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“I came to bring fire to the earth and how I wish it were already kindled!” This is not your Sunday School Jesus in today’s passage from Luke’s gospel. This is firebrand Jesus, take action Jesus. Last Christmas, the staff had a White Elephant Gift Exchange. I managed to choose the best present of them all. Would you like to see what it was? Action figure Jesus! Turns out Doyt is the one who put this present in the pile and now Action Figure Jesus lives in my office. When I read this passage in Luke, I don’t think “angry Jesus” or even “scary Jesus,” but rather Action Jesus.
“I came to bring fire to the earth.” Let’s break that down a little bit. When you think of fire, what comes to mind? It makes me think about building a fire in the fireplace in the dark of winter. We had a fireplace in our house in CT and one of our favorite things to do was to build a big fire and all gather around to read and hang out together. Sometimes I light candles to do the same thing. Especially in the cold and dark months, fire can make us feel cozy and safe.
But fire can also be terrifying. Fire can cause destruction, devastation, and even death. My family knows this all too well. My husband, Joel, has been a Seattle firefighter for thirteen years. When a building is on fire, most people get out as quickly as possible. But my husband is the one who runs into that burning building. We make our livelihood because Joel does what very few people are willing to do. He runs into the danger, into the fire.
One thing that is consistent about fire is that it always changes things. A fire or candles can turn a cold, dreary evening into one filled with light and warmth. It can also change a structure or a forest by destroying it. Living in the Pacific Northwest, we are all too familiar with the dangers and perils of wildfires, like the Bear Gulch fire, and the destruction as well as the health implications of breathing in the smoke.
Fire has changed my family too. Because Joel is somewhat of a fire expert, we orient our lives a little differently than most. Joel knows fire intimately and he knows how it moves through a building. We make small decisions in the routines of our daily life that keep us safe in the event of a house fire. For example, we taught our children to always close their bedroom doors while sleeping because that door will slow down or stop fire. Fighting fires has changed Joel which in turn has changed our family.
Fire also appears throughout scripture. Moses met God in the burning bush when God told him to free the people from Egypt. God appeared in a pillar of fire and led God’s people safely through the wilderness at night during the exodus from Egypt. A chariot of fire appeared and led Elijah the prophet to heaven.
John the Baptist baptizes his followers with water, but he tells them Jesus is coming who is more powerful and he will baptize with the Holy Spirit and fire. And at Pentecost, divided tongues of fire appear among the apostles, filling them with the Holy Spirit and giving birth to the church. Fire is both a physical reality and a metaphor for our faith. As a metaphor, fire is our transformation. When we are forged in the fire of the gospel, we are changed.
In the beginning of Mark’s gospel, Jesus tells the disciples to “Repent, and believe the Good News!” Jesus came not just to die for us, but to change the world. The word “repent” literally means, “to change” from the Greek word, metanoeō. This Greek word, metanoeō, appears 34 times in 32 verses in the New Testament. We are here to be changed and to change our world.
When we think of Jesus, we tend to think of Jesus the Prince of Peace. The Jesus who says, “Peace I leave with you, my own peace I give you.” The Jesus who says “peace be with you.” This Jesus, Action Jesus, says “Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division!” In contrasting these two statements, Jesus comes across as mercurial or contradictory.
But I would encourage us to consider Jesus beyond a binary. With Jesus it is not either/or. It is not simply peace or division. Jesus is more nuanced than that and so are we. Jesus doesn’t bring peace at all costs because that would be a false peace. False peace extinguishes the fire of the gospel. False peace is remaining silent in the face of evil or oppression or atrocity. False peace demands we all agree with each other. False peace intimidates and pushes people into silence or hiding. False peace makes change impossible.
Jesus comes to bring true peace which is the Kingdom of God and sometimes that peace requires us to be forged in the fire, changed into something new. I want to tell you a story about someone who worked tirelessly for change in our world and ended up giving his life for it. In his efforts to bring about true peace, he was met with division and oppression and death. Maybe you have heard of him. His name is Jonathan Myrick Daniels and he is recognized as a saint in the Episcopal Church.
This month marks 60 years since Jonathan Daniels, an Episcopal seminarian, was killed while trying to protect a Black teenager from gunfire at the height of the Civil Rights Movement. You might wonder how a 26 year old, white Episcopalian from New Hampshire ended up being killed in Alabama in 1965. It happened because of a transformational experience Daniels had while attending Evensong. In March 1965, Jonathan Daniels heard Martin Luther King Jr.’s call to come to Selma to secure the right to vote for all. His conviction deepened while singing the Magnificat at Evensong: “He hath put down the mighty from their seat, and hath exalted the humble and meek.” Daniels wrote, “I knew that I must go to Selma.”
There he witnessed both the nation’s racism and the church’s complicity. Arrested for joining a picket line, he spent six days in jail. Upon release, he and three others walked to a small store. As sixteen-year-old Ruby Sales reached the steps, a man appeared with a shotgun. Jonathan pulled her aside to shield her, and he was killed instantly. Reflecting on his time in Selma prior to his death, he wrote, “The faith with which I went to Selma has not changed: it has grown… I began to know in my bones and sinews that I had been truly baptized into the Lord’s death and resurrection… with them, the black men and white men, with all life, in him whose Name is above all the names that the races and nations shout… We are indelibly and unspeakably one.”
Fire is the foundation for new beginnings. It is not the end, but rather the beginning of new birth and change. The Civil Rights Movement and the individual actions of people like Dr. Martin Luther King, Ruby Sales, Jonathan Daniels and so many more were the catalysts for change. As we know, they were not met with peace, but rather division and violence. Yet, they persisted in the name of the Gospel.
Jesus came to bring peace, but he did not come to enforce it. Jesus meets humanity where we are as the free agents God created us to be. We are the ones who cause division, division for power’s sake or out of fear. And the one thing that ultimately conquers division is love. There is an urgency in this text, in Jonathan Daniel’s story, and in our world today. The call to love is vital and imperative. In this text, Jesus jolts us out of our complacency or inertia and calls us to be agents of change in this world.
While fear causes us to fight or flee, love chases us down. Love chases us down like fire and changes the Kingdom of God from the man Jesus into us, the people of God. If God wanted peace, it would happen. But God chooses love over peace. God chooses loving us and giving us agency. We have to choose to be agents of change bearing love to a broken world.
In the adversity of every day existence, facing a climate disaster, unceasing war, the stripping away of rights, the persecution of the LGBTQ community, famine, genocide, the list goes on and on, we must allow ourselves to be forged in these fires. For on the other side, there is new beginning, there is change, there is life.
So today, may the fire Jesus brings not be one we fear, but one we welcome, because it is the fire that refines, renews, and sets us ablaze with the love of God. Let that fire burn away our false peace and complacency. Let it ignite in us the courage of Jonathan Daniels, the persistence of Ruby Sales, the vision of Dr. King. And may we go from this place as people forged in God’s love, carrying that flame into a world aching for justice, mercy, and true peace.