One of the personal joys of ministry for me is being able to conduct pastoral services for family members. I have conducted marriage services for both daughters and next week I baptise my fourth grandchild – little Archie Frame Dobos – at the Duntroon chapel. They are happy but also confronting occasions because I realise that whereas once I was the principle love of my daughters’ lives, they now have husbands and children who have a special place in their lives. They are their next of kin … and I’m a little further down the line or less in the centre in special terms. Do they love me less and do they love their husbands and children more? Or is this the wrong question? If so, what is the right question? Is there a hierarchy of love and, if so, how does it function?
Hold these questions as we think about Jesus’ words from today’s gospel. “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.”
Do we love God more than we love family or friends? If so, there is a potential division in our families … a division that might make some people feeling diminished and others rejected. Or do we see this division as one of identity? If God is the origin and source of our being and we find our point in purpose in God, do we need to be in right relation with God in order to be the mother, father, sister, brother or friend that we they need and we want to be? In other words, once we know who we are and know that we are the focus of unconditional divine love, can we empty ourselves of every impediment to loving others and being ready to sacrifice everything for them?
Can I suggest that our identity is derived from, or imparted by, our various relationships; biological, natural, social and political. These include our relationships with family and friends, the natural environment, our work, our organisational affiliations, our beliefs, the things we possess. Some of these relationships are tangible and are associated with people, places, objects. We can talk about them in concrete terms and they give us a sense of meaning or a settled location in a community. These relationships provide us with a sense of belonging or they encourage or elicit certain behaviours. These relationships give our lives order and routine, objectives and rewards.
Some relationships are not as tangible but they are no less real; our spiritual commitments, beliefs and attitudes. Our lives are actually a vast network of relationships whether we are conscious of them or not. And regardless of whether we judge them as good or bad, healthy or unhealthy, taken together this complex of relationships makes you and me the persons we are. We are shared by our interactions with other people and with the organisations that people form.
Ultimately, however, only one of these relationships can finally be the most significant and decisive. This one relationship makes us uniquely who we are and not someone else. For example, if I decide that my relationship with my parents is the definitive one, then all my other relationships will be seen and lived out through the relationship I maintain with my parents. I will try to live their lives through mine. Their lives will become the lens through which I see and relate to others, the world, and myself. That one relationship will be decisive for who I am … how I see myself and what I will strive to be. It will become the criterion for determining and incorporating all other relationships that contribute to who I am as a person. For many people, pleasing their parents, attracting their praise and ‘earning’ their love matters most. As a general observation, the one relationship that ultimately determines our identity is the one to whom we will give our existence and probably our life.
Jesus’ relationship with the Father is what ultimately determined his identity and being. He freely chose that one relationship above all others. That did not mean that he rejected all others. Rather … all his other relationships were mediated through his relationship with the Father. Jesus’ choice brought about division with the religious leaders, the world, and all who would chose differently.
This is the choice set before us today. Who or what is the decisive relationship that shapes your identity and gives substance to your being? What relationship matters so much to you that you allow it to shape your life and give you identity? Maybe it is your children, your partner or your work. It could be parents, church, country, politics or God. I’ve met many people who struggled to answer the question … when it appears the principal relationship is the one they have with themselves: how they see themselves, their promotion, advancement, standing or reputation. They want to be someone, so how they relate to the person in the mirror is crucial … especially if they don’t like the person looking back or would rather be someone else – someone who was better looking or more popular. So they do whatever they can to enhance their self-image whether or not it is a distortion or a fantasy.
What is our principal or foundational relationship? It is a choice we make over and over, day after day, as we respond to existing relationships and enter new ones. It is a choice that always brings division as we tend to favour some people and their judgements over the opinions of others.
There is, then, something predictable about the Gospel reading for today … given what Luke has already told us about Jesus. “Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division!” This is not the Jesus we are used to contemplating and probably not the Jesus we want. Where is the water-walking, miracle-working, dying-for-me Jesus? What happened to sweet baby Jesus asleep on the hay … no crying he made? This fire bringing, family dividing Jesus makes us uncomfortable and he might even make us cringe.
After all, God knows we already have more than enough division on the planet. We do not need any more. We thought that knowing more about other people would make us more tolerant, understanding and empathetic. It has not. We are divided socially, racially, economically, politically, religiously not only in our own country but throughout the world. The nightly news is an evolving tale of division and the violence that it has provoked. There is division in marriages and families, in the workplace, in our schools. But this is not, however, the division that Jesus brings. The division that we see in news bulletins is not Jesus’ doing. We humans have caused those divisions by our choices of relationships that ultimately determine who we are and how we act. Russians choosing to despise Ukrainians; Sunnis Muslims deciding to hate Shi-ite Muslims; white’s committed to oppressing blacks. We have made bad choices. Getting our life, and our world, turned around means learning “how to interpret the present time” and choosing again.
For the Christian it means choosing God as the primary relationship that finally determines who we are and what we do. If we choose God as that one relationship then it means our parents, children, spouses, or friends do not determine who we are. It means that our jobs, our country, our politics, our possessions do not create our identity. God does. Those relationships do not necessarily have to end or their influence eradicated. Rather, they exist within the context of our underlying/foundational relationship with God. There will be new dynamics, new priorities, and new divisions. To choose God will bring about division – especially if we don’t do what others expect or demand of us. Jesus said it would be this way. The division about which he spoke does not kill, oppress nor separate. The division Jesus offers is about growth. He is directing us towards fullness of life and the acquisition of holiness.
Think for a moment: regardless of our age we are always in the process of growing up. Growing up is difficult and often painful work. Division is the way of life and growth. Look at the miracle of physical life and your body. Watch a child grow up. This, modern science has revealed, is a result of division at the cellular level. Growth and our physical bodies are a result of division. Go into a home where a teenager lives. On the surface you may see conflict between parent and child. At a deeper level it is about division. A young person is discovering his or her life and identity … apart from their parents. It may not be fun but it is absolutely necessary for life, the child’s and the parent’s.
Just as division offers physical and emotional growth, so it offers spiritual growth. Jesus is calling us to grow up … to become all that we can be … pointing to the division that makes that growth possible. For our part we must re-examine our relationships: both the priorities we have given them and the power they exert over us. Very often, we let others impose their priorities on us (and we go along) or we empower things that diminish and destroy and not enrich and enhance.
In the reading today we are being implored to make foundational our relationship with God, to the exclusion of all other people, places, or objects as the one relationship that finally gives us our truest, most authentic and timeless identity. We are known by God and we matter to God … God is reaching out to us and drawing us on … to a future that is beyond our imagination. This is the division that loses nothing and gains everything. This division does not marginalise or reject others. Instead, it offers wholeness and perfection. If I am assured of divine love and know that I exist in the mind of God, I can be your servant, I can offer you all that I have … and I am neither weakened nor watered down in doing so. It is the division that transforms our lives, makes sacred all our other relationships, and, I believe, has the potential to heal the world.