CAMINANDO WITH JESUS: When Division is Good News

Pentecost 10, Proper 15 | August 18, 2019

By the Rev. Joe T. Mitchell

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I will admit that, as far as comfortable words go, the ones that Jesus offers in this pericope from Luke’s gospel do not exactly fill me with the warm and fuzzies. At first glance, I have a hard time finding Good News in Jesus saying he has brought division rather than peace. Then I remember where I came from. 

Growing up in the coalfields of southwestern Virginia, I was surrounded by a brand of Christianity typically characterized as “fundamentalist” or “evangelical.” An example of religious diversity would be how many different kinds of Baptist churches one would find in my hometown.   

In the midst of all this, I was reared in a loving Episcopal parish two towns over from where we lived. As the only Episcopalian in my high school, I was often confronted with some pretty harsh rhetoric, including threats of my everlasting damnation over the fact my church had a female priest and actively preached that gay people were not an abomination unto the Lord. Once I was even brought in for a heart-to-heart with one of the football coaches/Baptist preachers, who told me that I needed to read Revelation, welcome Jesus into my heart, and realize my church was wrong before it was too late.  

Teenage Joe understood something that 30-something Joe forgets: Jesus’ coming did, indeed, bring division, and thank God it did! Surrounded by a Christianity that was more concerned with judgment than mercy, more eager to condemn someone for their gender or sexual identity than to see the imprint of God on them, I somehow did not crack. Blessedly, I had a church home that continued to preach love and to welcome those who were cast out. This kind of rhetoric was fundamentally opposed—one might even say divisive—to the kind of Christianity that I experienced in my daily life. For some of my closest friends, I was a radical, a false Christian who did not adhere to the Bible and who would most assuredly encounter Jesus’ wrath when he comes again. Still, I kept going to church and kept standing up to and loving those who ridiculed and harassed me because someone needed to show them another way. Sometimes, I realized, division is not a bad thing when it means modeling love while all around you are modeling hate. 

Of course, Jesus came to bring division. His life, death and resurrection all pushed (and still push) against human constructs of prejudice, judgment and absolutism. Those in power will continue to call him down— “Stop being so divisive, Jesus!”—but he will keep on standing in the midst of the storm, preaching love and hope to a congregation steeped in bitterness and despair. I would likely not even be a Christian, let alone a priest, had someone not modeled for me something different from a uniformed message that reinforced such hurtful and harmful constructs.

The message of the Gospel is not one of uniformity. That was Rome’s prerogative. The power structures we encounter, both large-scale—a government bullying its people to fall in line with its leaders—and small-scale—a group of teenagers trying to get a kid to renounce his faith under penalty of hellfire—are still being undermined by the Good News of Jesus Christ, whose message of love still stirs hope in the hearts of those who are brave enough to look at the world and say, “This is not the way of Jesus!” 

Sometimes I do wish we could all just get along, but then I remember that if getting along means continuing in cycles of oppression, then we who are the Body of Christ must throw a hitch into those cycles, call them out, stand in love and know that Jesus has our back. Certainly, that is Good News!

The Rev. Joe Mitchell is the rector of Good Shepherd, Asheboro.