Today’s Daily Lesson comes from Luke chapter 12 verses 49 through 53:
49 ‘I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled! 50I have a baptism with which to be baptized, and what stress I am under until it is completed! 51Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division! 52From now on, five in one household will be divided, three against two and two against three; 53they 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.’
I think a lot about the politics of division and often decry what has become of our political landscape. I think the division it is largely a symptom of our vastly different experiences relative to young and old, urban and rural, white, black, and brown, and wealth and working class. These divisions have been with us in some ways since the very beginning of our Republic. They have been exacerbated with the decline of rural farming, the political ascendency of people of color, and the advent, stratification, and mobilization of social media.
When I look at this it’s hard to imagine the situation getting better. The tensions seem only to be gaining force. The center will not hold. It might well be cause for deep pessimism.
And yet, here is Jesus in this morning’s Daily Lesson speaking of division as a work God — a burning, a refining way of purification. Though it’s hard to see or even really imagine, it’s a hopeful word to remind us that God is in this somewhere, working God’s purposes out.
Amidst a time of tribulation it’s a hopeful enough thought to make a semi-Calvinist out of me.
And speaking of Calvinists and politics, I’m thinking here of the deeply-Calvinistic Lincoln, who after defeat in the Second Battle of Bull Run:
The will of God prevails. In great contests each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God. Both may be, and one must be wrong. God can not be for, and against the same thing at the same time. In the present civil war it is quite possible that God's purpose is something different from the purpose of either party---and yet the human instrumentalities, working just as they do, are of the best adaptation to effect His purpose.
Contrary to what the media might lead us to believe, we are not at a point of Civil War. We thank God for this. But we may very much at the point of division between:
“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.”
Perhaps it would behoove us then this Thanksgiving after this election that either way God is working God’s purpose out through this all and that there is a very good chance that neither of our parties knows or acts in accordance with the complete will of God.
That will be a pretty good thing for everyone at the Thanksgiving table to remember — no matter who’s holding the carving knife.
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