Dangerous

Luke 12:49-56 (Hebrews 11:29-12:2; Isaiah 5:1-7)

Did you notice all those eruptions of violence and judgment, division and fire in the various scripture we heard this morning?

It’s gory stuff; heavy stuff.

And it’s the middle of August, when those of us who aren’t on vacation probably want to be. 

If you’d asked me, I would have picked a different gospel for today.  Maybe “consider the lilies” or maybe one of those parables with a feast in it…

But the angry or dangerous elements show up in everything we read today, because there’s destruction, wrath, and judgment seeded all through the Bible,  “Old” Testament and “New.” 

So perhaps, even in August, the church -- and beyond the church, the whole family of God – is not meant to be a comfortable place.

Which is, of course, exactly what Jesus is talking about.

Not about whether we like the music, have cushions for the pew, or other physical comforts in worship, but about how seriously following Jesus is going to get us into dangerous, stressful, painful situations,              

not maybe, but definitely.

I’ve come to set fire to the earth, Jesus says.

Don’t think I have come to bring peace; no, I bring division! The kind of division that happens when you bring an ax or a sword down on something. Families will be divided.  Unpredictably.  Unevenly. Don’t you people understand what’s coming????

It’s so clear to Jesus, and he seems frustrated that we don’t always see it, too.

His first disciples, the crowds who followed him for healing and miracles and rousing preaching, all of them expected him to fix the system.

All of them expected the Messiah they had waited for to get rid of the foreign invaders, and bring back the golden age.  To bring security and assurance in daily life and in our relationship with God.

That last isn’t much different from what a lot of people are looking for in the church today.  Including me, often.  And maybe many of you.

It’s probably perfectly normal to want assurance, comfort, and stability in our relationship with God, not to mention our daily lives,

and if we Christians advertised ourselves as firestarters, disrupters of the peace, and guaranteed to spilt up your family, would you have joined? Or stuck with it?

Maybe.

Maybe.

Because even if we are comfortable in church today, we have to take seriously the disruptive, dangerous power of Jesus, and of the gospel, and the kingdom of God.

You can’t – really cannot – overthrow injustice and establish righteousness in a few tidy steps with no one getting hurt. 

Just look at Egypt.  And most of their neighbors.  Look at Iraq.

You can’t feed the poor and heal the sick without pissing off a LOT of people and groups with deep, entrenched, real power.  Look at the fights over “Obamacare” and the gutting of real help for hungry Americans in this summer’s “Farm Bill.”

You can’t love your neighbor as yourself without tripping over a lot of fears and prejudice.  Look what happens when people start identifying with Trayvon Martin or George Zimmerman.

Look what happens when gay and lesbian people want to be married, and serve openly in the military, and bisexual and transgendered people want equal protection under the law.  That’s hardly been a love fest in this country, no matter what it looks like on Pride weekend.

All those things divide families, often violently.

They disrupt peace and security, sow stress and distress, and spark fires that are metaphorical and real.

And they’re all the gospel.

The gospel is dangerous.

Jesus is, too.

And it’s not a bad thing if we leave church today alert, and wary, and looking over our shoulders, instead of comfortable and secure.

Because justice, healing, equity, and love are incredibly disruptive, but we need them.

We need them, the world needs them, more than security, or power, or wealth.

And God needs this. God needs you and me to want God’s kingdom enough that we can see the disruption and distress coming, and leap forward to welcome that kingdom anyway.

This week I heard the story of Viola Liuzzo on the radio.  She was a white woman active in the NAACP in Detroit when she heard about the voting rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama.  She told her husband, “This is everybody’s fight,” kissed her children, and drove south.

At the end of the march, she was driving others back to their Alabama homes, when a car full of Klu Klux Klan members tried to force her off the road, then shot her in the head.

She was the only white female protester killed in the civil rights movement.

And that was only the beginning of the division.

Her family were hounded in their neighborhood, for being “nigger-lovers.”  One daughter had to change schools, and the family needed armed guards for years.

Vicious rumors about Viola spread, locally and nationally – an attempt to divert attention from the FBI informant with the Klan members who shot her.

Her husband turned to alcohol; the children moved away, at least one with post-traumatic stress disorder.

Justice and equity are dangerous.

Healing, hope, and fierce love for our neighbors are some of the most disruptive forces on earth.

Because they scare people who are used to our broken world, and power doesn’t like change.

That’s what Jesus said to his followers so many years ago, and to us today.

The gospel is dangerous.

And we need to embrace that.

Two years ago, Viola Liuzzo’s daughter Sally moved back to Detroit, to the place where she lost her mother, and was driven out of school, because, she said, “There’s a lot of work to be done in Detroit, still.”

She wants to help the world remember her mother the way she does, loving and loved, determined and purposeful,making a real difference, marching toward the dangers of justice, equity, love, and healing, because those gifts, those gospel gifts, matter more than all the disruption they cause.

Sally Liuzzo-Prado remembers a conversation with Martin Luther King III, son of a much more famous civil rights martyr, at the dedication of the Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery.

She told the reporter:  "He pulled me aside, said, 'I wanted you to know something: 30 years ago, my dad couldn't be in this ballroom. And today you and I are here together, and it's because of your mother.'”

She’s never forgotten that.

And we can’t forget, no matter how comfortable we feel in church or in life, that our faith is about fire, disruption, stress, and division;

justice, equity, healing and love.

Dangerous, every one of them. And they belong together.

This is the gospel of the Lord.

Thanks be to God.

Two Ton Faith

Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16  Luke 12:32-40

In Nairobi, Kenya; in the cities of Naivasha and Narok, and in the towns and on the roads between, you see motorcycles and matatus (village to village taxi vans) and occasionally private cars which have faith written all over them.

Scripture citations are blazoned on the windshield, and you see stencils proclaiming the “Power of Prayer” – even one matatu covering multiple bases: “Inshallah” on the windscreen, and “No Jesus, No Peace” on the side window.

Our bumper stickers have nothing on the Kenyan vehicular proclamation practices.

On those roads, the group I traveled with also passed buildings with signs proclaiming “Blessings Butchery,” “Amazing Grace Apartments,” and “Anointed General Store.”

From what’s visible on the highways and streets, it would be easy to imagine that Kenya is where the Kingdom of God has come.  (And in that case, I should perhaps alert you that in that kingdom they drive on the other side of the road!)

My time in Kenya was an immersion into a different world –which is in fact what Jesus proclaims about the kingdom of God. 

Jesus tells us that God’s kingdom is a time and place where the Word of God is the lens through which we see one another, our work, and the world around us.  A life in which God’s Word is lived in ordinary, daily, world-changing ways.

That happens in Kenya.

And it happens here, too, in some ways and times and places.

And in Uganda, and Canada, and Brazil and Egypt;

even places full of danger and fear.

Do not fear, Jesus says, for it is God’s pleasure to give you the kingdom.  It is God’s delight to bring us into that way of being where we live in the fullness of God’s will and promises.

Nice, yes?

Very nice.  But it’s worth noting, too, that this assurance is bracketed by and embedded in Jesus’ instructions to all of us to be ready, watchful, alert, and focused on God’s kingdom, rather than the desires and anxieties that line our daily paths. 

Our eagerness for the kingdom, our readiness to recognize it and join in, is just as important as God’s delight in bringing the kingdom to us.

That’s what I saw in Kenya, on all those windshields and storefront signs.  I believe that the people who name their bikes, taxis, and roadside shops for psalms and blessings are anchoring themselves in God’s promises, equipping themselves to be alert – on the road, at work, at home, at all times – for the presence of God’s kingdom in all those places where daily anxieties, desires, fears, burdens and boredom are most likely to claim us.

Kenya, like the kingdom of God Jesus teaches about, lives in the tension between blessings recognized and daily injustice; between grace celebrated and voices silenced; between unearned pain and answered prayer. 

There’s still vast injustice and pain in Kenya, as in so many places.

Kibera, the largest urban slum in Africa – in many places free of running water or electricity – sits a just few kilometers from the Nairobi National Park, full of international tourists (yes, me) clicking expensive cameras at giraffes, ostriches and lions.

And government mansions are built and protected by armed security, while Nairobi County has no working fire engines to respond to a fire at the airport.

And in the midst of this, every day, Kenyans count their blessings, praise God, and paint their faith across the windows of their vehicles, stores and homes, where it’s neither ironic nor a dream, but profoundly real.

Faith is the assurance of things hoped for; the conviction of things not seen.  That’s what we heard this morning.  But it takes the 400 year old King James Version to get the English translation right:

Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

Faith is reality.  Faith is proof.

Faith is not wishful, or light, or magical thinking.

Faith is the reality of our deepest hope, distinct and substantial with weight and momentum. Faith is verification of the things we cannot see that matter most: relationship, love, promises and peace.

Think about faith in your life,

in our world, here in and near Lombard.

I know that many of you make a habit of counting your blessings.

Where have you already touched the truth of your deepest hopes?

In your children, or grandchildren? In your spouse or a dear friend?

Have you touched hope in a community that embraces the lost and the broken?

In simple joy of living?

Where can you experience the substance of your hope, the reality of the kingdom of God, here and now?

When have you known proof of the things you cannot see?

Have you been able to act on something because you love someone? Or because you are loved?

A week ago, I flew across the Atlantic on prayer more tangible than an economy class seat.   Have you felt prayer lifting and supporting you?

Have you known peace, while living in a world that’s full of anxiety and conflict?

That’s faith.

Your actions, when you act in the confidence of those things we can’t see.

Our experience of hope living and growing.

That’s faith.

And that’s the kingdom of God. 

The one that you and I are supposed to be watching for, now, yesterday, tomorrow, and always.

In Limuru, I rode in a taxi with “Psalms 121” across the windshield in letters bigger than my hand.  Some of the Episcopalians in the car promptly began quoting to each other the beginning of that psalm:

“I lift my eyes to the hills – from where will my help come?”

considering it apt for the potholed mountain roads we were traveling.

And then our driver quoted the last verse instead,

“This is the Psalm,” he told us,  “that says ‘God will protect you on all your journeys, coming or going, now and forever,’ and that is what this car means.”

Indeed. That car is two tons of solid faith, with weight, and momentum.

Faith which is the substance of our deepest hope; the proof of what we do not see.

Faith which is the living truth that the kingdom of God embraces us, now,

in traffic, at work, shopping, playing, fighting for justice, or praying at home.

The sign on my office says “Calvary,” and my business card says, “Reach out. Receive. Rejoice.”  Those expressions of faith come with the job.

But maybe it’s time to think about my car, too.

About faith, visible and substantial, in the solid metal and plastic of my daily journeys.

What would your car say,

about real, substantial faith,

if you went home today and painted your truth on the windshield?