Sermon Tone Analysis

Big Idea: Jesus’ urgent call to seek peace with God divides people

Big Application:

Debated danger divides people.

Don’t be surprised.

See the signs.

Seek peace with God through Jesus while there is still time.

Warn others they are debtors and the time for settling accounts is coming.

Who’s heard the term “climate emergency”?

Hands up if you’ve heard that term.

Yeah it’s gotten a lot of air time recently hasn’t it with the Climate Rebellion protest group.

And perhaps you’ll also know the UK has been busy patting itself on the back for being the first country in the world to declare a climate emergency - 2nd May this year.

World leaders, ‘eh!

This is a great example of a neologism: “a newly coined word or expression.”

Seems like lots of us have heard the claim that we’re facing a climate emergency but it’s amazing to discover that no-one at all was describing our situation as a “climate emergency” even as recently as last year.

Here’s a cool chart from google tracing the usage of the term “climate emergency” since 2004.

As you can see, not so much climate emergency - in fact, basically zero until the start of 2019.

Of course that’s just a term, just the latest term, for a wider issue.

climate change.

global warming.

nuclear winter.

ozone layer, environmentalism.

Even that wider issue has a pretty short history in the public eye, though.

Here’s a chart of how often some of the key terms appear in our literature.

As you can tell, I was having too much fun with data this week!

So the wider issue has had significant public profile since the late 80’s - and that profile just seems to be rising and rising as time goes on.

But even today, if you stopped people in the street and asked whether we’re currently facing a climate emergency, whether climate change is going to wreck our world, whether we should take urgent action, you’d still get a range of responses.

It’s still a debated issue - not everyone agrees that it is scientific fact yet.

And there’s even less agreement about how we should respond.

Do we all need to switch to electric cars? or even bikes?

Should we place sanctions on key global polluters like India and China?

Should we just hang on a bit, and wait and see if we’re actually right this time with our theories and models?

Debated dangers divide people.

Debated dangers divide people.

It’s a bit like smoking.

As late as 1960 only a third of the doctors in the United States agreed the case against cigarettes had been established.

There was huge disagreement and division over how we should respond to the debated danger of cigarettes.

Was it trampling on people’s freedom to ban or limit them?

Or wicked to let people put themselves at such risk without warning them?

Of course nowadays there’s really no question in, I think, pretty much anyone’s mind that there is a serious risk of cancer connected with smoking, and that we should guard against it as a result.

Debated dangers divide people.

Let me just dare to say one word: brexit.

There you go.

Did it.

As I say, debated dangers divide people.

And that is where Jesus starts as we pick up the story.

We’re continuing our journey through Luke’s gospel, Luke’s telling of the story of Jesus.

And today we start with a picture of exactly this sort of passionate division that comes from debated dangers.

It all feels very contemporary.

Jesus positions himself as someone bringing division, not peace like we might expect.

Let’s take a look at what he has to say together: why this division?

Then we’ll explore what it means for us here, today.

Nita’s going to read for us this morning - we’re on page ______ in these blue bibles if you want to pick one up or words will be up on the screen too.

Luke chapter 12 - big 12 - verse 49 - small 49.

Page ______ - Luke 12:49.

Big 12, small 49.

Jesus comes to bring division, not peace.

That’s what he says here in v51.

“Do you think I came to bring peace on the earth?

No I tell you, but division.”

Now that might be rather surprising if you have a gentle-Jesus, all meek and mild, in your mind’s eye.

Isn’t his goal to turn the world into one giant group-hug?

Nope - that’s not what he says here.

Jesus comes bringing division, not peace.

And it’s the sort of division that will split not just nation from nation, or tribe from tribe, but father from son, mother from daughter.

These are the closest relationships, the most intimate family connections.

Now maybe today this doesn’t doesn’t seem totally shocking - I imagine in this room there are probably some who know division in these close relationships, and probably more for whom these relationships are at least pretty distant.

But in those days the normal path for a son ran very close to his father.

The norm would be taking up his father’s trade alongside him - like Jesus, learning carpentry alongside Joseph.

Families in those days were tight-knit.

And Jesus is saying he has come to divide even the closest earthly relationships.

To break up the family unit itself.

What gives?

How could something like that be at the centre of his mission?

Why would something like that come out of his mission?

Why does Jesus divide, not bring peace?

...

The answer is here for us: There’s a danger - a terrible danger ahead.

But it’s debated.

There’s disagreement about it.

And that’s what causes this division.

Think back to where we started, with this new term climate emergency.

That’s in the news, in peoples minds, mostly because of a group called Extinction Rebellion, and their protests in London which caused absolutely massive disruption to millions of people by shutting down key roads, setting up a campsite at Marble Arch, gluing themselves to trains, staging huge “die-ins” and other crazy stuff.

Why are they doing this?

The group think climate change isn’t being taken seriously by the powers that be, and that if things don’t change much more radically then the consequences will be massive and absolutely disastrous for everyone.

So they are willing to cause division, to make a massive fuss and to upset millions of people, because they feel this danger is so grave.

One banner asked “is this the last generation?”

That’s how serious they think the issue us.

A representative for the group said afterwards: “we’re hoping that the political class wake up, because if they don’t the next thing that will happen will be much more dramatic.”

But there’s disagreement about just how urgently and extremely action is needed on climate change.

There are lots of people just trying to get on with their life.

There are plenty of people who are pretty sceptical about the whole idea, who would argue we probably don’t really understand things well enough to be so sure.

A danger.

One people disagree about.

And so there’s division.

That’s why Jesus comes to bring division, not peace.

What is this danger?

We’ll get to that.

But first Jesus tells us a little more about why there’s such sharp division here - and the root of it isn’t what you might expect.

In v54 and v55 Jesus talks about how the crowds could all predict the weather.

I think it was quite a bit easier to do there than it is here in Scotland.

Here, pretty much all I can tell you about tomorrow’s weather is there will be lots of it.