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+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
Between whom do you and I want peace? Precisely where are we looking for peace? Are we looking for peace in the world? Peace in our country? In our state? Are we looking for peace in our respective communities? Peace in our church? In our families? In today’s Gospel Reading, the Lord Jesus Christ explicitly contrasts the division that in fact He came to give on earth with such peace that we might think He came to give on earth, and thereby He implicitly contrasts earth as the place where we might think He came to give peace with heaven as the place where He actually gives peace. This morning we reflect on today’s Gospel Reading under the theme, “Division on Earth and Peace in Heaven”
For today’s Gospel Reading, we have moved forward a bit in the twelfth chapter of St. Luke’s Divinely‑inspired Gospel account from Jesus’s teaching last week about our not being anxious (Luke 12:22-34). In between, Jesus taught about His final coming to judge the living and the dead and so also about our need to be ready for His return (Luke 12:35-48). Today, with an apparent reference to prophecy God spoke through Micah (Micah 7:6), we heard Jesus tell His disciples—and us—that the time leading up to that return will be anything but peaceful; rather, Jesus’s Gospel “will arouse fanatical opposition and sad dissension,” subjecting both Jesus and His followers to terrible suffering (Arndt, ad loc Lk 12:49-53, 323).
That we like hearing about the division Jesus’s coming brings is hard to imagine. In some ways, we are like His disciples, who the All-Knowing Lord knew were thinking that He came to bring peace on earth (His rhetorical question expects His disciples to answer “Yes”, that they were thinking that). We understandably want peace in our war‑torn and terrorism‑stricken world, in our racially‑divided and politically-split country, between the more‑liberal cities and more‑conservative parts of our state, as well as peace in our respective communities, in our church, and our families. And, God certainly wants peace in all of those places, too, but Jesus did not come primarily to give peace either on earth, or in our families, or in any of the places in between. We sin when we persist in thinking that Jesus did come to bring such peace, and we sin when we are willing to compromise, either the words of our confession of Jesus or the deeds of our lives in Him, for the sake of such peace. Apart from faith in Jesus, such sins, like all of our sin and our sinful natures themselves, put us at war with God in heaven and warrant our present and eternal punishment in the literal fires of hell.
Jesus is not an arsonist! He did not come to cast literal fire on the earth but to bring the division of judgment between those who turn in sorrow from their sin and trust God to forgive their sin for Jesus’s sake and those who fail to so repent and believe. Of course, even before Jesus came there already was such a division between believers and unbelievers, but Jesus’s coming, with its primary purpose of giving us peace in heaven by earning our forgiveness of sins, heightens that division on earth. As we heard in today’s Old Testament Reading (Jeremiah 23:16-29), none of us can hide from the Lord. The Lord knows whether people with impenitence and unbelief reject Him and so remain in their sin or whether empowered by the Holy Spirit we repent and believe and so are forgiven—forgiven of our false thoughts about Jesus’s bringing peace, of our compromised confessions of Him in word and deed, and of all our other sin, whatever our sin might be, even our sinful natures themselves.
In today’s Gospel Reading, Jesus says both that He wishes the fire He came to cast on earth was already kindled and that He was under great distress until the baptism of His death was accomplished. Jesus knew both Who He was and why He had come (Schneider, TDNT 2:667‑668)! We might imagine that as true God Jesus was very eager to act to save His people, and we might imagine that as true man Jesus was not all that eager to die on the cross in order to save us. Yet, He did die on the cross in order to save us! Truly Jesus is the “Prince of Peace” (Isaiah 9:6), at whose birth the angels sang of peace on earth among those of God’s good favor (Luke 2:14). Jesus Himself knew betrayal from among His closest followers in the most intimate of table fellowship (Psalm 41:9; John 13:18), and now His cross confronts us with a division that cuts against all sorts of our relationships (Roehrs-Franzmann, ad loc Lk 12:35-59, 71). As we and others repent and believe, however, we receive the peace Jesus gives us between us and God—the forgiveness of all of our sins—quite different from the kind of peace the world would give (John 14:27; confer Arndt, ad loc Lk 12:52-53, 324).
In discussing today’s Gospel Reading, one commentator says that Jesus began His ministry with a water baptism and ended it with a blood baptism (Just, ad loc Lk 12:49-53, 523), and it is true that over time some church writers have identified various baptisms other than water baptism, such as a blood baptism ascribed to martyrs and a baptism of desire ascribed to people such as the penitent thief on the cross. Yet, in the Gospel Reading, Jesus is not referring to a literal blood baptism but to the overwhelming suffering of the cross, and there is only one Baptism (Ephesians 4:5). That one Baptism of water and the Word connects us with Jesus’s death and resurrection so that we die to sin and rise to live a new life (Romans 6:4; Colossians 2:12). That new life is fed and nourished in the Sacrament of the Altar where with bread and wine we receive Jesus’s Body and Blood for the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation. Baptismal water leads to Eucharistic blood for you and for me, and we depart from this Rail as we will ultimately from this life in peace.
Until we fully experience that peace of heaven, we experience division on earth over faith in Jesus. That division even cuts across our families and even here at this Altar Rail (1 Corinthians 11:19). Even Jesus knew such division in His family, as His step‑brothers at first did not believe in Him (John 7:5). Interestingly, with the divided five‑person family Jesus describes in the Gospel Reading, we do not know whether the three‑person majority is with Him or against Him or whether the two‑person minority is (Luke 11:23). Although our Synod’s most‑recent convention had a wider margin favorable to conservatives, we all nevertheless probably still can relate to almost evenly‑divided situations: between our country’s two major political parties, on the U‑S Supreme Court, and in our families. As the world hated and persecuted Jesus, so Jesus says the world will hate and persecute His followers (John 15:18-21). We endure division, affliction, and persecution on every level—even between so‑called “Christian” churches (Arndt, ad loc Lk 12:49, 323)—but we can be sure that this is according to God’s good will (Luther, Annotations on Mt 10:34, AE 67:113-114). As we bear the cross of persecution for Christ’s sake, we may have to renounce members of our own family or, if not, we may not be able validly to claim to be Christian (Pieper, III:70). Yet, even then, we are not alone. We who are made children of God in Baptism, who eat of the family meal, who hear the Word of God and do it, are part of the family of God (Luke 8:21; confer Just, ad loc Lk 12:49-53, 525). In this world there is tribulation, but Jesus has overcome this world, and in Him we have peace (John 16:33).
Whether in our world, country, or state; community, church, or family, we do have “Division on Earth”. Nevertheless, as today’s Epistle Reading exhorted us (Hebrews 11:17-31; 12:1-3), we look to Jesus and, with the Holy Spirit daily leading us to repent and believe, we run with endurance the race set before us, without growing weary or fainthearted, until He gives us the fullest experience of our “Peace in Heaven”.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +