Rev’d Mark B. Stirdivant, Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, Yucaipa, California
✝ sdg ✝

Could this be the Prince of Peace talking? He says: “I have come to cast fire on the earth.” Someone forgot to tell that to the multitude of the heavenly host of angels when Jesus was born. It looks like they were mistaken when they announced to the shepherds in the field, “Glory to God in the highest, and peace on earth, goodwill to men.” Instead of that, you heard it right out of Jesus’ mouth, He said as clear as day that peace on earth just isn’t His thing. “I have not come to bring peace, but division.”

Are you upset? Are you disappointed that you were led to understand that believing in Jesus was going to change your life for the better? Maybe at one time you were convinced that since God loves you, He wants you to be happy. That your family would be free of conflict. That your job would be secure and more than adequate to support you. That your plans for education or retirement would be well-financed. That people would give you the respect you deserve. You tend to follow the desire of most American Christians who long for a God who believes in you, who takes you for who you are and blesses your life. You want your church-going experience to improve your attitude and outlook for the rest of the week; you know, make you look on the bright side of things. Develop a deep relationship with God and grow closer with other people who feel the same way that you do. You are led to believe that these things are the best of what Jesus can offer to our hurt and broken world.

So Jesus simply is not helping His cause at all when He claims that He’s the cause of division and strife. When your Lord claims not to bring peace on earth but division, it really sets back the success of the Christian Church and puts it farther from its goal of reaching out. How can you market your message if you promise that this message will be so controversial? It’s going to offend too many people… why take the risk? If you are worldly-wise, you know already that it’s best to “choose your battles.” Don’t go out and ruin your prospects by nit-picking over details. Zero in on some common ground, and forget about all the other stuff that causes disagreements. Someone should tell Jesus what a grave mistake He’s making. Someone should rush the latest survey results straight to the Son of God so that He stops all this talk about tearing up homes and families. People want peace! It’s a very appealing and popular message. They’ll pay handsomely for it, and they’ll even come to Church in droves to get it. Leave well enough alone. You’ve got plenty of the Bible that you can use to say what you want, and then just ignore the rest of the Bible that seems to contradict it.

But suppose for a moment that Jesus is not making a mistake. Let’s just say for the sake of argument that He isn’t the bad guy, and that all this division and strife is really for your good. If that is true, then the peace of God is different from the kind of peace that you have in mind. If a family is at peace, without any contention or division, and yet at the same time does not have Jesus, then whatever peace that family does have is false and misleading. God is not blessing them, rather, the devil is deceiving them. And he may be deceiving you. It’s easy to fall for. It’s easy to have false peace.

It’s tempting to make false peace look as if it were the kind of peace that Jesus was sent from heaven to win for the world. But Jesus simply won’t let you do that. There’s too much at stake. Your eternal salvation is more important to Him than your temporary comfort in a pleasant state of false peace. Your heavenly destination takes greater precedent than your worldly success. “I came to cast fire on the earth, and I wish it were already kindled.”

And boy, can that fire burn you. While your conscience is scorched with the difficult task of keeping true to God’s Word, everybody else throws fireballs at you, saying you are unloving, Pharasaical, legalistic. They say you aren’t acting like Jesus would act when you point out the Bible says that homosexuality is a sin against God. The fire of division stings with the rejection and dirty looks that you may get at school or work because of your faith. In your own family, the issue may come up that a couple is living together without the protection and blessing of marriage. You thought they were raised better than that, but you hold your tongue because you don’t want to start a fight. It’s not my place, so you reason with yourself, while the whole time God’s command remains ignored and despised. Your kids resist coming with you to church. It gets harder and harder to make it happen like it did when they were small. So you relent and give in to them for the sake of peace at home and rationalize to yourself that, oh, well, the Church isn’t giving them what they like anyway.

If that’s the peace you want, then you aren’t going to get it from Jesus. For the peace of God, that passes all understanding, is a peace that burns like fire. It hurts you because it also hurt your Lord. It burned Him on the Cross with the furnace of God’s wrath against your sin, and He took on Himself the punishment that divided you apart from the Lord your Creator. The peace of God ripped open Jesus’ side with the centurion’s spear, so that the cleansing flood would wash away your sins and offenses. This peace divides the church because after all it was a group of church leaders and teachers that pushed for the passion of the Christ in the first place. This peace even divides you within yourself, as St. Paul describes of his own Christian life in Romans 7: “What I want to do, I do not do, but what I hate, that I do.” That’s truly what the victorious life is like for all of us this side of heaven!

For though you have often rejected God and His peace in favor of your own, though you have done wrong against your neighbor and your family, you have the promise of God’s true peace because the blood of Jesus paid the price for you to get it. He is the author, founder and protector of our faith because He took the fire of your judgment in your place. He doesn’t promise you the success and creature comforts that false peace offers to you, but He does guarantee suffering now, and glory later in heaven. This isn’t to say that if you aren’t going through strife and struggle right at the moment, that you should go out of your way to pick a fight. No, like any good soldier, always be prepared to fight, but stay true to your orders laid out in God’s Word, remain faithful to Him in whatever your vocation is, and let your Almighty General Jesus choose the battles. As you run with perseverance the race marked out for you, don’t change lanes on the track and covet some other calling that hasn’t been given to you. Look to Jesus, who has gone ahead of you. Listen to the cheering of saints surrounding you, for He helped them along and gave them the same assurance of forgiveness that He gives you.

Give thanks that your Lord and Savior came to bring you not the worldly peace you want, but the heavenly peace that you need. Realize that it is for your good that the worship of the church is not merely entertaining and attention-grabbing, but instead it is a solid deliverer of the precious, divine gift of forgiveness. Be grateful that you have not empty success at home, school, work or church, but rather the painful fiery cross to bear in your life. For although Jesus has destroyed the false peace that you had at one time come to love and cherish, He replaces it with the real peace that the world cannot give, a peace that is sealed with this promise from the Prince of Peace: “Whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” Dearly baptized children of God, you have already lost your life for the sake of Christ. Welcome to true peace.

In the Name of the Father and of the ✝ Son and of the Holy Spirit.

Readings:
Jer. 23:16–29 What is the chaff to the wheat?
Psalm 119:81–88 Revive me according to your lovingkindness
Heb. 11:17–40; 12:1–3 so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight…
Luke 12:49–56 how is it you do not discern this time?