We're still off-lectionary for the next couple of weeks but the Luke passage is a stoater, as they say. How on earthy do we make sense of that...? One way of thinking about it may be this:
Luke 12:49-56Here we have Jesus in extreme make-over ready and fit for battle: I tell you I shall divide households, three against two and two against three, brother against father and mother against... well, you fill in the blanks.
One reading of this is an excuse to let Christianity/Church be used as a weapon, and say to people "We're right, you're wrong and we're allowed to fight over it." That's anathema to the faith though plenty have and still use it like that. Woe to you...
The other reading is focusing on who Jesus is talking to and about: households and families. It seems Jesus is refocusing what our basic unit is: family or faith? Traditionally the power lay with the household or the family. Jesus it taking that cultural unit and suggesting that the basic unit has to be the realm of God. The power lies there rather than in the matriarch or patriarch.
But before we raise our eyes to the ceiling and think: 'good grief, the church has the power again and all those wizened old men are back in charge,' reflect again on who Jesus is talking about. He pairs one generation off against another. He pairs the 'older' generation off against the 'younger' generation. This could be all about change and who has the power when things change. It's not about keeping things as they are but Jesus recognises that a new way of thinking will upset those who have thought in one particular way for their entire generation. Father against brother: this new Jesus politick will sit uncomfortably with the old politick of the head of the household. Jesus seems to land on the side of the generation which changes. The faith Jesus hold to is a new world view and no one is going to pretend it is going to be easy for folk.
Now, if ever a true word was spoken about the church...
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