I grew up in extended family structures where there would be lots of cooks in the kitchen. When food was being made and served and eaten people would comment on it and say things like, “Hey, why are you making it that way?” It wasn’t considered rude during a meal to poke in someone else’s fridge for some hot sauce to give a dish some extra zing. Every Thanksgiving us cousins would make fun of just how bad my uncle’s creamed lima beans were and he would laugh. And every year he would still make them.
When I was getting to know Alli and her family – I learned that no matter what food was being served, it was important just to say, “This is delicious! Thank you so much!” Food wasn’t something to be commented on and dissected, it was an opportunity to express gratitude and be together.
Family is the structure within which we learn how to do conflict.
Whether it’s the chosen family of housemates and dear friends or the small family of partners and kids or if its the big extended family of uncles and aunts and cousins not all of whom are on any official family tree …. or whether it’s the family structure of the church where we are all siblings to one another, each of us brought into the family of God by the power of the Spirit and the love of Christ.…no matter the family structure and how its members are defined – it is in these thick bonds of relationship that we learn how to do conflict well and we learn how to do conflict poorly.
It’s in the context of family that we learn what kinds of words and outbursts and tools are permissible when we disagree and which cross a line. Families not only teach us how to do conflict but families themselves are formed through the creative process of conflict. Sharing together a harrowing experience of conflict can build trust and rally people around a common cause, but conflict can also lay bare deep division and tragic betrayal.
When we encounter Jesus in the twelfth chapter of the gospel of Luke – his patience has worn thin. He is on a journey to Jerusalem, with his eyes fixed on the inevitable clash with the political and religious authorities that awaits him there. Referring to the threat of death on the Roman cross – Jesus speaks boldly, “I have a baptism I must experience. How I am distressed until it’s completed!”
And then Jesus hits us with some of his most sharp and vexatious words, “Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division!”
These are hard words for our Anabaptist Mennonite Christian ears to hear. As a church community – “peace” might be our most revered theological concept. We are proud of our historic commitment to resisting war and working for shalom. We seek to be peacemakers like Jesus taught us, working for reconciliation within our churches, in our families, our communities, in our world.
I imagine that if someone asked you, “What does it mean to be a Mennonite Christian?” You might say something like, “We take seriously following Jesus in the way of peace.” A line from our CHMF vision statement proclaims that the love of Christ “transfigures us into an egalitarian community of peace.”
Yet in our passage from Luke Jesus provocatively teaches that he has come not to bring peace but division! Jesus has come “cast fire upon the earth” wishing the earth were already ablaze! This polarizing Jesus turns up the heat and provokes all who hear him to commit themselves to the upside down kindom of God.
To follow after Jesus and the kindom he preaches is to find ourselves embroiled in the work of doing conflict well. Concretely loving one’s neighbors and sharing material possessions and healing the sick and giving one’s allegiance to God alone over any other loyalty – these actions bring not an escape from conflict, but are an invitation to enter into the conflicts God cares about.
In response to the false peace and greatness of Rome – a peace built on wide-spread military rule and hierarchical household structures and economic greed – Jesus brings nothing but division. Because giving one’s allegiance to God and God’s kindom is a subversive, divisive, conflictual act in such a world, in our world.
Jesus’ fiery words arise not because he’s seeking drama and is rebelling against any kind of structure – but that his words spring up from a prophetic fire in his belly. Jesus’ words erupt from his sense of call to be faithful to the God who has claimed him as beloved.
To a world that mocks prophetic justice as impossible and seeks to strip people of their belovedness…Jesus brings division and enters into conflict so that all creation might be ablaze with the love of God.
While we can grasp this zeal theologically, Jesus’ illustration of the impact of his divisive message can land like a gut punch. Households divided, mothers against daughters, sons against fathers, the tight knitting-together of family structures fracturing against themselves. These words of Jesus can hurt because we might have already known within our own families the pain of disconnection, betrayal, estrangement or abuse. Our own connections with the families we were born into and the families we’ve chosen along the way may have worn thin or are ruptured.
Yet Jesus’ point is clear – we have before us an ongoing invitation to be faithful to the mission of God. And our seeking after God can bring consequences and conflict within all sorts of structures including our own families. And the presence of conflict is not a sign that something has gone wrong – but a sign that we need to pay attention to how God is working in this moment in time. Conflict is an opportunity to clarify what matters.
Our Luke gospel passage concludes with Jesus criticizing the crowd gathered around him that they have no idea how to interpret the present time. They are adept at pulling out their phones and checking the weather app and seeing whether rain or clear skies or scorching heat is on the horizon – but Jesus blasts them that they are out of tune with understanding the deeper meaning, the divine significance of the turning point where they find themselves. They are out of touch with the story of God happening all around them.
Jesus’ sharp words of division are an invitation to recommit ourselves to the work of God. And in turning to God and God’s work of justice we will inevitably get more comfortable with conflict. In following Jesus, he teaches us that not all heat, not all fire, and not all conflict is bad – but that it can be a justice-brining, attention-getting, clarifying opportunity to commit and recommit ourselves to what really matters.
Now things could have been a little bit simpler if Jesus could have lived a conflict-free life. Things would have been simpler for Jesus and easier for us as his followers.
Things could have been simpler, if Jesus was never more than a little carved baby figurine, unable to wriggle in the wooden nativity set as the angels sing, “Glory to God in the highest heaven and on earth peace among those whom God favors.”
Things would have been simpler, if Jesus had just been a dispenser of quotable snippets, somehow both bland and inspiring enough to go up on posters in elementary school classrooms and short enough to fit within an Instagram square.
Things could have been simpler if Jesus was just a healer, a kind-of one-man, rapid-care clinic, where folks could come in with mild ailments and leave feeling better because of his prescriptive blessing, “Your faith has made you well, go in peace.”
But Jesus came into the world not to pronounce a false peace over the status quo… Jesus came bringing the truth and justice and beauty and love of God to our world bent on deceiving itself that everything is OK just as it is.
Things could have been simpler if Jesus had lived a conflict-free life.
But Jesus burns with the fiery love of God. And that kind of love is like a fire-ant bite on the foot of a world in need of waking up. Jesus disturbs us out of the myth that avoiding conflict is simpler or easier or worth it.
Jesus invites us into the creative and conflictual work of redemption and justice and salvation, that is good news to the poor and liberation to the incarcerated and hope to the hopeless. Jesus invites us to lean into and learn from conflict and not run from it.
And in the midst of conflict and division, in our families or in our workplaces or communities or nation or world, Jesus promises to be there with us, helping us to clarify what God is up to and giving us the courage and creativity this moment in time requires of us.
“I have come to cast fire upon the earth, and how I wish it were already ablaze,” Jesus preached.
Along with all of creation, may we follow Christ who walked towards conflict, and in following him, find ourselves ablaze with the very love of God.