August 17, 2025
Pentecost 10/Proper 15, Year C
The Rev. Dr. Elaine Ellis Thomas
St. John’s Episcopal Church
Essex, CT
Isaiah 5:1-7; Psalm 80:1-2, 8-18; Hebrews 11:29-12:2; Luke 12:49-56
The reading from Luke that we just heard is the one appointed for this day, the 10th Sunday after the Day of Pentecost. To be part of a faith tradition that uses a three-year lectionary cycle of biblical texts is both a blessing and a curse. It is a blessing because over the course of three years, as a congregation we hear a good chunk of our holy scriptures. The curse is that we don’t get to take a pass on the more challenging texts, even on a day when we are having a community celebration outside. Something tells me that you did not show up here today to hear about division and strife being part and parcel of the life of following Jesus.
Yet, here we are. We’ve come together united as one community in the household of God only to hear Jesus railing, “Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division!” (Luke 12:50).
Not exactly the kind and gentle Jesus we might have hoped for today.
But if you are at all like me, the Jesus I encounter when I study the gospels may not always be the Jesus I want to meet, but he is always, always the Jesus I need to meet in that moment. So, while all this talk of family strife might sound like bad news for us and those we love, it points us to the Good News of God’s reign breaking into this world in the person of Jesus Christ.
You see, Jesus is not making a prediction or a prophecy about some future event; he is simply naming the reality of what is going on all around them. We already know that his family thinks he isn’t quite in his right mind (Mark 3:21). Many people thought he was demon-possessed (John 10:20) and were divided amongst themselves over him. People are already arguing about him.
And I can’t help wondering what old Zebedee thought when his sons and co-laborers up and left him holding the nets when they traipsed off after this itinerant preacher, or Matthew’s wife when he gives up his lucrative tax-collecting business to go out into the towns and villages carrying nothing.
And even in the time Luke was writing this gospel, we know how much tension and strife existed between those who followed Jewish tradition and practice and those who followed the way of Jesus. It was not pretty.
No, Jesus is not predicting calamity. He is naming reality.
And he still is, even today.
Now, I know that things were particularly bad back in the 16th century during the Reformation, and maybe we aren’t burning people at the stake or beheading them for heresy, but the number of people claiming allegiance to a Jesus and a faith that I don’t even recognize gives me pause. What are we to do? Keep our head down and hope it passes? At the risk of resurrecting a hackneyed question, What Would Jesus Do?
Just before this part about Jesus coming to cast fire upon the earth, he says this, “From everyone to whom much has been given, much will be required, and from the one to whom much has been entrusted, even more will be demanded” (Luke 12:48). Jesus has a claim on us. If we keep silent, the stones will cry out (Luke 19:40). Do we hide our light under a bushel? No! We put it on the lampstand where it casts its light into the shadows.
No, silence is not an option.
And so, we will face the consequences of that. Awkward Thanksgiving tables might be the least of it. Truth-telling always entails some kind of risk.
Eight years ago this week, the white supremacist Unite the Right rally shook the city of Charlottesville, Virginia. A young counter protester died and dozens were injured when a homegrown terrorist rammed his car into a celebratory crowd. The night before, students and a few others were injured and traumatized by a tiki-torch bearing crowd of neo-Nazis around the statue of Thomas Jefferson on the grounds of the University of Viriginia while I and more than 700 others held a mass prayer rally just across the street at the church I served.
My clergy colleagues and local activists had worked for months to plan and prepare ourselves for the violence we knew was coming. There were those who said we needed to just stay home, don’t give the haters any oxygen, and they will go away. But I’ve never known hate to back down until confronted by deep, abiding love. And so, we marched through the streets on a blistering August day, singing and praying, comforting the wounded and frightened, and picking up the pieces when the day was over.
The next day, I climbed into the pulpit of St. Paul’s Memorial Church to preach on the story of Peter trying to walk across the water to Jesus during a storm. It’s a text I’ve preached on many times, and it usually has a theme about taking risks, getting out of the safety of the boat, answering Jesus’s invitation, and trusting that he will not let us be overcome.
But not that day. No, that day after the violence and the trauma of the day before, I said that maybe I was wrong. Maybe getting out of the boat is to abandon one’s community in the midst of a storm, and that only by sticking together could we hope to make it safely to shore and continue in the work set out before us.
After the service, I was approached by a member of the congregation whose face was purple with rage. He said, “If you had just not gone out and confronted them, Heather Heyer would still be alive. This is your fault.”
And this is where the counterpunch of Jesus’s message hits hard. We like to think that it is all those people who are wrong, and we are right, and we miss subjecting ourselves to the fire that Jesus is bringing, refining us, burning away the parts that are not of God so that we can seek a deeper relationship with God and one another.
Yes, I think we did the right thing in Charlottesville, I think we are doing the right thing now in pleading for the hungry, the lonely, and the strangers in our midst.
But, my friends, it isn’t about being right; it’s about being faithful.
We have been given much, and much is being asked of us.
Are we being faithful?
Are our hearts open to those who disagree with us, maybe even violently?
Are we walking a way of love that leads with hope and points to reconciliation, even if that reconciliation seems impossible and a long way off?
We are not expected to finish the work, just to do our part in making God’s reign evident here and now.
When we gather at this table, surrounded by that great cloud of witnesses that went before us, those who never received what had been promised (Hebrews 11:39), we are refreshed and renewed to just keep going. Keep doing those things we know to do – loving God and loving our neighbor, feeding the hungry and tending the sick, welcoming the stranger and visiting the prisoner. Sure, plenty of people may question our motives or want to disqualify some as being unworthy of our care, but Jesus has no qualifiers, and neither do we. We know the signs of the times. The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few (Luke 10:2). We have work to do, and we do it best together.