A Heart Divided Cannot Stand

Read Luke 2:22-40

Christmas brings with it a message of hope.  But it is only because there is a darkness that there can be any hope at all.  

The baby’s father and mother are stunned at the things being said about Jesus.  Simeon blesses them but cautions Mary: 

“Behold, he’ll be for a falling and rising for many in Israel, and for a sign spoken against – and a sword shall go through your own soul – in order that the thoughts of people’s hearts might be disclosed.” 

A Divided World 
As 2017 closes, social divisions confront us in new, troubling, even dangerous ways.  A generation ago, Francis A. Schaeffer challenged Christians' response in the face of social divisions.  He confronted the Christian establishment: 

 “[Leaders of the anarchist movement in Amsterdam] call their public demonstrations "Happenings"... Dare we laugh at such things?  Dare we feel superior when we view their tortured expressions in their art?  Christians should stop laughing and take such men seriously.  [Only t]hen we shall have the right to speak again to our generation.  These men are dying while they live, yet where is our compassion for them?  There is nothing more ugly than an orthodoxy without understanding or without compassion.”

The God Who is There (1968)

Consider the power of respect and compassion toward those who appear to be so threatening to you.  We follow Christ, and flatter ourselves that we represent him in this world. So who is the one in our worlds God is calling us to respect, not with a patronizing, pious, holier-than-thou compassion, but a compassion borne out of shared awareness of our common humanity?

The imago Dei – the image of God in all of us: that is the point of contact.  We're cut from the same cloth.  

Here, maybe for the first time, Mary understands that this child will bring her heartache and pain.  Mary will see her son rejected by a divided Israel.  

In their proud moment, when folks then, as now, dedicated their babies to God, Simeon speaks stark words of a grim reality. He speaks of divisions among people -- those who rise and those who fall.  He makes clear the impossibility of neutrality with Jesus, as well as his demand (or is it an invitation?) for total surrender. 

Jesus isn’t an app we use, or a 911 operator we only call in emergencies.  He will not be our accessory. 

A Divided Heart 
It comes full circle to our own hearts, "in order that the thoughts of people’s hearts might be disclosed.”  The division we see without is just an extension of the division within.  

We all have that wrestling.  We struggle with being single-minded and we wrestle with conflicting desires.  Our hearts find peace when they rest in God. 

Reject him or find life in him, but one thing we cannot do is dismiss Jesus.  There is one God, and we can know him.  The death of His son is startling proof that we can only come to God on God’s terms.  Yet the reward is greater still.  

The counter-intuitive kingdom says lose your life in order to find it: 

"Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it."

Die in order to live:  

"Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit."

There is no more emancipating answer than the one to this question.....in what ways is my own heart divided?  In what ways am I holding back?

Not a bad question to start the year with.