Tenth Sunday After Pentecost
Year C, RCL
August 18, 2019
North Fork Ministries
Gospel:
Luke 12:49-56
Jesus said, "I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled! I have a baptism with which to be baptized, and what stress I am under until it is completed! Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division! From now on five in one household will be divided, three against two and two against three; they will be divided:
father against son
and son against father,
mother against daughter
and daughter against mother,
mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law
and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law."
He also said to the crowds, "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?"
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“When you see a cloud rising in the west, you say, `It is going to rain'; And when you see the south wind blowing, you say, `There will be scorching heat.”
Jesus’ observation concerning the ancient wisdom of weather forecasting reminds me of the story of the American Indians on a remote reservation who asked their new Chief if the winter was going to be cold or mild. Since he was a new Indian Chief in a modern society, he had never been taught the old secrets, and when he looked at the earth and the sky, he couldn't tell what the weather was going to be. Nevertheless, to be on the safe side, he replied to his tribe that the winter was indeed going to be cold and that the members of the village should collect wood to be prepared. But also being a practical leader, after several days he got an idea. He pulled out his cell phone called the National Weather Service and asked,
"Is the coming winter going to be cold?"
"It looks like this winter is going to be quite cold indeed," the meteorologist at the weather service responded.
So the Chief went back to his people and told them to collect even more wood in order to be prepared. A week later he called the National Weather Service again.
"Is it going to be a very cold winter?"
"Yes," the man at National Weather Service again replied, "it's going to be a very cold winter."
The Chief again went back to his people and ordered them to collect every scrap of wood they could find. Two weeks later he called the National Weather Service again.
"Are you absolutely sure that the winter is going to be very cold?"
"Absolutely," the man replied. "It's going to be one of the coldest winters ever."
"How can you be so sure?" the Chief asked.
The weatherman replied, "The Indians are collecting wood like crazy!"
The app on my iphone tells me that it’s going to be rather warm this afternoon and for the rest of the week. I’m guessing that it was hot in Galilee on that afternoon 2000 years ago when Jesus addressed an intently listening crowd. At least, Jesus seems to be feeling the heat. “What stress I am under,” he confides to his listeners.
Now this is a side of Jesus most of us can relate to. In an uncharacteristic tone, a manner that conveyed how overwhelming he found his circumstances and the prospect of what awaited him, Jesus says. “I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled! I have a baptism with which to be baptized, and what stress I am under until it is completed!” We are listening to the lament of a stressed-out Jesus.
What had happened to the Jesus who said, “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you” Or the Jesus who told the parable of the prodigal son who was returned to wholeness with his family. Forget about it. Jesus now envisions a future of strife and division within families. Fathers against sons, mothers against daughters – all against one another.
Then he acknowledges that his listeners already know how to read the earth and sky and predict when it is going to rain. They could forecast the future weather, but Jesus says they didn’t know how to interpret the present. I think a lot of bad theology imagines a Jesus who was a “perfect prognosticator”, a Jesus who understood everything that was going on around him and knew how the future would unfold.
Jesus was learning who he was as his future opened up around him. And through the events of his life and the people he encountered, he learned to interpret the present time, and not to live only in the uncertainty of imaginings about the future.
Jesus learned and teaches that to demand peace when there is not peace for those who live at the margins of society, is a false peace – a peace that does not contain the elements of compassion and mercy and justice that true peace demands.
Jesus conversation about the weather is very topical for us here the middle of August. According to a just-released analysis from NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency, July 2019 was the Earth's hottest month in 140 years of recordkeeping. The agency said Thursday that global average temperatures across all land and ocean surfaces in July were the highest of any month in its database, which extends back to 1880.
You see we have an advantage over Jesus’ listeners in the Gospel of Luke. We really do know how the interpret the weather. We no longer have to rely on the uninformed musings and prophecies of soothsayers and shaman.
In the 21st century, unlike the 1st century when Jesus walked the earth, we have God’s gift of science. We are in possession of a method of arriving at conclusions about the nature of physical reality that is based on experimentation, careful observation, tested hypotheses, and logical analysis.
Every reputable climatologist, biologist, botanist, and ecologist on the planet recognizes that the earth is steadily heating, glaciers are melting, and our earth is suffering because of the ongoing buildup of human-related greenhouse gases — the result of our persistent burning of fossil fuels.
We have the signs. We have the information we need to “interpret the present time”, to guide us to right action. We know how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky far better than any weather watcher in Jesus’ day. But apparently we are no better than they at using those signs to tell us how we are to live in God’s world.
But why do we, a “we” that I suspect includes most of us here, whose faith in the Almighty God is not threatened by the findings, insights and understandings of science, why do we continue to live as though the signs were not present? It seems much easier for us to ignore the clear evidence that we are destroying the planet, and then proceed like nothing is happening.
Are we personally driving less and buying fuel-efficient cars? Are we demanding that our governments provide transportation alternatives to the automobile? Are we willing to call for an increased tax on our gasoline, so that solar and wind and other clean sources of energy can be financed? Do we sit idly by and allow the Environmental Protection Agency to be gutted?
The problem is, movement in such a direction is hardly ever a peaceful process. It produces strife – within families, within and between political parties, between countries, and yes, between church members. Nobody really wants to accept the reality of the threat the future holds, because it requires sacrifice, it requires us to change. We are reluctant to upset the uneasy peace that we know and have grown comfortable with.
But Jesus, who often spoke of reconciliation and peace also knows about change. And changing the status quo (and that’s what Jesus is really saying when he talks about the discord between fathers and sons and mothers and daughters. He is speaking of discord within families – the core of societal structure), changing the status quo is never easy.
We really do have the capacity to interpret the present time. The problem lies in the fact that, as Upton Sinclair famously said, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!"
And how could we receive a clearer sign than the image we are all witnessing, of temperatures rising, glaciers melting, and sea levels rising, clear signs that something is wrong with the way we are treating God’s earth. God has given us the signs we need to interpret the present time, it is up to us to heed them.
Our cry on behalf of the planet must echo the psalmist’s plea:
“Turn now, O God of hosts, look down from heaven;
behold and tend this vine; *
preserve what your right hand has planted.