There are plenty of things I wish I had never said. I bet there are things you wish you had never said. Unfortunately, there are also things I wish Jesus had never said. Life as a Preacher would be easier. The so-called Difficult Sayings of Jesus - you know them - to the disciples: "The poor you will always have with you." To Peter: "Get thee behind me Satan!" To his mother Mary" "Woman, what have you to do with me?" To the Samaritan Woman: "It is not right to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs." Yes, the so called Difficult Sayings of Jesus can all be explained ultimately in a long and intricate process, they can be interpreted appropriately, they can finally be appreciated, but it is work. We have got some of that this morning in this morning's Gospel. Jesus said, "Do you think that I have come to bring peace on earth? No, I tell you, but rather division." Yes ... I did sort of think that he had come to bring peace on earth. That's what the angels were singing about at his birth, that is what the prophecies foretold. Peace on earth, good will to men. The Prince of Peace. Peace is a good thing. It is always difficult to deal with insights or lessons or experiences that overturn our assumptions, our expectations, our cherished beliefs. When friends do or say something we consider uncharacteristic of them, we are startled. When God does it, we are dismayed. We can not second guess him but how we love to try. We like to be able to predict with reasonable success how someone we know well is going to react. What they are likely to do or say. As a priest, I count on you to detect things you suspect I never said or did. When someone, out of hurt or anger or confusion quotes me as having said something horrific, I depend on you to say: "Mmm .. that doesn't sound like Bill Rhodes to me." Thanks for sticking up for me. I try to do the same for you. I will say and have said: "I know her well, I can't quite picture her saying that. Could you have misheard or at least misunderstood? Well, I so badly want to do that with this Gospel. It sounds so foreign to my ears, I want desperately to say: "that doesn't sound like Jesus, maybe St. Luke mis-heard." Actually, I suspect not. I don't think Jesus is being misquoted. I think it is more likely that I have been surprised only because I have been making short-sighted assumptions that were just my own presumptions, which are not necessarily identical to the reality of God. And suddenly God has surprised me, startled me, blind-sided me. The first temptation is to pretend the difficulty is not there. Denial it called, and it's not a good thing. Another, more frontal assault is simply to ignore those pieces of Scripture or Church teaching you don't like, or that sound archaic or inconvenient. That is not a very appealing approach for people who in their heart of hearts know they have to deal with these difficult bits in some fashion if they are ever to know religious contentment and spiritual security. Finally, you can contextualize it all away. That's the most respectable and scholarly approach. People condescendingly pointing out that all it really means is thus and such. In this case, with this Gospel passage, the argument would probably run something like this: Jesus is rightly predicting religious divisions in families where some would remain faithful to an original religion and some would accept a new revelation. Some holding fast to Judaism or classical paganism, while others took up this new Christianity. That is fine as far as it goes, but it's ultimately inadequate. Everyone in my family was Episcopalian, so do I get to skip this passage and fast forward to the next? No, the applicability of this passage did not cease after the first few centuries, when it was no longer common to have a pagan Roman mother-in-law in the same house as a Christian Greek daughter-in-law. On an even cleverer level, you can re-interpret tough passages on a more subtle and implicit level and that too has aspects of truth: Here we would say that are being Christians does not guarantee or require or impose agreement, uniformity, single-mindedness. It permits, in some cases causes, serious divisions, honorable differences, principled dissent. An explanation in a similar vein would insist that the passage simply establishes that Christianity does not, and should not, promote a phony peace, a fake harmony, a peace that is unjust or oppressive, a harmony that is contrived or forced. Yes, the passage can be explained in all of these ways and many more besides. That's what I meant at the beginning about difficult Biblical passages being ultimately explicable through a long and painful process. Even now some of you look quite pained. Enough of the interpretation. Whatever the final interpretation we select, I really think one of the most worthwhile and helpful insights we can come away with, after an encounter with a very difficult, unsettling passage like this, is the humbling and necessary realization or reminder that God can and will surprise us, startle us, confuse us, undermine our smug assumptions, overturn our naive expectation, unsettle our too, too settled opinions. Some of our breeziest assumptions about God are unexamined and way off-base. We need to be jolted from time to time into revising those assumptions, and re-adjust them to the reality of God, and not our own fantasies. Now I don't want to give you the impression that I think this is a huge problem or a horrendous besetting sin of all Christians, but it crops up from time to time, and so passages like this pop up from time to time to shoot those silly assumptions down and remind us that God is God and we are not. Every time we say to ourselves and others: "Well, I am certain that God" ...whatever. Then God comes forth and says in what we call the difficult sayings of Jesus: "Do you think that I have to come for ... thus and such? No I tell you ..." and then he tells us something startling, that challenges us, stretches us, makes us take a second and better look. God will not let us go on long just continuing to make assumptions about him that are unreliable and misleading. When we are running that risk we will stumble over some tough, difficult truth. However we finally explain or interpret such a passage or experience or insight, we will at least know that once again we have encountered God and once again come away amazed.