Not Peace but Division: A sermon by Kristle Delihanty

49 “I have come to bring fire on the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled! 50 But I have a baptism to undergo, and what constraint I am under until it is completed! 51 Do you think I came to bring peace on earth? No, I tell you, but division. 52 From now on there will be five in one family divided against each other, three against two and two against three. 53 They will be divided, father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.”

Message version: “I have come to start a fire on this earth- how I wish it were blazing right now! I have come to change everything, turn it right side up—how I long for it to be finished! Do you think I came to smooth things over and make everything nice? Not so. I have come to DISRUPT and CONFRONT!”

Interpreting the Times

54 He said to the crowd: “When you see a cloud rising in the west, immediately you say, ‘It’s going to rain,’ and it does. 55 And when the south wind blows, you say, ‘It’s going to be hot,’ and it is. 56 Hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of the earth and the sky. How is it that you don’t know how to interpret this present time?

I am a woman in long term recovery from homelessness, a couple decades of addiction 12 years ago, and eventually evangelicalism – which is why Reverend Sara Fischer gave me a strict 12 minutes to speak. Charismatic folks know how to talk.

A few years after I came into recovery, I was driving through this city, and I could not look away at the poverty and heart break that loomed. One day, I dropped one of my children off at day care and was coming back towards my home when I saw a woman on the corner, a block from my home. Her posture was bent over, hair in her face, and she was very dirty. I passed her by turning onto my street when I felt in my entire body, God tell me “I want you to feed her.’  We argued – I don’t really have the money, we are struggling financially, the baby is in the car. But eventually, I did.

I went back and brought her the food, but more I began to chat with her. Tell me about yourself, are you from here? What are your barriers? She carried shame and so I said – “I know mine were…” she looked up and looked me up and down and then we began to talk – and within minutes we were having a conversation, we told about our childhoods, and what led us to addiction, eventually we were laughing and the mood became light. She began to lift her posture, looking me in the eyes. I left feeling full and wondered what God was doing.

A few days later, again – there were two men. I went and grabbed some leftovers and came back. They told me the story of leaving home in the East, out of shame. They thought they’d find work here and it didn’t happen. The conversation began to be comfortable and again – I noticed the light of laughter and smiling.

When leaving, I asked – “God, what are you doing?

Immediately, I had this thought. “Love brings all of us HOME”

This began my ministry

________

What a timeline we are walking (or scrolling) through.

Some days it feels as if Peace is the furthest thing from our hearts.

Not just in the way we feel in our own homes, but through the headlines we scroll, the losses we endure, the grief that settles into our bones. Local tragedy. National unrest. Global heartbreak. It is all here, all at once.

And yet, somehow, we keep walking. We keep holding the tension.

We are witnessing the capacity for our hearts-- these fragile, finite containers -- to hold a multitude of emotions, and truths, and complexities all at once. We find ourselves stirring a pot of soup while watching footage of children across the globe starving. We pull weeds in the garden, tend our summer squash, water the lawn… all while knowing that vulnerable people just down the street are being stripped of their healthcare, or losing access to food, or being evicted from the safety of housing and shelter. My friends are dying in these streets, and I  still have to come home and make dinner and play board games with my babies.

We are watching this fire bring forth an unprecedented Holy disruption. In the world and in the church. The sword, this division Jesus is talking about in this verse is Justice. Dismantling the status quo. Shaking up traditions, systems, and institutions. Separating the wheat from the chaff, and Love from Empire.

While division isn’t our end goal, it is a natural consequence of truth, of LOVE, confronting the world. Our allegiance to this Love reorders everything. The way we think. The way we spend. The way we love. The way we live.  Bringing us to decolonizing our hearts and re-wilding our Love.

It’s easy to fall into despair and I think, rather, Jesus calls us to RESIST despair and live expectantly towards this moment. That we don’t close our eyes to this present time. That we let the Spirit lead us- That we actively look for the Kingdom, for the others, who’s pain overrides their comforts enough to stand up for radical and revolutionary love.

A kindled love that continues to burn away what is false and disrupts what is comfortable. A love that shakes up our human relationships, especially where loyalty to Him has called us out of old ways, unjust systems, and soft fuzzy lies.

 A costly Love.

A Refining and Fiery Love.

A love that Resists.

I remember being in church years ago and looking around at my peers. We’d sing (Remember, I was an evangelical – We’d sing for like an hour.) and we’d cry, and we would lift our hands to the Lord and thank God for the blessings in our life, and I would begin to have this dissonance, because the world outside was burning around us. I had been taking meals to neighbors living unhoused for a few years, a ministry birthed in my heart out of my own very lived experience. I would try to engage my peers in the church to “come and see, what is good.” But they seemed captive to comfort and what I found was just asleep in their pew. Wake up sleeper – there are gardens to tend to.

Jesus isn’t describing a nice and tidy faith. A faith that we bring home on Sunday and tuck back away for the week. He is showing the Kingdom of God like wildfire – a fire that refuses to be contained. A fire that burns away what can no longer stand.

Cleansing away oppression, hypocrisy, and hollow religion. A faith that renews and demands that we choose.

We can read the skies. We can prepare for storms. We can stockpile food and water. We can watch endless news streams. But can we read the spiritual and moral moment we are in right now? And more than that - do we have the audacity to respond?

Radical Love here in this moment is not sentimental; it’s a refusal to let injustice remain unchallenged. It’s scandalous, it’s risky, and it’s good, good trouble;

Siding with the poor, the marginalized, the excluded – and it will alienate you from those with privilege and power. Even from people who once called you friend.

Its calls us to run for the people, to bring meals to the poor, to accompany neighbors in hospitals, to hold memorials in the streets and parks, to cry on a curb with a friend. It calls us to speak out with our shaky knees, to disrupt and to rebuild. To grow gardens. Right here and now.

This is the way of the Kingdom. This is the fire Jesus came to kindle. This is the holy disruption we are invited into. To live expectantly, knowing that all true life is found in Him.

And US with our neighbors.

So may we have the courage to stand in it.

To let it refine us.

To let it burn away everything that cannot remain.

And to join the Spirit in building something new, something truer, something rooted in the fierce, unshakable Love of God.

I want to share a poem that my friend, who is a Rabbi here in Portland, shared with me a few days ago.

Most Wanted

Warning: God has slipped the noose.

We must confirm the worst of our righteous fears-

God has escaped the mosque, the synagogue, the church, where we have locked him up for years.

God is on the loose.

Henceforth beware;

You may find God in heathen beauty.

You may stumble upon God unaware.

Take appropriate measures:

You may have to behave as is each human being could reflect God’s face.

-              Mohja Kahf (1967)