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S. Pentecost 10.25 Jer. 23:16-29, Luke 12:49-56

‘I came to cast fire on the earth, and would that it were already kindled!… Do you think that I have come to bring peace on earth? No, I tell you, but rather… division.’

Whew! Jesus sure was in a mood that day, right? Sure glad he later changed his mind on this fire and division thing, right? I mean, after his crucifixion and resurrection he changed his mind, right?, and at the end, in Matt. 28, he took it all back, right?, and told the disciples to go out seeking as many of the unchurched as they could cram into their sunken airport hangers they call “our sanctuary” ‘teaching the world to sing in perfect harmony’, right?

Uhm, well… no. Oh, I know that’s the popular “vision” the modern prophets of missions cast: luuuv, tolerance, peace on earth, goodwill to all. Freaking hippies! Will the ‘70s ever end? Let me tell you one thing kids, as someone who lived through the ‘70s and hippy deaconess youth ministers in tie-dye t-shirts strumming guitars who made you sing stupid songs in a round: the ‘70s sucked!

OK, the Stones were good then, and John Irving, the Talking Heads, the Police, and Saturday Night Live were fun, but those were little, OCCASIONAL rays of light in a dark world of 55 mph speed limits. stagflation, higher criticism, polyester leisure suits, Seminex, mullets, disco, detente, the Bee-Gees, and slow cars that, on the one hand, were hideously ugly, but, on the other hand, broke down a lot. There was, as President Carter honestly admitted, a general sense of malaise…

Jesus CHANGED his mind? Do you hear yourself? GOD doesn’t change his mind, ever! He is changeless, the same yesterday, today, and forever. If he says “Don’t go after Gentiles or even enter a Samaritan town, but go only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel” he means it! That will not change! Matt 28 is not Jesus “changing his mind” on the great commission he gave the Apostles in Matt 10; he is merely promising that Gospel proclamation and Holy Baptism will work on anyone non-rejecting his gifts…

OK, yes; God will on occasion RELENT on the killin’ for a while, delay the coming clouds of judgment—which will only make the hurricane and fire fiercer, hotter, when it does come! As Psalm 5:5 says, God hates all evildoers, always, and Psalm 7:11, God is furious with the the wicked every day!

And his love and mercy to his Remnant (always a tiny group, 7,000 out of million or two Israelites!) are similarly changeless and constant for the lost sheep of the house of Israel. The scriptures are everywhere quite clear on both these points—as is Jesus in our Gospel today. And on this our FAITH depends!

This was not some new message Jesus busted out in 30 AD. NO! It was what he told Adam and Eve in the Garden after they sinned, what he told Abraham, Moses, David, and all the prophets. Jeremiah is quite clear on this in our OT reading:

“Thus says the LORD of hosts: ‘Do not listen to the words of the prophets who prophesy to you, filling you with vain hopes. They speak visions of their own minds, not from the mouth of the LORD. They say continually to those who despise the word of the LORD, ‘It shall be well with you’; and to everyone who stubbornly follows his own heart, they say, ‘No disaster shall come upon you.”

Sure glad that never happens in the church today, right? 😉

Jeremiah and Jesus are saying, quite simply, that the Word of God is like the Sorting Hat in Harry Potter—how it fits on you tells you whether you’re in Slytherin (hell) or Gryffindor (heaven). And those are the ONLY 2 HOUSES in Jesus’ world. Whoever is not against him is on his side, and whoever is not with him is against him. Those are the ONLY 2 CAMPS! There are NO NEUTRALS trying to make up their mind, just waiting for a slick Synod marketing campaign to move them… 🙁

It is the dream of neutrality—that the world is filled with people who are neither for nor against Jesus—that is the source of all the stupid hippy missional nonsense of love and peace and outreach to the unchurched. I mean, think how stupid wanting to fill the church with the unchurched is! You’d UNCHURCH THE CHURCH(!) and then there’d be no church at all, there! To think you can change people’s hearts or minds is pure hubris. Who went and made you God, huh?!!!?

The truth is that God has love and peace only for the lost sheep of the house of Israel, and hate and wrath and a fire-storm of hell for the wicked who hate him!

Luther says in the explanation to the 3rd commandment: “we must not despise preaching of the Word, but gladly hear and learn it.” If you are not glad to be in church, hearing and learning the Word, then don’t kid yourself: on that day at least, you’re a hater of JESUS who is angry with you and is preparing one hell of a storm of wrath for you!

Now let me be clear on one important point: there is a God-hating sinner that lives in each one of us!, called “The Old Adam”. Even Christians, this side of the grave, have got him. That Old Adam will be BURNED UP!—which is not an entirely benign procedure—it’s why death is terrible. But in the BAPTIZED who do not (completely) reject the Word—Jesus!, there lives a NEW Adam who survives the fire and comes out of it refined like gold, perfectly re-made in the Image of Jesus.

How do you tell the true from the false prophet? Simple! Jeremiah asks: “who among them has stood in the council of the LORD to see and to hear his Word, or who has paid attention to his Word and listened?”

Jeremiah’s WORD is not mere information—designed to create an ideology. NO! The WORD is Jesus Christ, the One, True, GOD come in Person to REIGN OVER YOU! Jesus’ called and ordained servants re-present him—he comes to you through our hands and mouth and feet. It’s a little spooky and a quite disconcerting when the mantle, that ‘apostling’, falls on you, believe you me!

It’s not what YOU THINK about Jesus’ teaching that matters, it’s what he thinks of you, whether you receive him by faith, like Mary sitting at his feet and soaking up the Son—or, on the other hand, whether you reject him and insist on running the verbs yourself that actually matters…(!)

By the Word of his apostles, JESUS is speaking right now, through my mouth, through the water of Baptism that slips through my fingers, by the bread and wine that are his body and blood I put in your mouths, JESUS COMES TO YOU IN PERSON!!!—to REIGN, gloriously!

Daunting! But take heart: faith is not your doing; it is simply the non-rejection of the gift of himself Jesus grants by his Spirit, in which is Peace, surpassing all understanding, guarding your heart and mind in Christ Jesus. Amen.