The Crucible of Crisis (Luke 12: 49-56) 8/18/13

 

Jesus is speaking to his disciples and the crowds that follow him. Luke tells us that Jesus has stopped on the way to Jerusalem to talk with his disciples and to the very large crowd that has gathered. Jesus talks about the division that will result from his ministry and message, warning that families and friends will suffer and split from his teachings, as some will follow him and many will not. He goes on to exclaim how blind we can be to revelation right in front of our eyes, He talks about how a south wind means hot weather approaching, while clouds rising in the west mean a shower is on its way. We can interpret the earth and sky by how they present and yet we seem to have little idea how to interpret what is going on all around us.

This passage contains several lessons, but I keep being drawn to verse 50: “But I have a baptism to undergo, and how distressed I am until it is completed.”  Jesus is looking toward the cross. He knows what is coming. He has to die to light the fire. He is not only the solution. He is the kindling for the fire to come.

Baptism. It is a sacrament in every Christian church. Along with the Lord’s Supper, it is one of two sacraments recognized by most Protestant churches, including ours. In the Reformed tradition, of which we are a part, baptism is recognized for both infants and adults, although we most often see it observed with infants. In that setting, it is an acknowledgment by both parents and church to raise a child in the church until he or she obtains the age of consent. But the word has a much richer meaning and history. Webster’s Dictionary tells us that, in addition to the Christian definitions, baptism means to purify, cleanse or initiate. In the New Testament, the term comes from two Greek roots. One is baptizo, which means to make fully wet. The second is baptizen, meaning “to dip.” It is used of someone submerged in some grim and terrible experience. We might paraphrase Jesus’ words this way: “I have to pass through a terrible experience, and my life is full of tension until I pass through it and emerge triumphantly from it.” 

Jesus was letting us “in,” so to speak, on where he was and what he was going through. Most of the time, we look upon Jesus as our Savior, someone so much higher above us that we stand in awe. We admire him, we worship him, but we do not relate to him. It’s certainly right to see Jesus in this light, but it’s not the only way we should see him. We know that Jesus was fully God. From that vantage point he knew exactly why he was here and what he was ultimately going to do to redeem us. But we know also that Jesus was fully human and I think this verse gives us a glimpse into that very human part of Jesus the man. This is a part of Jesus that we can relate to.

“But I have a baptism to undergo, and how distressed I am until it is fully completed.”  The part of Jesus that was God knew he would face the cross and complete his task, but the part of Jesus that was man was not so sure. The verse foreshadows Jesus on the Mount of Olives the night of his arrest. Remember? In the cool of the night, he is in anguish, “his sweat is like drops of blood falling to the ground,” (Luke 22: 44) as he asks the Father to let this cup (the cross) pass away from him (v.42). He is deathly afraid. His fear is not just of the pain of the cross, but of failure; failure of his mission for his heavenly father; failure of this opportunity to deliver God’s saving grace for mankind. He knows he has to come through. Too much is riding on it. So Jesus is in crisis. He is looking down the road of crucifixion and death. He is in the crucible.

          A crucible is a container that can resist great heat. It is the hollow at the bottom of a furnace where the molten metal collects. It’s where the heat is at its unbearable greatest. Ever been in the crucible of crisis? Ever been at the point where people you love are depending on you and the only way to come through for them is to do something you can’t do, go to a poiny where you might break? It’s hot there, and there’s no room to breathe, no margin to err, no wiggle room. It’s a dark place when you’re in the crucible.

Crisis came to Jesus. He had many temptations, but perhaps only one great crisis. Crisis and temptation come to us as well. They come in many forms. Though not as significant as the crisis faced by Jesus, they are very powerful and often seemingly overwhelming. Crisis has many names: poverty, illness, disease, divorce, addiction, to name a few. There are people here who have gone in to work only to be handed a pink slip at the end of the day. They know what I’m talking about. There are many here who have sat beside the hospital bed of a parent or child or friend fading from life. They know what I’m talking about. If you have been served with divorce papers, had to apply for disability, admitted an unwilling parent to a rest home, bailed a child out of jail, you know what I’m talking about. Even if you have led a charmed life to this point, the crisis of your life may be around the next corner.

There is ugliness and hardship in this world, and very few escape its clutches from cradle to grave. Yet for all their gravity, these sorts of crises do not rise to the level that Christ faced. Indeed, the book of James tells us to consider such things “joy.” James call these events “trials,” and tells us that “the testing of our faith develops perseverance, which must finish its work so that we may be mature and complete” in the eyes of God.

Jesus, the Son of Man, was in crisis. He was in the crucible. The King James Version translates verse 50 this way: “But I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how am I straitened till it be accomplished.”  “Straitened?”  In the Greek (sunecho), it means kept in, pressed. Jesus is in a vise, and there he will stay until he has met and conquered the cross and all that goes with it. Paul tells us in 2nd Corinthians 5:21 that “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us…” Matthew and Mark tell us that on the cross, Jesus cries out in a loud voice: My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” He makes this appeal in the ninth hour, right before he dies. All three Synoptic Gospels report that darkness had come over the land three hours earlier. I think that somewhere in this three hour period, perhaps right at the moment of the ninth hour, the sin of all mankind for all time physically entered into the heart and soul of Jesus and, as Paul tells us, Jesus became sin. At this point God, who cannot look upon sin, turned his back on Jesus. It is not that Jesus sinned. Jesus never sinned. But he became sin; he became the vessel for all our sin.

Jesus became the bridge to our righteousness. Had he failed to finish the task, had he appealed to the angels standing by, had he cried out for rescue, mankind would have lost the redemption that he bought with his life. But Jesus didn’t fail. He endured his time in the crucible. He faced the crisis of the cross.

There are other examples in the Bible that come to mind. Think of Joseph languishing away in an Egyptian prison; Jonah in the belly of the great fish; Daniel in the lions’ den; Abraham standing over his son Isaac with knife raised for sacrifice. These people were at turning points in their lives. They were in the crucible.

          Today we too face crises. We already talked about that briefly. Jesus paid the price and we are ransomed. We are made righteous by his atonement.  But we still have to believe and work out our salvation. I think a big part of that is to understand that while salvation comes to individuals, it is largely achieved through community. And the community of Christ in the United States and other western nations is in crisis. It may be bigger and stronger today than ever before. We: you, me, our families, our country, our church, are all in the crucible. We face a crisis of commitment.

We have answered that call before. Here are just a couple famous examples. On a December day in 1955, a 43 year old black woman boarded a city bus in Montgomery, Alabama and took her place in a seat behind all the white people on the bus. Later, when the bus filled up and a white man was without a seat, this woman was directed by the driver to surrender her seat. When she refused, the police were called and she was arrested. Rosa Parks had voluntarily placed herself in the crucible, and in doing so, became one of the catalysts for the Civil Rights movement.

Called by many the most influential person of the 20^th century, Mother Teresa spent her first year in India with no income and had to resort to begging for food and supplies. As she emerged from the cloud of loneliness and doubt that plagued her, she wrote in her diary: “Our Lord wants me to be a free nun covered with the poverty of the cross…Of free choice, my God, and out of love for you, I desire to remain and do whatever be your Holy will in my regard…”

Our times are no exception to the call to commitment. You can think of others not so famous who live their lives in such crises. They are your family, your friends, your neighbors, and they also have entered the crucible of commitment. They are part of that cloud of witnesses to which the Book of Hebrews refers and their example must not be lost upon us. Nor must our example be lost upon a new generation for Christ waiting in the wings, for if we fail to spend our time in the crucible, if we fail to pass on the Good News of the Gospel to our children, to our peers, to our friends and acquaintances, we will have failed our commitment which we shoulder as Christians. The next generation for Christ is in our hands. In this so-called “Post-Christian” era, it is a battle line from which we must not retreat.

 Paul tells us in Philippians that “to live is Christ, to die is gain.” I sometimes think the dying part is the easy part. Faced with the prospect of losing our freedom, denying our faith, I think our chances are fair that we can face death. But living with committment? That’s a crisis without a deadline. That’s a wake-up-with, go-to-work-with, go-to-bed-with, get-up-the next-day-and-do-it-all-over-again sort of crisis. We are in the crucible. We can’t always feel it, but it’s there all the same. The crisis is real and the stakes are high. The reward is out of this world, but it takes commitment of Christians, church and community to live in Christ.

The Message translates verse 50 in a way that I think  catches the mood of Jesus on that day. It says: “I’ve come to change everything, turn everything rightside up—how I long for it to be finished” Jesus did that for you and me. We have only to reach out in faith. Get in that crucible. Get upside down if you need to, if it helps you see things rightside up. Feel the heat. Get committed. Become part of the fire. You won’t get burned.