remains? Only the real Messiah.
Jesus, the Messiah, the Son of God, God the Son, Jesus the Christ, the second person of the Trinity, the one who has taken upon himself our humanity for our salvation and healing. On the cross, only Jesus the Messiah in his flesh-and-blood remains. A human being who bears our burdens and shares our sufferings. A divine person, who wants to save us from the suffering we inflict on each other and on ourselves; a divine person who wants to bring us to the perfection of the divine presence.
And to do this, Jesus the Messiah must kindle the fire that burns away those false images of the Messiah. To do this, Jesus the Messiah must cut the knots that bind us, even as we furiously try to re-tie those knots to avoid any change at all. We human beings are like that. But Jesus loves us too much to let us be limited by our limited expectations and our limited hopes – he will not be a limited Messiah. He is our true Messiah, our true savior, and our true hope. So when in a few short months we are looking at the baby Jesus, the infant Messiah in the manger, we remember that he embodies our hope – but that this baby Messiah will not stay confined by our wishes and expectations. Hope is far bigger than that, and hope is wild – hope is fiery – hope will not stay confined in a manger but hope will kindle in us the same baptismal fire that is within Jesus, our Messiah, our Anointed One, the Christ. What will that baptismal fire kindle within us, what will it call us to do … what does it call us to do now? Amen.