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Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. For the sermon today, we’re going to be using parts of the Old Testament reading from Jeremiah and also from the Gospel reading. Please be seated.
This Gospel reading today, in case you didn’t know, the word Gospel comes from a word that means a good report or a good message. Or more commonly, we know it as good news. Good news. And the gospel readings for worship come from one of the four gospels, usually Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John, and they’re from events or teachings of Jesus. But this reading today doesn’t really sound like good news, does it? In fact, in reading it, the response I wanted to give afterwards was, this is the gospel of the Lord? I mean, where was the good news in that? What? Jesus saying that he’s coming to bring fire and division, even pitting relatives against each other. See those fights you have on holidays with family? It’s Jesus’s fault, right? No. Where’s the good news in that?
It’s amazing to me how much people, we love labels. We have to label things so that we can either kind of justify it or qualify something or identify something. We use labels for that. And we love labels—old, young, traditional, contemporary, conservative, liberal. I got it backwards. No, conservative. You’re liberal. I got left or right. Okay, right, left. Yeah. Rich, poor, Texan, everybody else. Right? All of them labels that we use to identify and qualify ourselves.
Well, for people who have the label Christian, there’s another label I think that they should get used to and even like: different. And division in the gospel, that word division, doesn’t just mean dissension or disagreement, but it also means aparting from or disunion. Separation from. Different. And this is caused by Jesus. Caused by him casting fire on the earth and saying that by a baptism that he’s going to be baptized with, this is going to cause division. That still doesn’t sound like good news. Isn’t Jesus supposed to bring everybody in the world together in peace? Doesn’t Christianity teach that all people are equal? That’s kind of a perception anyway that people have of Christianity. But here Jesus is talking about division. Talking about being different.
Yes, all people are equal. Christianity does believe that all people are equal. They’re all equally sinners. All equally guilty of breaking God’s laws and breaking human laws. All people are equally enemies of God. Romans chapter 3 says, “So we’re equal,” but there’s division. Christians are different. But how? How so?
I think we see the answer in that Old Testament reading from the prophet Jeremiah. And you might want to take a look at it if you’d like to. It’s the last verse, actually, of the reading. It’s even bolded for you there. That’s not a typo. That’s intentional there. Where God says through Jeremiah, God’s word, “Like fire and like a hammer.” This also doesn’t sound much like any kind of good news here. Fire is pretty destructive, and usually when we think of a hammer breaking rocks, it’s the hammer being raised up and swung with a lot of power and breaks, crushes, and basically destroys the rock.
And to think of God’s Word like that, that sounds harsh, even painful. God’s Word can do that, actually. Really? It can accuse us, convict us, convict us of breaking God’s law, which we do. But again, that’s not really good news because there’s another way that a hammer works. To break rock, a hammer doesn’t just get swung hard and comes down hard and crushes and breaks rocks. But another way that the hammer works is in the hands of a sculptor. A hammer chips away at rock. Breaking it and dividing it from what they’re trying to sculpt. The hammer chips away useless rock to reveal a beautiful work of art.
By dividing the rock from the sculpture, the sculptor makes a new creation. And so it is with God’s work in you. Jesus has come to cast God’s word of fire on the earth to burn away sin and to use the hammer. And he does it in the baptism that he talked about. That baptism that Jesus said he was going to be baptized with, that would be his suffering and death on the cross. And that’s good news because he did that for you. To make you different. To forgive you of your sin. To forgive you of any and every sin that you’ve ever done, no matter what it was. Jesus suffered and died to chip away the useless sin in your life, separate it from you, and make a new creation of you. A beautiful work of art as his creation.
That was the baptism of Christ, his suffering, his death on the cross. But then he rose again from the dead to create new life in you, eternal life. And God chips away at you each day with the reminder of that word—the word that you’re forgiven and beautifully and wonderfully made a new creation, a work of art by what Christ has done for you. God chips away at you and reminds you of that every time you hear that word of fire in the absolution when the pastor says, “As a called and ordained servant of Christ and by his authority, I forgive you of all your sins.”
In the absolution, God says to you with fire, “Your sins are forgiven.” He chips away there. And at the Lord’s Supper, where you receive Christ’s body and blood, and you hear the word of fire, “This is my body given for you, and this is my blood shed for you for the forgiveness of your sins.” Those are the times when God chips away there. The hammer of God chips away, removing sin from you and wants to make a new creation, a beautiful work of art, dividing that sin from you, separating it from you, and making you different than the sinful being that you are. He divides you, makes you different.
And that’s how that gospel reading is good news. Division is good. It makes you different. But still, it causes division. It causes division between people, between friends, between family. Being a Christian can bring division. And maybe you’re all too aware of that. In your life situation with your family, in your friends, you already know that it can be hard to be different. Life isn’t often easy for Christians. It can hurt getting chiseled or hammered on. It can hurt to be divided. It can hurt to be different. It can be harsh. It can be painful. And reactions to you being different can range from ridicule to outright persecution.
This is often the case on college campuses, where Christian students are sometimes the target of challenge from professors, to challenge their faith, to get them away from their beliefs. And Christian organizations are sometimes challenged with their rights of speech and their expression. Being difficult or being different can be hard on campus for God’s people. And as a campus pastor, I see that. Kind of as a shameless self-promotion, I want to say to you that any of you here that are incoming students to UT or to Concordia, please see me after the service. I want to talk to you about University Lutheran Church and our campus ministry. Okay, that’s done, all right. Thanks for indulging me there.
But seriously, I want to talk to you. Division can be hard. Being different can be hard. But this division is still good news. Being different is still good news. Because Christians should be different. I mean, we are different. Christians have a totally different worldview than other people. We have a different outlook on life. We have a different approach to the problems of life. And being different is good because then Christians, we stick out. We’re different. And people know that. They know our different outlook and our different worldview.
And this is what people should see as different in Christians. Not seeing how we might be different by our morals or our behavior or our political views. That stuff doesn’t bridge this division. I think this maybe sometimes causes more division. People need to see in us what is really making us different. And that is the forgiveness of sins brought about by that suffering and death of Jesus on the cross for us. And that it’s for them too. They need to know about the difference maker, Jesus, who they’re divided from and want to be brought into that relationship with Jesus.
Too often all the people see are those different things about us that just cause more division. They need to see what really makes us different. They need to see Jesus, and that’s the good news. It’s good news for us. It’s good news for them because God does want other people that we’re divided from, that we’re different from; he wants them to be with him too. God doesn’t want this division. Jesus brings division because some believe him, receive him; others reject him. There’s the division.
God doesn’t want that. He wants unity. He wants unity in Christ. He wants all people to be divided away from sin and death and brought into being a new creation by Christ. 1 Timothy 2, verse 4 says, “God desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.” Think about it in math terms. I don’t like math; it’s because I’m bad at it, that’s why, but… But think of it in math terms. Jesus causes division, but he wants multiplication. He wants all people to be saved. He wants all people to receive the effect of the hammer of God to chip away the sin in their life and to make them into a new creation, a work of art in the forgiveness of sins too. He doesn’t want the division. He wants all people to be different.
I guess that would make them all the same, but he wants them different from sin. Amen.
Living in Austin is wonderful. And if you’re new to Austin, maybe you already know about Austin. It’s different. It’s different. It’s the only blue spot in the red state, right? And Austin has capitalized on that with its kind of unofficial motto, which is what? Keep Austin. Keep Austin. We had the bumper stickers and all that stuff. Brilliant. Okay. And all of us, we know what the weird is. It’s kind of hard to describe it, but we all know what the weird is.
But you know something? The weird of Austin is what’s becoming normal. Everybody’s got a tattoo, it seems like. What used to be weird is now normal. You know who’s becoming weird? Who’s becoming different? It’s Christians. We’re different. We’re a minority. We’re small. And I love it. I love it. It’s a little scary, but it’s great because then we stick out. Not just physically or anything, but again, worldview, outlook, Jesus, forgiveness of sins. We stick out. We’re different. And then maybe people notice that and they ask.
See, the bad news is we’re different. The good news is we’re different and we stick out. We may have the opportunity to tell other people about Jesus. What makes us different? For goodness sake, don’t say your morals or your behavior or your political views. Please, not your political views. Tell them about Jesus who makes the difference, who made the difference for you in his death and resurrection, his forgiveness of your sins. People need to hear that good news. We’ve got it. It’s different than anything else in the world. We’ve got it.
If you find yourself being different among other people, you’re in the right place. Maybe the opportunity will come that you can explain that difference. The gospel reading today, it’s gospel. It’s good news. And even though my response to it wanted to be, this is the gospel of the Lord, the response that the congregation, that y’all gave, was perfect. And that response was, “Praise to you, O Christ.” Praise to what you’ve done today. For your baptism of suffering and death to make us different, to forgive our sins, to chip away the rock of sin, to make a new, beautiful creation, a work of art. Amen.
