“The great composer Ludwig Van Beethoven use sometimes to play a trick on polite salon audiences, especially when he guessed that they weren’t really interested in serious music. He would perform a piece on the piano, one of his own slow movements perhaps, which would be so gentle and beautiful that everyone would be lulled into thinking the world was a soft, cosy place, where they could think beautiful thoughts and relax into semi-slumber. Then, just as the final notes were dying away, Beethoven would bring his whole forearm down with a crash across the keyboard, and laugh at the shock he gave to the assembled company.” (LUKE for everyone, Tom Wright)
In reflecting on this story, Tom Wright suggests that:
“there may come a time when Christian teachers and preachers find, like Beethoven with his salon audiences, that people have become too cosy and comfortable. Sometimes, for instance, the selections of Bible readings for church services omit all the passages that speak of judgement, of warnings, of the stern demands of God’s holiness. Maybe there are times when, like Jesus himself on this occasion, we need to wake people up with a crash. There are, after all, plenty of warnings in the Bible about the dangers of going to sleep on the job.”
What Jesus says Luke 12. 49-59 about coming to bring division instead of peace seems a lot like Beethoven’s crash across the keyboard which is designed to wake everyone up. It certainly seems like that for us. After all, Jesus is the Prince of Peace isn’t he? The one who brought peace between humanity and God, and also between Jew and Gentile, through his death on the cross? That’s what the Bible tells us about him isn’t it? That’s how we think about Jesus! Yet here he is saying, “Prince of Peace, eh? No. Prince of Division, more likely!”
Sometimes, we need the piano crash to wake us up to reality and Jesus is never less than real! Here he confronts us with the reality that once the good news about him gets into households there’ll be no peace and families will split up over it.
We have our own example of this reality at St John's Seven Kings at the moment. A parishioner was baptised here in March as a sign of his earlier conversion from Islam. He has experienced persecution from friends and acquaintances as a result and received threats of harm from his family if he were to return to Pakistan. Despite this, he has spent the months between his baptism and last week when he was able to return to St Johns, in Immigration Detention Centres because the UK Border Agency has refused his asylum claim and want him sent back to Pakistan. He is only here because the High Court have agreed to a Judicial Review of the decision made by the UK Border Agency.
So, as we reflect on the reality and pressures of division that can result from hearing and responding to the good news of Jesus Christ, let us pray for success for this person in that High Court Judicial Review which is still to come and for a greater acknowledgement by our Government of the reality of persecution for those who choose to convert from Islam to Christianity and of those who live as Christians in countries where persecution from those of other faiths or none because of their beliefs is commonplace.
Jesus was real about the reality of division and wants us to be too; to anticipate it, to acknowledge it, to face it, to deal with it. It is after all, what the prophets foretold as:
“The warnings he gives about fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, and so on includes a quotation from Micah 7.6, a passage in which the prophet warns of imminent crisis and urges that the only way forward is complete trust in God.”
Jesus sees a crisis coming for those to whom he speaks; a crisis of which his own fate will be the central feature. He will be rejected and killed but will rise from death before ascending to his Father and sending his Holy Spirit on all who follow him. His validity as the Son of God will then be clearly confirmed when his prophecy about the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem comes true in AD 70.
Jesus knows that all this is about to come and “is astonished and dismayed that so few of his contemporaries can see it at all”:
“why can’t they look at what’s going on all around them, from the Roman occupation to the oppressive regime of Herod, from the wealthy and arrogant high priests in Jerusalem to the false agendas of the Pharisees – and, in the middle of it all, a young prophet announcing God’s kingdom and healing the sick? Why can’t they put two and two together, and realize that this is the moment all Israel’s history has been waiting for? Why can’t they see that the crisis is coming?
If they could, they would be well advised to take action while there was still time.”
“Israel, rebelling against God’s plan that she should be the light of the world, and thus eager for violent uprising against Rome,” was liable at any moment to face the complete ruin that finally arrived in AD 70 with the destruction of Jerusalem.
“The church has from early on read this chapter as a warning that each generation must read the signs of the times, the great movements of people, governments, nations and policies, and react accordingly.” And, if we find ourselves caught up in crisis, so be it. What else should we expect?
Except that we don’t currently expect it because the church in the West, like the rest of our consumerist culture has become cosy and comfortable and in need of waking up to harsh reality. What are the signs of our times? Here are a few from the national press over the past two weeks:
• former Bank of England rate-setter, William Butler, now chief economist at the investment banking giant Citigroup, saying that, “We lived beyond our means year after year, and the nation collectively has to consume less.”
• the number of people suffering from the massive floods in Pakistan exceeds 13 million — more than the combined total of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, the 2005 Kashmir earthquake and the 2010 Haiti earthquake, the United Nations said Monday. The suffering of people in Pakistan comes alongside the landslides in China also caused by heavy rains which seem part of a worldwide pattern of climate change affecting the poorest nations hardest of all.
• Reflecting on the rise of superbugs which are resistant to antibiotics, Thursday’s Guardian found parallels between our need to conserve the antibiotics we have and our need to conserve the oil we have, because supplies have peaked, and to reduce its pollutant effects.
Overconsumption in the West, the long-term effect of pollutants on our climate, the peaking of energy supplies, the rise of viruses resistant to medication are combining to create a point of crisis which is directed particularly at those, such as the 13 million in Pakistan, who are the poorest and most vulnerable in our world.
If we are to read the signs of our times accurately, then we need firstly to respond with generosity to funding appeals for relief in Pakistan, China, the Niger and wherever natural disasters occur in future. But we also need to review the underlying causes and the need for a radical simplifying of our Western way of life and seeing that “the inevitable and profound changes ahead can have a positive outcome … [leading] to the rebirth of local communities, which will grow their own food, generate their own power, and build their own houses using local materials.” (The Transition Handbook)
Last year at St John's Seven Kings thought about division and crisis through our Dealing with disagreement Bible Studies which introduced us to the idea of peak oil. In September, we have the opportunity to consider these issues further through a trip to Mersea Island where we will hear from Sam Norton, the Rector of Mersea Island, who has regularly blogged about the coming impact of peak oil. I urge us all to think seriously about the underlying causes of our contemporary crisis, praying for those in Pakistan, China and the Niger currently caught up in the effects of that crisis and for those dealing with the reality of division as a consequence of their faith.
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The Clash - London Calling.
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