Lexegete™ | Year C | St. Luke
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Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost
August 15, 2010 (Lectionary 20)
Complementary Series
Jeremiah 23:23-29
Psalm 82 (8)
Hebrews 11:29–12:2
Luke 12:49-56
Semicontinuous Series
Isaiah 5:1-7
Psalm 80:1-2, 8-18 (14, 15)
Hebrews 11:29–12:2
Luke 12:49-56
Prayer of the Day
O God, judge eternal, you love justice and hate oppression, and you call us to share your zeal for truth. Give us courage to take our stand with all victims of bloodshed and greed, and, following your servants and prophets, to look to the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, your Son, Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.
Gospel Acclamation
Alleluia. My sheep | hear my voice.
I know them, and they | follow me. Alleluia. (John 10:27)
1a. CONTEXT: Luke 12:49-56
The author of this passage, as perhaps someone else has
noted elsewhere in this 'electronic commentary,' is
responsible for over 27 percent of the New Testament (Luke
& Acts)--more than the entire Pauline corpus. On this
basis alone, this ancient theological historian's (or
historical theologian's) voice deserves to be heard.
To oversimplify somewhat, the first half of the work that
bear's the author's name (the whole work is most often
rather functionally referred to as Luke/Acts) centers
around its "hero", Jesus, his life and ministry, and his
progression to the site of his passion: Jerusalem--the
city and center of Judaism that rejected Jesus and his
message. In this gospel, the Kingdom of God is
proclaimed--first in Galilee, then in Judea--and seeds
planted for the community that will continue what Jesus
began. In a brief exegetical survey of Luke-Acts, Dennis
Duling entitles volume one of this two part work, "The
Ministry of the Spirit Through Jesus" (THE NEW TESTAMENT:
An Introduction. Perrin/Duling, 1982.)
This text comes from that large body of material that is
generally known as the "Journey to Jerusalem"
(9:51-19:27). Except for 18:15-19:27, the material is
wholly non-Markan and combines the Q and L sources. Such a
significant departure from the order of Mark's gospel is a
clear indication that here are to be found those concerns
both peculiar and important to Luke. This section
represents over half of Luke's gospel and contains many of
the themes that are central to his theology, including:
the delay of the parousia, the mission to the gentiles,
special concern for outcasts, the poor and women,
discipleship and the Kingdom of God. This section is
primarily theological in content and contains most of the
best-known Lucan parables.
To narrow the focus somewhat, the passage under
consideration is couched in a smaller body of material
encompassing the twelfth chapter which deals with
teachings and warnings to the disciples (probably not
limited to just the twelve). Luke has arranged a number of
loosely connected sayings of Jesus into a set of
exhortative teachings aimed at the Jewish Hellenistic
Christians of his day. Jesus' words to his followers takes
on a severity of tone that we usually expect to be
reserved for the "scribes and pharisees".
Today's lection from Luke contains: a sudden outpouring of
Jesus' personal feelings regarding his passion and the
delay of the parousia, his stern assessment of the effect
of Christianity on typical familial relations, as well as
a lambasting of his followers for their blindness to the
"signs of the times". These are orginally unrelated
sayings of Jesus that Luke appears to have strung together
based on their common note of conflict.
The other lections for the day include: a typical jeremiad
from its namesake, a Psalm of lamentation, and familiar
words of comfort and encouragement from Hebrews 12 (I feel
the relationship of the texts to each other is important -
I work from the New Common Lectionary). All of the
lections leave the basic impression that to be a person of
faith means to encounter substantial opposition and
personal difficulties (the first three being expressions
of that inevitable difficulty, and Hebrews being words of
encouragement for those encountering such difficulty). As
is often the case during these ("dog") days of Pentecost,
this gospel is part of a semi-continuous series of
readings in Luke over twenty-four consecutive Sundays
(Propers 4-28).
1b. TEXT: Luke 12:49-56
ESV:
Not Peace, but Division
49 “I came to cast fire on the earth, and would that it were already kindled! 50 I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how great is my distress until it is accomplished! 51 Do you think that I have come to give peace on earth? No, I tell you, but rather division. 52 For from now on in one house there will be five divided, three against two and two against three. 53 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.”
Interpreting the Time
54 He also said to the crowds, “When you see a cloud rising in the west, you say at once, ‘A shower is coming.’ And so it happens. 55 And when you see the south wind blowing, you say, ‘There will be scorching heat,’ and it happens. 56 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 Holy Bible, English Standard Version copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles
Greek:
49Πῦρ ἦλθον βαλεῖν ἐπὶ τὴν γῆν, καὶ τί θέλω εἰ ἤδη ἀνήφθη. 50βάπτισμα δὲ ἔχω βαπτισθῆναι, καὶ πῶς συνέχομαι ἕως ὅτου τελεσθῇ. 51δοκεῖτε ὅτι εἰρήνην παρεγενόμην δοῦναι ἐν τῇ γῇ; οὐχί, λέγω ὑμῖν, ἀλλ' ἢ διαμερισμόν. 52ἔσονται γὰρ ἀπὸ τοῦ νῦν πέντε ἐν ἑνὶ οἴκῳ διαμεμερισμένοι, τρεῖς ἐπὶ δυσὶν καὶ δύο ἐπὶ τρισίν, 53διαμερισθήσονται πατὴρ ἐπὶ υἱῷ καὶ υἱὸς ἐπὶ πατρί, μήτηρ ἐπὶ τὴν θυγατέρα καὶ θυγάτηρ ἐπὶ τὴν μητέρα, πενθερὰ ἐπὶ τὴν νύμφην αὐτῆς καὶ νύμφη ἐπὶ τὴν πενθεράν. 54Ἔλεγεν δὲ καὶ τοῖς ὄχλοις, Οταν ἴδητε [τὴν] νεφέλην ἀνατέλλουσαν ἐπὶ δυσμῶν, εὐθέως λέγετε ὅτι Ὄμβρος ἔρχεται, καὶ γίνεται οὕτως: 55καὶ ὅταν νότον πνέοντα, λέγετε ὅτι Καύσων ἔσται, καὶ γίνεται. 56ὑποκριταί, τὸ πρόσωπον τῆς γῆς καὶ τοῦ οὐρανοῦ οἴδατε δοκιμάζειν, τὸν καιρὸν δὲ τοῦτον πῶς οὐκ οἴδατε δοκιμάζειν;
Novum Testamentum Graece, Nestle-Aland 26th edition © 1979, Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, Stuttgart;
The Greek New Testament, 3rd edition © 1975, United Bible Societies, London
2. ANALYSIS: Luke 12:49-56
"Attention is focused on Jerusalem as the goal, so that
the cross, resurrection, and ascension are anticipated.
The section is almost entirely didactic and polemical . .
. The fact that the section portrays Jesus as on his way
to his suffering and death indicates also that Jesus is
equipping his disciples for carrying on his work after his
death and resurrection." (Arland Hultgren - Interpreting
the Gospel, James L. Mays, ed.)
Within this unit of scripture are four discernible
sayings: vs. 49, vs. 50, vss. 51-53, and vss. 54-56. There
is no unanimity among translators as to how to group this
set of verses. Placing together vss. 49-56 is as tenable
as any other suggested grouping.
Luke 12:49 - It is conceivable that Matthew and Luke draw
on the same source, as they both utilize the same (rare?)
variant of ballo [to send, cast, pour or throw] in what
are nearly parallel sayings. (MT 10:34) The image of
"cast[ing] fire upon the earth" is reminiscent of the
terrible "day of the Lord" that so predominates the
thoughts of the minor prophets (Day of Judgement/the Lord
- Joel 2:3-5, Nahum 1:5-6, Zephaniah 1:18 Refiner's Fire
- Zechariah 13:9, Malachi 3:2).
" . . . would that it were already kindled" suggests to
some scholars that it is already assumed (in Jesus' mind
or Luke's community?) that the parousia has been delayed,
the subject of which was treated in last week's lection.
vs. 50 This, again, has no direct parallels. In Mark
10:38-39, however, Jesus uses baptisma/baptizo as an
allusion to his passion, as Luke does here. When Jesus set
his face toward Jerusalem (9:51), he was well aware just
how personally demanding his ministry was to be. The
constraint he feels "presses" Jesus down in this very real
"mini-portrait".
vss. 49, 50 In these two verses, Jesus echoes the
strident apocalyptic themes and tones that characterized
John the Baptist's preaching in Luke chapter 3. Possibly
this is connected to 3:16's reference to being baptized
with "the Holy Spirit and with fire". Perhaps this is an
indication of the extent to which Jesus' preaching, like
John's before him, was shaped by Jewish apocalypticism,
which was an integral part of their immediate religious
past.
vss. 51-53 This illustrates the crisis and disruption
that Christ and God's Kingdom bring into the world and its
relationships. As we will see in the last section (vss.
54-56), the lack of peace is in no small part owing to the
stubborn refusal of the people to heed what should be
obvious (hence Jesus' lament in 19:42). Vs. 53 is drawn
from Micah's words of judgment (7:6) that Matthew has also
borrowed.
vss. 54-56 While 49-53 are spoken to the disciples,
these words are spoken to the multitudes. This basic
saying is shared with MT 16:2,3.
Except for the basic tone of Jesus' words to his
followers, this passage shares no obvious connection with
the previous passage. The word dokimazo is most often
translated discern (KJV) or interpret (RSV, et al).
However, the word commonly means "to prove or try", as in
a legal sense (hence, the connection with the following
verses (57-59) which were not included in today's
lection).
Kairos is what Luke chooses to indicate "time". As is so
often true in the NT, this connotes the sense of fulness,
pregnancy, opportunity and expectancy that chronos does
not.
3. STRATEGY:Luke 12:49-56
At first blush, this lection, coming in the heat of the
summer as it does, seems to offer very slender homiletical
pickings (Which makes this writer think: Just as, in the
Kaopectate ad, people at the bustop huddled under their
umbrellas in a downpour don't want to hear about diarrhea,
neither is it likely that brow-mopping parishioners will
want to hear that Jesus came to bring fire down upon the
earth--though they may be inclined to believe it if told).
Part of the difficulty in shaping a message from this
lection lies in determining Luke's audience for these
stern words. It seems likely that Jesus originally spoke
these words (some or all?) to his followers who 1) sensed
that they were living on the edge of the culmination of
time (parousia), and 2) were commissioned by Jesus
(10:1ff.) to live the lives of itinerant preachers
("wandering Christian charismatics" - Theissen) of the
Kingdom of God--a difficult and often unrewarding
vocation. Luke appears to have recast Jesus' exhortations
into challenging words to the Christians of his day.
Luke's fellow Christians saw themselves living in the last
days and therefore might find comfort in knowing their
Lord had predicted turbulent times for people of faith,
and had lived through and died at the hands of that
turbulence himself. Certainly, following the destruction
of the temple, it would be virtually impossible for
Hellenistic Jewish families to maintain unity were part of
the family to become loyal to Christ, rejecting the old
loyalties.
The preacher will want to be very careful how these
exhortations are transformed into "homiletical gems". As
mentioned above, the themes of fire, unrest, familial
division, and inability to read the times may touch raw
nerves in the hearers. Clearly Christianity is not always
a blessing or at least perceived as a blessing. People in
every age who have attempted to live out their
understanding of radical discipleship have awakened
unbelievable hostilities. Individual families aplenty have
known the division that can occur when one or more of
their members "get religion". Denominational families who
struggle to be faithful to Christ's spirit in the sticky
social areas of abortion, ecumenism, homosexuality,
nuclear armaments, Central America, ad nauseum, will at
times concur that Jesus came to bring division. Every
generation has experienced the shaking up of old loyalties
that the "sword" of Christ can effect. This writer's hunch
is that this was a popular lection from which to preach
during the Civil War.
In our more cynical and "prophetic" moments, it would be
every preacher's temptation to point out to the
church-folk and the world their attention to things absurd
and their utter blindness: to things of importance, to the
crying needs of our world, to deeper spiritual realities,
to the multitude of ways that they help create the
spiritual wasteland that troubles so many. The time that
is so filled with the potentiality of God's Kingdom is
passed by because all we knew to talk about was the
weather. At the very least it would not hurt any of us to
be reminded that Christ calls us to continually pull the
scales/callouses from our eyes and hearts--that in an age
of spiritual and moral torpor we need to find ways to be
resensitized to the complexion, complexities and needs of
our world. If your preaching of the "Good News" tends to
be a bit privatized and one-sided at times, this could
serve as a helpful corrective.
Finally, at the beginning of his bestselling book The Road
Less Traveled, Scott Peck observed that, "Life is
difficult." Regarding the life of faith, this writer
believes Jesus would concur. Regarding the homiletical
adventure this lection engages one in, this writer
concurs.
4. WORSHIP & MUSIC SUGGESTIONS: Luke 12:49-56
All are Welcome (ELW 641)
God of Grace and God of Glory (ELW 705)
Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory (ELW 890)
Be Thou My Vision (ELW 793)
Once to Every Man and Nation (various)
Lead On, O King Eternal (ELW 805)
Exegete: The Rev. Dr. Gregory H. Ledbetter is Pastor of Shell Ridge Community Church, Walnut Creek, CA:
< http://shellridgecommunitychurch-sermons.blogspot.com/>.
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