Jerusalem Presbyterian Church

Asking Jesus Tough Questions - August 19, 2007

There is a scene in the film, “Taladega Nights: the Ballad of Ricky Bobby” when the title character, Ricky Bobby is saying grace with his family assembled at the table.  “Dear tiny baby Jesus…” Ricky Bobby begins, then he goes on to thank Jesus for his various family members and their attributes.   His wife (for whom Ricky has just thanked Jesus for making “smokin’ hot”) interrupts the prayer, “You know Ricky, Jesus did grow up.  It’s kind of off putting to pray to a baby.”    Ricky responds, “I like the Christmas Jesus best.  When you say grace, you can pray to whatever Jesus you like, old man Jesus or teenage Jesus.”

So enamored is Ricky Bobby of this image of tiny baby Jesus, that later in  the film he prays to “Dear Lord baby Jesus, sitting in his crib, watching Baby Einstein videos, learning about shapes and colors…”

This morning, I wish I could preach a sermon about a tiny eight pound, six ounce baby Jesus.   That’s the one that many of us like best: harmless, laying gently in the night, surrounded by the beasts and his loving parents, unable to speak.  A new born King, God and humanity at once.  That’s a Jesus we can wrap our minds, and our hearts around!

I don’t much like this Jesus in Luke today.  I don’t like him so much that I tried to find another passage to preach—I can do that, you know.  I have the authority to preach any passage I darn well please.  Preaching the lectionary is neither required nor preferred by many congregations.   You may notice that in the newsletter I listed a passage in Jeremiah. That’s the one I intended to preach on because a month ago when I looked at the gospel for today I was so turned off by it I couldn’t imagine how I would make it into a sermon.  I’m going to let you in on a secret about preachers: we are human too.  Sometimes the temptation to take the easy way is very great.

The sermon I was going to preach was going to be called “Not a far off God.”  It would have been about how God is close to us, even when we don’t feel like it.  It would have been comforting, I hope.  Instead I found myself re-reading this text from Luke, trying to get a handle on it, wishing I could instead find comfort in it.  I tried, and I failed.  Jesus is not a good guy in this text, he does not ask people to do things that are reasonable, and what he has to say is not very comforting.  There.  I said it.

What is equally true in preaching, along with the fact that preachers sometimes like to take the easy way, is that sometimes when text is very difficult, it begs (or demands) to be dealt with.  So today we are dealing with it.

When I read that Jesus told his friends this:

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, mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law."

It brings up all kinds of questions for me.  It should bring up questions for any peace-loving follower of Christ.  Some people will tell you that it is wrong, very wrong to question what is in the Bible. In fact I was raised to believe that it was wrong to change the Bible in any way from the King James Version—which as any true believer knows, was surely the one Jesus read.

But I cannot read this (in any translation) and not want to ask Jesus more about it.  So my questions would sound something like this:

This is the part of the sermon where I’m supposed to tell you that I have actually gone through the original text, word-for-word in Greek, and that I have found that the use of metaphorical language and hyperbole has rendered the harshness of these words null and void.  I’m supposed to tell you that Jesus didn’t really mean it, or that we shouldn’t take it at face value, or that it doesn’t really apply to us.

I’m sorry.  I can’t tell you that.  There is no “hidden Greek” way to negate the harshness of this, it isn’t hyperbole, and Jesus probably did mean it.  That means I’m stuck with it, and so are you.  Tiny baby Jesus, the eight pound, six ounce Prince of Peace is not going to rescue us from this one.

The Jesus we are stuck with today, with his campaign of division and family destruction, is heading towards death—he has literally turned towards the place where he will die—and yet his friends do not understand what is about to happen.  This Jesus, with his gospel that disrupts and confronts The Powers That Be and business-as-usual wants his disciples to understand what real commitment is.  This Jesus is no good guy who was willing to keep his mother happy by sticking close to home and going into the family business.  He was willing, rather, to do things that his best friends didn’t always understand, and say things that we would be pondering and questioning hundreds of years later in order to follow through with his commitment to God.

Whether this message found in Luke is an endorsement or an indictment depends on the level of commitment of the person hearing these words.  In seminary we were taught that the gospel message intends to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.  Today’s Good News reminds me of the Choose Your Own Adventure books my son liked to read when he was in elementary school.  How this sermon ends depends on you.

If in fact we are, as a church and as a Church so committed that we have indeed been willing to cut ties with those closest to us, disagreeing gracefully perhaps with the person sitting next to us in the pew, even, maybe even willing to give up a little institutional stability in exchange for transformational truth then this message should comfort us, letting us know that whatever we are going through is just God’s plan for us.  If instead we are frightened by the prospect of committing so closely to God that we might damage earthly relationships, if we are willing to believe and do and say any old thing to keep the peace—the peace that Christ did not come to bring, but a peace of our own making—if that has become more important to us than following through, fully committed with our relationship with God then this message sounds like doom. And Christianity, that is following Christ to the cross, sounds like a fool’s gamble. For every tough question we ask of Jesus, he asks only one of us:

Which are you? 

Thanks be to God.

• Welcome
• Directions
• Staff
• History
• Special Events
• Sermons
• Resources