Fire

“I have come to cast fire upon the earth, and how I wish it were already ablaze!

When I first read this gospel earlier in the week, I was filled with dread at the idea of having to preach on it today. Especially in the context of this summer of wildfires. Not just here in Canada, but in so many of the places Guylaine and I traveled this summer. In Greece, for example, so many of the islands we visited were so hot and dry that they were ready to ignite at any moment. Some of them did, though thankfully for us, not while we were there.

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

The mood has changed in the gospel of Luke. I don’t know if you’ve noticed it, but ever since Jesus set his face towards Jerusalem, the stakes have been raised and the message, it’s not that it’s changed, but it has taken on a more insistent, a more urgent, maybe even a darker tone on this journey towards Jerusalem.

Don’t get me wrong, I think that Jesus longs to bring peace on earth. But everywhere he looks, he sees the effects of human sin. Everywhere he looks, he sees the need for change.

Do you remember the first words of Jesus’ ministry and mission?

“Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand.” 

Jesus came to proclaim the kingdom of God, a radical new way of living together, a way that calls on us to love each other, a way that calls on the powerful and the privileged to give up their power in order to lift up the poor and liberate those who are oppressed.

How do you think that message will be received? What do you think will happen when Jesus gets to Jerusalem?

Now that he’s turned his face to Jerusalem, he’s starting to flesh it out. To the Pharisees, the religious leaders, he tells them that they are hypocrites, that they neglect justice and the love of God. To the law-makers, he tells them that they load people with burdens that are hard to bear. To the wealthy, and those who aspire to  wealth, he warns them to be on their guard against greed, to sell their possessions and give alms. To those who ask what it means to love their neighbour, he calls them out for their neglect and hatred of people like the Samaritans.

So, when Jesus tells his disciples that there will be division as a result of his coming, he is simply stating the obvious. He’s doing a little truth-telling. Even families will be divided. It’s true. It happened historically. Luke’s community, for whom this gospel was first set down in writing some 30 years after Jesus’ death, they would have known and lived the truth of this. People were thrown out of their synagogues and families divided because they took what Jesus said seriously, because they believed that Jesus was indeed the Messiah sent by God.

There is another difficult truth that Jesus is telling here as well: we are screwed up, and we need to repent and change our lives before there will be peace on earth. There have been too many times and places and situations when the earth is not ready for peace. Jesus longs to bring peace on earth, Jesus longs to bring peace to Jerusalem, when he gets there, he will weep over the city. But when he does get to Jerusalem, he will also see that it is all screwed up. Wealthy elites have taken control of the land, dispossessing the poor. The religious leaders have collaborated with the Roman occupation, squeezing taxes out of their own people. The roads entering Jerusalem have been lined with the crosses of those who opposed the empire. Jesus longs for peace, but he won’t sacrifice justice and embed oppression in order to have a so-called peace. Sometimes we are not ready for peace. Things have to change before peace is possible.

That’s what Jesus sees when he sets his face toward Jerusalem. Would it be any different today if he set his face towards Washington? Or Moscow? Or Jerusalem? Or Ottawa?

“Do you think that I have come to bring peace on earth?”

I thought about those words on Friday morning, the day that Trump and Putin were scheduled to meet to discuss peace in Ukraine. Would they initiate the changes required, the demands of justice, an end to oppression and occupation? Would there be any repentance? Or would they simply try to bless the status quo, sacrificing justice for the sake of a so-called peace? As it turned out, we still don’t know, because after their meeting they weren’t taking any questions.

In today’s gospel, Jesus refuses to create a false sense of peace by blessing the status quo or by watering down his kingdom message to make us feel good. 

“Do you think that I have come to bring peace on earth? No!”

“I have come to cast fire upon the earth, and how I wish it were already ablaze!”

When Jesus looks upon the earth, when he sees how screwed up so much of it is, when he looks at how we humans treat each other, how we treat creation, when he’s confronted by selfishness, sinfulness, and entrenched structures of injustice, he longs for God to come and to set things right.

Don’t you ever feel like that?

That’s what fire represents here in Jesus’ lament. In the Bible, fire is first of all a sign of God’s presence with us. In the book of Exodus, the slaves crossing the wilderness were led by a pillar of fire, the assurance of God’s presence with them. In the book of Acts, on the day of Pentecost, the coming of God’s Holy Spirit was signified by tongues of fire resting on each of the disciples.  But fire is not just a sign of God’s presence. It also signifies transformation, purification and change. Gold and silver are refined in fire when the heat is used to separate out the dross. And sometimes in the Bible the fires of change involve judgement and destruction, as things that will not stand in God’s kingdom, things like violence and injustice, are taken away and burned.

In Jesus, God’s work of setting things right in the world has begun. In Jesus, God is present, and he calls us to repent and change our lives. In Jesus, the judgement is made that some things on this earth, injustice, hatred, violence and oppression, these must not stand.

Jesus says, “I have come to cast fire upon the earth, and how I wish it were already ablaze!

Shocking, yes. But then Jesus says something that I find remarkable:

“I have a baptism with which to be baptized, and what constraint I am under until it is completed!”

Jesus wants us to repent, to change our lives, to change so much that is wrong with our world. But the cost of that change, the destruction of the fire of transformation that he would cast, he will bear that upon himself.

When he gets to Jerusalem, he will create division. He will call for repentance. He will initiate the great transformation that we need. But for that he will bear the cost. He is the one who will be rejected, arrested, tortured and put to death upon the cross. That’s the baptism that he is talking about here, the baptism of fire with which he will be baptized. Jesus will endure the fire for the sake of our transformation. For our salvation.

God seeks to bring peace to our world not by reliance on our own patchwork efforts towards reformation but rather by drawing all people to himself through what Christ has done. By assuring us that we have been forgiven, by showing us that we have been reconciled with God, and by loving us with the love of God made known in Jesus, so that we, in our own small ways, can forgive and be reconciled with and love each other. 

So that, little by little, in acts of forgiveness and love, divisions may end, lives may change and peace will be brought to the earth.

Amen.

Homily Yr C P20. August 17 2025. Trinity

Readings: Isaiah 5.1-7; Ps 80.1-2,8-18; Hebrews 11.29-12.2; Luke 12.49.56

Image by Gael Varoquaux