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Avatar: The Last Airbender deals with a great conflict in the world of the show: the Fire Nation vs. everyone else. This is the result of the Fire Nation’s campaign to take over everything and everyone.
There’s also conflict within the Fire Nation itself, specifically within the royal family. For most of the series, Zuko, the crown prince, has tried to capture the Avatar, Aang, on his father’s orders. In fact, his father, the emperor, has said Zuko cannot return until he has done so.
Yet throughout the series, Zuko comes to see that the ways of his father, of his nation even, are wrong. They have instilled fear throughout the world instead of bringing everyone together in peace. Zuko now realizes that he shouldn’t be fighting Aang, but instead should be working with him. At the first opportunity, he tells his father this as he cuts ties with his family and works to try and restore goodness to his world.
Sometimes conflict is necessary in order to bring about Good. Today in the Gospel, Jesus gets at this truth by saying: “Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division! From now on five in one household will be divided, three against two and two against three; they will be divided: 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 mother-in-law.”
Jesus says this for the same reason Zuko leaves his family. Sometimes those we love, even those we are united to, are wrong. Sometimes they get in the way of our being able to serve God.
We do not desire division for division’s sake. That’s not what Jesus is calling on us to do. Jesus is calling on us to be firm and certain where our loyalties lie. Do they lie with our Lord, or do they belong somewhere else?
The truth is our loyalty belongs with God first, over every single other thing or person in our life. After that, we are called to do God’s work in the world. That is what we are reminded of every single Sunday in the Rite I service. We remind ourselves that we are called to “Love God with all our hearts, with all our souls, and with all our minds.” After that, we are called to “Love our neighbors as ourselves.” This is no mere quote that can be lifted out of context, but on these words, as Jesus reminds us, “hang all the Law and the Prophets.”
We hope that our families and loved ones will help us with that service, but if they cannot, we are called to follow our Lord, even if we must leave them behind. We hope that our communities and nations will support us in our work to love our neighbor, but when they do not, as we have seen recently with Pottstown’s efforts to censor churches in their area from feeding the hungry, we cry out against them, as our Diocese has and as you have heard me do in our Wednesday services. We hope one day the world will come together to love and serve the Lord with us, but until that day, we must continue to serve Christ Jesus and no other.
We have many different groups we belong to and people who we love and feel loyal to. None of those allegiances matter except for our fidelity to our Lord Jesus Christ. That is what Jesus reminds us of today in the Gospel according to Luke. We hope we can work together in service to our Lord with others, but when we can’t, we go the way of Jesus and not in any other path.
My hope is you will never have to experience this kind of division in your life. Yet if you do, my hope is that you will make the correct choice. My hope is that you will choose Jesus.