I come to bring division?
GospelLK 12:49-53
Jesus said to his disciples,
“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.”
There are two parts to this selection, and both are out of the ordinary. The fire and baptism couplet is unique to Luke, and you can't help noticing how abrupt and pithy is each part of it. There's nothing quite like this in the whole New Testament. It sounds like a slogan.
'A baptism I have to be baptised with' - scholars suggest that this may not be something Jeshua said, but something added to the narrative in the early communities as they struggled to grasp the meaning of his violent and untimely death. It is interesting that baptism is taken in the sense of being put to the test, of being proofed. Purifying fire is a common metaphor because every village had its forge and blacksmith and you always needed to know if your knife or axe or spade was of good metal, but a 'test by washing' stretches the imagination a bit - unless it's a pun on dyeing. A reference to shrinking, perhaps: we shrink with fear.
The likelihood of having to face a violent death because you were a follower of the Way was already common. People who had given the ultimate witness were being remembered. In our second reading they are 'a great cloud of witnesses', with Jeremiah prominent among them as in the first reading. It has been said that Luke's gospel has no mention of the sacrifice of atonement (Jesus died for our sins), but instead his death is seen as a witness, a proof, an authentic testimony to the truth. The truth that the Father loves his world and every one of his 'children'. The truth that suffering does not prove sinfulness but proofs the authentic: it's how we respond to life's challenges, to the good and the bad, joyful and painful, that matters. We are proofed/baptised by life.
Christianity as we know it has lost its ability to engage the modern mind. It needs to be re-thought so its meaning can be presented in a way that makes sense of life. Everyone who believes in Jeshua as the Anointed One, the Christ, has to make it all so real for themselves that they can explain it to their neighbours, if they ask. The time when we could just say 'We go to church over there', pointing to the big red-brick building on the corner, is gone. The 'Church' has stalled, like a rusty old bus in the street.
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The second part seems to show a heartless side of Jeshua. I've come, he says without batting an eyelid, to bring division, not just conflict between nations ('catholic' vs 'other'!) but in families: and Luke goes on and on about it in a disgusting way. Enough already. We get the point!
But do we? I have always hated these few lines. There's nothing like them anywhere in the gospels, perhaps anywhere in the whole bible. Today you'd probably say it shows this celibate preacher needs some experience of family life to keep him human. He should've got married. Perhaps his family were right when they said he'd gone mad.
It's remarkable that commentators take it literally. Not many things in the gospels are meant to be taken at face value, with the literal meaning the one to focus your attention on. There's always a 'further' meaning, a symbol, a metaphor or a reference to some figure back in history. But here, for our commentators, imagination fails, and they tell us, That's how it is! Peace means fighting, division, and family breakup: that's the price you pay!
It doesn't seem right to me. As I listen to Jeshua's words I can feel a sadness in them. He had a long experience in family living. He didn't take off at age 19 to shack up in a high rise with his housemates. Families had tighter bonds then, and clans even tighter. If you stepped out of line you were in big trouble. Even today you can be killed for letting the family down by trying to become something else. I wonder is this passage too hot to handle in some cultures!
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But is there something else here? What would it look like if it was read as a metaphor, as an AS IF statement:
Do you think that I have come to establish peace on the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division. This is what it will be like. It will be as if a household of five were divided, three against two and two against three...
Was Jeshua thinking that the communities of his followers would be like families that suffer painful divisions? Did Luke have in mind to drive home a lesson for communities he knew who were experiencing some conflict? Taking these words as metaphorical may open up a new insight into our attitude to differences among christians,
We might begin by asking what would our divisions look like if we thought of the church community as a family rather than an institution governed by law and logic. Is there a bond among christians that holds us together through all the disagreements and the fights? Do we belong, come what may? No matter what odd ideas you have, you are still my sister/brother, and at some level we are one?
There's something special about a family fight. The cutting sword of division causes pain different from the pain of wounds of battle or of political opposition. It hurts to fight among ourselves. We know how to inflict pain on one another as only siblings can. We feel the offense to our common origin, our life experience, our being 'family', or deepest loyalty, our very self. There is something inane, suicidal about a family feud.
At present there is increasing talk of schism. Will it be necessary for conservatives to separate, as the Old Catholics in Holland did after Vatican I? Or is it time for progressives to break away and form 'The People of Vatican II' as some are advocating?
In the end the question is, can we be in communion with people who have different thoughts and attitudes to ours? Historically, when divisions occur, at some point we break off communion. Religious people, whether catholics or protestants, christians, muslims or jews, take the matter of being 'in communion' very seriously. We value purity of doctrine above family bonds. We can't break bread with you! This is very sad. It is very odd. I wonder is this the aberration that Jeshua knew they would not avoid?
What is the 'unity' he prayed for? Uniformity of thought and expression in a world whose very evolution and development is a product of diversity? Conformity that is changeless in a living world where adaptation to different environments is the rule of life's survival? To be unchanging in a cosmos where there is nothing that is not moving? Sameness, permanence, being still is total illusion.
Or was he thinking of a family bond that would hold us together, even while we find many different paths through life. Unity in diversity.
What is the touchstone? What is the bond that makes us one? Why do our divisions hurt more than the divisions that are part and parcel of politics in a democracy, of business interests, of sport and even of football codes? Why do we treat difference in our Christian Family as worse than criminal? Why do we cut off communion and refuse to talk with the 'others'? Is it reasonable? Or is it childish recoil from the pain of family hurt where any disharmony is magnified into trauma.
I believe that, in the last analysis, it's a matter of trust.
We do not trust those who are different, or go a different way. The sad fact is that our rejection of them shows that we do not trust God to lead them along their paths. We judge them because the thought that there might also be another way threatens our security. Without understanding them, we reject them on the measure of our own perception of the truth. To cement our stance in place we all claim that God's approval makes our position absolute. Children! Children! Behave yourselves. Remember where you are!
In our Father's house we must first trust him. It is the embodiment of believing - to trust. It takes faith out of the airy intellectual and makes the heart big enough to embrace other sisters and brother, God's other children. It is not foolish or irresponsible to trust God. But it is silly to try to run his world our way.
Part II: How does he bring division?
I must confess that this reflection is more an amateur excursion in theology than food for the soul, but with further reflection there's more I need to set out. I'm leaving the first part as it is, hot from the oven and ready for tasting, or testing. For better or for worse, if someone sees twisted logic in my thinking I'll gladly stand corrected. To propose something that seems entirely novel, with no tradition behind it, is unusual to say the least.
One of our small Ynot Team (as we call ourselves) asked some questions that led to further insight, and this gets really strange, but I feel it must be done today because who knows which of us will be around in 2019 when the cycle brings this reading up again. What I offer in Part I and here in Part II is hypothetical, and needs testing in the fire. First reactions will be welcome.
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Jeshua says: 'Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division!'
But it was peace he came to establish: ‘God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself’ (2 Cor 5:19); ‘For he is the peace between us’ (Eph 2:14); ‘a peace the world cannot give, that is my gift to you’ (Jn 14:27).
So what is this division he brings? That is the question. Commonly it is said to be the potential split in families if one follows the way of Christ and others don't. I am not satisfied with this.
For a start the examples are too stark, and too all embracing. Every which way the split is there, and it is not the young ones who are the cause. It is reciprocal: father against son – son against father, etc. In fact not only is parental authority destroyed but clan authority too as in the person of the matriarch, the husband's mother! In sum, the teaching represents the end of the traditional family structure.
Having said that I then must ask, is this possible? Could the Gospel contain such a teaching? For an answer I would look to the real world where we live. We have in fact rejected, or grown out of, or evolved beyond that form of family structure, and we find it good. Nobody today in our world wants to go back to when children were like possessions of the parents and everyone was under the tyranny of the mother-in-law – or father-in-law, as the case might be. We might struggle to work out right relationships and how to launch our children into life, but no one is suggesting we should go back to that.
How would Jeshua be the cause of the family evolving from that ancient pattern to something else – as yet we hardly know what it should be? I suggest the answer to this might be found in something that institutions tend to suppress but which is fundamental to the Good News proclaimed by Jeshua: the value of the individual person and the autonomy of conscience. The charter document called the Sermon on the Mount insists that you may not follow either traditions or community/family standards, but you must judge for yourself and choose accordingly. “You have heard it said...; but I say...” In each example Jeshua's standard is nothing less than an absolute commitment, in conscience, to truth. To treat it abstractly as we do is to miss the point.
How well we have kept our minds closed to the stark reality of this was seen when the Nuremberg trials imposed this very standard on those judged guilty of war crimes. 'You are responsible, as a person, individually.' The world was shocked but there is no escape. That is the sword of truth that cuts each one free from the enslavement of family, culture, tradition, institution, nation and church.
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Now to come back to community, on the supposition that the teaching is to be applied metaphorically in order to explain division in the community of believers. I have come to bring division! In trying to draw out a logical consequence of this principle that every individual is responsible, first and last, for his/her own truth and conduct, it becomes apparent that in any community as in any family there can never be the kind of peace that speaks of total harmony, a static peace, a state of peace.
Each individual of necessity sees things in a personal way, different from every other. Every single one of us, by the nature of things, has a personal stance that is unique, in every situation. We are always alone. We always fly solo. Each one's conscience is a self-determining system. It needs educating, it can be guided, it may align itself with a community ideal alongside others, but in the end it is only itself.
Actually this teaching has long been embodied in church practice. Preachers of parish missions loved to tell us, 'You die alone; that final journey is yours alone to take.' In the end there can be no excuses. Likewise individual or private confession has been a valuable way of teaching that each one is individually responsible for themselves, even little children apparently (though that's stretching it a bit!).
However the same principle is regularly suppressed in favour of an ideal of unity that is said to be most desirable in families and communities. I shudder at some things I've heard parents demanding of their children in respect of loyalty to the family. I mourn the millions of religious people oppressed in the name of unity - for Christ or for the Prophet or for Jahweh.
The 'unity' that subordinates the individual to the community cannot be the unity Jeshua had in mind, because it cramps conscience. The community is for the individual; the person may never be subordinated to the community or sacrificed for the common good. In time of crisis, if some volunteer to give their lives in an attempt to save their fellows, that is noble and enriching only to the extent that it is a free choice on their part. For the rest, we may have to forego some part of our freedom for the sake of good order in the community but we can never give up our self-determination, our freedom of choice, our conscience which determines what is good, what is to be done.
I've been asked why Jeshua didn't say it plainly, if this is what he meant. Perhaps he did, but we have moved into other forms of thought and language and we hardly see the meaning of these words and metaphors and images. Clearly he could not use our concepts of individuality and personal responsibility if they did not exist at that time. We are slow learners, especially in things of great importance. We take the easy way out, the substitute for the real. Belonging to a community gives security, and maybe we can get through without meeting too many problems personally. But that is not the goal. Even in his dying, alone, subject of criminal execution, he showed what individuality demands. 'I have a baptism I must undergo...'
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The unity that Jeshua prayed for, then, is found in respect for each other, and cooperation. It is a dynamic affair. We have to forge this unity every day. It is a living thing, not a static framework into which persons are locked in to their various places. Our relationship is ever active because such is life.
So there is my half-baked reflection. I apologise to those who feel they should be able to expect good solid food, but being open-ended may invite some responses and even sharp precisions. Perhaps I'm the only one who finds all this rather novel. If so, I'll welcome any light you can shine on it for me.
7.I just hope Ynot one of these days will talk more about how to --not destroy--but cope with Division.
Many thanks, Harry, for your pointed comments. I take up No. 7, and you have already shown that the way is through talking to one another. My concern was more on the level of institutional policy.
Institutions deal with division by excising the troublesome member. You stop dialogue, break off contact, disenfranchise, and finally you label the opponent 'The Enemy'. On the international level this is last step before war.
I think the gospel was telling the communities at the time that they should not do this. The peace Jeshua brings is strong enough to bind the family together even with all its divisions. In fact the truth Jeshua brings, and the honesty/integrity it demands of us, uncovers the elementary fact that we are all separate beings. My identity can never be submerged in the family. The father must be 'over against' the son, and the son 'over against' the father. We are identified by these polarities, and any system that would suppress the opposition would destroy the persons.
Politically this was never realised under kings and lords whose subjects had no rights. Magna Carta began the change. The Age of Revolution established democracy as normal, and democracy works on recognition of equal rights for every citizen. (Currently they're toying with the idea of making some unwanted refugees 'stateless' - something inconceivable only a generation or two ago.)
It was inevitable, I suppose, that the followers of Jeshua should form themselves into an institution, and become monarchical. But the ideal is to be a family in which differences should not lead to division, or if they do never to total separation. The family bond is greater than any difference of thought, lifestyle or ideal. Never, in the family community of The Father's People should one say to another: "We will not break bread with you. You cannot take communion with us."
Sometimes of course division does happen, as Brian's example shows, and the family actually breaks up. I'm talking about ideal principles when I suggest that excommunication of individuals and of 'other churches' is wrong. It is an institutional response that denies the family bond. What gives a bishop the right to reject, cut off, exclude a brother or sister, another child of the Father, let alone a whole group of them - and in perpetuity? This is politics, not gospel spirituality.
Thank you for this searching response, Brian. I know how very real division can be - has been in your family. It happens, as also when the one-on-one relationship of marriage breaks down, irrevocably. I don't think Jeshua, or Luke, were talking about marriage and family in the real, but about the structure, the way we find our identity as part of a relationship, father to son / son to father, etc., and the ground of that relationship is structural, or "ontological", of the very nature of things. So the famous prodigal son still belongs, and can never not belong.
The 'division' factor is in the father having to respect the son, and vice versa, for their real place in the scheme of things. It is totally contrary to the peace Jesus offers for the father to dominate the son, or for the son to despise the father, no matter what. Only when each takes their distinct place and separate role can there be peace. AND that involves the father launching the son to walk his own path, free and independent, and always mindful of where he comes from.
I think perhaps we have been blind to this gospel teaching. It's paradoxical, but not that difficult: the peace that makes us one must stand on the acknowledgement of our real difference. The oneness of a shallow peace is no better than a coat of paint.
You ended with:
Following Jesus, to me, is all about knowing his story intimately and personally enough that, whatever situations confront us in our journey, we are able to read our personal story through his lived experience.
I think that, added to this role of exemplar and teacher, Jeshua also embodies the promise, the guarantee that the Father will be with us, enough strength will be available to us, rescue will come in the end. I liked the way Martin Sheen said it on Compass last night: 'How could you show this better than that God should become human...!' (That's the gist of it.)
The Catholic Church desperately NEEDS the Unity in Diversity that every family needs in order to maintain individual integrity and familial compassion for each other. Wouldn't that set a great example for the world that keeps trying to alienate the stranger/the different one?
'An example for the world': isn't that what the community of followers of the Way are meant to be. The Church calls it a sacrament. The Church itself is a sacrament, an effective sign to the world, of unity.
But grace builds on nature, and only on nature, not against it. By nature we need the space you speak of, the structural diversity to allow for different languages, cultures, mentalities, traditions..., yes, and mere preferences. It's good to have preferences in the way of the spirit. Y not?
Imagine a world-wide community, where differences were promoted, against the trend towards uniformity preferred by industrial society, against the demands of globalisation, and yet these communities able to share their highest ideals and spiritual journeys in a Unity that refused to be competitive, dominating, or subservient for profit. All the things the world feels are necessary and unavoidable.
Let's have as much diversity as we can, because then unity is more beautiful.