Preacher: Dana Cassell

Scripture: Luke 12:49-56

Since I left ministry, I have had an unquenchable thirst for DRAMA. When you’re a pastor, or at least when I was a pastor, people’s dramas – large and small – land in your lap day in and day out. I cannot resist the allure of a juicy storyline, even as I practice care and compassion and active listening and prayerful support to the people who are telling me the stories swirling around them. I was, I think, pretty good at being a supportive, caring spiritual leader. I genuinely cared for people and what was happening in their lives.

But also, I didn’t realize until I left that work, how much I LOVED getting to be in on the unfolding dramas of peoples’ lives. For the last couple of years, I’ve been on the lookout for drama anywhere I can find it.

Last week, I got my drama fix from the tiny world of Roanoke Instagram influencers. Roanoke is a pretty small place, and when I decided to move back last year, I started following Instagram accounts to learn about good restaurants and great hiking trails. I followed restaurants, breweries and bookstores, and I also followed a couple of people who seemed like they were filling a gap in the online influencer space for this part of SW VA.

One of those accounts, called Hello Roanoke, is run by a young couple who moved to the area from North Carolina and started documenting their adventures around town. Sometime last year, they made the decision to quit their day jobs and make this influencer account their main source of income. That meant, of course, charging businesses for airtime and expanding the base of restaurants, tourism boards and local businesses that they worked with. The quality of their content definitely diminished.

And people started talking about them, too. Word on the street was that they were awful tippers and not very friendly. They were hard to communicate with, and folks started questioning their partnership choices. In particular, Hello Roanoke had done work to advertise several businesses whose owners were both supportive of and present at the insurrection in DC on January 6 of 2021. But: they had also been the only game in town for a couple of years. 

Last week, a new account popped up called HI Roanoke. They came out of the gate swinging, calling out the Hello Roanoke people for charging exorbitant fees for their services, not tipping, and partnering with businesses whose politics and practices were, for lack of a better word, hateful. Hi Roanoke was here, they said, to give honest, free reviews of all kinds of places in Roanoke – politics included. They called out businesses who supported MAGA, businesses who had relationships with ethically questionable local personalities and heavily complicated the influencer game in town. My drama-hungry self was immediately sucked into the conflict.

The drama is still going on – one business in particular that the HI Roanoke people called out for platforming problematic people marshalled their supporters and got the Hi Roanoke account suspended for a while because of what they called “bullying.” The HI Roanoke people are back, more energized than ever.

And, look: I will be the first to admit that this is mostly a waste of my time, to pay attention to this low-level, local drama. The dynamics of it all are so small-town predictable that I could have written the plot before it began. But something the HI Roanoke people shared got me thinking.

In explaining why they thought it was important to know the politics of the businesses we’re patronizing, why they were naming the fact that one local restaurant owners were present in the Jan 6 resurrection and why they thought it was a big deal for people to know that, the creators behind Hi Roanoke said something to the effect of “we are living in a time when being blissfully ignorant of others’ politics just isn’t an option. It’s not innocuous for the people you partner with and profit from to be actively supporting homophobia, Christian nationalism, political violence and disappearing neighbors off the street. We live in a time where that stuff matters, and not only do you need to be aware of it, you have to choose whether or not you’re going to support it.”

You have to choose. And you have to be aware of what’s happening, able to, as Jesus said in this morning’s gospel passage, “interpret the time.”

Here in Luke 12, we get Jesus at his most salty. “I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled,” he says, telling everyone listening that he came not to bring peace to the earth, but rather division; that from now on, households will be divided because of him. 

And then he goes on, criticizing his disciples and the gathered crowds for not paying enough attention to what’s happening in the world around them:

‘When you see a cloud rising in the west, you immediately say, “It is going to rain”; and so it happens. ⁵⁵And when you see the south wind blowing, you say, “There will be scorching heat”; and it happens. ⁵⁶You hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky, but why do you not know how to interpret the present time?

Jesus is frustrated with the people who can’t see that the world has come to an inflection point, that he is so outraged, grieved and upset with the gruesome structures of oppression that humans have set up for themselves that he wants to burn it all down. This Jesus is not a builder of bridges; he’s a lighter of fires.

In scripture, fire is kind of ambiguous. It is both destructive and generative. Moses saw the burning bush and was led to turn aside and listen to God’s plan for him. God rained down fire on Sodom and Gomorrah as punishment for their violence and lack of hospitality. We know these double sides of fire, too: wildfires rage and destroy, but in nature those fires also clear the land and prepare for new life.

Like the writer of Revelation, Jesus in this passage is upset that his followers are choosing a lukewarm existence. Can’t you see what’s happening, he asks? Aren’t you seeing how bad things have gotten around here? I’m ready to burn this entire creation to the ground! Do you not understand that desire? Maybe you should be paying closer attention.

This is not the Jesus we learn much about in Sunday School. The Jesus I learned about was all for conflict resolution, building bridges, bringing as many people along with us as we could. The Jesus the church taught me to follow valued “unity” above all else which, in their definition, really meant “uniformity” and “toeing the company line.” This Jesus, the one we find right here in Luke’s gospel, is practically begging us to make some trouble, speak up, complicate the status quo, call some people out, enter into conflict with the expectation that it will yield generative results, go against the grain, refuse to sit silently or complicitly, start a revolution.

This Jesus wants to burn it all down. He recognizes that the world has come to an inflection point.

Grace Lee Boggs was an American social activist and philosopher who lived most of her life in Detroit, Michigan. Her life is fascinating – a Chinese American woman who got a PhD in philosophy in 1940, married a Black man from Alabama and spent six decades working in movement spaces as an organizer and philosopher. She died in 2015 at the age of 100. People who sat at Grace’s feet and learned from her knew that one of her most-repeated maxims was that in order to act in ways that have real impact, we need to know “what time it is on the clock of the world.”

Grace and her husband Jimmy visualized 3,000 years of human history on a 12 hour clock where every minute represents 50 years. Building on this model of time, they theorized that revolution as the primary driver of social change is only 5 minutes old. They advocated for “visionary organizing” rooted in re-imagining not only structures and institutions, but also ourselves and our relationships. 

The Boggs’ work contrasts “rebellion,” which they see as oppressed people refusing the conditions imposed on them but expecting the people in power to change the way things are with “revolution,” which creates new systems and structures that are more conducive to human development. They believed that in order to enter into revolution and bring new worlds into being, we need to know our history, know what time it is on the clock of the world, pay attention to what’s shifting under our feet in the context of the long span of human existence.

I think Grace Lee Boggs and Jesus are in agreement: we could be doing a much better job at paying attention to what time it is on the clock of the world, where we stand in the long arc of human history, putting our present moment into the context of how humans have lived on this earth for the last 3,000 years. Jesus is talking about burning things down; Boggs is talking about building new societies. Both are asking us to consider that right now, our task is something Big, with a capital B. Both are trying to convince us that we have something important to do in the world.

Maybe part of our work is getting rid of the old, stale, oppressive structures that are no longer serving anyone. Maybe part of our work is working in the revolution to build up new systems that serve everyone. Whatever we’re being called to, I think the people at Hi Roanoke get it: we have to choose. Will we stand idly by, our lukewarm consent making Jesus see red? Or will we stand up, take action and risk the divisions and conflict that will inevitably come our way because of it?

I was reminded by this poem from Mary Oliver about the power of fire, about what invitations like these do to us. It’s called “What I Have Learned So Far”:

Meditation is old and honorable, so why should I

not sit, every morning of my life, on the hillside,

looking into the shining world? Because, properly

attended to, delight, as well as havoc, is suggestion.

Can one be passionate about the just, the

ideal, the sublime, and the holy, and yet commit

to no labor in its cause? I don’t think so.

All summations have a beginning, all effect has a

story, all kindness begins with the sown seed.

Thought buds toward radiance. The gospel of

light is the crossroads of —indolence, or action.

Be ignited, or be gone.