Year C
Luke 12:49-56
The Very Rev. Denise Vaughn
The Peace of Fire
Jesus spends much of the twelfth chapter of Luke, of which we are in today and have been for the past two weeks, reassuring and encouraging his followers to be ready in the face of possible catastrophic circumstance. All of life is to be lived in expectation of the Son of Man’s return. To the crowd surrounding him, he says, “I tell you, my friends, do not fear those who kill the body, and after that can do nothing more. “Therefore, I tell you, do not worry about your life.” “Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.”
This same chapter that begins with encouragement ends on a far less positive note. It might even be considered high on the list of Things We Would Rather Jesus hadn’t said. Rather than encouraging, Jesus says that his ministry will be very divisive. After spending 45 verses trying to quiet the anxiety of his followers, Jesus then tells them that he came to bring fire from heaven! His ministry will not bring peace. He comes as a cleansing and purifying fire, winnowing wheat from chaff and even dividing families and pitting individual members of households against one another.
These are deeply disturbing words for us to hear as Christians. We tend to pride ourselves on our efforts for unity, peace and harmony, whether in our personal relationships or in the larger arenas of civil and church affairs. And so we should; the gospels, taken as a whole, are abundantly clear that the work of peacemaking is central to our call. From the beginning of Luke’s story, promises of peace have been central to the presence of Jesus. But today’s gospel presents another face of that call. The peace we are called to bring is the peace of God, not peace as humans define it. This peace of God does not necessarily feel peaceful; the very presence of Jesus brings crisis and division among people in terms of how they respond to him. This peace can feel more like death by fire to anyone or anything that hinders commitment to Jesus and his mission of salvation.
I suspect audience that day understood the imagery of fire from heaven better than we possibly do. Most of us, thank goodness only have a passing acquaintance with the power of fire. We read of forest fires and see the devastation they can bring on the news. We hear the siren of a racing fire truck and are thankful that our fire departments are so competent that a fire death makes the news. But those who lived during Jesus’ day had a more intimate knowledge of fire. Their only nighttime light came from the flames of a lamp. There was the smoke of the cooking fire on the kitchen floor that would cause eyes to be irritated and arms and hands to bare the scars from burns.
Homes regularly burned to the ground by an overturned lamp or a carelessly maintained kitchen fire. In this intimate acquaintance with the power and the paradox of fire, the people saw fire as theophany, that is, fire as a manifestation of God. When Moses was tending his flocks on Mount Horeb, the Lord God spoke to him out of a burning bush. When the Hebrew people were wandering in the wilderness of Sinai for 40 years, the Lord God led them at night with a pillar of fire. On the Day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit appeared to the disciples in the upper room as tongues of fire. The Old and New Testament uses fire as a metaphor to talk about how God punishes, purifies and strengthens God’s people. They believed that God worked through fire and they knew both fire and God as being purifying and punishing. They also believed that if Jesus was God’s representative, then that presence of God would be manifested by fire.
“I came to bring fire to the earth” Jesus says. Jesus brings fire to the earth that purifies and perfects our faith, as he faces a baptism of fire that will result in his crucifixion in order to accomplish God’s saving plan, a divisive plan to bring mercy, compassion and justice between God and humanity. The saving message of the gospel is so radical that the world will experience it as fire raining from heaven and those who follow his teachings will be considered revolutionaries. Jesus’ mission and destiny of peace, compassion, mercy and justice through his death and resurrection, shatters the status quo and brings division as people are either embraced or repealed by what God is doing through Jesus.
It is this agenda of bringing mercy and justice and showing compassion that we are called to embrace in the present in anticipation of God’s future. We have been baptized into this saving plan of God. Jesus wants to fire us up to live fruitful and worthwhile lives; lives that are always working to bring about God’s peace and justice in the world. This work starts with us living in right relationship with God, and with others. Practically speaking, living justly might be framed in terms of keeping the commandments and thereby guarding against serious sin against God and neighbor.
The writer of Hebrews encourages us to persevere and look to Jesus’ life and ministry to see how to live in right relationship with God and neighbor. Responding to a question about the fruits of living justly, the writer of Hebrews suggests that though faith we will find real joy and living justly will bring a reward, but in God’s time. It doesn’t guarantee a suffering-free life for us. It does promise a place before the throne of God. We are to run the race before us and this work of justice, mercy and compassion that God has called us to do, the gospel suggests may cause just persons and their message to not always be well received, causing tensions in the very relationships that we wish to show justice, mercy and compassion to.
And this work may even cause division in our own hearts as we struggle to follow Jesus more faithfully and to live in the same faith and trust of our forefathers and mothers. Yet, our world continues to thirst for justice. There is no place on earth where God’s plan for justice and peace has come to completion. Look at what is going on in our world today. We see in Jesus words today that he has no patience with those who do not grasp the urgency of his mission to Jerusalem and his life work. Yet, God does not give up on us. Again and again we are invited to read the signs of the times that reveal God is near to each generation and cling to Jesus as our hope, trying to walk in his way.
Even though for the most part, we prefer the peace as we humans define it, and not necessarily the way God has defined it. Some people catch on fire with the presence of God. Be open to that fire God rains down from heaven. Open your heart that God in Christ, through the Holy Spirit will strengthen and purify you. As hymn writer Adelaide Pollard puts it, and one of my favorite songs that we sing at Cursillo, “Have thine own way, Lord. Thou art the potter. I am the clay. Mold me and make me after thy will, while I am waiting, yielded and still.”