A few years ago, the city of Swansea in Wales put up a new road sign. Now, the Welsh government wants to promote the Welsh language, so that it survives, and so things like road signs are required to be bilingual. But only about a quarter of the population actually speaks Welsh. And so it’s typical for a local government to have an in-house translator; most people working in the road-sign department don’t actually speak both languages, so they send the text off to be translated.

Anyway, the city needed to put up a sign that read, “No entry for heavy goods vehicles. Residential site only.” So, the road-sign office sent an email off to the translation office and asked for a Welsh translation. And an email came right with two sentences of Welsh. So they printed the sign with the English on top and the Welsh on the bottom, and installed it on the road.

Later that week, photos started appearing on social media with laughing emojis.

Before Jesus was born, it was prophesied that he would come “to shine on those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death, and to guide our feet into the way of peace.” (Luke 1:79) At his birth, the angels sang, “Glory to God in the highest, and peace to his people on earth.” (Luke 2:14) During his ministry, Jesus ended more than one healing miracle with the words, “Your faith has saved you; go in peace.” (Luke 7:50; 8:48) And he told his disciples that when they came to a new house on their journeys to spread the good news, to offer the greeting, “Peace be to this house!” (Luke 10:5)

So you could be excused for guessing the wrong answer to Jesus’ rhetorical question today: “Do you think I have come to bring peace to the earth?” Jesus asks his disciples. (Luke 12:50) Based on the evidence so far, that’s exactly what you’d think! And just as the disciples were looking for peace two thousand years ago, we still yearn for it and pray for it now, in tumultuous times of our own.

But “No, I tell you!” Jesus says. I have come to bring not peace, “but rather division!” (12:51) And how about that. Division! Thanks, Jesus. Division is just what we need.

Abraham isn’t an example of faith because he believes in a God or gods. It’s not because he’s committed himself deeply to a particular set of doctrines. It’s not because he has regular experiences of the Divine. The faith for which Abraham is famous is the unreasonable but undeniable sense that God’s promise is true, even though its contents are unbelievable, and its timing is unreliable, and there’s no evidence at all that it’s ever going to happen.

We live in a world in which people are simultaneously hungry for a sense of meaning and purpose—and increasingly detached from traditional religion. This disconnect is so clear that you can actually measure it in survey data. Pew Research, for example, releases a regular Religious Landscape Survey. And in 2024, their data for Massachusetts show the following: 72% of Massachusetts residents believe in a God or universal spirit, but only 20% attend a religious service more than once or twice a year, and 63% attend seldom or never. 82% believe that human beings have an immaterial soul or spirit, but only 46% feel a sense of spiritual peace and well-being once a month or more. 71% believe that there is something spiritual beyond the natural world, even if we cannot see it; but only 48% report ever feeling the presence of something from beyond this natural world. And of course my favorite: 45% believe the Bible is extremely, very, or somewhat important; but only 26% report that they ever read it.

Those of us who are deeply dedicated to the life of the church tend to fixate on the statistical decline of church attendance over the last fifty years or so. We often forget about the enduring spiritual curiosity and hunger all around us, and the reality that as traditional religion has waned, people have experienced the same level of spiritual hunger with fewer ways to experience and make sense of spiritual life. As Jesus puts it: the harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few.

Jesus’ words this morning come at an urgent turning-point in the story of his life. The time has come for him to be “taken up” (Luke 9:51), and this phrase contains a multitude of meanings. He will be raised up on the Cross to die, and he will be raised up to new life from the grave, and he will be taken up from earth to return to heaven. And he knows where he has to go for all these things to take places. They’re going to happen in the Holy City, the place where God’s Temple is found, and so he sets his face to go to Jerusalem. (9:51)

Jesus grew up in the Jewish province of Galilee, to the north. And he’s spent the last year, traveling around Galilee and the neighboring Gentile lands, preaching and teaching and performing miracles, gathering a group of students and disciples who follow him around, trying to learn about the coming kingdom of God. He’s spent the year trying to explain to them what exactly it means that he is the Messiah, and how that will be different from what they thought. And now, together, they’re going to go south to the Holy City, where Jesus will be taken up and the disciples will be sent out to spread the good news of his Resurrection and to live the rest of their lives in accordance with his teachings.

There’s just one problem with the plan: the disciples keep completely missing the point.

This Sunday, we had a guest preacher: our new Regional Canon, the Rev. Marissa Rohrbach. As Regional Canon, Marissa is our primary contact with the Bishop’s Office and the wider life of the Church. In her sermon, she spends a little while introducing herself and her role, before turning to the Gospel reading for the day.

Our world is not at all a perfect place. Our lives are full of broken habits and mistakes. But God’s love has been poured into our hearts, again and again and again. And so we have peace in our hearts, when we know that we are loved by God. We have the strength to carry on, because God has not left us comfortless. We have the power to love, because it is God’s love that works in us and through us in the world.

I’ve always found the titles of the What to Expect When You’re Expecting series to be so funny. Sometimes it feels like the only useful advice I’ve ever gotten in life, let alone as a parent, is to expect the unexpected. It certainly would have been good advice for the disciples, as they gathered on Pentecost Day.