Luke 12:49-56
This is one of those passages that sounds contrary to what we expect Jesus to say. He came to bring fire to the earth? Division in family households? We admire his parables that emphasize the power of God’s love, like the Parable of the Prodigal Son or the Good Samaritan.
But Jesus talks here about fire and division, even separating people from their loved ones. And what’s more, Jesus is just itching for the fire to arrive! How do we reconcile that with his parables and Beatitudes? In Luke’s gospel, Jesus says, “Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division!” Jesus makes it sound as though his followers can expect to be rejected and vilified, just as he was, because of their faith.
That doesn’t mean that we should play the victim card to get sympathy every time somebody disagrees with us or criticizes us. Far too many people do that, and that is not what Jesus is talking about.
I think the first point to understand in this passage is the fact that the way of God’s kingdom is not the way of the world. I’ve heard that truism all my life, but to be honest, I’m not sure I believed it for a long time. Frankly, I expected that if I was a strong person of faith, I would do well in the world. For the most part, people in the church where I grew up were successful in business and in the world. They were patriotic; every Fourth of July, a huge American flag was stretched across the baptistry, and we sang patriotic songs that mentioned God and country.
I assumed that my church life was part of being a good American and saw a continuity between the two. If I was a good church member, then I too would be equipped to take my place in the world. The world would notice my goodness and reward me accordingly! People would like me and respect me. Maybe being a good Christian meant that I’d get elected to high office with all the honors and privileges appertaining thereto. I just had to keep my nose clean, and everything in my life would fall into place.
And I have to say, maybe there’s a little bit of truth to that. The times when our lives have become more complicated are mostly the times when we acted out of self-interest or fear rather than faith. As we slowly learn to pay attention to the gospel and shape our lives accordingly, life can become much less stressful and much more meaningful.
But that doesn’t mean that there’s no stress when we try to reconcile our world and our faith. Jesus said in our passage today, (Luke 12:50): “I have a baptism with which to be baptized, and what stress I am under until it is completed!” Jesus felt stress. He felt stress in the Garden of Gethsemane when his sweat was like great drops of blood. He felt stress to the point on the cross that he cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Jesus didn’t sugar-coat things to sound more pious to the people around him.
Jesus tells us not to worry about the everyday things of life (Luke 12:22). But he didn’t claim that the Christian life is a stress-free life. Any serious Christian will in time experience “the dark night of the soul,” as the 16th-century Spanish saint, John of the Cross, tells us in his little classic, Dark Night of the Soul.
Luke’s passage is one of those that require us to take a step back and study its context. Jesus is talking about the demand inherent in the gospel. The kingdom he preached requires a decision to follow, not simply nod and carry on as usual. Just a few verses before our passage today (12:35-48), Jesus tells his followers to look to his future return and to be ready for it. Those who have been faithful stewards of what they’ve been given will be rewarded. Those who have been unfaithful servants will be in for an unpleasant surprise. No one can serve two masters; we have to make a choice between the way of God’s kingdom and the way the rest of the world works.
Jesus says that he is bringing “fire to the earth,” and he wishes it were already kindled. That sounds like a declaration of war, but how could the Prince of Peace say such a thing? What is this fire that Jesus is talking about?
The first clue is that the fire wasn’t already kindled when he said this, because he wishes that it was. There was plenty of fire and war and destruction in Jesus’ day, so Jesus clearly isn’t talking about those things.
In the context of Luke and Acts, which are volumes one and two by the same author, the thing that can’t come until Jesus has passed through his baptism is the Holy Spirit. On the day of Pentecost in Acts 2, the Holy Spirit descended unexpectedly on the disciples like “tongues of fire.” On that day, the followers of Christ were transformed. Peter, who had denied Jesus three times, suddenly became a powerful preacher of the kingdom. Phillip had to leave Jerusalem to escape Saul’s persecution, but he turned his exile into a series of mission trips, ignoring the usual cultural barriers to tell the good news to an Ethiopian eunuch and others.
When the Holy Spirit came, the early church caught fire. They went out into the world to preach a gospel about dying to self and being raised to new life by the transformative power of God. It was the exact opposite of the world’s understanding. In the world, people usually got ahead by promoting themselves, by being louder and more aggressive than the other guy. If you can slow the other guy down, you can pull ahead, and then as now, the world says that’s just good business.
In the kingdom of God, people love each other. In fact, they love their enemies. They do good to the people who treat them badly. They don’t work to get ahead of everybody else at all costs; they give others a hand up, whatever it costs them.
The point of the kingdom is to become aware of God’s presence, to know union with him, to live in such a way that the experience of that union is deepened, not broken. That sense of union is the fire that Jesus taught about. It’s the point of authentic spirituality – the experience of the presence of God and our place within that presence. It leads us to love, not fear.
It sounds strange that the fire which envelops us in God’s loving presence would cause division in the world. But it causes us to act in ways that the world doesn’t expect and often doesn’t like. Instead of fighting people in the other tribe, the other country, the other family, we look for the image of God in them. Our attitudes and actions undermine the world’s conventional narrative that other people are unworthy and dangerous and evil.
The world that follows a self-promoting ethic feels threatened by the fire Jesus talked about. Jeremiah wrote (23:29), “Is not my word like fire, says the LORD, and like a hammer that breaks a rock in pieces?” None of us likes it when our perspective on the world is shattered and we are pulled out of our comfort zones. But it’s when our conventional wisdom of the world doesn’t work anymore that we can feel the fire of a different way to live.
And that’s when we have to make a choice. Luke 16:13 tells us that “No one can serve two masters…” We can’t simultaneously live by the rules of the world and the wisdom of the gospel. They’re going in opposite directions. We either protect our egos and try to build ourselves up, or we set aside our egos and empty our hearts so that God can fill them and transform us.
We live in a time when the contrast between the world and the gospel is becoming clearer every day. The division in our country is becoming ever more painful. It’s at times like ours that Jesus’s words take on particular significance:
12:54 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.
12:55 And when you see the south wind blowing, you say, ‘There will be scorching heat’; and it happens.
12:56 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?
When the wind came into Israel from the west, it brought moisture from the Mediterranean Sea, and that meant rain. To the south lay the Negev Desert, and wind from there was hot and dry. If you lived in Israel for very long, you learned how to read the signs of the weather.
Jesus expected his followers to learn to interpret the spiritual implications of what goes on around them. It’s important to avoid getting caught up in the emotion and fear of tribalism and nationalism, of the “us against them” mentality that seems to drive so many people today. The biblical story of creation tells us that all people were created by God and carry his image within.
When we say that we love our country, do we mean that we love the ideals our country supposedly stands for, and that we’ll work to ensure that our country lives up to those ideals? That’s the definition of patriotism. Or do we mean that we love only our own kind, and that we’ll look down on, and fear every other kind? That’s not patriotism; it’s tribalism and nationalism, and it has nothing to do with the gospel of Christ.
As people of faith, we open ourselves to the fire of the Holy Spirit. We need to be transformed by that fire into more loving people. And then we need to interpret the present time from the perspective of our faith instead of the world’s fear. That is not an easy task. Even Jesus found it hard. But that is the mission to which we are called – to love and not hate; to love others and not fear them.
1 John 4:18 tells us that:
“There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.”
We are called to the practice of the presence of God. We are called to love, not to fear. We are called to interpret the signs of the world around us, and to be emissaries for God’s kingdom in that world. It won’t be easy because the two kingdoms are worlds apart. The conflict will cause us stress. Nevertheless, we are called, and we need to respond in faith.
Let’s pray.
Lord, you call us to follow in faith, in the middle of a world that operates by its own rules. You call us to lay our old selves aside as we follow; yet the world beckons for us to pick them up again and inflate them to become ever larger. The voices of the world are loud in our ears. We long to be loved and accepted and important. Help us to remember that the siren songs of the world promise much and deliver little. Help us to know the love that comes from your presence, the only true acceptance that we can know. Fill us with your Spirit as we empty ourselves and invite you in. Give us strength and wisdom in this world, Lord, we pray. Amen.
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