Tough Love - Reflections on Luke 12:49-56, Pentecost 10, Year C
by John C. Holbert on Friday, June 6, 2025
Today’s text from Luke is one of those designed expressly to call into the most serious question that simple characterization of Jesus as “gentle shepherd meek and mild.” It also makes a decided mockery of that other old saw that claims, “That Old Testament God is so fierce; I am so glad that we have Jesus!” Really? “I came to throw fire on the earth!” “Do you think I am here to bring peace on earth? Not at all, I tell you, but instead division!” (Luke 12:49, 51) Just what are we to make of THIS Jesus? What has come over the pleasant savior we have come to love and treasure? Was he merely having a bad day; we all get one of those sometime. Let’s talk to him tomorrow!
This fiery (literally!) Jesus must be reckoned with if we are to gain a fuller portrait of the prophet that Luke imagines Jesus to be. It may be that we have characterized Jesus Messiah for so long in one certain way—the noble, caring, loving supporter and friend of us all—that we can be nothing less than shocked when this Jesus shows up on our screens. Where, oh where, is that Prince of Peace promised by Isaiah 9:6, that “little child” who leads in Isaiah 11:6? And did not the shepherds in Luke hear from the angel chorus that the child born in Bethlehem would be known as a bringer of peace? (Luke 1:79; 2:14). Simeon, that aged and devout man, a regular participant in temple worship in Jerusalem, prayed to God, as he held the infant Jesus in his arms, “Lord, now let your servant depart in peace” (Luke 2:29). The adult Jesus in Luke 12 seems far from those earlier portrayals.
But perhaps we need to pay attention to that other prediction from the mouth of Simeon found in that same chapter 2. Simeon first blesses the new parents of the child, but then turns to Mary, the mother, and announces in rather darker words: “Look, this child is destined to cause the rise and fall of many within Israel, and to be a sign that is disputed—without doubt, a sword will cut through your very life, so that the calculations (“inner thoughts”—NRSV) of many hearts will be revealed” (Luke 2:34-35). Simeon warns that not only will peace be a significant gift of this child, so will division and dispute and the revelation of many hearts be a part of his work. This is the Jesus who looks with fury at some of his Pharisaic antagonists and calls them, “whitened sepulchers, full of dead persons’ bones (Luke 11:44),” hardly the gentle Jesus we thought we knew.
But is this fuller picture of Jesus not exactly what we would have expected from a prophet who finds himself speaking words that often fly right in the face of the powers of the day, the politics of Rome, the ease of the rich, the comforts of a society that finds challenges to its certainties not at all to its liking? What else may we expect from a Jesus that calls us to enter the rule of God, over against the rule of Caesar, the love of enemy over against the hatred and rejection of the enemy, the sharing of wealth over against the hoarding of wealth? Simeon’s words from Luke 2:35 are exactly fulfilled in the mouth of Jesus: he will divide households, and he will create divisions among the people. The love Jesus comes to announce is no sweet, romantic notion of relationships among like-minded and comfortable would-be followers. There were, and have always been, wildly diverse responses to Jesus’ message about the rule of God, responses that have inevitably led to division, disagreement, and rancor among those who call themselves Christian.
Just today, I watched a podcast that accused the current Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, with having what they called “a Moses complex.” In a speech he gave last year to a very conservative collection of pastors and Christian leaders, he described how, before he was chosen as the current speaker, he was content to be “Aaron” to another Moses, either Mr. Johnson of Wisconsin or Mr. Scalise of New York. But, he said, “God woke me up and spoke to me, and told me to get ready for greater things.” Hence, he concluded, he was Speaker of the House because God had directly and audibly chosen him for the work. The podcasters were horrified, and without using the word proclaimed such hubris on Johnson’s part little less than blasphemy.
I am rarely one who wishes to question the certainty of another person’s religious proclivities; if Johnson thinks he has been directly called by God to be speaker, then he may well think that to be true. However, the point is that he, and I, both call ourselves Christians, but he has just pushed a bill through the House that will deprive millions of poor people their Medicaid health benefits, while at the same time enriching the already wealthy through generous tax breaks. For me, this is about as far from my understanding of the rule of God as can be imagined. Thus, once again, Jesus has brought not peace but division between Mike Johnson and me.
Jesus says later in the text that those listening to him know how to interpret the weather by observation of the movement of clouds and wind (Luke 12:54-55), but have not a clue about interpreting “this present season” (Greek kairos—the fuller meaning of what is really happening in the world). In this they are “hypocrites” who share the blindness of those lawyers, who have in Luke 11:53, “taken away the key of knowledge,” refusing to seek real knowledge and stopping others from discovering that knowledge. Jesus here is an uncompromising prophet who speaks painful truths to those who refuse to listen to him with care and to act accordingly. This is the very definition of tough love, truth in the face of those whose understanding of truth is clouded by their own narrow desires for comfort, wealth, and status. Here is a Jesus who brings division and anger and even a sword for his own mother, as Simeon warns. But this is still the Jesus who has come to announce the rule of God, and part of that announcement is surely division and hard choices, both of which are surely parts of the love he brings.