"Division Is Not Final" | Vijendran Sathyaraj | Sunday, August 17, 2025

Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division. These are surprising words from Jesus predicting conflict between parents and children, including in-laws. But Jesus was introduced in the story of his birth as the Prince of Peace, a title also used by the emperor Augustus. So what did Jesus mean? And why did he leave out married couples?

Probably because they are capable of generating their own division.

The history of conflict and division within families takes us back to the very beginning of humanity, as described in Genesis in its prehistory before the call of Abraham. The writers of this history of Israel must have struggled to understand the sad but universal spectacle of divided families, especially brother against brother in a patriarchal society, and they told the story of the first family—Adam and Eve and their sons Cain and Abel. In this story, grievous and tragic, we see the first use of the word sin in the Hebrew Bible in the murder of Abel by his brother Cain. And in a literal translation from the Hebrew, God says to Cain, “If you do not intend good, at the entrance is sin, a crouching demon toward you, his lust, but you can rule over him.”

This is how sin first appears in the Bible: in the context of extreme violence. And this is what sin remains—the violence that takes human life, whether through weaponry or neglect or starvation. Cain must have experienced extreme sibling rivalry and rejection that turned his hatred into murder. The story points to the dynamics of human relationships: jealousy arising from constant comparison, unresolved wounds and grievances, and the lack of mutual approval and appreciation.

Is the story of Cain and Abel an archetypal conflict, a pattern repeated in all societies, part of the invisible but predictable behavior of humans? Representations of this archetype keep appearing in the Bible: Esau and Jacob, Joseph and his brothers, the sons of David, and in the teaching of Jesus, in the parable of the prodigal son—the resentment of the older brother.

In The Lion King, the character Scar shows us the consequences of rivalry and jealousy, the desire for revenge leading to violence, and the skilled manipulation of truth. Scar was to be the heir to the lion's throne, but he is replaced by Simba, his nephew. The screenwriters, who in the process of writing wanted to represent the course of evil, drew on Shakespeare's Hamlet. They researched the character of Claudius and then they also researched Adolf Hitler to fully represent the process of evil. And then the director chose Jeremy Irons, a Shakespearean actor, to portray Scar's evil through his voice acting. Jeremy Irons didn't want to take this role, having just received an Oscar and having never done voice acting, but it turned out to be his most popular role. And we hear the grievance in his voice when he says, “I was first in line until the little hairball was born.”

And thus begins division and conflict between the two brothers, Mufasa and Scar. And we see in Scar the progression from disappointment to anger to revenge and a plot and then the execution of his evil plan.

Conflict on a larger scale is seen in the history of Israel. After the creation of the first monarchy under Saul came division after Solomon, and then following the prophecies of Hosea, the annihilation of the northern kingdom. And in today's reading, Jeremiah's prophecy about the remnant of Israel, the southern kingdom of Judah, whose capital was Jerusalem. Jerusalem was going to be destroyed. What had they done? Well, the usual—idolatry, adopting other deities from their neighbors, Egypt, Assyria, and Babylon, and extreme corruption.

Jeremiah condemned the multiple kings of Judah, its priests, and its false prophets for their injustice, exploitation of the poor, and assurances of peace that were false. He accused them of treating the temple as something magical, that merely performing ritual would ensure God's protection and presence and approval. Jeremiah's warnings were not heeded, and destruction followed.

If we were to use the modern names for these places, it would be that Israel was invaded by Iraq, its temple destroyed, all able-bodied people carried away to do forced labor. And these captives were held hostage for 50 years until Iraq was destroyed by Iran, and the leader of Iran set these prisoners free to go back and rebuild the temple. This was the temple that Jesus knew, and this was the history that Jesus knew. But Jesus is warning people of the new destruction that is going to take place with the rebuilt temple being destroyed again.

Luke, writing about 40 or 50 years after the time of Jesus, having seen the second temple destroyed, addresses the problem of what the followers of Jesus—the Jews, the Gentiles, and other people—were trying to find out in this time of extreme chaos. Who were they? Whom shall they follow?

Luke reminds us that tension is inevitable. When God's truth is revealed, pointing out injustice and calling for transformation in God's love invariably brings conflict. The clash between those who walk in alignment with God's purposes and those whose hearts resist may seem inevitable, but that is not the end of the story.

Following Jesus does bring division with those who oppose the command to walk in love. However, division is not a final condition. It instead provides the great opportunity to love one's enemies, to do good, to become our sister or brother's keeper, and to love our neighbor as much as we love ourselves.

And Jesus goes on to say later in Luke, “The greatest among you should be like the youngest, and the one who rules like the one who serves.”

Servant leaders are hardly ever seen today in any of our institutions. We don't appear to have them. We are accustomed to—and we may even admire—egocentric and authoritarian leaders because they seem strong. So what does Jesus teach us to do? To pray. To pray for those who plot harm, division, and violence. To allow God's love to radiate from within our being so that those who feel hate may feel love and be transformed. And imperceptibly, very gradually, we may find that we change too—perhaps even more than the haters we are praying for.

We move step by step, gradually but surely across a bridge from being enraged at the injustice around us to the other side of peace, trust, love, and grace and gratitude. God's love, God's peace, the experience of being one body in Christ enables us to pray for those who are against us. In fact, this step-by-step process is a daily spiritual improvisation, taking us from one thing to something dramatically different.

The Roman Emperor Augustus, when called the Prince of Peace, believed, as many still do, that peace can only come from violence—from crushing enemies in military defeat. When every enemy combatant is killed, they think peace will be achieved.

But Jesus promises the lasting peace that in the kingdom of God is characterized by mercy and by justice. One kind of peace is external. The other is internal and long-lasting.

Working towards peace with our families and our neighbors, step by step, is a real possibility. In a symbolic manner, this process is illustrated for us each week by our extraordinary organists. They create a musical template that can inspire us to be transformed step by step, day by day, through prayer and through listening to the Holy Spirit. None of what they do in improvisation is written down.

And please listen today to both our soloist Liam and our organ scholar James in the offertory solo that magnificently captures Jeremiah's prophetic anger and the call for justice: “Is not my word like a fire, says the Lord, and like a hammer that breaketh a rock in pieces?”

But then at the end of the solo, listen to James improvising note by note so that the Mendelssohn morphs into the presentation hymn composed by Reginald Heber, bishop of Kolkata, who while traveling in South India in 1826, died at the early age of 42:

Bread of the world in mercy broken.

Wine of the soul in mercy shed.

By whom the words of life were spoken,

And in whose death our sins are dead.

Look on the heart by sorrow broken.

Look on the tears by sinners shed.

And be thy feast to us, the token

That by thy grace our souls are fed.

Amen.