Family Matters

Scripture — Luke 12:49-53 (NRSV)

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.”

Devotion

This is, as the phrase goes, a hard saying. I wrestled with it quite a bit three years ago. As with yesterday’s devotional, I find that I am drawn to a different emphasis now than I was then.

In that 2022 devotional, reading the passage in the context of Luke 12, and the way the entire chapter swings back and forth between apocalypse and comfort, I emphasized Jesus’s reassurance of his disciples in Luke 12:22-34. That’s where he tells them (and by extension us) not to worry, to consider the lilies, to seek his kingdom and have faith and have no fear. Reading this passage now, though, I am afraid my reaction has swung back around to “Wow, Jesus, I am not sure I’m ready for this hard teaching.”

Part of the problem with these verses—certainly part of my problem with them—is knowing that they have been abused down through the years to split up and destroy families, in ways that I truly believe did not serve the kingdom. (I’m not going to tell specific stories here, but I know of more than one.) Yet I know that Christians have also been prone to the opposite problem from time to time throughout church history—emphasizing family over faith, and loyalty to family over loyalty to Christ, in a way that is detrimental to the journey of discipleship. Jesus reminds us here that, if we have to choose, we have to choose him.

I think it helps to go back and put these verses squarely in their first-century context. (Remember, the Gospels are describing things that happened while Jesus was alive, but they were written after the Resurrection and intended for an early church audience. Luke recorded this story because it happened, to be sure, but also because he wanted to edify and instruct the earliest Christians.)

As people came to follow Jesus and ultimately, after the Resurrection, as the early church formed, there were some families—households is really a better term, as they often included multiple families plus servants and the enslaved—who came into the church together; all of them became followers of the Way. They could encourage each other, pray together, aid the poor together, and maybe even host house church meetings together. But there were many other families where this did not happen, and where someone who had become a disciple of Christ was doing so without any family support and would have been in conflict with those in their household. For those people, the church became their only family. And those people would have felt the divisions in this passage keenly.

I think sometimes when we read the Gospels we think the most important thing we can use them for is to create peace and order; strong families, strong countries, strong churches. Jesus tells us clearly here that his message will not always bring peace. It is the message of the kingdom; it is a baptism of fire. Sometimes it will unite, but sometimes it will divide. Either way, always choose Jesus, and trust that the church will be there for you even when no one else is.

Which means—church—that we probably have some work to do.

Find all Life for Leaders devotions here. Explore what the Bible has to say about work at the High Calling archive, hosted by the unique website of our partners, the Theology of Work Project. Reflection on today’s Life for Leaders theme can be found here: Did Jesus Come to Bring Peace or Division?.