The Holy Gospel According to St. Luke, the 12th Chapter
Jesus said, "I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled! I have a baptism with which to be baptized, and what stress I am under until it is completed! Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division! From now on five in one household will be divided, three against two and two against three; they 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."
He also said to the crowds, "When you see a cloud rising in the west, you immediately say, 'It is going to rain'; and so it happens. And when you see the south wind blowing, you say, 'There will be scorching heat'; and it happens. You hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky, but why do you not know how to interpret the present time?
The new pastor went to visit Elmer Snodgrass... the fourth. Yes, that means there were indeed three Elmer Snodgrass’ before him. Elmer’s house was almost normal. I say “almost” because in the living room was a couch, chairs and pictures… but there was also a toaster. A toaster... silver with two slots, sitting on the end table… a light bulb in each slot.
The pastor sat down and Elmer reached over and pushed down the lever on the toaster... nothing happened. Elmer gave the toaster the look of a lamenting, long endured, disappointment. Now, an experienced pastor would not have said anything here, knowing that some things are best left as mysteries. But this pastor was young and that toaster was just a bit too tempting.
“Elmer,” the pastor said, “why are there light bulbs screwed into that toaster.” “Well,” said Elmer with a nostalgic air, “When electricity came to town no one really had any idea what to do with it. It was strange. Didn’t come with instructions. The lines were strung and electric stuff came on the train and we just had to figure it out. My great grandfather though, he KNEW how it worked! "Light bulbs go in the slots!" he said, “It’s clear as day!” It didn’t work but he kept trying until he died.”
“He tried all his life?” asked the young pastor. “Yup. Of course, he died later that evening. You see, he wanted to read in the bathtub, so he set the toaster with the light bulbs on the side of the tub for light. And well... You know my great grandpa is a town hero because of that. No one else has ever taken bath with a toaster after that…saved countless lives. Grandpa took up the cause from there. He passed on the mission to my father and now it’s down to me. Lots of people say it will never work, but it’s the Snodgrass tradition! Every Snodgrass has sworn to keep trying until we get a toaster to light up a light bulb.”
“So, you’ve tried to get light by screwing a light bulb into a toaster for four generations?” asked the pastor. “Yup, and nobody’s gonna tell me that light bulbs don’t go into toasters! You aren’t, are you?” asked Elmer. “No” said the pastor. Elmer quickly added, “But I won’t take a bath with a toaster…I’m not stupid.” “Right,” said the pastor… “good idea.”
Two morals to this story. Don't bathe with a toaster, AND, like the Gospel story says... If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always got. It’s not that the Snodgrass family needed to try HARDER to get light by screwing light bulbs into toasters, (after all he and his family had been trying that for four generations!). What they needed to do was to try something entirely different! But for Elmer, the toaster-light was more than just his personal quirk. It was tradition! It was what he’d always done and it connected him with his family through the generations and no one was going to tell him that things just didn’t work that way. He would never go against his family that way.
That’s what Jesus meant by telling us that he brought division and not peace. You see, Jesus brought with him a new idea, that God was really a God of grace and love and justice. More interested in how we took care of the people who were the least and the lost and the last in our society than anything else. Jesus challenged the political and religious powers of his day and insisted that God was not a God of vindictiveness and revenge that needed to be pacified with sacrifice, but that God was calling us to change the world. To change the world from a human empire, where a few had a lot and a lot didn’t have enough, INTO the Kingdom of God where no one had too much but everyone had enough… enough dignity, worth, purpose, food, shelter and all the rest.
Of course to the people with all the power and wealth in Jesus’ day, his idea was a threat. It was different and for folks who are comfortable with how things are, different is bad. Jesus knew that if someone from a family started following him and his teachings about God, then there would be trouble in that family. He knew that, but Jesus also knew that “if you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always got.”
Two thousand years later, it’s still true. Changing the world... heck, even trying to change just a tiny city block of it, can create division and burn like that “fire on the earth” Jesus talked about. Our challenge is to push through the burn that comes with changing the world to be more like God's Kingdom. It's a challenge, both when it burns others and even more when that needed change burns us, because the truth is, God is always doing a new thing and for “God’s will to be done, on earth as it is in heaven” some things just need to change.
My prayer is that we can trust God’s love, grace and abundance enough to honestly look at everything we do… all of our traditions… everything… and honestly ask, “why do we do this?” “Does this move us and the world closer to God’s Kingdom? Or, for whatever reason, does it work now more like a lightbulb in a toaster?” Then, may we have the courage to brave the fire, and change what needs to be changed, keep what still works and, as the Serenity prayer says, be given the wisdom to know the difference. Amen.
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