Sermon preached at St. Alban's, Spirit Lake, on June 29, 2008
(Seventh Sunday after Pentecost, Year A, BCP Lectionary)
by the Rev. Carl D. Mann

Texts:   Isaiah 2:10-17
Psalm 89:1-18
Romans 6:3-11
Matthew 10:34-42

Last week when the Bishop was here he read past the Gospel that we had assigned and then preached about it. Unfortunately, that was today’s Gospel! So where does that leave me? Well, I’m going to preach on it, too, and see if I can maybe kick it up a notch or two.

“Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father and a daughter against her mother, etc.” Now most people don’t like to hear this kind of language. Let’s face it; there were some of us who were a little squeamish last week and maybe even a little bit this week when we heard this passage. If the family is the basic unit for society and ordained by God to be just so, why would He want to destroy it? And what’s this sword stuff? I thought we were to beat our swords into plowshares? There’s nothing in the world that could turn me against my own child. How can Jesus, who is God in the flesh, appear to be so violent and as unloving as to separate a child from their parent? That doesn’t sound like any God I want anything to do with.

And the Bishop, as so many people do, played to our sensibilities and was attempting to get to the next level of thought by labeling the sword. He called it God’s Love! Jesus is coming and wielding the sword of God’s Love. That gives it a nicer ring, doesn’t it? If it’s God’s Love, it can’t be a bad thing, right?

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to make light of this because I don’t believe the Bishop wrong…but in my opinion he didn’t completely follow through with the metaphor.

First of all, I think that families have truly been divided over the centuries because of Jesus Christ. On the one hand, I’m sure some member of some family somewhere betrayed the other to the authorities when it was illegal to be a Christian whether they did it for vengeance or self preservation. But on the other hand, there were times when it wasn’t that sinister. For example, my siblings and I are fifth generation Episcopalians, and fourth generation at Grace Church in Cedar Rapids. Our family was so intertwined in the Church that if there was something amiss in the Church you could be sure something was amiss in the family and vice versa because as we all know families of any kind don’t always agree with one another.

When I was an infant, just such an incident was happening. I don’t even know what the fight was about but the Church was divided and so was my extended family. My father was so tired of all the infighting that he said enough was enough and we all went to Olivet Presbyterian Church for a while where my mother had grown up. In due time, the rift was settled and our family returned to Grace. No pun intended or offense to Presbyterians.

Here’s a different way to look at it. Even in my adult life, I knew in my heart that I was called to the priesthood and I should go to seminary but I used my family as an excuse to stay away. “The family business needs me.” “I don’t want to uproot my wife and children from their home just to satisfy my own spiritual needs and vocation.” These were just a few of the lame excuses I would throw out to God. Even without their consent, I was putting my family members between Jesus and me thus setting them against me just as Jesus predicted.

So you see this passage doesn’t always have to take the active aggressive connotation implied by the use of a weapon. It can be passive and more subtle than you can imagine.

Now let’s look at the sword. A sharp sword is able to cut clean through and separate bone from bone, muscle from muscle and all that other stuff that holds us together. Essentially it’s a large meat cleaver. But the word cleave has two meanings. On the one hand, it means to sunder forcibly by the blow of a cutting instrument, to cut, to split, to divide, to separate; as to cleave a man’s head from his shoulders. But on the other hand, it also means to adhere to, to cling to, to remain attached or faithful as in a man shall leave his father and mother and cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.

Now isn’t that interesting. Another paradox in the Bible! The sword that Jesus wields both cuts clean through and reattaches all in one fell swoop. It’s like an electric needle used in surgery which cuts and cauterizes at the same time. And doesn’t that make what the Bishop said true? Jesus doesn’t come to bring peace but a sword. And that sword is the Love of God! The Love of God has the capability of cutting through anything that we can imagine. It cuts through whatever we have placed between us and God; drugs, booze, wealth, sex, work, food, power, jealousy, envy, even friends, and family; whatever it is that we have placed first and foremost in our lives obscuring our vision of God. But through the saving action of Jesus Christ, the Love of God in one gleaming arc cleanly cuts away sin which has separated us from Him and at the same time reconnects us to Him through reconciliation!

In the hand of Jesus Christ the Love of God is so powerful that nothing can prevent it. As Paul tells us in his letter to the Romans there is no tribulation or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or even another sword that can stand up to the Love of God. In our current time that would include tornadoes and floods, too! Neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, [absolutely nothing] will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

And here’s the best part. When we have been amputated from sin and reconciled by the Love of God, we in turn will receive a whole new perception on life. When we take those things which we loved before God and have removed them from our sight, focusing our attention only on God through Christ Jesus, we will then be able to reconnect with those things in a new way, and love them in a divine way not unlike how God loves us. If we want to truly love our children or spouse or parent, we need the Love of God first in our lives and He will show us how to love them even more. It’s a matter of proper perspective. It’s a matter of priorities. It’s a matter of balance. By the Love of God we will be able to interact with others in a more healthy way. We will be able to interact with the material gifts that God has given to us in a more moderate and productive way. And above all, we will be able to live our lives in a way more closely attuned to the way for which God intended.

Only when we choose; when we allow the sword which Jesus is wielding to pierce our heart and empty it of all the flotsam and jetsam of life, then and only then will we know true freedom and true peace in this world and in the next. This is our promised reward.

So be not afraid. Listen carefully to the Word of the Lord. Open your hearts and be a target for the Love of God.

Gloria Patri