Luke 12:49-56
“For Now”
August 14, 2022
It was not the coldest Ash Wednesday but the weather on this past March2nd still had the ability to chill my dear colleague Rev. Mary White and I to the bone.
We had bundled up with multiple layers and had tried repeatedly to make a fire in the fire pit I had brought with me to start the day of doing Ashes to Go in front of St. James.
We had gone through a few dozen matches, fire starters, newspaper, and pieces of cardboard.
The wind was not in our favor, and I will be the first to admit that, in spite of having been a Girl Scout for 6 years and a great admirer of fireplaces, wood stoves and backyard fire pits and Mary having made her fair share of fires, neither of us had any luck getting anything other than a very pathetic and useless pile of smoke going.
But then along came someone who offered to come back with just the thing that would get the fire blazing.
Obviously, our meager attempts to make something happen on our own were proving futile and frustrating.
Continuing to do the same thing over and over again and expecting different results, it is said, is a sure sign of insanity.
Just when our frozen smudged fingers were making it increasingly difficult to make the sign of the cross on the foreheads of those humans and their dogs who drove up and rolled down their windows, Olavi arrived back to save the day.
First, he created the right conditions for a successful fire, arranging the wood in the proper set-up and then he brought out just what we needed – a blow torch – and within seconds we had the perfect roaring fire that was so successful that it took a boatload of snow to put it out when it grew dark, and it was time to call it a day.
Mary even came back out after I’d returned home and one of the logs was still burning and in need of still more snow to extinguish it.
No, as much as I admire and respect Olavi’s skill in fire making, I am not comparing him in this story to Jesus.
Sorry, Olavi.
No, the blow torch here is Jesus or rather Jesus is a blow torch.
One of the reasons that this passage is so uncomfortable for so many of us is that we have grown accustomed to the image of Jesus as the man of peace.
We hold onto the happy/clappy Jesus and what Jesus is saying here is that he is the fire starter, a catalyst.
He makes the fire happen which means there are bound to fights and arguments and division created in his name because he is challenging the status quo and introducing a new way.
We all know from experience – on the job, in our government and no where more so than the church – that meaningful change does not usually come without some kind of fight.
When we think back to Jesus’ birth – on that night when he was to come as a bearer of peace – “sleep in heavenly peace” and “Hail the Heaven-born Prince of Peace”
from the beloved carols we sing together on Christmas Eve – blow torch Jesus is probably the furthest thing from our minds.
Maybe our whole notion of the peace that Jesus comes bearing needs to be re-imagined.
The Hebrew word, shalom, which we associate with peace, can be defined in more than a half dozen distinct ways.
Interestingly, none of them is quiet or still or orderly which we seem to embrace in our Western culture.
The Middle East is a boisterous and noisy place where what to us might seem like chaos may reign with loud children and adults shouting.
Peace in the Middle East can even mean that there are rivalries within and between families.
We certainly have examples of this in the guy who asks Jesus to make his brother share his inheritance.
It was Rebekah who told her son Jacob to fool Isaac his father into directing the inheritance to him instead of the rightful heir, his brother, Esau.
James and John are brothers who want the ultimate places of honor ahead of the rest of the twelve disciples and all those twelve are still arguing about who’s the greatest at the Last Supper.
But all of these are calm in comparison and not nearly as vital to the rest of the world as Jesus’ call here.
During Jesus’ time there was a strict adherence to social hierarchy.
Everyone had a specific place in the culture either assigned or inherited and dared not make any effort to be something different.
Doing so could risk being ostracized or even killed.
Those who were going to follow Jesus had to create a new family.
Anyone, especially the well-off, might lose all of their money and power and influence by joining up with this new movement.
Joining may mean you jeopardize the family that is created through marriage also.
This is the image that Jesus is painting.
If they were going to join him, they too, would be in the fire-starting business of lifting up the poor and the sick and the elderly and the outcast, putting their needs ahead of the already comfortable.
We are in the midst of a great divide here in our country right now with talk of another civil war and an inability to even listen to each other.
What are we, on either side of the divide fighting for?
How will we go about bringing Jesus’ vision to bear while also bearing God’s love?
We are not called to sit on the side lines and watch it unfold.
We have the capacity to light a fire that will make way for the Kingdom of God to be present in our world through both our words and our actions.
Let us pray for wisdom for our voices and the living of our days with these words from our UMC Bishop Devadhar:
O God, of love
who does not dispense
grace cheaply,
you sent Jesus
to bring fire to the earth
to bring our divisions to a head
to show us that the way to peace
is not the absence of division
is not unity based on uniformity
is not to escape from this life;
the way to peace is
to be present with,
to be presence within
this tumultuous world.
God, let your fire burn in us,
not to destroy us
but to cleanse us;
not to exterminate beauty,
but to clear space for new growth;
not to leave your creation
vulnerable and defenseless,
but to protect and heal it from disease.
God, help us!
to submit ourselves to the
refiner’s fire that will
remove our dross,
purify our desires
melt and mold us,
that we may share in
Jesus’ baptism,
and be born anew.
In the name of Christ, Jesus
who lives and reigns with you
and the Holy Spirit,
now and forever. Amen.