Which Jesus Do I Serve?

This past Sunday, I preached on the text from Luke 12:49-56. In my ten years of ministry, I have never before preached on that passage, mainly because I have never really liked what Jesus was saying in those verses: "I have come to bring fire on the earth… do you think I came to bring peace on earth? No, I tell you, but division… They will be divided, father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law." Who wants to hear Jesus talking about that? Besides not preaching on this passage during the past ten years, I don’t ever remember hearing a sermon on it either. If I have heard a sermon preached on it, the sermon must have been very forgettable. What was I going to do?
Well long story short; after some mental discussion on the passage, I decided to go with the above text. After doing all of my sermon prep work, I struggled with how to start the sermon and then where to go with it. The next day, I was talking to one of my seminary friends who was dealing with a different problem. She wanted to preach to her congregation on the passage from Luke as a way of addressing a challenge within the church she was serving. While we were talking, she made me realize how often we filter out the verses from the Bible which make us uncomfortable and leave in those we like to hear. She now gave me the direction I wanted to go in with my sermon (Thanks Sarah B.)
I preached my sermon to my congregation as a warning to all about the danger of how easy it was to filter out some of the difficult sayings of the Bible, especially those where Jesus preaches to us about things that are considered obsolete in the world’s terms. Sure, we love to hear Jesus say that he is the light of the world (John 8:12), but this is the same Jesus who told us that we are to “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. If someone strikes you on one cheek, turn to him the other also.” (Luke 6:27-29a)
I closed my sermon by asking my congregation (and myself) which Jesus were we going to serve: the Jesus we like from passages like John 8:12 or the Jesus of Luke 12:49-56. I then reminded us that they were both the same Jesus and for us to grow in our walks with Christ and in our service to the kingdom we needed to be followers of Jesus instead of admirers of Jesus. Because when we are faithful to following Christ, we are not only drawn closer to God, but we are also drawn closer to our neighbor—to those in our lives and even strangers. We see them just as God does—as human beings just like us, created in the image of God. Human beings just like us who are a sinners who need to know and be reminded how much God loves them. Human beings just like us who need to know and be reminded that God loves them so much that God sent his one and only Son, Jesus, to die on the cross for them and for me. Yeah, that’s the Jesus I want to serve and preach on no matter what he may be saying to me and the congregations I am blessed to serve.