Hear what uncomfortable words our Savior Christ saith unto all who truly turn to him. I came to cast fire upon the earth. . . . Do you think that I have come to give peace on earth? No, I tell you, but rather division.
With these uncomfortable words, today’s gospel forces us to confront [what the biblical scholar Joseph Fitzmyer calls] the enigma of Jesus’ mission. He aims to bring a discriminating fire upon earth, the fire of crisis—the critical event upon which will hang the meaning of the cosmos. He has already been baptized by John, yet he speaks of a baptism in his future, one that brings great constraint upon him until it is accomplished. Consequently, Jesus, face set upon Jerusalem, set upon the fire of crisis, his looming baptism by nails and wood—Jesus is not bringing peace, but division, sword slices that will shatter the calm of every human family.
What shall we make of these uncomfortable words? What is the enigma of Jesus’ ministry?
For a first clue, return with me to the 3rd chapter of Luke, the prelude to Jesus’ ministry. Here we see John the Baptist in the midst of the crowd he has drawn. He baptizes many and teaches. And in the course of teaching, the Baptist says, There is one to come who is mightier than I. . . . He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.
It is not immediately clear what John the Baptist means by saying Jesus will baptize, not only with the Holy Spirit, but with fire. Some (for instance, St. John Chrysostom) have thought that “fire” is just another name for the Holy Spirit, or perhaps for his effect, as if to say to receive the Spirit is to be set on fire. Others (for instance, Origen of Alexandria) have said that the Spirit and the fire are opposites: that Jesus’ baptism bestows the Spirit on the repentant, but brings the fire of judgment on those who fail to repent of their sin. A third view is that the fire does mean judgment, but it is for everyone: the baptism of the Spirit and fire refers to the judgment that Jesus will come and give to everyone: a future baptism in which the blowing wind of the Spirit will fan the fire that consumes. And a fourth view is that “Spirit” and “fire” refer to the two different effects that Jesus’ baptism has upon us: it makes us holy (that’s the Holy Spirit), and it consumes away everything in us that’s not holy (that’s the burning with fire).
We are not forced to choose between these different readings; each of them points to a truth about Jesus’ baptism. But on any reading, there is no baptism without fire. And this brings to our face the recognition that Jesus’ baptism is not safe. Jesus did not work for OSHA. The mission of Jesus is not to bring safety into the world. He comes to burn, to consume.
So hear again today’s reading from the middle of Luke’s gospel, the conjunction of fire and baptism. Jesus says he came to cast fire upon the earth; and would that it were already kindled! I have a baptism to be baptized with—note how baptism is emphasized as both noun and verb—I have a baptism to be baptized with; and he means, his death. Jesus looks to the future and says he has a baptism coming and thus he calls his death a baptism. The promise to us was that Jesus would baptize us with fire, and here Jesus says he wants to set fire to the earth—what can all this mean save that Jesus’ intentions towards us are fiery, that in our baptism there was an unnoticed promise to consume us with fire, a promise that will be consummated in our death?
These cannot be pleasant thoughts, yet today’s gospel gets worse. In it, the man whom scripture elsewhere calls the Prince of Peace carries on to say that he has come not to establish peace on earth, but rather division so extreme that it will sever the most intimate human bonds. The clue to interpreting this purposed division is also found earlier in the gospel [Luke 2:34], in the scene with the old prophet Simeon in the temple when Jesus was presented at the age of 40 days. Simeon took up Jesus in his arms and praised God for his gift of salvation in this child. Then he said to Mary: This child is destined to be a sign that is spoken against. And he said directly to her: a sword will pierce through your own soul also. As with baptism with Spirit and fire, the purport of this saying is not immediately clear. What might be the sword that will go through Mary’s soul?
Tradition speaks of the “seven sorrows of Mary,” and sometimes in pious paintings she is shown with seven swords piercing her torso—her heart. This tradition takes each sorrowful event—such as witnessing her son die—as a separate “sword.” Thus swords and sorrows are simply equated, and Simeon is taken to be a prophet of Mary’s future witnessing of her son’s death. We would do well, however, also to keep in mind one feature of swords in the Bible. Biblical swords to not merely pierce; they discriminate. A biblical sword cuts between those who are being destroyed and those who are receiving mercy and being saved. So when in today’s passage Jesus goes on to say that he comes to bring dissension even within families, Jesus seems to identify himself with this discriminating sword.
Indeed, the mission of Jesus brought dissension within his own family itself. [Take the story in Luke 8:21.] Jesus is told his mother Mary is outside. He says, My mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and do it. Or another time [Luke 11:27]: A woman says, Blessed is the womb that bore you. Jesus replies to the contrary, Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and keep it!
Mary herself had to learn that it is not enough to have a good family, it is not enough even to be the mother of God. What she had to learn—and what Luke might hint she had difficulty in learning—is that obedience to the word of God must transcend even family ties.
It is not an easy thought to imagine Mary having to struggle to attain obedience to the word of God; to imagine the cool sacrament with water as a burning fire that will consume us in death; to imagine the Prince of Peace as one who sets people against each other, deliberately—this is not easy Christianity, certainly not cheap grace. Yet might it not be more real than the breezy casualness of what we usually think of as faith?
Faith, where does it come from? He was promised great things, the so-called father of faith: a name, worldwide importance, a blessing to all who blessed him. He left father and home and wandered in service to this call of many promises. But slowly, as comfortable words became uncomfortable, he learned some difficult lessons. He learned he could not pretend his wife was his sister. He learned that the promises made to him would not for the most part be fulfilled in his lifetime, but in his descendants. He learned he couldn’t just have the promises, but he had to live a life worthy of the promises. At last the day of his final exam came. He was told to take his son, the one born to his wife when she was 90 years old, his only son, the son in whose flesh reside all the superlative promises made to him some 40 years back: to take that son and bind him in sacrifice. It is the greatest question, the most difficult question, the sword-in-the-heart ultimate question for each one of us: Do we love God for the promises he has given to us? Or do we love God apart from all the promises—do we love God in himself?
It is the final exam, not just for Abraham, but for you, for me, for Mary, even for Jesus. God, who has given us everything, will in a sense take it all away. The Spirit is fire. The sword will cut through every human heart. And in that apocalyptic consummation—when our whole cardboard world is revealed for what it is and turns to ash—the only sure ground left in the universe will be the ground that is faith.
. . . Let us stand on the ground of our faith and affirm the Nicene Creed.
