Jesus came to bring what?

“Do you think I have come to bring peace to the earth?  No, I tell you, but rather division!”

Even if Jesus came to bring long division to the earth, I wouldn’t like this passage.  As I’ve said all week, these words from Jesus are difficult to hear.  This isn’t the Kumbaya Jesus of modern day prophets – you know, the kind that the prophet Jeremiah spoke against in Sunday’s Track 2 Old Testament lesson – who wants to give you “your best life now.”

No, this is the Jesus who has come to stake his claim on your life so that the world might come to know the kingdom of God now.  Living a life of the kingdom of God in a world hell-bent on the successes of the kingdoms of power, privilege, money, and self-interest will cause division, of that there is no doubt.  However, this reality seems…