The Great Divider

Christian Community Presbyterian Church
Bowie, Maryland
August 17, 2025

The Great Divider
Luke 12:49-56 
(Video may be viewed at SERMON—The Great Divider—Rev. Hays)

Jesus, the “Great Divider.” That’s not an image that comes immediately to our minds. But it is the reality that was Jesus. Either a person loved him or hated him. Either a person believed in him or failed to believe in him. Either a person was for him or against him. No one could not be indifferent about Jesus.

We are comfortable with a meek and mild Jesus, a compassionate Jesus, a Jesus who feeds and heals and comforts, a gentle Jesus. In today’s reading we get a Jesus with an in-your-face attitude.

Jesus says he came to bring fire to the earth—and he wishes it were already kindled. You and I like fire when it is under our pans on the stove, in our furnaces and hot water heaters, in our outdoor grills. We love candles at dinner. We can control this kind of fire; it can serve us. But otherwise, we want to avoid fire. Fire that’s out of control destroys things, changes lives. In 1666 fire destroyed much of London. Mrs. O’Leary’s cow set Chicago ablaze. Wildfires destroyed Maui’s Lahaina and the Grand Canyon North Rim Lodge. We try to avoid fire with smoke detectors, sprinkler systems, and fire departments. But Jesus says he came “to bring fire to the earth.” We don’t want Jesus saying that. We want the Jesus who says, “Come unto me, all you who are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”

So Jesus comes as fire—which we can’t control—and that reeks of judgment. Really hot fire judges metallic ores, dividing pure metal from impurities.

The Greek word Luke used for “divide” is the same word that the gospel writer used when he described what the Roman soldiers did with Jesus' clothing (Luke 23:34); each piece was taken by a different soldier. Jesus also said that a kingdom divided against itself will become a desert (Luke 11:17). Perhaps what divides the families is not Jesus himself, but his demand for total allegiance to his cause. His kingdom—his people—cannot be divided. It is not a question of “both/and” but “either/or.” As Jesus will say later: “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:26).

Jesus speaks often enough about the coming judgment that his hearers should sit up and take notice. His words force us to examine the implications of our commitments. It is all too easy to make commitments in one area of life as though they do not affect other areas. R. Alan Culpepper, in his exposition on Luke in The New Interpreter’s Bible, says

“Jesus warned that those who make a commitment to him will be persecuted, that a commitment of faith also means that our attitude toward material possessions must change, and that moral responsibilities must be taken with even greater seriousness. Now Jesus warns that persons who make a commitment to him will find their relationships to others, even those closest to them, affected by that commitment” (vol. IX, p. 267). 

What Jesus says is not prescriptive but descriptive. It is not Jesus’ purpose to break up families, but that sort of rupture can be the result of following Jesus. Our commitment to Christ, if it is true and sincere, shapes our values, priorities, goals, and behavior. It forces us to rethink old habits. It may put us at odds with people close to us who have made no commitment to Jesus or whose commitment has not grown following their first encounter with Jesus. Think of the younger son who breaks his father’s heart by taking his inheritance, leaving town, wasting his assets. He returns home disgraced. Father and son reconcile. The relationship between the older brother and the younger was ruptured when the younger took his half of the family inheritance and left. That rupture then grew to include the father when he welcomed and feted the returning son.

Tom Mullen, a Quaker, writes in Laughing Out Loud and Other Religious Experiences, “My religious denomination is the Society of Friends (Quakers).... I learned upon joining the Quakers that they attack large social and moral problems with conscientious determination. They work for peace—and if you really want to cause conflict, work for peace” (p. 59).

Christ comes, dividing all the way, to institute peace. His peace. Not our peace. Not our individual notions of what peace is or ought to be. “My peace I give to you, not as the world gives,” is what John remembers Jesus saying. Jesus’ peace is not the absence of conflict. Jesus’ peace is the total presence and acceptance of the will of God. There is no way on earth that we are going to bring that peace about. Only the Holy Spirit can do that, and it will be according to God’s timetable, not our own. 

The peace that Christ brings has no resemblance to peace as we define it our dictionaries. Jesus’ peace is, and always has been, controversial. In C. S. Lewis’s The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, part one of The Chronicles of Narnia, the Pevensie children discover the same understanding about the (Christ-figure) lion Aslan. One of them asks Mr. Beaver if Aslan is safe. “Safe?” said Mr. Beaver. “Of course he’s not safe! But he’s good.” Christ isn’t safe. He is good. The division he brings isn’t safe, but it is good.

Luke couples Jesus’ sharp words with a brief note about human propensity.

“When you see a cloud rising in the west, you immediately say, ‘It is going to rain’; and so it happens. And when you see the south wind blowing, you say, ‘There will be scorching heat’; and it happens. You hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky, but why do you not know how to interpret the present time?” (Luke 12:54-56).

Jesus seems to be saying that we know how to divide as well as he does, but if he is doing it up and down, we do it crosswise.

We divide crosswise by the ways we define the church’s mission. Some see it as telling the Good News (Matthew’s Great Commission's “make disciples”). Others see mission as service (Matthew 25's “as you did it to the least of these”). Still others see mission as advocacy (Luke's record of Mary celebrating God’s intention to raise up the poor and hungry and bring the rich down a peg or two). These concepts divide the church crosswise.

Jesus defines mission in another way. In John’s Gospel, Jesus prayed that his followers would be one, that they would love one another as he had loved them. Loving each other, loving as a witness to the world, loving people in the church as well as outside the church is what divides up and down. Either we love or we don’t. No ifs, ands, or buts. If we can’t love everyone we meet with Christ’s love, we can’t love Christ. And if we can’t love Christ, how can we ever hope to love anyone else? Love, like scripture, is a two-edged sword. It can divide and it can unite.

What do we love? Who do we love? When and how do we love? The answer to why do we love should be clear. Christ and his kingdom should be our primary allegiance and the first priority for time, talent, and treasure. How that works out is between each of us and Jesus. While it is true that Jesus accepts us where we are, Jesus does not expect us to stay there! Hear the words of a hymn birthed by John Bell and Graham Maule at the Iona Community of Scotland:

Will you come and follow me if I but call your name?
Will you go where you don’t know and never be the same?
Will you let my love be shown; will you let my name be known;
will you let my life be grown in you and you in me?

Jesus raises these questions of priorities for our salvation. If we try to keep Jesus under our control—instead of him having control of us—the judgment is on us. That is our sin. It is scary to surrender control of our lives to one beyond us whom we cannot control. That’s the fear that made Adam and Eve try to hide from God in the Garden of Eden. Christ came to break the bonds of that fear. Christ came to immerse himself with us and among us so that we have every good reason to entrust ourselves to him.

We don’t welcome the fire, but we need the fire. We don’t welcome immersion into Christ, but we need it. We don’t welcome the necessity to quit majoring in minutia, but Christ calls us to do just that. At some point, we must deal with a “Final Jeopardy” answer: “Jesus Christ,” and its correct question: “Who is my Lord and Savior?”

Thanks be to God.