What’s the deal with the weather forecast? That’s what I asked the late Dave Lane one day years ago. Dave was the general manager of WFAA, Channel 8 TV, here in Dallas and my friend here at Wilshire. Channel 8 had just invested millions in new Doppler radar technology, color graphics doohickeys and what- not for what always seemed to me like a good five minutes of wasted time in the nightly news while I was waiting for the sports report. Now, I’m a city kid, always have been. So to me, the difference between rain and shine matters little. If the weather changes, you change with it. No big deal. But it’s apparently a big deal to a lot of people. I suggested to Dave that all we needed for the weather report was a little information on the crawler at the bottom of the screen. Give me the big news stories of the day, the ballgame scores, and call it a show.

Dave asked me who I thought was the most trusted man on local television. I never thought of it. Troy Dungan, he said. People tuned in to watch Troy Dungan, now retired, more than any other news personality. Go figure. A weathercaster.

Now, I know Troy and like him a lot. He’s one of the really good guys in Dallas. Toys for Tots at Christmas time, and all that. But here’s the thing: Troy, like every weather forecaster, got it wrong a lot of the time. He would tell you what to expect, and sometimes it would be that way, but, this being Texas, don’t you know?! you couldn’t count on it from minute to minute. And yet we so wanted to trust someone to give us a trustworthy word about the future that we tuned in every night.

Well, Jesus tells us we’re all a bunch of hypocrites acting like we care about the future because we can read the clouds and the wind and predict the weather, but at the same time on the biggest questions of life we can’t interpret the signs of the times. What’s coming? How should we prepare for it? What sort of changes do we need to make in our lives to be ready to weather the times? What we hear from Jesus is that it’s going to take more than an umbrella. We’re going to have to prepare ourselves for a complete shift in the way we organize our lives and structure our relationships.

Here’s Jesus’ spiritual weather forecast: I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled. I have a baptism with which to be baptized, and what stress I am under until it is completed. Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division.

Fire, flood, and fighting? Sweet Jesus, what’s up with that? What about that peace on earth, good will toward men the angels sang about at your birth? Didn’t the shepherds give you the word?

Before Jesus can bring us peac,e he has to disturb the peace. Before the calm, a storm. That’s not news. Sure, the shepherds heard the angels sing about peace on earth, but the old priest, Simeon, also sang about how the infant Jesus would grow up to be responsible for the falling and rising of many in Israel—falling before rising. He said that Jesus would be a sign who would be opposed. He would reveal the inner thoughts of people. Simeon then told Jesus’ mother, Mary, that a sword would pierce her own heart also. In other words, Jesus brings division before unity. He cuts into us in order to heal us—the way a surgeon does.

Things that have been squeezing the life out of us without our even knowing it have to be judged and destroyed in order to give way to the peace Jesus is bringing. What we have here, in other words, is not the last word on the weather; it’s the next to last—not the ultimate reality but rather the penultimate that gets us ready for the ultimate.

Jesus isn’t bringing bad news so much as honest news. He isn’t saying this is his goal, to be a hellfire-and-damnation preacher who drives a wedge between family members. He is saying that God is bringing a new front into our world, changing the pattern of how the world is organized. That will be good for all who prepare for it and embrace it. But the transition time must be weathered.

The English mystery writer, Dorothy Sayles, addressed this realistic portrait of Jesus that tends to shock us. The people who hanged Christ never … accused him of being a bore—on the contrary, they thought him too dynamic to be safe. It has been left to later generations … to efficiently pare the claws of the Lion of Judah, to certify him “meek and mild” and recommend him as a fitting household pet for pale curates and pious old ladies. To those who knew him, however, he in no way suggests a milk-and-water person; they objected to him as a dangerous firebrand!

She’s right, you know. I remember one of my theology professors asking me a provocative question in my doctoral oral exams: Why couldn’t Jesus have saved us by living a good life and dying in his sleep? I’m not sure quite what I answered. I probably mumbled something about the cross and fumbled the answer on the one-yard line. But on reflection, the answer seems to be found in our text today. Jesus’ word of good news that is coming is a harsh judgment on the world that is passing away. This world has to die in order for the new world to be born. And in a way that the poet Dylan Thomas would approve of, that world rages against the fading light and doesn’t go gentle into that good night. It goes kicking and screaming. The cross vividly pictures this sense of the world torn asunder. And what we see on the cross is the presence of God with us, enduring it all for us in order to make of that cross a bridge that allows us to cross safely to the other side.

But isn’t it true about all real change that we feel the crisis and division more than the peace and harmony? Patrick Caddell and Douglas Shoen, two longtime Democrats from the Carter and Clinton administrations, wrote a searing editorial in the Wall Street Journal this week calling President Obama a great divider. The great unifier he talked about being on the campaign trail has disappeared, and they claim he is a divisive president. This kind of critique is nothing new for a president; the same was said about President George W. Bush. As governor of Texas, he worked in bipartisan ways that many cheered. But after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, people vilified him for being more a divider than uniter, more a warmonger than a peacemaker. Here’s the thing: both presidents have had to deal with the extreme stress of a world that seems to be breaking apart. And each, with his own vision, perhaps, has sought to go to the roots of things in order to shore up the foundations and make us more secure, even if in the short term it made us more anxious. It’s easy to be a uniter when there it feels as if there is little at stake. But the greater the stress, the more we feel the division.

When Air Force test pilot Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier in his X-1 plane on October 14, 1947, he faced a decision. Many before him had flown close to the limit. The closer they got, the scarier it got. As they would approach the speed of the barrier, the plane would shake more violently, and they would fear it breaking up. In each case they pulled back to restore the peace. Yeager wondered what would happen on the other side. What if, instead of being destroyed, it was calm on the other side? When the moment of truth arrived, he pushed through it and found … smooth sailing.

When Jesus talks about being a divider and a firebrand, he means it this way. He wants us to make a decision for the kind of peace that lasts. He knows that all the ways we organize our lives without God at the center are doomed to fail, breaking us apart. Only when we put things in order with God will we be able to hold together through all the crises of life that will come.

Many of you have struggled financially during these past few years. We have all been affected by an economy that was clearly overheated by unsound fundamentals. We have wanted something for nothing. We have tried to build houses on shifting sand instead of solid rock. And we have all paid a price. We’re not finished, most sober analysts tell us. And we don’t seem to learn. We still want a fast recovery. We are willing to pass on debt to our children and grandchildren instead of stepping up ourselves and getting our houses in order. Democrats and Republicans tell their core constituents what they want to hear. They call for sacrifice only from those who don’t vote for them. They know we don’t really want sacrifice, and they want what we want because what they most want is for us to want them.

If you can read the signs of the clouds rising in the west, as Jesus says, you know it’s going to storm again soon. Jesus wants us to do more than adjust ourselves to economic crisis so that we can weather the financial times that are coming. He wants us to prepare ourselves spiritually so that we can weather the biggest changes that are coming.

The Gospel of Luke was written after the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of temple by the Roman Emperor Titus in the year AD 70. The people of Luke’s day thought it was the end of the world. It turned out to be the end of the world as they knew it, but not the end of the world. Every time a civilization begins to break down, people think of it as the end of the world. When the emperor Julian saw the rise of Christianity, he bemoaned the loss of the pagan world that had produced such magnificent achievements in the arts and philosophy and government. But it wasn’t the end of the world; it was only the end of the world as he knew it. And today, we are seeing the loss of a Christianity-dominated culture. Everywhere you turn you hear the Christians grieving the demise of our position. Whether it’s arguments over prayer in the schools or the posting of Ten Commandments or the ruling on gay marriage or the building of a mosque at Ground Zero in New York or the disappearance of young adults in the pews of our churches, you would think it’s the end of the world. But it’s not the end of the world; it’s only the end of the world as we know it. Christianity will not endure, but Christ will.

Jesus is telling us is that all these things are necessary preludes to the peace that is to come. They are purgings by fire. Fire scares us, but it can burn away all that wants to suffocate the fresh air of the Spirit.

Barry and Terry Buchanan came back from a trip to Yellowstone some years ago telling me about the forest fire there that claimed so much of the land. What surprised them about the horrible-looking burned-out forest was the reaction of the park rangers. They said that fire is nature’s way of renewing itself. The fire burns away all that wants to choke off the good growth of the forest. And out of the ashes, the seeds of new trees are planted, the sun can shine on them, and new life can emerge.

I was talking this week to a man from California who feels as if his life is breaking apart. His second marriage is on the rocks, he realizes that he has sought meaning in his work that isn’t satisfying any longer, and he just feels like something is missing. I was able to tell him that it’s a good thing that things are falling apart on him, since they have brought him to a point of crisis that has his attention. Now he has to make a spiritual decision about where to place his trust. Only Christ survived the ultimate crisis of the grave, and only he can carry us through the fiery ordeals we will face in life.

What about you? Are you prepared spiritually to weather the times ahead? Jesus calls you to put your trust in him.