Jesus said, "Do you think I have come to give peace on earth? No, I tell you, but rather division." That saying of Jesus has always struck me as one of the most disturbingly honest things Jesus ever said. There's a legend, which may actually be true because it sounds real, that when Abraham Lincoln was first introduced to Harriet Beecher Stowe, who wrote Uncle Tom's Cabin, he said, "So this is the little lady who started the Civil War." However true that incident may be, she wrote not to bring peace, but division, and people had to decide where they stood.

There was a knight of Bethlehem
Whose wealth was tears and sorrows
His men at arms were little lambs
His trumpeters were sparrows

His castle was a wooden cross
On which he hung so high
His helmet was a crown of thorns
Whose crest did touch the sky.

Sometimes I think our reluctance to share our faith is not so much our lack of knowledge and experience in sharing it, but rather that gut feeling, we know...we know how controversial Jesus is. To say his name is to offend. My friends, Jesus knows that. He did not come to bring peace but a sword.