Came to bring a Sword

There has been posted on Facebook an essay by a preacher who claims that part of the reason for ministers' leaving the ministry, for depression and emotional burn-out is the fact that most congregations want their pastors to preach positive, happy, entertaining sermons. That members move from church to church looking for a minister who will not challenge their convictions, will not preach against some of their habits, will confirm their prejudices and political positions and will do all this positive and happy stuff in an entertaining and pleasant way. The article was an editorial in one of the New York papers. But there have been plenty of other evidence that the "feel good, prosperity, self-centered full potential" movement has come to be the standard by which all preaching in local congregations is judged. I do not know a preacher who has not had a member comment that he would really like to leave church of Sunday morning feeling good, happy and positive. Congregations have been known to remove the Confession of Sin from their service because it made people feel bad.

It is no wonder that passages like "You must not think that I have come to bring peace on earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. I have come to set a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a son's wife against her mother-in-law, and a man will find his enemies under his own roof."(Matthew 10:34-35) do not get preached very often. Passages like these seem to indicate that Jesus did not come to make us all feel happy, positive, and self-confident. The challenge is to force us to look at ourselves and make some very deep and difficult decisions. "Did you ever have to make up your mind? Pick up on one and let the other ones ride? None of them easy, none of them kind? Did you ever have to make up your mind?"

It is not possible to have it all. There is the parable about the man who sold all of his little pearls for the one pearl of great price. We are presented in the Good News a choice, a decision, a hard decision. Either to live in the hope that this is God's creation and world and God will bring it to fulfillment and bring his purposes about (and it is not something we can go out and accomplish)and to live as a citizen of that kingdom now even if it is not yet a reality or to live as if this is our one chance and we had better grab all the gusto now and to hell with everybody else and anything else.

To present that choice to a congregation who wants to think very little, feel very good, and to live contentedly in the culture they live in is a tremendous risk and a rare thing. So if you leave worship and feel angry and disturbed by what you heard, look up, rejoice and be glad, perhaps your redemption is drawing nigh.