Brothers and sisters in Christ this morning our scripture reading move us to look at the betrayal and danger that those who are right in our midst can bring into our lives.
Our collect prayer asks boldly of the Lord: “Cleanse and defend Your church” To cleanse is to clean up that which is polluted from within. The church always needs to be reformed because the ways of the world should never loom larger than the way of Christ. To defend the church is to protect from both dangers from the outside and dangers within.
In the Introit we heard about a particular painful danger from within the church- from someone who has been very close to you:
12 For it is not an enemy who taunts me— then I could bear it; it is not an adversary who deals insolently with me— then I could hide from him. 13 But it is you, a man, my equal, my companion, my familiar friend.
What poetic words of bittersweet lament! An attack from an enemy would be so much more bearable, you know who the enemy is and you understand why they are attacking. An attack form an enemy has a rally effect that brings people together for the common cause.
It is all together more disarming when the attack comes from someone you put your trust in- a family member or a close brother or sister in Christ. Such betrayal can be so discouraging that it moves people to want to abandon being a part of a church at all. Some people who have been hurt refuse to attend a church again, People say, “I am not going to get hurt like that again.” Like the psalmist we say that we cannot bear it.
What does it mean for us in worship to join in these words of lament as they were spoken in the Introit? Is there a spiritual gain in lamenting out loud about mistrusting our friends and family and neighbors?
It seems the gain is our recognizing that those who are closest to us in our family and in our church can pervert God’s Word and persecute God’s people.
Included in these ranks of those who distort God’s Word are the prophets who speak falsehood in order to be well liked. This is what the prophet Jeremiah describes. “They say continually to those who despise the Word of the Lord, it shall be well with you.”
This betrayal theme that is not ready made for a sermon that makes people feel good about life, such as Good Shepherd Sunday, or a reflection on how God’s love for us is like the wings of an Eagle sheltering and protecting us and lifting us up.
What is more, we are a small congregation, so if I talk about the evil from your neighbor, it is harder to just make those words into a general picture of that neighbor out there in the church who is a danger to you by false teaching- because you can see the neighbor right there beside you.
And what is more, the one Sunday that this gospel of Luke about divisions in family is read over the three year readings cycle, is the Sunday that I have a larger contingent of family worshipping with us than usual.
Jesus does not mince words in talking about the divisions that his baptism of fire of the cross brings. “I came to cast fire on the earth and would that it were already kindled.” An unbeliever hearing the words of Jesus in the gospel lesson might wonder, what is this division Jesus is talking about, what is this fire Jesus is coming to bring?
As the Elvis Costello song goes What’s so funny about peace love and understanding? Isn’t that what Jesus is for? Apart from the Holy Spirit a person would think Jesus must have been having a bad day. A person might wonder, why not just focus on other portions of the gospels where Jesus teaches about loving enemies and forgiving and paying forward to others and turning the other cheek?
It is difficult to take that hard line of Jesus that if you are not with him you are against him, that there is a way of righteousness which is the way of life- hoping in Christ and following him and forsaking the priorities and the false idols of the world.
It’s much easier to look at our neighbor and say, “it shall be well with you.” It is much easier to overlook differences in a family with respect to the gospel. We can agree to disagree as a family about certain things or not talk about them for the sake of a peace within the family. But this does not bring peace in God’s kingdom.
As we heard in our reading from Jeremiah, the church just like the prophets are expected to speak God’s Word faithfully no matter what.
What has straw in common with wheat? declares the Lord. 29Is not my word like fire, declares the Lord, and like a hammer that breaks the rock in pieces?
We cannot overlook the role of the law in serving as a hammer in condemning sin in Christian life.
Those nearby who can lead us astray because they do not look to Jesus as their life’s foundation. Jesus talks about division in the family.. verse 50 “I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how great is my distress until it is accomplished.” Jesus is talking about the cross, the greatest news we can ever imagine, the message of our forgiveness because of Jesus’ punishment. This cross also brings division and shows how helpless we are without Jesus. So if we give up speaking the law just to avoid conflict, avoid those divisions of father against son- we avoid the cross, we avoid the law that condemns sin. Even those within our own family or in our church can be angry with us. But this is a loving purpose, so that those who hear the law can repent of their sin and find life.
Avoiding the law will bring division as well, as those who live in Christ are betrayed and disappointed by our compromise. We who believe in the gospel will be undivided from Christ, we will be with him- regardless of what persecutions we face.
Our introit from Psalm 55 was first written by King David in the context of betrayal he experienced in an evil city. Clearly this points forward to the betrayal that Jesus experienced from his own disciple Judas. “He who eats bread with me has lifted up his heal against me.”
Jesus was betrayed on the night he instituted the Lord’s Supper, that is how the earliest account in scripture of the Lord’s Supper describes it: “For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, 24 and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, “This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.”
The betrayal of Jesus is always mentioned as one of the essential details of the Lord’s Supper, and it is mentioned each Sunday as we celebrate the sacrament. We can never escape that alongside the heavenly feast that joins us to Christ is the betrayal from within.
The world is never a friend to the church, as long as there is a fallen world we live in there is always betrayal. We lament at this and sometimes it feels like we cannot bear it. Those who have been at this church before my time have spoken of feeling abandoned by so many leaving essentially all at once.
People leaving for another church is not exactly betrayal in the sense that they are likely still Christians. But- It is still hard to bear! When those who were with us are no longer there we feel forsaken.
Jesus was betrayed by not only Judas but many in the holy city of Jerusalem- Jerusalem the city that kills the prophets. Jesus went through the suffering of betrayal by the very people who the LORD chose for himself. And we have inherited the curse of this same sinful nature, the nature that considers God the enemy and want to get rid of God so that we can be as “God” for ourselves.
Jesus died for this quick to betray and quick to abandon people that our sin created. Out of great love Jesus set his face resolute to the cross to redeem us who fail and betray Jesus.
And Jesus rose to call us as his own people so that we would not be like Judas and betray Jesus with a kiss, but instead like the thief on the cross we call to Jesus saying: ‘Jesus remember me when you come into your kingdom.’
We call to Jesus, not to the strength of man, because we know that He will never abandon or betray us. In Christ we always have family and belonging according to God’s perfect will for us.
When we feel we cannot handle the disappointments of life in the church, God’s Word reminds us that those who fear the Lord will lack no good thing. “Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivers them out of them all.” Amen