August 19, 2007          “Family Feud”             By Pastor Laird Duran

We like to imagine Jesus as kind and gentle, loving and caring, but these are hard words that challenge our assumptions about his impact on families. Where's the Good News in this text from Luke’s gospel? We are not going to be able to make sense of this teaching unless we apply them to the story of life in the family. Let me tell you one by Paul Nuechterlein.

Daniel, for most of his life, saw himself living a charmed life from an ideal family. His father was a doctor, and he, his two brothers and a sister were all successful professionals. Daniel himself was a highly regarded executive in a thriving corporation. He worked hard many hours a week and earned a six figure salary. He, his wife, and two children lived a comfortable life in the suburbs.

Family had always been an important part of Daniel's values. He had done his part in keeping up the successful appearances for the sake of the family name. He worked hard for family, and stayed connected to them. His mother, father, sister, brothers, and their families always got together for holidays and special events. They had fun celebrating together. They had even taken vacations together.

There had been only one great tragedy to intrude on Daniel's big, happy family. Two years ago his father had died suddenly of a heart attack. Since then, the family stayed together, but things just weren’t the same. His father's death had caused him to take a hard look at his own life.

Daniel became chronically agitated as he began to realize that he really wasn't a happy person. He came to see his family relationships as mostly a surface thing. For his family, happiness was just an appearance that everyone worked hard to keep up. But Daniel came to realize that he was unhappy since his childhood.

Of all his brothers and sisters, he had always been the best behaved child. He always did well at whatever he did, and never got into trouble. His two brothers had both gone through a rebellious stage, and his mother and father had to continually bail them out of trouble. By contrast, Daniel had never needed any special help. In the hectic pace of their home, he had been the quiet wheel who never squeaked. Daniel came to realize that the more he achieved, the more they seemed to expect of him. He lacked the one thing that he needed the most: he needed to know that he was loved.

Daniel wasn't trying to blame anyone; he was simply trying to discuss his feelings with them. But when he tried to talk with his mother and his brothers and sisters, they cut him off and ignored what he was saying. When he pressed the issue, they became angry and hostile toward him. His mother wouldn't hear of such nonsense. 'They had always had everything they needed,' she would say, and then change the subject.

One day he had the chance to talk to his sister Cheryl. She had never been as regular at family events as the other siblings; she even lived farther away. So Daniel was surprised to find out that, when he began to share his feelings with her over the phone, he truly had a listening, sympathetic ear. As a matter of fact, Cheryl told Daniel why she had separated herself from her mother and her siblings.

When she was in 6th grade, their family hosted a high school exchange student for a year. The student befriended her, but then this student molested her over and over again. She tried to tell her mother, but her mother blamed her for being promiscuous. So she had kept this terrible secret all these years.

A strange thing happened to Daniel and Cheryl. They truly became brother and sister. In being able to tell the truth of life sorrows, they were also able to fully share one another's joys. By telling the truth, they became the truth closer together than ever before.

In our gospel lesson this morning, we hear these troubling words from Jesus:

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. (NRSV)

I understand these strange words in the light of Daniel's story, and in the story of all human families. This what Jesus meant when he said, he came to not to bring peace, but to bring division. If we live behind a deceptions and lies, the truth Jesus of God’s judgement will divide us. Jesus had to show us the depth of our problem with sin before his grace can heal us.

What is that problem? Simply stated, one cause of sin is simple selfishness. The creation of the family is a gift of God, but we also find them to be riddled with deceit and manipulation throughout the family system. As sinners, we are inclined to try to get what we need to be happiness at the expense of what others need. One way we often use to get what we want is by not telling the truth. In so doing, we live a lie. Even worse, sometimes we try to get happy by inflicting pain and suffering on someone else. We will sacrifice the well being of others so that we can have what we desire. This happens not only in human families, but among the nations as well.

For instance, on a recent trip to England I learned about the British Empire and their colony, India. The British believed that God chose them to rule their colonies. The prime minister, Winston Churchill said that God gave them the people of India because they were incapable of governing themselves.

The Indian leader liked Jesus principals of a kingdom filled with God’s peace, but he saw that British Empire, who called themselves Christians, prone to violence and arrogance. In a discussion about Christianity, Gandhi said, “I would become a Christian, if I ever met one.” With Gandhi’s encounter with leaders like Churchhill, who claimed to be Christian, this was a theological challenge to the British assumptions about their Empire. Gandhi caught the British in their own self deception and lie.

Gandhi led a nonviolent revolution in India that won their freedom from the British. And today, India has a thriving economy and is a powerful nation. (I think I was talking to someone from India the last time I called for help with one of my appliances.) Now this is just a sign of the times we live in.

In the next few verses of our reading, Jesus went on to ask if they could read the signs of the times, calling his challengers hypocrites. I hear him calling us to oppose all hypocrisy and arrogance in the whole human family. What are the signs of our times?

Do you see that foreclosures on homes are at an all-time high? Wars and violence happen with such frequency, it’s old news until it happens to us. Today we heard that over 600 people a day are homeless in this affluent city. Jesus saw these things as signs that God was going to have to do something, and establish a new kingdom to rule the universe.

The good news is that Jesus chose to be the first to suffer for the sake of God’s kingdom by his cross. He succumbed to the sin of lies and hypocrisy, manipulation and deception, and died to forgive our sin. He didn’t do it by inflicting harm or ignoring someone else's suffering. He didn’t call for revenge on us when we crucified him. Rather, he forgave us and became for us the victim of our sin. God raised him from the deathly consequences of human sin and gave him the victory. And the amazing grace is that all who follow Christ have that victory! Every family, every city, every nation, all people are the winners in God’s kingdom.

And Jesus our brother calls us to be part of a new family, one that first shares in each other's pain and suffering, but that also grows stronger together in love. We grow stronger because we have faith and hope that in God’s kingdom, pain and suffering will be no more.

At the center of our worship is the altar, a table, and Jesus is calling us for our family dinner. It came top through the pain and suffering, the body and blood so that it is now a victory celebration. It calls us toward the day God’s victory over all sin and death when Jesus comes again to rule the heaven and the earth. We're here for a foretaste of a great feast to come. Come, Lord Jesus! Amen!

Amen