When the Lectionary readings seem ever so timely… First up, from Jeremiah 23:

I have heard what the prophets have said who prophesy lies in my name, saying, “I have dreamed, I have dreamed!” How long? Will the hearts of the prophets ever turn back—those who prophesy lies, and who prophesy the deceit of their own heart? They plan to make my people forget my name by their dreams that they tell one another, just as their ancestors forgot my name for Baal. Let the prophet who has a dream tell the dream, but let the one who has my word speak my word faithfully.

Substitute “American evangelical preachers” here for “the prophets” and the word still burns with fire.

Then comes Psalm 82, which includes:

Save the weak and the orphan;
  defend the humble and needy;
Rescue the weak and the poor;
  deliver them from the power of the wicked.

So say we all.

The ‘great cloud of witnesses’ reading from Hebrews is a banger on its own - mocking, flogging, frigging sawn in two, but the bit that stuck out at me this morning was this verse, right before the big “therefore”:

Yet all these, though they were commended for their faith, did not receive what was promised, since God had provided something better so that they would not, apart from us, be made perfect.

So all these heroes of the faith still did not get everything that was promised. “WTF?” the reader may rightly ask. Why not?

Because, the author of Hebrews says, they need all of us with them to be complete, to reach fulness. Wowza.

And then there’s the Gospel

I will quote it in full (from Luke 12):

Jesus said, “I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled! I have a baptism with which to be baptized, and what stress I am under until it is completed! Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division! From now on five in one household will be divided, three against two and two against three; they will be divided: father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.”

He also said to the crowds, “When you see a cloud rising in the west, you immediately say, ‘It is going to rain’; and so it happens. And when you see the south wind blowing, you say, ‘There will be scorching heat’; and it happens. You hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky, but why do you not know how to interpret the present time?”

Our priest this morning called to note the specific generational nature of the conflict that Jesus brings. And which among us has not felt that conflict this past decade? So many of us had and continue to have painful disagreements with parents about what it looks like to follow Jesus. We can read the clouds and see the storm brewing. We’re already feeling the wind gusts. We need to buckle in and hold tight. This may well be the time when we make up what is lacking in Christ’s suffering, as we build toward the completeness of the faithfulness of the people of God.