We gather in worship seeking a place of comfort and quiet consolation. Our life is on fast-forward.  We are busy people.  We need some rest and some peace and quiet.  We like things to be predictable in church.  That’s why things are often bolted down.  That’s why it can be difficult to be creative in church.  We don’t do it that way.  We don’t dress that way.  We’ve never done it that way before.  We like it the way we’ve always done it. 

            Oh, didn’t they tell you. Don’t sit there!  Joshua’s mom always sits there.

Lots of people say that the major reason they come to church is to find a place to be centered and touch base with what is stable and dependable.  People come to church to be grounded. 

And then there's Jesus. Jesus is shocking! What kind of peace is this?  Did he come to bring division and not peace?  Like the prophets of old, Jesus has a message to share.  It’s a message that warns us about wild grapes.  God expects justice, but sees bloodshed, God anticipates righteousness, but hears a cry!  If you’re going to follow God, then you will need to try to do things the way God would want you to do it. 

Jesus taught that this choice, of the Realm of God, brings division.  Some will follow whole heartedly; others will not follow just as whole heartedly.  Some will make great sacrifices; others will choose not to sacrifice anything.  The divisions will be clear.

In our Gospel lesson Jesus uses the image of “fire” to describe his mission. Jesus taught the disciples that built into God’s act of judgment is the reality of division: the wicked are condemned and the righteous are saved.  Households will be split apart – three against two and two against three…father against son and son against father.  This decision is monumental, life transforming, eternal, and yours to make.

Life transforming decisions lead to division: leaving the old ways behind and embracing the new way, choosing to walk as a child of the light rather than walk in darkness, to live for God rather and self alone, all have to do with decisions that lead to division.  Jesus instructs the disciples that making the choice to follow God is enormous; it’s a matter of the heart.  Here Jesus is teaching about the life changing choice that brings division.  This is not about conflict.  Sometimes we get the two confused.

The decisions that we make as the Body of Christ, will involve conflict, and will make us grow in the Spirit of God.  It’s not about right vs. wrong, it’s about the community growing in faith and putting faith into action.  If there is conflict, then we know that we are alive and well.  If there is conflict, then we are doing what God is calling us to do.  Are we not called to the difficult tasks of ministry?  Moving forward for Christ is not done without conflict.  Conflict is not about stomping off when we don’t get our way, especially if we think that we are right (with God on our side) and everyone else is wrong.   No, we are the people of God who have learned how to let go with the hand before the tree flings us into space.  We have even learned how to let go of our well thought out plans in order to embrace one another, and listen to the Spirit.  In this process, sometimes, we are pleasantly surprised.  As Robert Frost wrote in his poem “Wild Grapes,” “We have no wish to let go with the heart – nor see no need.”   Sometimes the struggle (conflict) is about letting go with the hand, or even the mind!  The choice to be a disciple is a matter of the heart.  Jesus reminded the disciples that some won’t have the heart for it.

Yes, conflict is over important matters, though not life and death matters.  Why is it that we find it difficult to let go of insignificant things?  Usually it’s because we are wrapped up in it…  The best thing about conflict in the church is that it is a teaching moment and a growing process.  Through conflict we learn how to deal with our Ego.  Conflict is also a teaching moment for the whole Body of Christ as we learn how to love one another.

I overheard someone say recently…  “Well, I hope our church never has a conflict again like we had over the financing of the new construction.”   I had to chuckle…  What a great week to make a statement like that.  Thank you.  What a great sermon illustration.  Important decisions, difficult decisions, meaningful decisions, the type of decisions that move us forward in the realm of God will get us deeply involved, but not completely possessed.  When we are involved deeply, it is an opportunity for us to grow in love; sometimes in ways we never thought possible.  Conflict is good in a community that knows the difference between division and conflict.  Not everyone will agree all of the time; we just pray that we will agree part of the time.  Most of all, we pray that we will learn how to love one another.  So conflict is not just O.K., it’s essential.  The Way of the Christ is nothing if it is not controversial. 

Thanks be to God, that God’s Realm gives us the opportunity to embrace growth and forgiveness.  The difference between healthy conflict in the church and destructive conflict in the church has to do with the spirit in which we love one another.  It has everything to do with forgiving one another and being willing to be forgiven.

As Robert Frost said, knowing when to let go is the first step in knowledge.  So remember, just because you are seeking perfection doesn’t mean that you’re perfect.  That needs an Amen…  

What unites us as the Body of Christ isn’t that we agree with one another; what unites us is that we love one another with the love that God has for us.  

“Wild Grapes” 

by Robert Frost

WHAT tree may not the fig be gathered from?
The grape may not be gathered from the birch?
It's all you know the grape, or know the birch.
As a girl gathered from the birch myself
Equally with my weight in grapes, one autumn,
I ought to know what tree the grape is fruit of.
I was born, I suppose, like anyone,
And grew to be a little boyish girl
My brother could not always leave at home.
But that beginning was wiped out in fear
The day I swung suspended with the grapes,
And was come after like Eurydice
And brought down safely from the upper regions;
And the life I live now's an extra life
I can waste as I please on whom I please.
So if you see me celebrate two birthdays,
And give myself out of two different ages,
One of them five years younger than I look--

One day my brother led me to a glade
Where a white birch he knew of stood alone,
Wearing a thin head-dress of pointed leaves,
And heavy on her heavy hair behind,
Against her neck, an ornament of grapes.
Grapes, I knew grapes from having seen them last year.
One bunch of them, and there began to be
Bunches all round me growing in white birches,
The way they grew round Leif the Lucky's German;
Mostly as much beyond my lifted hands, though,
As the moon used to seem when I was younger,
And only freely to be had for climbing.
My brother did the climbing; and at first
Threw me down grapes to miss and scatter
And have to hunt for in sweet fern and hardhack;
Which gave him some time to himself to eat,
But not so much, perhaps, as a boy needed.
So then, to make me wholly self-supporting,
He climbed still higher and bent the tree to earth
And put it in my hands to pick my own grapes.
"Here, take a tree-top, I'll get down another.
Hold on with all your might when I let go."
I said I had the tree. It wasn't true.
The opposite was true. The tree had me.
The minute it was left with me alone
It caught me up as if I were the fish
And it the fishpole. So I was translated
To loud cries from my brother of "Let go!
Don't you know anything, you girl? Let go!"
But I, with something of the baby grip
Acquired ancestrally in just such trees
When wilder mothers than our wildest now
Hung babies out on branches by the hands
To dry or wash or tan, I don't know which,
(You'll have to ask an evolutionist)-
I held on uncomplainingly for life.
My brother tried to make me laugh to help me.
"What are you doing up there in those grapes?
Don't be afraid. A few of them won't hurt you.
I mean, they won't pick you if you don't them."
Much danger of my picking anything!
By that time I was pretty well reduced
To a philosophy of hang-and-let-hang.
"Now you know how it feels," my brother said,
"To be a bunch of fox-grapes, as they call them,
That when it thinks it has escaped the fox
By growing where it shouldn't-on a birch,
Where a fox wouldn't think to look for it-
And if he looked and found it, couldn't reach it-
Just then come you and I to gather it.
Only you have the advantage of the grapes
In one way: you have one more stem to cling by,
And promise more resistance to the picker."

One by one I lost off my hat and shoes,
And still I clung. I let my head fall back,
And shut my eyes against the sun, my ears
Against my brother's nonsense; "Drop," he said,
"I'll catch you in my arms. It isn't far."
(Stated in lengths of him it might not be.)
"Drop or I'll shake the tree and shake you down."
Grim silence on my part as I sank lower,
My small wrists stretching till they showed the banjo strings.
"Why, if she isn't serious about it!
Hold tight awhile till I think what to do.
I'll bend the tree down and let you down by it."
I don't know much about the letting down;
But once I felt ground with my stocking feet
And the world came revolving back to me,
I know I looked long at my curled-up fingers,
Before I straightened them and brushed the bark off.
My brother said: "Don't you weigh anything?
Try to weigh something next time, so you won't
Be run off with by birch trees into space."

It wasn't my not weighing anything
So much as my not knowing anything-
My brother had been nearer right before.
I had not taken the first step in knowledge;
I had not learned to let go with the hands,
As still I have not learned to with the heart,
And have no wish to with the heart-nor need,
That I can see. The mind-is not the heart.
I may yet live, as I know others live,
To wish in vain to let go with the mind-
Of cares, at night, to sleep; but nothing tells me
That I need learn to let go with the heart.