This is the sermon I prepared for Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Beatrice, Neb., for the Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost, August 15, 2010.

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Readings

Jeremiah 23:23–29
Psalm 82 (antiphon v.8)
Hebrews 11:29–12:2
Luke 12:49–56

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Prayer

Lord Jesus, restore in us the vision granted by your Holy Spirit, so that we may see the way of discipleship and the pitfalls along that path. Amen.

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Message

He asked a simple question almost twenty years ago.
It’s been repeated, parroted, parodied, and rubbed down to its nub:
“Can we all just get along?”

Rodney King asked that question,
not rhetorically, but as a plea,
begging the people of Los Angeles
to stop their rioting.
They’d taken to the streets to protest
the acquital of officers tried for beating King in the course of a traffic arrest,
acts captured on surveillance video.

“Can we all just get along?”
It’s a simple question we often ask ourselves.
We want the answer to be as simple as the question.
“Yes. God, I hope so.”

And there may be times when we do get along,
moments when it seems as if our world,
or perhaps just our little corner of it,
might suffer from an outbreak of peace.

But most of the time,
despite our desire for an answer of “yes,”
the tragic and true answer is the opposite: “No.”

We can’t get along.
We don’t get along as a nation, as a people.
Pick pretty much any issue
and you can draw the line almost right down the middle.
Half of us are in favor of “it,”
and half of us are opposed to “it.”

And the divisions seem not to be between factions and coalitions
lukewarmly committed to their positions.
We appear to be polarized in our divisions—
cut in two, bisected—
with little hope of finding any common middle ground.

Here are a few specifics that serve as a sad litany
of the issues that we use nationally to divide ourselves:
+ Abortion
+ Same-sex marriage
+ Immigration
+ Health care reform
+ Assisted suicide
+ Entitlement reform
+ Social security and the generations
+ Privacy in the digital age
+ Terrorism
+ Nuclear disarmament
+ National debt.

And it’s no surprise that within the whole Church
and within our little corner of it here in the ELCA,
we find ourselves marked by equally deep divisions.
And we can add to the list:
+ Benevolence: local or global?
+ Worship: modern and casual or historic and liturgical?
+ Mission: accompaniment or evangelization?
+ Salvation: for all faiths or through Christ alone?
+ Morality: personal choice or traditional standard?

“Can we all just get along?”
It’s hard to see how we can make any progress
in the face of such a long and dauntingly troublesome list.

And it doesn’t get any easier when we turn our attention
to the word that Jesus shares with us in today’s Gospel.
In fact, the trouble deepens,
because he looks at the symptoms and diagnoses our divisions,
saying the cause is more profound
than one faction squaring off against another
for thoroughly mundane and human reasons.

Jesus says, “I came to bring fire to the earth,
and how I wish it were already kindled!” (Luke 12:49, NRSV)
He is the catalyst that spurs our reactions,
the spark that lights the fires.
It’s his baptism, his sacrificial death on the cross,
that touches off the great conflagrations in our midst.

He says, “Do you think that I came to bring peace to the earth?
No, I tell you, but rather division!” (Luke 12:51, NRSV)
This sounds so scary, so harsh, almost cruel.
But there it is, the Word of God.
So what do we make of it?
How can we find a handhold of hope in the midst of a treacherous time?

First of all, we follow our Lord’s advice.
He reminds us that we daily use our common sense
and our experience to read the signs in the skies.
We know that when the clouds build tall and grey in the west,
that a storm will approach and the rains will come.
We know that when the winds blow hard from the south,
that the heat and humidity will bear down upon us.

So, likewise, when we see division breaking us apart,
we can trust the wisdom he has shared with us.
The divisions come into our midst, here and now,
because of his baptism, his trial by fire,
when he came and suffered and died and was raised,
defeating death and holding out the promise of life.

The cross stands empty in our past and in our Father’s as well.
It’s a signpost along the path taken by his Son,
a milestone in his personal history.
But the fullness of the Spirit’s gift of the kingdom of God lies ahead of us;
it beckons to us from the future.

And right now, in this moment, we stand between cross and kingdom,
between the defeat of death and the triumph of life.
And that’s why we live with these deep divisions,
because none is more profound than the absolute divide between death and life.

We know this is the diagnosis of our division,
because it is the Word of our Lord,
it is the testimony of Scripture,
it is the confession of our faith,
it is the witness of God’s Church.

And here in the diagnosis we find our comfort,
strange as that may seem.
When Jesus says, “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 12:56, NRSV),
we reply, “But we do know, or at least we can know.”

We do know because we live with Christ’s cross in our history.
We may choose to act as if we don’t know why our lives are plagued by conflict,
but that’s only because we find false comfort
when we delude ourselves into believing we control our own lives.
But in reality, Jesus is Lord,
Lord of the dead and of the living,
Master of your life and of mine.

And as our Lord and Master,
he promises that he lives in our midst,
he tells us that we know division in our lives as a mark of his work,
he assures us that our struggles echo and emulate
his struggle against the power of death.

For now, in these difficult days, we live in the meantime, in a mean time.
Here and now, we live with division and conflict.
This is how we interpret our present moment, this day made by God.
But as surely as the cross stands empty behind us,
the kingdom stands glorious before us.
God’s kingdom will come, his will shall be done,
on earth as it is in heaven. That’s his promise and our prayer.

And on that day when we inherit the kingdom,
then we will come to a place of peace,
where division gives way to unity,
where discord surrenders to harmony,
where death is swallowed up by life.

And on that day, all of our conflicts will pass away,
and the answer to that simple question—
“Can we all just get along?”—
will be simple, “Yes, by God’s grace.” Amen.