49 “I have come to cast fire upon the earth, and how I wish it were already ablaze! 50 I have a baptism with which to be baptized, and what constraint I am under until it is completed! 51 Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division! 52 From now on five in one household will be divided, three against two and two against three; 53 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.” 54 He also said to the crowds, “When you see a cloud rising in the west, you immediately say, ‘It is going to rain,” and so it happens. 55 And when you see the south wind blowing, you say, ‘There will be scorching heat,’ and it happens. 56 You hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky, but why do you not know how to interpret the present time?
Luke 12:49–56 (NRSVue)
This passage from Luke ends with Jesus reprimanding his audience for “not knowing how to interpret the present time” (Luke 12:56). This reprimand speaks to how discipleship must be embodied wherever Christians may call home. It calls for a two-fold awareness—eucharistic solidarity and joyful hope. The two-fold awareness demands that Christian discipleship be shaped by a prophetic lamentation, shedding light on the social evils playing out both in one’s context and in other contexts as well, for Christians are called to embody community. The two-fold awareness also demands that Christians embrace the content of Christian hope, which is the resiliency of the gift of joy that will transcend all tears and sorrows, just as the resurrection event became the source of Christian joy even in the face of the memory of the traumas of Good Friday.
In fidelity to Jesus’ reprimand, one must ask the following questions: What are the signs of the times in our contemporary contexts to which Christians ought to respond? How can these signs serve as a disruptive moment of awakening to social and religious realities? To address these questions, I offer two concrete examples below that can be the springboard for discipleship in Christ that is grounded in a eucharistic solidarity and the praxis of joyful hope for our times.
First, in the global south, two major moral crises are playing out before our eyes. On January 7, 2025, the United States government declared that the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) was committing acts of genocide in Sudan. Also, over 14.6 million Sudanese have been displaced. Of these, 2.9 million have fled the country and are living as refugees in South Sudan and Chad. Both the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the RSF are using starvation as a weapon against their perceived enemies. The RSF is systematically committing ethnic cleansing against non-Arab population. And it is believed that over 150,000 Sudanese have been killed since 2023. While it is commendable that the U.S. State Department has announced a $30 million aid to support the affected civilians, this is not enough. Not much support has been given to the victims of this war and to actively intervene and bring all parties together to negotiate a peace deal. Also, there seems to be a code of silence defining media coverage of the ongoing genocide.
Similarly, the current genocide being perpetuated against the Palestinian People in Gaza by the State of Israel speaks to a moral lapse in the conscience of the leaders of the world. The refusal to recognize the systematic ethnic cleansing being carried out by the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) by some western powers, especially the United States (which has continuously provided weapons to the IDF that are used to kill children, women, and men in Gaza), points to some moral questions: Why is it difficult to defend the lives of the Sudanese and Palestinians? Why the constant attempt to make excuses for the actions of the IDF when evidence shows that Palestinians in Gaza are being starved to death? Yet, many in the western world, including the United States, say they want their societies to be shaped by “Christian values.” But Christian values call for a prophetic stance against systems and structures that diminish life, wherever that may be playing out in the world.
In Luke 12, Jesus (the source of all that can be labeled Christian values) reminds us that his ministry is a disruptive one, one that is intended to allow for an awakening to justice and hospitality towards all. Jesus was not naïve. He knew that discipleship in fidelity to his mission to humanity will be disruptive of the status quo; a status quo that most often produces insular modes of being in the world and which tends to create unhealthy competitions among societies. But Jesus chose to embrace it all and to invite all who seek to follow him to embrace this courage inherent in discipleship. In response to his mandate, the powerful and wealthy in the western world and in warring nations who embrace Christian values ought to center “eucharistic solidarity” in their efforts to end these senseless genocidal wars currently playing out in Sudan and Gaza. In Christ, all lives matter. And this means that the vulnerable ones of our world must be protected from the powerful and those who seek their harm.
To do this well, M. Shawn Copeland reminds Christians, especially those in the western world, of the need to practice a type of solidarity that is eucharistic. It entails “embodying Christ [as] discipleship, and discipleship [as] embodied praxis. This praxis is the embodied realization of religious, cognitive, and moral conversion” (127). It is eucharistic because it involves sharing of one’s gifts, talents, resources, insights, and voice with those who are less fortunate so that together, all can experience abundant life. This eucharisitc solidarity must lead to a state where “prerogatives rooted in socially constructed disparities are deconstructed” (Copeland, 127–128). In doing this, “eucharistic solidarity orients us to the cross of the lynched Jesus of Nazareth, where we grasp the enormity of suffering, affliction, and oppression as well as apprehend our complicity in the suffering, affliction, and oppression of others” (Copeland, 128). Today, the lynched Jesus of Nazareth is symbolically represented by the starving and dying Sudanese and Palestinian children, women, and men who are caught in the senseless wars being fought in their homelands. Their emaciated bodies and cries due to their sufferings ought to disrupt our comfort and offer us the opportunity to reimagine a more just and inclusive world for all.
At the same time, discipleship is also grounded in an embrace of joyful hope. Joyful hope entails a praxis of solidarity between those who are better placed in society and the victims of social violence. It speaks to the enduring fellowship of life that Jesus’s ministry was all about. Through his ministry, Jesus crafted a sense of solidarity with those at the peripheries of society, while intentionally calling the affluent ones to abandon the structures of oppression they benefit from and to intentionally work at constructing a social world that is saturated with virtues.
The temptation that suffering can evoke in us is to lead us to conclude that our lives no longer have meaning which can lead to a state of hopelessness. To address this temptation, we have to remember that Christian discipleship entails surprises. This is because it offers new pathways for being in the world; ones that delegitimize old patterns of exclusion and exploitation to allow for authentic sharing of resources and caring for each other. For example, the consistency in this approach to discipleship is found in the life and mission of John the Baptist. As the angel who appeared to Zechariah in the sanctuary of the Temple of Jerusalem reminded Zechariah, John the Baptist “will go before him [Jesus Christ] in the spirit and power of Elijah to turn the hearts of fathers toward children and the disobedient to the understanding of the righteous, to prepare a people fit for the Lord” (Luke 1:17). It is a moral duty on the part of Christians to be bearers of hope to all who suffer unjustly and who might be tempted to embrace a state of hopelessness. To be bearers of hope is to be an active agent of social harmony in a world that is plagued by conflicts.
If John the Baptist was the forerunner to Jesus Christ, and his task was to be a prophetic witness to the truth of the Spirit which Christ embodies, one that produces understanding and obedience in all who hear him preach, then Jesus’ words in 12:49–56 must not be understood from a negative perspective. Rather, the disruption and division that Jesus speaks about is intended to upend structures and systems of violence that diminish life in the world. His is a clarion call for justice, empathy, inclusivity, sororal and fraternal love, and collective flourishing of all without discrimination. It is a summon to embrace hope in the face of injustice. On that note, Christian discipleship entails being forerunners for Christ in the world just as John the Baptist was; being bearers of hope to those who are experiencing hopelessness in the here and now; and being willing to embrace joyful hope as a way of responding adequately to the social realities defining one’s life.
For affluent Christians living in the West, eucharistic solidarity entails actively taking actions and promoting social policies that can invalidate the structures diminishing the lives of their neighbors. Eucharistic solidarity also involves being willing to collaboratively reimagine the world to allow for a new way of being that is hospitable, friendly, and altruistic all the way. This is because “eucharistic solidarity teaches us to imagine, to hope for, and to create new possibilities. Because that solidarity enfolds us, rather than dismiss ‘others,’ we act in love; rather than refuse ‘others,’ we respond in acts of self-sacrifice—committing ourselves to the long labor of creation, to the enfleshment of freedom” (Copeland, 128). The new world that ought to be imagined in Sudan and in Gaza, for which affluent Christians in the western world can help advocate, ought to allow for neighborly existence among members of different religious traditions, cultures, genders, and languages.
Finally, the two-fold awareness that the Lukan account reminds Christians to embrace points to a healthy way of being Christian in today’s world. It calls for a disruptive stance and actions in the face of structures and acts of evil that diminish the lives of others. In today’s world, we are all connected. This means that no form of insular existence is acceptable. We ought to look out for each other. Sudan and Gaza need our support to bring an end to the senseless killings and to offer them the necessary economic aid to rebuild their nations so that they can flourish as well.
