JESUS, THE HOME WRECKER .
I opened with this illustration from Bishop William Willimon:
For many years I taught at a divinity school, preparing persons for the ordained ministry. To my dismay, I noted a sad number of divorces among our students. I would try to reach out to some of the students, offering my help at this time, for divorce can be a wrenching and terrible experience.
I heard a story often repeated from them that went something like this: "God called me to go to divinity school and to prepare myself for pastoral ministry and when I told my spouse about this he left. He said that he had no intention of being married to a pastor."
I guess they were living examples of the fulfillment of Jesus promise in Luke 12:52-53. Jesus, the home wrecker.
This scripture is hard to accept if we are use to themes that center on Jesus the Prince of Peace, or Jesus meek and mild who would do no harm. Here Jesus truly speaks for himself and his ministry among us. Turn to Mark 10: 38 “But Jesus said to them, “You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?” In both Luke and Mark the image of baptism for Jesus runs through the crucifixion to the resurrection. And Jesus challenges us to follow him on this path.
We live in an age of uncertainty much like the time of the early church. We long for a security that we shall never be able to claim. God knows that each generation must answer the divine call by going through the journey to the cross free of the expectation that the son shall be just like his father, or the mother who expects her daughter to do exactly what the mother would want. That expectation leads us to wrap ourselves in cocoons of security that block us from God. When Jesus comes into our life he will stir up a confrontation between generations, communities, and ministries. John Lynn has put it this way.
Like Fire Cast On the Earth
Martin Luther knew that the ice of human nature had frozen things over in his day, most especially he thought, in the heart and mind of a man named Erasmus. To that Dutch humanist Luther wrote the Word of Godalways puts the world in a state of tumult because it comes like fire cast on the earth. "For the Word of God comes, whenever it comes, to change and renew the world."
Nowhere does the fire of God's Word burn off the ice and cause tumult more than in the differences between generations, in the relationships between father and son and mother and daughter. These relationships tend to freeze over into a cool placidity where mother thinks her daughter must be just as she is, or son thinks he must be a carbon copy of dad. Not so, says the gospel. There will not be agreement between mother and daughter or father and son so much as there will be distinction; each will have a proper share of the kingdom of God. God's Word burns off the ice of mutual identification and kindles the fire of proper identity over and over again.
John G. Lynn, Trouble Journey, CSS Publishing.
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