Telling the truth or keeping the peace?

Text: Luke 12:49-56

Well. I bet you are all both dying to hear and at the same time dreading what I might say about Jesus’s words in the first part of Luke’s Gospel lesson today, where Jesus says he didn’t come to bring peace but to bring division. After all, we call Jesus the Prince of Peace and recall all those times when Jesus says to his disciples, peace be with you, I leave you my peace, peace be still. But today he says he brings fire and division and that he wishes that fire was already taking effect. Whew.

But here we are, so I will cut to the chase, and in doing so I am responding to an idea offered by Frank Logue, Bishop of Georgia, who is someone I admire and follow both his writings and his stunning photography. In writing about this passage, Bishop Logue makes the distinction between true peace and “keeping the peace.” 

We keep the peace when we look the other way while wrong-doing is happening around us, in our families, in our communities, in our relationships, in our world. We don’t want to upset people by telling the truth, by demanding honesty and integrity, by intervening in destructive behavior patterns that our families and friends - or our priests or teachers or elected officials - engage in that destroy the fabric of our society, community, families, people. 

Sometimes keeping the peace means pretending that there is no wrong-doing at all, a willful denial of reality. Keeping the peace might mean not telling about the affair of the spouse to save face or not telling about the cruel letters sent to the ailing rector to protect reputations. But keeping the peace allows an abuser to keep abusing, even destroying, out of some misplaced loyalty and magical hope that somehow the victim is not really being damaged or destroyed.

Jesus demands loyalty to God alone. True peace is not the absence of strife, it’s knowing that we are joining in God’s work of protecting the vulnerable and the lost and the grieving and the poor even if it means upsetting someone, upsetting even someone you love, even your mother or father or brother or sister or your priest or your wardens. And so following Jesus can indeed bring division and indeed demands division when we are faced with the choice of telling the truth or keeping the peace. Which is not the peace that Jesus wishes for his followers, a peace based on acknowledging reality.

Which leads me to the second part of Jesus’s words today, in which he urges his followers to learn how to read the signs of the times.

But first, a short story. The other night I said to my husband, let’s walk up the street to a restaurant for a quick dinner. The Weather App says it’s not going to rain again for a couple of hours. So off we go for our 10 minute walk and 5 minutes in, Tom looks at the sky and says, “I don’t think we’ve got 2 hours. That sky looks ominous.” And I, looking at the same sky, but wishing mightily for the tacos I’ve been thinking about for two hours, said, “Oh, no, it isn’t going to rain yet. We’ve got enough time, the weather app says so.”

We had thirty minutes. And yes, we got wet on our 8 minute walk back. And one of us was gracious enough not to say, or not to say repeatedly, “I told you so.”

I let wishful thinking cloud my judgment to the point that I ignored the reality around me and couldn't consider any alternative options.

If we are going to interpret the times, we have to be able to acknowledge the realities around us instead of engaging in wishful thinking. And during this present time in the life of the church - all the church and also this particular church of All Saints - it is crucial that we attend to this. So thank you, Jesus, for bringing it up today.

Most of us are aware that a major shift has occurred in the world around us. Things are not the way they used to be in many many areas of life. Some of these changes are good and we’ve rolled with them, but many of them have left us feeling lost. We are in a period of destabilization and disruption, both in the world and more to the point today in our church, which makes us very anxious. And the impulse in a time of anxiety is to do everything possible to just get back to normal, to the way it used to be. Parishes in transition like ours are susceptible to wishful thinking, to experiencing a reality gap, ignoring the signs of the times around us.

And these are the times: Christianity is not dead, but many of the ways we have practiced Christianity for the last few generations have run their course. All but a very few (usually very large, very well resourced) churches are in steep decline in both membership and financial resources. We have experienced that here. And as we prepare to begin the process of interviewing candidates for a new rector to lead this parish in its next season of life, we are in danger of engaging in the kind of wishful, magical thinking that Jesus is warning us about. 

So let me tell you a truth. Lots of new families are not going to walk through the doors just because we want them to and the new families who come, and have already come, are not going to be just like we were but will have different priorities and express spirituality differently. And the new rector is not going to reverse the decline or bring back all the people and things we loved from the past. And if we secretly are wishing that she or he is going to do that, if we are secretly hoping for a magical turn around so that we can just stay the same and never change, we are going to make things difficult for them and may even turn on them when they do not perform miracles. But their work is going to focus on leading into a new future.

We have to accept the reality that we are a much smaller parish than we used to be, and I know that’s hard and sad.

But interpreting the times isn't about doom and gloom. Truly, being freed of trying to maintain old habits and dragging around old baggage and trying to make bloated systems and processes work that don’t work for us any more gives us a wonderful opportunity to do something new and have new life that will necessarily look very different from life before but will be an authentic life of following Jesus into the world. Following Jesus!

Resurrection is our brand, and we need to learn to live into that. As hard as it is to live through decline and even death, we don’t get to resurrection any other way. Ignoring reality kneecaps the opportunity to grow into the new life God is hoping for us, and what we need to and should always be about as followers of Jesus is new life. 

So, we are not engaging in hopelessness by seeing the realities - we are giving ourselves a chance to be transformed into a church community that can reflect the glory of God in ways we can’t even imagine now. That's what being faithful means. But we have to be willing to let go and take a leap of faith into a new and unknown future, trusting that God is good and faithful and true and that in God there is always hope and new life.

So let me tell you this truth, too: Something new is wanting to be born here at All Saints. Because God is always doing new things. We can try to shape that future by planning and forecasting and strategizing, but in the end it might be best for us to train our eyes outward, toward what God is doing in the world, giving ourselves over to wondering instead of striving, and letting a new passion for God be born in this community in response to God’s life-giving ways.

Does that feel scary? Of course it does. But as we heard Jesus say last week, do not be afraid little flock, for God wants to give you everything. Let’s prepare for that by opening our minds, our hands, our habits, and our hearts to receive it.