"Conflict" is a dirty word in most churches. As Christians, we seek to avoid it at all costs and do so in the name of Christian love. We call it, "seeking the peace, unity and purity" of the church.

And then Jesus comes along and says, "I have not come to bring peace, but a sword (Matthew 10:34)," or as Luke has it, "I came to cast fire upon the earth; and would that it were already kindled!" The words send us scurrying for explanations to reduce their caustic effect.

But who is this whose words intrude into our quiet worship, disturbing our Sabbath rest?

It is Jesus the outlaw! A law breaker! A radical and a revolutionary!

If we take off the rose colored glasses of traditional piety, Jesus stands before us in the gospel narratives as one who, when someone needed to be healed, ignored the Sabbath law banning work, and healed the person. Much to the dismay of the Pharisees, it might be added, those righteous representatives of the moral majority. He blatantly excused the breaking of the Sabbath law again when his freewheeling disciples plucked a few grains of wheat and ate them. The defense offered to the watching Pharisees was not that the disciples were starving to death - an argument which might have pardoned the offense - nor even that they were hungry, a more problematic defense. The law was bypassed, said Jesus, because the Sabbath was made for human beings not the other way around. Laws are relative; which is to say: Their authority is not absolute. They only exist to serve the interests of humanity and must be bypassed if they get in the way.

As a cute little baby, blowing bubbles and nursing at his mother's breast, Jesus made no enemies. But he outgrew his cradle. It was an adult Jesus, who taking responsibility for his actions and his words, fell off the popularity charts. His adoring public responded by demanding his execution. He was seen as a dangerous threat to the social order, a reckless blasphemer of God, and a corrupter of public morals. It is this Jesus who says, "I came to cast fire upon the earth; and would that it were already kindled!"

Jesus didn't get into trouble talking about the birds of the air and the lilies of the field. Indeed, healing the sick and blessing the children touched a warm and responsive cord in the crowds surrounding his ministry. Throngs were attracted by his charisma of love and compassion. But almost as if to correct a growing false impression, Jesus uttered these harsh words, "Do you think that I have come to give peace on earth? No, I tell you, but rather division; for henceforth in one house there will be five divided, three against two; and two against three; father against son, and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law." Matthew even goes so far as to add, "... and a man's foes will be those of his own household ... (Matthew 10:36)."

In light of his obvious concern and compassion we must wonder where Matthew and Luke dug up this quotation. The question has, in fact, led some scholars to conclude that these alien words were put in Jesus' mouth by the gospel writers in order to address the divisions emerging in the early church. But the sword of division about which Jesus spoke is the inevitable consequence of Christ-like love and there is no reason to doubt the authenticity of the teaching.

To love people as Jesus did is to stand for something. To stand for justice is to stand against injustice. To stand for truth is to oppose hypocrisy and falsehood. G. K. Chesterton observed that tolerance is the easy virtue of people who do not believe anything. Some unknown bard has put the observation poetically.

Popularity was his middle name. Its prod was pride, its price was pain. He never learned the word called, "no." They spoke of him as "good old Joe." His life was one long laughing spell,and how he felt you couldn't tell. His favorite words were "yes," and "sure." Yes, good old Joe was Simon Pure. So when he died they wrote these lines, and laid him down midst whispering pines. "Here lies a man - his name was Joe. But what he stood for, we'll never know."

You couldn't have said that about Jesus. You knew where he was coming from. Clearly, "conflict," was not a dirty word in Christ's vocabulary. Yet, one of the more popular fantasies nurtured by a pietistic spirituality is that if folks could only be more loving, the world would be a better place. Peace and harmony would break out. What's more, if we would be more loving everyone would like us. Being a follower of Christ translates into being a nice man or woman. Not only will love iron out the differences between friends and enemies, but indeed, we ought not have any enemies. So the pop theology croons, "What the world needs now is love, sweet love!"

But in Jesus' view of things, love apparently does not mean that we refrain from conflict nor bow to the opposition. Jesus reminded his disciples that if everyone spoke well of them, something was wrong. We cannot pretend as though conflict does not exist. To be a Christian is to love all that Christ loved, and to be an enemy of all that crucified him. To follow him is to make enemies. Jesus did not win a popularity contest. He was awarded a cross and he bids us take up one and follow him.

"If the world hates you," Jesus warned, "know that it has hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love its own; but because you are not of the world, therefore, the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you, 'A servant is not greater than his master.' If they persecuted me, they will persecute you (John 15:18-20)."

Basic to all of Jesus' teaching was the assertion that all of us have worth in God's eyes; more worth than the lilies of the field, or the birds of the air. The poor, the meek, those who mourn; all are to be blessed. Those who are the outcasts of society, the lepers, the insane, the foreigners, those who have been ignored by the mainstream of life are the ones who have worth in God's sight. Jesus came to love in the name of the Holy One and that love has set a sword in our midst.

Jesus, himself, delineates the scope of that love. To love God, he says, is to love our neighbor; who, it must be noted, is not the person living next door but any needy person in the world. That covers a lot of uncomfortable ground. But the New Testament writers are adamant. If we cannot love our neighbor, whom we have seen, we cannot love God, Whom we have not seen. The logic is devastating. John pulls no punches when he says that anyone who claims to love God while hating his brother is a liar (1 John 4:20). Not uninformed, not short-sighted, not ignorant. A bald-faced liar! In most circles, "them's fightin' words."

So, tell me! How do we say to the Bethlehem babe, "Well, concern for the poverty plagued shepherds is a matter of opinion?" How can I say to Emmanuel - God with us, born in a barn and crucified on a cross - that my child's education is more important than that of the kid in the ghetto?

Or, how do you say to the Christ who had nowhere to lay his head that it is more important for you to live in a $100,000 house than it is to provide public housing, and therefore, you will vote against a tax increase because its passage would mean cutting back on your vacation this year. In a world where we, who must diet to reduce our overweight while three-quarters of its population goes to bed hungry at night - how do we say to the Bread of Life, "I can't afford to tithe?"

To take on the name of Christ as a "Christian" is to be radically bonded to those who have been overlooked by the distributors of this world's goods and services; those who were born, or must live in the "barns" of this world. For us who assume that Jesus is the Christ reaching out to those who have to scrape the bottom of the barrel is the ethical imperative. This means doing what Jesus did by becoming involved in the lives of those who are regarded as less than beautiful by the usual standards of society: economic, social and moral.

That point seems dangerously close to being missed by many of us as Christians in this country. Today, multitudes of our people look upon their spiritual journeys as a religious quest in search of personal fulfillment. The rise of the huge array of nondenominational parachurch organizations and Bible study movements that have captured the allegiance of millions, offers a personalized perspective of the Gospel story which panders to this market. The emergence in the late 1960s of the Charismatic Renewal Movement has further emphasized a personal, individualized faith. The religious landscape has been enlarged to include a rapidly growing number of churches that do not identify themselves with any of the historic denominations. All are aggressively seeking converts. Because of thinning numbers in mainline churches and the need for supporters in the newer religious groups, the drive toward self preservation is in the end stronger than the desire for social change. Whether because of fear, or tiredness, or boredom, or change in the national temperament, the causes of the 60s have given way to different priorities in the 80s and 90s. Virtually every public opinion poll comes up with essentially the same results: the concern for social justice and human rights is losing ground in the search for an individualized spirituality and numerical growth.

But numerical growth is our concern. To love as Christ loved, is God's. Jesus' words are a constant reminder to us that the name of the game is setting fire to the old so that the new can emerge. The old wineskins cannot hold the new wine of the Spirit. "Do not think that I have come to bring peace!" The good news of God's love is often bad news for people of privilege and power, because in Jesus, God provides a higher authority than the law of the land or religious practice. The Word enfleshed in Jesus gives all oppressed people permission to live as free men and women. When Jesus says, "Peace, peace, I leave with you. My peace I give to you, but not as the world gives (John 14:27)," he is not talking to tired, hassled executives who deserve a little rest. On the contrary, he is offering himself as that higher authority to those who labor under the burden of social sin; those who are milked by it, drained by it, used by it. Jesus is telling them that he has come to give them the Shalom that the world will not give. Set within the biblical purview of God's concerns, this is a revolutionary invitation to those victimized by society. It is divine permission to lay hold of that Shalom which society denies them. It is an open invitation to take it if the world will not share it.

Jesus represents a long biblical tradition of what, from the perspective of Pilate and Pharaoh, champions of the status quo, must have been considered left wing political and economic views. The Exodus was a political revolution, though that reality may have escaped our notice in the Sunday school version of the tale. It involved the tactics of intimidation and force. Its results were violence and bloodshed. What is disturbingly clear in the biblical account is: not only is God praised by the Hebrew slaves for their deliverance from bondage, but the Holy One is credited with having masterminded the whole plot, including the bloodshed.

Our instinctive inclination is to dismiss such a dreadful bias in the story by claiming, for ourselves, a less bloodthirsty understanding of God; one which pictures God taking little lambs into the Divine bosom and gently leading those who are with young. We, thereby, turn the Lion of Judah into a household pet, tamed and domesticated. Jesus as the messianic King is emasculated as a court eunuch and becomes the private chaplain to tired corporate executives who are exhausted from their efforts to increase profits. "Come to me, all you who~ labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Peace, I leave with you." We have sentimentalized God's love, just as we have so many of the stories surrounding the King.

The birth narratives of Jesus, and the seasonal sentimentality surrounding them, are a case in point. They were never written as Christmas stories to be acted out in Sunday school pageants by people wearing bathrobes. We have trivialized these gospel stories, not to mention those of his life, death and Resurrection. As a result Christmas and Easter have become cultural rituals; times for families to gather, go to church, and celebrate traditions. They have become holidays in our society featuring Santa Claus and Easter bunnies, and offering opportunity for economic gain. But they are almost devoid of any serious reflection about their theological, much less political significance.

Herod, however, did not miss the point! The coming of Christ was a political event with revolutionary implications, and Herod knew it. Matthew's narrative includes the cruel slaying of innocent children (Matthew 2:13-18). And why? Because the power of Herod was threatened. He sensed in this Divine visitation something that would challenge Caesar's law and order, alter the priorities of his people and render relative his authority. Herod was so threatened and enraged that he began a systematic liquidation of all the male children two years of age and under. He was taking no chances.

Today we are surprised by the abrasive words of Jesus reported by Luke, but Luke might well have said, "What did you expect? Chimes?" Luke telegraphs his punch by recording, at the beginning of his Gospel, the psychic foresight of Mary, the mother of Jesus, regarding the ominous implications of her son's Messianic reign.

"He has shown strength with his arm, he has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts, he has put down the mighty from their thrones, and exalted those of low degree; he has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent empty away."(Luke 1:51-53)

That is cause for concern if you happen to be rich, full or mighty. Compared to the standards by which most of the world's population lives, all of us probably fall into one or more of these categories. As I read Mary's prophecy, that causes me a fair amount of anxiety. Her perspective is of those victimized by the privileged brokers of worldly power.

Jesus' words have lit a fire in our midst and something is apt to be incinerated. He was, after all, a subversive and the telling of his story has revolutionary implications for us. We must never forget that the church's scriptural source of wisdom, without hesitation or apology, asserts that a nation which fuels its economy on greed, that is, at the expense of others' basic needs, is not only a nation under God; it is a nation under God's judgment. The sword of divine justice hangs over us. Amidst all of the sloganeering and flag waving it must seriously be questioned by us as Americans - and especially those of us who salute the Christian flag - if we are genuinely concerned about meeting the needs of those for whom Christ gave the last full measure of devotion?