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Proper 15 (20), Year C
17 August 2025
Isaiah 5:1-7
Psalm 80:1-2, 8-19
Hebrews 11:29-12:2
Luke 12:49-56
We all value family. Christmas, Mother’s Day, and Thanksgiving are practically family holidays, and the most important thing about these days is to spend them with those we love.
But we also know strife in the family. A couple of weeks ago I told you about my paternal grandfather and his brothers, and how my father and his siblings followed in their footsteps. I am not assigning blame, I would not know to whom.
When I was growing up we did not get together with my father’s family often, which included his parents. It was, according to our mother, because they did not value her. That may have been true, or perception, or both.
And so we know about families that are divided, over money, pride, power. That mother-in-laws are proverbially difficult says something about how we do with our in-laws, and they with us, and how we may perceive a marriage to rob us of our child. And we’re not always smart about mitigating this.
Often we call the church a family. That’s difficult not only because it’s hard to join a family, and the church is to be a community that welcomes all people, and do so not because we think “they” are like us or we deem “them” a good fit. We welcome others because God welcomes others, as God welcomes us.
And yet, there may be times when the family analogy is a good fit, because we are a closed group, or because we are feuding with each other. We have not done that for a while but we all know that churches feuding is a very real thing. The year I went on internship, a seminary graduate was called to a congregation in a mid sized town in Saskatchewan. The congregation was the fresh result of a split and they had given themselves the name Peace Lutheran Church. And that was long before our fights over human sexuality.
Not surprisingly, when a church experiences conflict, attendance goes down, for we come to church seeking peace, not conflict. That being said, we know that we too can cause strife.
And so we wonder about today’s reading. Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division! says Jesus.
We may wonder, “Is it too late for me to go home? Maybe this Sunday is not for me.”
We are confused, is Jesus not the Prince of Peace (Is 6). Did Jesus not warn against the use of the sword? Did he not heal the servant’s ear that a disciple had cut off. Did he not refuse to engage legions of angels in his defense when he hung on the cross? Did he not rebuke John when John had suggested to firebomb a Samaritan village? Is Jesus not the One who brings peace and commands his disciples to bear Christ’s peace wherever they go?
So, what does Jesus mean when he says he did not come to bring peace but to bring division?
Last week we had spoken about losing faith, having faith, and the story we live by. The assumption of the modern world is that we write our own stories. The Christian faith teaches us that God writes our story. It is not a story in which every detail of our lives is predestined and predetermined, but it is the story of creation, fall and redemption, death and resurrection. It is the story in which our life finds its meaning and fulfillment. This means that meaning is given to us in God’s self-revelation in Jesus. The theologian Stanley Hauerwas says that “Israel and the Church are not characters in a larger story called ‘world,’ but rather ‘world’ is a character in God’s story as known through the story that Israel is the Church. Without them there is no world to have a story.1 This will require us to speak and act differently than those who write their own story.
That we do not write our own story caused conflict for early Christians for they did not believe that faith is just a matter of personal opinion. To follow Christ instead of Caesar, to believe that the last, the least, the lost, and the little are God’s beloved, that God has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly is a different narrative, it is the politics of God, and it may likely put you in conflict with others, perhaps the members of your own family. “Don’t get involved in politics,” they may say. God’s politics includes to refuse the sword.2Christ refused the sword not as the way to bring peace but because the sword is not the way of God who does not wish the death of anyone, and we know that those who raise the sword will die by the sword. Or think of the sparrow, if God’s eye is on the sparrow, should the Church’s eye not also be on the sparrow and all of creation? Those whose loyalty to God is greater than their loyalty to Caesar – think of the civil rights movement, those whose loyalty to God is greater than their loyalty to the prevailing opinion, to the consumer economy, or to their family, may experience the division Jesus is speaking of. Jesus is not wishing for strife but speaks of the consequences of a life lived in faithfulness to him.
The evangelist Luke is also the author of the book of the Acts of the Apostles. At the beginning of his gospel we read, 15As the people were filled with expectation, and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Messiah, 16John answered all of them by saying, ‘I baptize you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.
In Acts 2 Luke tells us about the fire John spoke of, 1When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. 2And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. 3Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. 4All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.
The “divided tongues as of fire” is what will help us understand Jesus’s exclamation that he came to cast fire upon the earth, and wishes it were already ablaze! In Christian art we see the Pentecost scene scene depicted as flames on the heads of the apostles.
Jesus longs for the transformation that his death and resurrection will bring to his disciples. His death and resurrection are the baptism Jesus is speaking of, I have a baptism with which to be baptized, and what constraint I am under until it is completed! (v.50)3 We may remember how the Apostle Paul speaks of baptism as dying. (Rom 6) This dying and rising with Christ will lead to a whole new way of relating to the world as we see following the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, marked by flames of fire: 43Awe came upon everyone, because many wonders and signs were being done by the apostles. 44All who believed were together and had all things in common; 45they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need. 46Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, 47praising God and having the goodwill of all the people. And day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.
It is no wonder that St Francis returned all his belongings to his father when he stripped naked in the town square. It wasn’t just that he needed to be free from false obligations to his father – speaking of division in the family – , but he also had a whole new relationship to worldly possessions. He no longer lived a story that he wrote but he began to inhabit God’s story.
Our passage begins with Jesus saying, I have come to cast fire upon the earth, and how I wish it were already ablaze! Jesus longs for the powerful to be brought down from their thrones, and for the lowly to be lifted up, and for God’s people, for us, to live in that reality.
There is another fire I want to bring into this story. It is the fire of the burning bush, the appearance of God to Moses, a life-changing encounter for Moses when Moses left his story and entered God’s story, and a bush that is not consumed. The fire Jesus speaks of here, is all consuming in the sense that Jesus surrenders to God’s plan of redemption, and in the way that those who follow Jesus are also called to surrender to God. It is in fact a call to a way of life that may lead to martyrdom as martyrdom is not the prerogative of certain special people but the privilege of all of Christ’s followers. But while it is a fire that occupies Jesus and will occupy those onto whom it is poured out, it is not a fire that consumes us but a fire that enlivens us. For that we give thanks.
May God’s Church, so often pacified and accommodating, be set on fire for the reign of God, so that we are not afraid of conflict, and not afraid to have enemies.
Amen.
1 Stanley Hauerwas, Preaching As Though We Had Enemies, First Things, 1 May 1995
2 I walked past the Victory Square Cenotaph yesterday. The inscription reads: “Their name liveth for evermore 1914-1918. Is it nothing to you all ye that pass by.” Whom did the creators of the inscription have in mind with the accusation that it may mean nothing to some?
3 See also Mark 10: 35James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came forward to him and said to him, ‘Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.’ 36And he said to them, ‘What is it you want me to do for you?’ 37And they said to him, ‘Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory.’ 38But Jesus said to them, ‘You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?’ 39They replied, ‘We are able.’ Then Jesus said to them, ‘The cup that I drink you will drink; and with the baptism with which I am baptized, you will be baptized; 40but to sit at my right hand or at my left is not mine to grant, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared.’
