The division that 'good news' brings...

Luke 12: 49-59

⁵¹Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division!     

If you have been following this series you will be aware that the purpose we set ourselves is to match up our lives with the life taught and practiced by Jesus of the Nazareth sermon. There are many different portraits of Jesus; physical, social, psychological and so the list goes on. We have been interested in letting the bible as forms of literature speak to us. This has meant having a look behind the text to the culture of the authors, we have looked into the text and its language and we have stood in front of the text to hear what the text may be saying in our day and time. We have recognised that the bible tells a story of the revelation of the creating, redeeming and sustaining God and that He is revealed in His Son Jesus the Messiah. We have tried to take the words and practices of Jesus seriously. When He spoke in Nazareth regarding why He had come we decided to seek the fulfilment of that claim in the rest of the story of the gospel narratives. In other words we have tried to understand the life of Jesus through His claim to the fulfilment of the promise of God to set all humanity free from meeting its needs its own self destructive and imprisoning way.  We have seen Jesus as the source of liberation from the powers that oppress us and that use us in the oppression of others. This has meant we have had to break away from our old socialisation, challenge ourselves to think in new and inclusive ways through finding ourselves within the narratives of Jesus life and His story of restorative Justice. If we have done this we will have found it a source of challenge and change. Our story today is about the results of that change. The cheap sale of the story of Jesus in recent times has resulted in Jesus being portrayed as a ‘sweet and gentle everything works out in the end’ stereotype with little to offer in terms of the actual problems we face in the 21^st century. However, there is another ‘costly’ approach to the teachings and practices of Jesus; one which we have attempted to adopt namely, the teachings and practices of Jesus if adopted are transformative. That is, if the practices of Jesus are implemented they change me and those I come in contact with. The teachings of Jesus make a difference; there is ‘right and wrong’ and it’s important to find out what’s right and put it into practice. This is the division that Jesus brings; He divides His followers and separates them to stand by the side of the oppressed, the poor and the exploited. To be transformed is to give up the life of privileged, self-seeking independence and participate in the transforming power of putting Jesus words into practice in interdependent communities. This is how we and the world will be changed. If we are finding the path of discipleship costly and divisive, we may just be being challenged to recognise that our lives are in the process of being changed and transformed though putting the practices and teachings of Jesus to the task for which they were designed.