10 Pentecost

 August 14, 2022

 

Jeremiah 23.23-29; Hebrews 11:29-12.2; Luke 12.49-56

 

+ As most of you know, I have wanted to be a priest since I was 13 years old.

 The really amazing part of that is that I had no idea at 13 what it meant to be a priest.

 I don’t think I was particularly all that religious before that calling.

 I went to church and Sunday School because I had to.

 But it wasn’t always something that appealed to me.

 And I could never imagine actually “doing” church.

 And yet, somehow, into my life came this calling.

 And I will admit that I was pretty green about church when I first started to responding that calling.

 I guess, in some way, I thought, it was going to be blue skies and cool breezes all the time.

 And most naively of all, I truly believed that everyone in church got along with each other.

 Any of us who have been in the church for any period of time, know that is not quite the reality of the Church.

 I hate to break this news to you, but… Every day in the Church is definitely not a love feast.

 We don’t all sit around agreeing with each other on this and that.

 In fact, it’s almost never like that.

  Yes, there are divisions in the Church—the big Church

 And we have experienced those divisions here as a parish when we decided many years ago to be a place where all people are treated equally—including lesbian, gay, transgender and queer people.

 It was not a popular decision in the larger Church.

 But we did it.

 And because we did it, made a difference in countless lives.

 And I know there are many people who are members here because the Church has been a terrible place for them—a place of judgement and exclusion and meanness.

 And because it has been, we, as a parish, need to continue to do what we do and be what we are.

 As Steve Bolduc said today, people were coming up to him and others at Pride in the Park yesterday and saying that it is important that there are churches like ours, who welcome and include all people.

 Again, doing so means we will run up against a larger Church that does not support that.

 And because of that, the Church will still have its divisions.

 Issues of biblical interpretation and personal convictions continue to divide the Church.

 I get pretty firm about such things, as many of you know.

 Although I am patient when it comes to people telling me there are certain things about the Church they might not like personally—trust me there are many things I too personally don’t like about the Church and the way things are—even then, you have no doubt heard me say, “this is not an issue of any one of us.”

 We, as the Church, are a collective.

 And when one of us stiffens and crosses our arms and stands aloof off to the side, the divisions begin, and the breeches within the Church widen, and the love of God is not proclaimed.

 And the rest of us, in those moments, must simply go on.

 We must proclaim what needs to be proclaimed.

 We love what needs to be loved—fully and completely. .

 We move forward.  

 And when it happens to me—and it happens to me quite a lot—I will occasionally speak out.

 But for the most part, I realize: this is the Church.

 And we must plow forward together because that is what Jesus intends us to do as his followers.

 He makes this quite  clear.

 Jesus tells us today in our Gospel reading that he did not come to bring peace, but rather he came to bring division.

 What?

 What did he say?

 He didn’t come to bring peace?

 The Price of Peace didn’t bring peace??

 Not a nice thing to hear from Jesus.

 We want Jesus to bring peace, right?

 But the message of loving God and loving ALL people is a divisive one.

 It will, and trust me, has split families and societies and even the Church.

 Let’s be honest: his message, of loving God and loving one another, is a message that does divide.

 We, who inwardly stiffen at it, we rebel.

 We say, “no.”

 We freeze up.

 But, Jesus makes this very clear to us. It is not our job, as his followers, to freeze up.

 It not an option for us to let our blood harden into ice.

 For, he came to bring fire to the earth.

 To us, his followers.

 When we were baptized, we were baptized with water, yes.

 But we were also baptized with fire! With the fire of God’s Holy Spirit that came to us as we came out of those waters.

 And that fire burned away the ice within us that slows us down, that hardens us, that prevents us from loving fully.

 That fire that Jesus tells  us he is bringing to this earth, is the fire of his love.

 And it will burn.

 Now, for most of us, when we think of fire in relation to God, we think of the fires of hell.

 In fact, if I believed in an eternal hell, which I do not, I think it would be a place of ice, far removed from the fire of God’s love.

 Again and again in scripture, certainly for our scriptures for today,  fire in relation to God is seen as a purifying fire, a fire that burns away the chaff of our complacent selves.

 Fire from God is ultimately a good thing, although maybe not always a pleasant thing.

 The fire of God burns away our peripheral nature and presents us pure and spiritually naked before God.

 And that is how we are to go before God.

 But this fire, as we’ve made clear, is not a fire of anger or wrath.

 It is a fire of God’s love.

 God’s love for ALL people—not just those who we think God should love.

 It the fire that burns within God’s heart for each of us.

 And that fire is an all-consuming fire.

 When that consuming fire burns away our flimsy exteriors, when we stand pure and spiritually exposed before God, we realize who we really are.

 The fact remains, we are not, for the most part, completely at that point yet.

 That fire has not yet done its complete job in us.

 While we still have divisions, while we allow ourselves to stiffen in rebellion, when we allow our own personal tastes and beliefs to get in the way of the larger beliefs of the Church, we realize the fire has not completely done its job in us.

 The divisions will continue.

 The Church remains divided.

 For us, as followers of Jesus, we are not to be fire retardant, at least to the fire of love that blazes from our God.

 As unpleasant and uncomfortable it might seem at times, we need to let that fire burn away the chaff from us.

 And when we do, when we allow ourselves to be humbled by that fire of God’s love, then, we will see those divisions dying.

 We will see them slowly dying off.

 And will see that the Church is more than just us, who struggle on, here on this side of the veil.

 We will see that we are only a part of a much larger Church.

 We will see that we are a part of a Church that also makes up that “great cloud of witnesses” Paul speaks of in today’s Epistle.

 We will see, once our divisions are gone and we have been purified in that fire of God’s love, that that cloud of witnesses truly does surround us.

 And we will see that we truly are running a race as the Church.

 Paul is clear here too: that the only way to win the race is with perseverance.

 And perseverance of this sort if only tried and perfected in the fire of God’s love.

 Yes, this is the Church. This is what we are called to be here, and now, as followers of Jesus.

 This is what we, baptized in the fire of God’s love, are compelled to be in this world.

 So, let us be just that.  

 Let us be the Church, on fire with the love of God, fighting to erase the divisions that separate us.

 Let us be the prophets in whom God’s Word is like a fire, or a hammer that breaks a rock—or ice—in pieces.

 And when we are, finally and completely, those divisions will end, and we will be what the Church is on the other side of the veil.

 We will—in that glorious moment—be the home of God among God’s people.

 Let us pray.

 Holy and loving God, we thank you for this strange, jumbled, very human institution called the Church. We thank for its foibles and its attempts to do good, we thank for when it works well, and when it makes a difference in the world; and when it fails, we ask you to help us correct it and built it up. Be with us, your Church, as we attempt in our limited way, to live our faith, to be prophets of your Word, and to be on fire with your Spirit in our proclamation of your love; in Jesus’ name, we pray.