Pull Back the Veil: A Sermon on Luke 12:49-56
As a child in the Midwest, I learned how to watch the weather, especially in the summer. I learned to love that bright, high-relief coloring of grass and trees following a rainstorm, accompanied by that crisp summery scent of ozone. And I learned how easy it is for the sky to turn from bright summery blue to roiling dark clouds to that eerie green that signals impending dangerous weather. I learned how to read the signs of the weather, how to interpret the different siren sounds, and how to know when exactly you had to duck downstairs into the basement because the tornado was nearby.
Image from @designlaabb on Unsplash.
Interpreting the skies to predict weather is one thing. Interpreting the how and why and what next of the times in which we’re living is another.
In this Scripture passage, Jesus reprimands his disciples for just this: being able to read the signs of the weather, but not being able to read the signs of the present times.
So let’s be honest, this is an uncomfortable passage. Most of what we read about, and what I preach about, is a Jesus whose mission of peace and justice and love is known through generosity and humility and welcome and inclusion. His teaching is done through wondering questions and curiosity and conversation with experts and laypeople alike. His identity as an itinerant prophet and as the Beloved Child of God and as Love embodied are communicated in how he sees and hears and knows people with an unparalleled cosmic grace.
The Jesus we read about and preach about is all about unity—right? Not division?
That’s why this passage in Luke is so challenging. I like the peaceful Jesus...this guy, who brings tension and sets parent against child and division between neighbors...I'm not so sure about him.
But this discomfort is also why we need to read this passage.
Because Jesus challenges us.
Because Jesus calls us to live for something beyond ourselves, to live for each other and our neighbors.
Because following Jesus involves us not being able to turn away from the pain and injustice in the world simply because it is inconvenient for us.
Because following the Way of Jesus means that some people will not understand us, even those closest to us, even our kinfolk.
But still—reading Jesus saying that families will be turned against each other, even torn apart—that's a hard one. Even if the reality is that our families are at odds, or even divided, (and whose aren’t!) it is hard to hear Jesus tell us this.
Another question arises: is Jesus telling us that we must divide from our family to follow his Way? Sometimes when we read the sacred texts in our modern context, it can be confusing whether to think of these words as prescriptive or descriptive. Hermeneutics, meaning HOW we read and interpret texts, is a huge challenge facing the modern church, with the rise of evangelical fundamentalism and the rise of progressivism at disparate ends of a spectrum. I know we all are familiar with folks who are apt to say, “the Bible says this...” and thus understand the Bible as telling them to follow those words to the letter. That is understanding the Bible as prescriptive. Maybe pieces of the Bible are meant to be prescriptive, for example, the parts that say, “love your neighbor as yourself” and practice forgiveness seventy times seven. But it would be naïve to think that every story included in the Bible is meant to tell us, in the USA in 2022, exactly what to do or think or believe.
Some stories, especially those which Phyllis Trible and other feminist and womanist scholars call “texts of terror,” are not to be understood as prescriptive. For example, what do we do with the stories of sexual violence in the Bible? Surely those are not meant to be held up as examples of how to live. Or what are we to do with the story of Joshua and taking over the Promised Land from the original inhabitants, the Canaanites? We know all too well that that story was used as a justification for Manifest Destiny here in North America, and the expelling and execution of countless indigenous peoples. Those are dramatic examples, yes, but they are important as we consider the difference between reading with a mindset of ‘this is exactly what the Bible is telling us to do’ versus ‘the Bible is describing something that we can learn from.’
Denying a prescriptive reading in favor of a descriptive one, Audrey West, in the Feasting on the Word commentary writes about our chosen text, “It is not Jesus’ purpose to set children against their parents, or parents against their children, but this sort of rupture can be the result of the changes engendered by Christ’s work.”
Friends, we know, from our scriptures and from our own life experience, that an encounter with Jesus changes things. It even changes us.
An encounter with Jesus moves us to think differently about how we love ourselves and our neighbors, how we interact with our communities, how we share in God’s economy of abundance, how we steward our finances, how we care for Creation. No one remains the same after encountering Jesus.
Perhaps that is why, in our text for today, Jesus comes off as so frustrated at his followers. By the 12th chapter of Luke, the disciples should know that Jesus never said following him would be easy or simple. They are accustomed to the “leave your nets and follow me” messaging when they signed up for discipleship! In our scripture passage, Jesus is so impassioned about his mission in the world that he reprimands his followers for not being able to interpret the signs of the times. With angst, Jesus describes the changes that can take place when committed to following him—challenge, division, disunity.
Scripture scholar and pastor Richard P. Carlson encourages us to consider the public and private dimensions of this text. He reminds us that in the first century world, both in Jewish and Gentile communities, family and household were the building blocks of society. In communicating the division that may happen when people live a life following the Way of Jesus, Jesus asserts that he “has not come to validate human institutions and their values but to initiate God’s radical will.” And God’s will can be understood as the divine peace that we are so familiar with Jesus' teaching and preaching about. However, as each of us knows from living in this world, everyone does not want to engage with the lifestyle and behavior that it takes to achieve cosmic peace, so, Carlson says, “the initiation of Jesus' peace agenda also triggers contentious disunity and fissures among all facets of society, right down to the societal core of the household.”
This sounds familiar, doesn’t it? Elections of 2000 or 2016. Vietnam War. January 6, 2021. Extra-judicial killings of Black people by police. Mass incarceration. Immigration at the USA-Mexico border and the incarceration of children torn from their parents. A pandemic mishandled at the highest levels of government and that continues to rage, leaving vulnerable people particularly at risk. Protections for LGBTQIA+ people and same sex marriage under attack again. Reproductive justice access for people with uteruses post-Roe v. Wade protections.
Many of us have experienced the stark polarization in our society impacting our family and personal lives intimately. Unfriending on Facebook, chairs left open on holidays, heated conversations between once-close friends, communication cut off because the allure of conspiracy theories and hateful language got to be too much.
So, what does this passage from Luke 12 have to tell us in this time of deep division? On one level, we hear that we are not alone when it comes to the division that can arise from heeding the prophetic call to do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with God.
Again, Richard P. Carlson: “The harsh sayings and indictments resounding in this text remind us that Jesus has not come to validate the social realities and values we have constructed. Such social realities and values have a propensity to seek a harmony that favors those who hold positions of power at the expense of those who are powerless and expendable. Jesus’ missional agenda of compassion, mercy, and justice shatters such a status quo. This is a missional agenda that compels him toward his divine destiny to be accomplished in his death and resurrection. It is the agenda that will result in divisions and contentions on all levels of society, as people are either embraced or repelled by what God is doing through Jesus. It is the agenda that we are called to recognize in the present in anticipation of God’s future. It is the agenda that causes us to reinterpret what God is truly about it in the person of Jesus, and so to reinterpret who we are and what we are about as disciples of Jesus.”
And in this polarized society, with news of corruption and hypocrisy from elected officials, with news of abuse of power from church leadership across denominations, with news of diseases running rampant due to misinformation and mismanagement...we continue to interpret and reinterpret the signs all around us, at the same time as those realities are reinterpreting us, determining who and how we are in this world.
With the impassioned words in our scripture for today, Jesus desires thoughtful followers, not easily seduced by the hypocrisy of strategically interpreting weather events while being unwilling or feigning ignorance when asked to interpret the signs of the times. He wanted them to be filled with boldness, courageously witnessing the implications of his mission in the world and choosing to say “yes,” and pull back the veil such that what is hidden can come to light.
Today, we hear this call again anew. We, too, must choose boldness and courage to see and hear and understand the fear, shame, anxiety, grief and heartache filling this world. And so, we do our part, declining the seductive pull to be hypocrites, and instead, pulling back the veil.
Pull back the veil on white supremacy. Pull back the veil on patriarchy and misogyny. Pull back the veil on homophobia. Pull back the veil on transphobia. Pull back the veil on capitalism. Pull back the veil on colonialism and imperialism. Pull back the veil on corruption and treason. Pull back the veil on modern-day-slavery inherent in our incarceration system. Pull back the veil on “labor shortages” that are worker exploitation in disguise.
But friends, as we do this difficult and complex work of pulling back the veil on the great evils at work in our society, the ones that divide father from son and mother from daughter and sibling from sibling, we must also remember that we are each continuing to live in the world as humans. We are each experiencing the joys and sorrows, triumphs and tragedies of being human...yes, even as our world teeters on the brink of fascism and as we realize more and more that we are past the point of no return with climate change.
And as we remember our humanity, yours and mine, it is of the utmost importance that we remember to be gentle with each other. As we pull back the veils, we must also face the ways that we have hurt each other and also remember that we have the capacity to learn, do better, forgive and repair.
Face the ways that we have chosen what is easy and convenient over what is challenging and difficult, and also remember that together we have faced so much hardship and we can—and will—do it again!
We must face the white supremacy inherent in this culture, and often lying subterranean in each of us, and refrain from making excuses and exceptions for ourselves and others when it makes itself plain and harms our siblings of color. And at the same time we must also remember that learning is a process, that growth doesn’t happen overnight, that mistakes can be made, and that correction can be pursued with curiosity and compassion, and received with humility and a wondering mind.
Beloveds, it takes so much courage to pull back the veil. It takes so much courage to recognize what people on the margins have been telling people with privilege for so, so long: that the world is caught in the crossfires of hate and oppression, that the people who are pushed to the margins of society are the most impacted by evils such as climate change, the exploitation of capitalism and the inflamed rhetoric of nationalist language and policies.
Hear the good news, dear ones: you are not alone in this work. We are together. You and I make mistakes, and we also can repair them. We can remind each other of our sacred identities as beautiful children of the Holy, leaving no one out. We can remind each other of the boldness with which our hearts beat for justice, peace and liberty for all people and for Creation. Let us go forward boldly pulling back the veil, reckoning with the division that has come and may yet come, rededicating ourselves always to following the Way that is characterized by deep, cosmic Love for all.
May it be so. Amen.
This sermon originally preached at Seattle First Baptist Church on August 22, 2022.
