August 17, 2025
Pentecost 10 Lectionary 20
Luke 12:49-56
Epiphany, Winnipeg
Remember last week, when I started out the sermon with kind of a side thought that was prompted by the readings? I said that sometimes we get caught up thinking that in the Hebrew Scriptures, what we sometimes call the Old Testament, God is depicted as angry and vengeful and just ready to punish. Then Jesus came along, and people wrote the New Testament, and God was nice. I pushed against that and tried to remind us all that in the Hebrew Scriptures there is this thread that runs through it all and it’s all about God’s faithfulness and forgiveness and love of God’s people. If it seems like God is angry sometimes, it’s just because one’s own family members can be the ones who drive you the most bonkers. And sometimes God’s people, then and now and that includes us, just drive God bonkers, not just because we’re being bad but because we are not loving one another and loving our neighbour. And we get ourselves into such messes that way, but the thread that is woven into all of that, even into those times when God just seems angry, is the love of God for God’s people.
The flip side of all that is this idea that Jesus comes along and suddenly starts talking about a God who is nice. But today Jesus comes along and just doesn’t play or say nice. If one’s family are the ones we sometimes have the hardest time getting along with, today Jesus sort of seems more like the brother-in-law at Thanksgiving dinner who just comes out with something that makes everybody squirm.
What we get from Jesus today is fire that Jesus wishes was kindled already, and a baptism that sounds more like suffering. There’s scorching wind and driving rain, and Jesus calling out to the crowd – remember how we were in the crowd too? - “You hypocrites! You won’t even see what’s going on.” And he talks of houses and homes and families divided, and fathers and sons divided against each other, and mothers against daughters and perhaps least surprisingly, daughters-in-law and mothers-in-law divided against each other. I’m sure that if Luke wasn’t running out of ink at the time he would have added sons-in-law and fathers-in-law too. And in the thick of it all he says, “I didn’t come to bring peace. I came to bring a sword.”
Let’s just go home and pretend we didn’t hear that.
The way that Jesus talks today is hard, because we might rather he just say that things are fine and life will always run smoothly for the faithful. But he talks about divided households. There’s no secret hidden message or lesson under it all; Jesus is just saying right out loud what we know to be true: that we live in divided places. He says it right out loud, even if we sometimes might rather not hear it. He says it right out loud, even if by saying that he holds up a mirror to me and I can’t help but see that sometimes I like the division, and there are some people I’d rather keep on the other side of the line. He says it right out loud, and opens our eyes so that we can see and be honest about what’s going on inside us and all around us.
Jesus doesn’t come to bring peace. He comes to tell the truth….
…and if the truth is that God is more concerned about one person’s poverty than another one’s wealth, that might just cause some trouble. If the truth is that he’s more interested in the ones we call sick, or weak, or lost, or sinners, than the ones we call well, there might be trouble then too. If the truth is that sometimes we will get divided, even from the people we love the most, because we can’t agree on what is really right or true….well, that can hurt.
Then Jesus talks about fire. Now remember, this is Jesus the Jewish teacher, who is talking about fire to a Jewish audience. Anyone listening to him might just remember that fire shows up again and again in their own scriptures. It’s not a fire that destroys; it’s a fire that gives light in the wilderness, and it’s a fire that purifies, like a fire that burns away impurities to leave behind pure gold. It burns away hatred and fear and injustice, it burns away oppression and death; it burns away everything that keeps us from loving God and loving one another, and what it leaves in its path is healing and life.
A dozen or so years ago in Saskatoon there was a long power failure that covered major swaths of the city. It was late February, and it was really cold. Colder than Winnipeg. The power went out in the morning, and as darkness started to settle in over the city later that day people looked ahead to a cold night with no light or heat. A few good friends of mine, who had a wood stove in their house, sent word all over the block that they had room at their place and they had warmth and light at their place. So people from all over the block gathered there in that living room warmed by fire. There were old friends there, who loved each other and were used to spending hours and hours together every week. But there were also people there whom the neighbourhood usually ignored, and they all visited for the first time in months or even years. There were neighbours who could barely stand to live on the same block sitting together in front of the same fire. For awhile they became neighbours who were drawn together by this one fire that made peace, and healed a community, and left no dividing lines between people. The fire ensured that no one was left to face the cold and the dark all alone.
That is something like the fire Jesus comes to bring. It doesn’t burn away people; it burns away the ways we divide against each other. It doesn’t burn away the good guys or the bad guys, it burns away the ways that we hurt each other. It’s a fire that draws people together again.
“I have come to give fire to the earth,” Jesus says, “and Oh how I wish it were already kindled.” Imagine a fire that burns away all that division that we see and that we don’t need to have listed again. We know what’s going on in the world. Even if it seems best to pretend it’s not, we know what’s going on. Or imagine a fire that could finally clear away the grudge or that hurt that has lasted between you and someone you’ve always really cared about. Imagine a fire that could take away mistrust or disdain and leave grace and kindness and wonder all over the place once all the flames are gone?
To be honest, a lot of this sounds like what I wrote six years ago on this very text. It’s not the same, but it comes pretty close. And the thing is, you know, all of this could have fit somehow if I or you or somebody had spoken it all nine years ago. Or twelve, or twenty one. Or two thousand years ago. Because there’s always been division in the world. And we, the world, have always needed some kind of fire to burn away the ways that we are divided.
And we’re still here, because the fire that Jesus talks about today is stronger than any fire or division or death. We’re still here. The fire Jesus speaks of is a fire that will not be extinguished.
In two thousand years someone might be talking about this same story from the Gospel of Luke that we’ve been hearing today. Maybe they’ll be talking at the site of that ancient and long gone city called Winnipeg, or maybe they’ll be in an old old colony on Mars. And whoever’s reading and thinking and talking might then look back at 2025 and say, “You know how the history books tell us about how broken the world was then? Well look at this: all that trouble, and we’re still here. All of that trouble couldn’t bring an end to the world that God has given and to the fire of hope and cleansing and life that the Spirit gives. Jesus knew that there was always going to be division and trouble. But he promised a fire that would burn warm and bright and finally keep us together. And here we are, in divided times, and the divided times can never put out the fire of Jesus’ life and love.”
The fire that Jesus brings is his own dying and rising. And when the flames have gone down and the smoke is cleared, when the stone is rolled away, what’s left is life that cannot be burned away, in the years that came before then, in the years since then, and in all the years to come.