A reading of the holy gospel according to Luke. Now I'm reading this. Think of my well chosen remarks of yesterday. I think it was about peace and the meaning meaning of peace. When I said that the word should be eliminated along with the word love from the English language.
Because it has countless meanings, and any sign that can have so many meanings is worthless. So our lord speaks in this reading today considerably on this matter of peace, so get his idea of what it is. And this is from Saint Luke. Jesus said to his disciples, to those who follow him, I came to cast fire upon the earth, and would that it were already kindled. I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how I am constrained until it is accomplished.
Do you think I have come to give peace on earth? No, I tell you, but rather division. For henceforth, in one house, there will be five divided against three, three against two, and two against three. They will be divided, father against son, and son against father, mother against daughter, and daughter against her own mother, mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law, and daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. And this is the good news of Jesus Christ.
In the name of the father, and of the son, and of the holy spirit, amen. It isn't often you find this text on your Christmas cards or Easter time when, of course, everybody is overflowing with milk and honey and human compassion for their fellow human being. It's nice to make it twice a year. But as I said, the doctrine of Jesus Christ is a severe doctrine. And to live the life of Jesus Christ in this life is not an easy thing.
It is not going to be a joyful thing unless you live it in company with Jesus Christ. I often think of that text from Saint John speaking of how our lord will wipe away every tear. Notice, he wipes away the tears. He doesn't keep the tears from coming. Notice that little point.
He wipes away the tears. He comforts us. He supports us. He gives us strength. But he still says, you've got to carry my cross.
And really, if you take what I just read to you, which we take so calmly, and we're so relaxed about it, it doesn't raise our feathers one bit. But if you take what our Lord said there in the context of his time, talking to Jewish people whose whose family ties are so close, and many instances still are. The Jewish people, I think, have a rather favorable reputation for their close knitness of their family and their allegiance and loyalty to, one another in the family unit. And notice how our blessed lord keeps hammering us. He just doesn't say, I have come to bring the fire, the sword, or all that.
Well, you know, so what? Never doesn't touch us. The civil war, that's history, and nothing's going to happen. Then then he doesn't say, and I will be the source of division within the home. He devotes nearly four or five lines to explicitly, picturesquely telling you what he means by this division.
And Christ, as far as I know, could not have chosen sensitive area in which to show that he is a source of turbulence, turbulence. And remember, this emphasis upon the daughter-in-law and mother-in-law. Remember when a young man brought his bride home, she was brought to his home. She became the equivalent of a daughter. And so our blessed lord is using an extremely graphic illustration of what he is trying to tell us, not just those people who listened to him when they saw him, but to us today.
Because you see, unless we have a fairly decent, proper concept of what it means to follow Christ, we are going to be in for a lot of rude awakenings. We are going to be often in a state of utter confusion, as poor old Job was, or even more so. Because you see, we we are told so much about the love of God these days. We are told so much about the love of Christ. And just think of what Saint Paul told you in that first reading today about the love of Christ for you.
That's a very famous sentence. How it's so deep and so profound and so pervasive that you can't begin to imagine how Christ has loved you. This is another little point that we often forget. We are so busy trying to prove our love for God, which is certainly commendable, that we overlook the fact that on God's own word, we know he has first loved us. So that today we have a great atmosphere of love.
That word love is tossed around like the leaves on the autonomal tree. But with that, all that emphasis upon love, we have to take texts such as we have today, and plenty of other texts. This is just one. To get a picture of what it means to be a Christian, to be a honest to God Christian. And really, to be a good Christian should lift us out of confusion, out of confusion.
Because the when the you know, when the chips are down, when when all has been said and written and argued and debated, The big issues of life are not too many. And from time to time in our lives, we come face to face with them. I mean really big issues. Of course, one of the biggest issues in my life can be whether I'm going to go shopping today, or whether I'm going to buy an automobile, or whether I'm going to go fishing, or whether I'm going to catch any fish. Of course these things can be big.
Your child's education, how's he doing in school, of course that can be big. But when you're lying in bed or not lying in bed facing death, or a very critical illness, or facing a really frightfully important decision, a lot of these other things are going to lose importance. A lot of them. And so the the big issues of life, the whys and the wherefores, I I submit, have all been answered by Jesus Christ. Not completely, not comprehensively, not in a way that we know the whole story, any more than I know the whole story of that light burning when I throw a teeny weeny old switch in a wall.
But it's one thing to know that the light is burning, and to know that it ordinarily will do it if I throw that teeny tiny little old switch, and to say I don't know anything about the light because I don't know everything about it. So we are what I would call healthy agnostics, very healthy agnostics, if we are truly Christian. And so I think our blessed Lord has given us enough of the answers to satisfy our needs of God, these great big issues of living. What's it all about? What's the meaning of suffering?
How does tragedy and pain, bereavement, How do these things fit into to my existence, which is supposed to be under the jurisdiction of a benevolent God? How does all this fit together? Why me, Lord? Why am I clobbered? And let me tell you, plenty of people are clobbered.
There's no other word for it. Gosh, just a few days ago, I heard of of an instance. It's unbelievable. The things that can happen to some people and in quick order. What's the answer to all this?
Throwing up your hands in despair, saying, it's terrible. There can't be a just loving God when I see so much hate, and on and on. It's possible. Plenty of people do this. I'm not this isn't a figment in my imagination, but it can never be it can never be the attitude of an honest to God Christian.
Christ has given us all the answers to all the things that really and truly matter. But it's his teaching we take, not what we want, not what we would like it to be, not what seems to be pragmatically acceptable, not what is merely utilitarian. Christ was not a follower of Jeremy Bentham, that I know of anyway. There's a little chronological difference there. And so when we read a text like this or the text of our when our lord is telling us about his cross, the text where he says that you're going to have to suffer as I have if you want to be my father.
You know, these can these texts can be very, very damaging if we take them alone. But on the other side, if you take all this love and joy and happiness and brightness and gaiety and and all of this, that can be damaging too, even more so. The only safe path for a Christian is the path that he trods with Jesus Christ is in good company there. The name of the father and the son and holy spirit. Amen.