Saint Luke 12:49-56
It is a rare thing when a single sentence has an effect on anything. Most of us say things we do not mean and our friends just brush it off because they understand enough to know that nothing was meant by it.
Sometimes however, a single sentence can have a powerful effect on an entire life.
Such was the case on April 23, 2014. It was not a day that will live in infamy but it is a day that changed the life of one woman.
Peggy Kusinski was a sportscaster for channel 5 and NBCSports Chicago. All who saw her work with the Bulls, Blackhawks, Sox, Cubs and Bears knew that she was very good.
On that fateful day in April she was under a lot of stress.
She was grieving the loss of her sister who had become the matriarch of the family after the death of their mother. She had only taken a week off after her sister’s death before she was back on the Blackhawk beat covering their Stanley Cup playoff series with the Saint Louis Blues.
On that fateful day, April 23, 2014, Patrick Kane scored halfway through the first overtime period, giving the Hawks the victory and tying the series at two games apiece.
In the locker room scrum after the game - where reporters jostle to stick a microphone in the star-of-the-games face to get the perfect quote which is often nothing else than another sports cliche - Kusinski heard herself ask: “Patrick. Was this your first overtime game winner?”
Let me remind you that up until the time of the ill-fated question Patrick Kane already had numerous games winning goals in the regular season and two overtime game winning goals in the play-offs including the one against the Philadelphia Flyers in 2010 that gave the team their first Stanley Cup in 40 years.
Kane was classy with his answer. He “looked up to see who it was, and after a short pause chuckled and offered playfully, ‘I'm going to have to check that. I think I've got a couple.’"
When Kusinski got home that night, she realized that she was being vilified on social media.
Just in the past few weeks she broke her silence to tell Barry Rozner of The Daily Herald “some of the trolls on Twitter were horrible. Hawks fans were the worst. Any time after that -- for years after that -- that I posted anything about the Hawks -- stuff from the locker room -- they would say, 'Did you ask Patrick Kane if he had any game-winners?'”
Then she went on to reflect. Work done well “doesn't matter to the underbelly of society, the part that spends its days and nights searching for someone to ruin on social media, incapable of experiencing happiness or pleasure, living only to destroy someone or something. And civilization dies a little bit every day, a few hundred characters at a time.”1
It is much easier to become divided from each another today than in Jesus day but sill he warns that divisions will come whether we want them to or not.
The divisions Jesus warned about were major ones that split families and divided communities.
Social scientists tell us that as important as families are in our day they were even more important in Jesus’.
A person's place in the family conferred both personal identity and a place in the community. People knew who you [were], because they knew your father and mother. The family also provided a support system in a world without public welfare programs. To divide a family is to leave its members on shaky ground socially and economically. It is hacking at the very roots of the social structure.2
Divisions hack at the very roots of society and our relations with one another. Tweets are so easy yet they can be mean spirited. Tweets can be used to divide one group from another. Words can divide fragile communities when they are not carefully used. They can be used to correct but they also can be corrosive when they are used as threats.
This whole business is so dangerous because we are so easily divided over matters as trivial as a question after a hockey game. Jesus was talking about the divisions that come from following him.
For us that is a “ho hum” matter. Tell somebody you are a Christian or a practicing Jew and quite likely you will get no response. Say you’re some Sikhs, or a Buddhist, or a Baha’i and you might garner some interest but you will also find a disinterested acceptance. But, tell somebody you are a Democrat or a Republican and a war will break out.
The sin of humankind is that we will always be looking for ways that divide ourselves one from another. We’ll always look for the character flaws - real or imagined - in a person or group that will set them apart. We will always find something that will allow us to say, “we’re not like that.”
We may believe that we are more divided than ever before. We may come to believe that the only thing people care about any more is not that their side wins on the basis of ideas but that the other side loses on the basis of personality.
Columnist Jonah Goldberg invites us to take a deep breath.
In 1958, according to the Brookings Institution, 44% of whites said they’d leave if a black family moved in next door. In 1998, only 1% did. In 1990, according to the Pew Research Center, 63% of non-blacks expressed dismay at the prospect of a close relative marrying a black person. By 2016, that number had dropped to 14%. In 1967, only 3% of Americans married outside their race or ethnicity. Today, nearly one-fifth do.3
Pew Research continues this theme reminding us that “in 2004, Americans opposed same-sex marriage by a margin of 60% to 31%.”
And today, support for same-sex marriage remains near its highest point since Pew Research Center began polling on this issue. Based on polling in 2019, a majority of Americans (61%) support same-sex marriage, while 31% oppose it.4
That shows progress but there is still work to do. The problem comes when we try to rush this work along.
We too might long for the fire Jesus promised to bring to come and consume those whose opinions we do not share but that is not how God works. It wasn’t the way God worked for Jesus and it isn’t the way God works for us. God will separate the good from the bad in God’s good time and we can’t rush it, or plan it, or even help it come to pass.
In the meantime all we can do is respond like Peggy Kusinski.
Eventually she quit the daily grind of sports reporting and retreated into a private life. The closest she comes to a microphone now is a pod cast with one of her seventeen-year-old twins. Now, it was reported, “Peggy Kusinski takes deep breaths and long walks, enjoying time with her husband and three children in the Western suburbs.”5
She has left behind those who would sow divisions and destroy our peace 280 characters at a time.
Maybe the way out of our divisiveness is to stay out of the fray.
Ignore any meanspirited talk whether it comes from the occupant of highest office in the land or the lone hockey fan in his basement wanting to make a sportscaster’s life miserable.
Maybe the best way is to follow the advice of Chasten Buttigieg, husband of South Bend mayor and presidential candidates Pete Buttigieg, who wrote in, of all things, a tweet:
So here's the thing. You can look at that tweet . . . that really nasty tweet. The gross, homophobic tweet. The blatantly racist tweet. The "fires you up with fake outrage" click-bait news article tweet and just say "nope."
Scroll away. Don’t engage. Adios gross tweet. Not today.
Just be kind to your heart. Take care of others. Let hate sit alone.”Take a deep breath. Be kind. Take care. Most of all let hate sit alone.
And - this may be the hardest part of all - wait for God to take care of our divisions which God will do if we don’t stoke the fires of our own discontent.
Thanks for listening.
__________
1. Rozner, Barry. "Rozner: Whatever Happened to Peggy Kusinski?" Daily Herald. July 31, 2019. Accessed August 17, 2019. https://www.dailyherald.com/sports/20190729/rozner-whatever-happened-to-peggy-kusinski.
2. Richard Donovan, "Peace on Earth," Sermon Writer: Making Preaching More of a Joy, July 31, 2019, accessed August 16, 2019, https://www.sermonwriter.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/2019-08-18-Proper15C.doc.
3. Jonah Goldberg, "Commentary: Yes, We Have Problems, but Let's All Take a Breath," Chicagotribune.com, August 09, 2019, , accessed August 17, 2019. https://www.chicagotribune.com/opinion/commentary/ct-opinion-guns-racism-bigotry-jonah-goldberg-20190809-ioufik4wqfcgfdksihrhjk7amm-story.html.
4, "Changing Attitudes on Same-Sex Marriage," Pew Research Center's Religion & Public Life Project, May 14, 2019, , accessed August 17, 2019, https://www.pewforum.org/fact-sheet/changing-attitudes-on-gay-marriage/.
5. loc. cit.
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