Luke 12:49-56

“I have come to throw fire upon the earth, and how I wish it were already ablaze!”  Wow!  This is not “Jesus meek and mild” talking.  This is Jesus under stress.  This is Jesus who sees the cross bearing down on him.  This is Jesus impatient with everyone misinterpreting and misunderstanding him or just plain being dense.  This is Jesus on fire!    

Where did that idea—Jesus meek and mild—where did that idea even come from anyway? Is Jesus gentle?  Often.  Is Jesus compassionate?  Absolutely.  Always.  But meek and mild?  Not in my Bible. 

“I came to set the world on fire and how I wish it was already blazing!”  From the very beginning of his ministry Jesus has been announcing that the kingdom of God, the Commonwealth of God’s justice and mercy, is arriving.  A new reality is breaking into the old world order.  

Jesus did not come to maintain or reinforce the status quo.  He came to show us the heart of God and to share God’s vision of the world as God intended it to be.  He came to transform the world by transforming us. 

Jesus knew that life would be difficult for those who choose to follow him.  He knew that living in the stream of God’s love, proclaiming the radical equality and openness of God’s kindness, freely offering mercy and forgiveness, standing up for the oppressed, speaking for the voiceless, standing in solidarity with the poor and marginalized—he knew that this would create friction in a world that operated by other standards.  He knew that sometimes that friction would begin at home.

Jesus was a realist— he knew that the alternate and better reality he was proclaiming, his Good News initiating the reign of God, was going to cause division— not because he was unclear about it, but because this fire of transformation was going to bring a never-ending cycle of change.  And most people don’t like change.  He knew that conflict would be inevitable because God was entrusting this world-transforming, never-ending mission to everyday human beings— to us— and even on our best days, even when we’re filled with and empowered by the Holy Spirit, even when we think we’re seeing and hearing Jesus as clearly as possible, we can and will find things argue about.  

The church started arguing when it was still basking in the warm afterglow of the flames of Pentecost. Peter argued with James about including Gentiles in the family of faith.  Paul and Peter butted heads over authority and practice.  Paul and Barnabas argued over whether or not John Mark could travel with them and ended up going their separate ways.  In Phillipi, an argument between two important women pastors, Euodia and Syntyche, threatened to sink the congregation so Paul had to plead with them in his letter to the Phillipians, “Please, because you belong to the Lord, settle your disagreement.”  

“Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth?” said Jesus. “No, I tell you, but rather division!”

Jesus was so prophetic when he talked about the ways we separate ourselves from each other but I wonder if he ever imagined just how divided we would become.  There are 40 different church bodies in North America, in the US and Canada, that call themselves Lutheran.  There are 45,000 church bodies in the world that call themselves Christian.  And all of them have separated themselves from some other church body at some point in history.  Honestly, I think this makes Jesus weep.

The vision of the kingdom is that we are supposed to build bigger tables, not higher walls.  We’re supposed to open our doors wider, not close them against people who disagree with us.  The message of Jesus is that we’re supposed to embrace each other with love, not take intransigent stands in opposition to each other because of the way we interpret the Eucharist or the way we baptize or how we translate a few things here and there.

Whenever we take our eyes off of Christ and start focusing on other, lesser things— whenever we let those other, lesser things become more important than living in the way of Jesus, we end up fighting and going our separate ways.  When we get heated up about doing the right rite rightly or deciding who is and who is not acceptable in the body of Christ, whenever we start to think that we know who God does and does not like, whenever we start to think that our way is the only right way to read the Bible— whenever we start to think that following Jesus is about preserving the good old days and the good old ways instead of opening the door to the new thing that the Holy Spirit is doing,  the fire between us can flare out of control and become divisive and destructive.  

“I have come to throw fire upon the earth, and how I wish it were already ablaze!” said Jesus.  Here in Southern California we are all too familiar with the destruction and devastation caused by fire.  We know all too well that fire can kill and destroy.  It can turn everything to ashes, soot, and pain. 

But fire can also bring us light and warmth.  Fire can clear the ground and enrich the soil to make way for new life.  There are trees who need fire for their seeds to germinate.  Fire can cleanse and refine and temper things.  

Martin Luther reminded us that “The Word of God comes, whenever it comes, to change and renew the world.” Jesus, the living Word of God, has thrown fire upon the earth, a fire of transformation that brings a never-ending cycle of change. Change can create tension if we’re not all changing in the same way or in the same direction, and tension can generate a lot of heat— but not always a lot of light.  

Change is going to continue because Christ has brought a transforming fire to the earth, a fire that has been burning for more than 2000 years.  For two millennia Jesus has been changing us and changing the world but we haven’t always handled it well.  When we align the story of our life together and the stories of our individual lives with the story of Christ, things move forward with light and warmth and energy.  When our stories diverge, the fire between us can burn us.

“Yet they meet as well as diverge, our stories and Christ’s,” said Frederick Buechner, “and even when they diverge, it is his they diverge from, so that by his absence as well as by his presence in our lives we know who he is and who we are and who we are not.

“We have it in us to be Christs to each other and maybe in some unimaginable way to God too — that’s what we have to tell finally. We have it in us to work miracles of love and healing as well as to have them worked upon us. We have it in us to bless with him and forgive with him and heal with him and once in a while maybe even to grieve with some measure of his grief at another’s pain and to rejoice with some measure of his rejoicing at another’s joy almost as if it were our own. And who knows but that in the end, by God’s mercy, the two stories will converge for good and all, and though we would never have had the courage or the faith or the wit to die for him any more than we have ever managed to live for him very well either, his story will come true in us at last. And in the meantime, this side of Paradise, it is our business (not like so many peddlers of God’s word but as men and women of sincerity) to speak with our hearts (which is what sincerity means) and to bear witness to, and live out of, and live toward, and live by, the true word of his holy story as it seeks to stammer itself forth through the holy stories of us all.”^[1]

We align the story of our life together and the stories of our individual lives with the story of Jesus.  When all is said and done it’s important to remember that the story of Jesus is a love story.  He throws fire upon the earth to burn away everything that is not love, to clear the ground and enrich the soil so the seeds of love can germinate and we can grow into “little Christs” for each other.

If there must be fire between us, let it be the fire of love.

In the name of Jesus.

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^[1] A Room Called Remember; Frederick Buechner