Which fire this time?

A few years ago, I worked in Chicago Public Schools. In support of restorative justice efforts, I would respond to a number of discipline referrals as they would surface throughout the day related to all sorts of different things—conflicts of varying degrees of severity. 

As I would say to students and teach my team of teenage peer mediators: Conflict is value neutral. What I meant is that like basic emotions, it is neither good nor bad. It simply is. Which of course is the most important part: conflict is inevitable. Wherever there are humans attempting to be in relationship with one another, conflict will certainly exist.       

Conflict is kind of like seaglass I’d say, and then I’d pull out a large piece I often carried around in my pocket. Ever since I was a young child making trips to Lake Erie in the summer, I loved searching along the beach for sea glass. My siblings and I would collect buckets of it to bring home. This particular piece though I found on a beach in Chicago—on the same afternoon I came to terms with the realization that my first marriage had unraveled to a point from which it likely would not recover. 

When I’d pass this seaglass around for students waging wars against one another to hold in their hands, it was always a powerful reminder to me that what began with edges sharp enough to cut skin was now smooth to the touch. This unsafe shard of glass once entered the water and then over time, as countless waves and tiny grains passed over it, it eventually became pleasant to hold, even comforting.

Call it conflict or division, as in our Gospel lesson, these things have a way of changing us. And like so much of life’s experiences, how we respond determines whether they are guided toward a positive or negative outcome—whether through their formation dangerously sharp edges can become smooth. 

Jesus exemplifies this process with the image of fire.

Just a handful of chapters earlier in Luke’s Gospel, which we read together a few weeks ago, the disciples are offended by the actions of a group of Samaritans, so they ask Jesus if they might command fire to come down from heaven to consume their enemies. And as we might anticipate and certainly hope, Jesus rebukes this impulse. And thanks be to God for that.

But this morning we hear what sure seems to be a far cry from this Christ committed to deescalation. “I came to bring fire to earth,” Jesus tells his followers, “and how I wish it were already kindled!” 

It would be fair to be a little confused... To say nothing else, fire is certainly a powerful force. Of course I’ll say more, just to be sure I’m a proper preacher here.

Fire is also dangerous and destructive, we might even say violent. Like when the roof of Notre Dame cathedral collapsed and hundreds of years of history were erased in moments, fire reduces to ashes. 

Fire is life-giving, too. An episode of Michael Pollan’s documentary on Netflix, called Cooked, demonstrates the way humankind has been shaped by fire. From aboriginal peoples to diverse, multicultural communities, we use fire to cook the food that sustains our bodies, and we gather around it for social rituals that preserve our critical connections to one another. 

And, finally, in our Christian tradition, as with the flaming tongues that descend from heaven at Pentecost and give birth to the Church, we understand fire to be a purifying force.

It incinerates; it refines; it creates. So, just which fire are we talking about this morning?

Amid another time shaped by many social divisions, in an urgent and now-timeless appeal for racial reckoning, James Baldwin writes: 

“If we do not now dare everything, the fulfillment of that prophecy [...] is now upon us: God gave Noah the rainbow sign, no more water, the fire next time!”

Baldwin’s words are a kind of prophetic warning about what will inevitably happen should necessary social reckonings be put off or altogether avoided—not in a prescriptive sense though, but rather in a descriptive way. And the baptism by fire that Jesus has in mind functions in a similarly descriptive way.

Certain things are divisive. And there is simply no avoiding it. But as Jesus interprets the present time he goes even further: division is inevitable and perhaps even necessary for the sake of Good News.

Because when powers that be do not have ears to hear, whether that be Pharaoh or Caesar or any would-be Lord or wannabe-King, speaking truth is divisive… When some cry “peace, peace” when there is no peace anywhere to be found, speaking of genocide and asking how it is possible our neighbors can be disappeared by masked men is divisive... And when a society is set on further lifting up the rich, as they decry the unsightly inconvenience of homeless encampments while enroute to a golf course, defending good news for the poor, the incarcerated, and the vulnerable is divisive… 

Whenever and wherever the Gospel of Jesus Christ is proclaimed within a political setting it bears implications for the choices and actions within that political reality. The incarnate word of the crucified Christ does not look like a-political faith. Because we simply cannot extract faith from the context of our lives. Whether or not it is divisive though depends largely on whether we are willing to heed its call. 

For as inevitable as social divisions are though, surely we’ve all experienced them within the context of family if not community life, the purpose of Jesus’ message is not a partisan attempt to set families and neighbors and nations against one another. To end here would be to miss the deeper reality we are called to live into…

When he is confronted about the greatest commandment, Jesus provides a vision of unity: 

“Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.” And then adding, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

Just as there is no greater commandment than these, there is no greater summary of the Gospel than the oneness of God—and by extension the unity that exists between all beloved creations of God. Each of us is bound in a common web of humanity and we need one another. In the words of Dr. King, “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.” 

And this is precisely where things really begin to get difficult…

“You shall love,” Jesus commands. This, as Kierkegaard puts it, is the ethical imperative of Christian faith. Love. And it is to this burning fire that our feet are held.

Truthfully, I can think of no greater refining source in my life than love’s presence—in ways I have at times both welcomed and also resisted. Learning how to love others and to receive love is rarely as straightforward as we might hope for it to be. It has a way of sometimes painfully burning away parts of ourselves that are no longer of use, just as it can also kindle us with comfort and warmth.

This fire Jesus is so restlessly impatient to cast upon earth aims to make us capable of dwelling in love, together. 

Let us be clear: it is right to stake our claim in pronouncing good news. Divisions will come and they will go, and it is right for us, like Jesus, to define and assert differences. Not all positions and policies are created equally. And in failing to proclaim good news, “the fire next time” will not look like the one Jesus has in mind. 

Lest we become nothing more than clanging symbols in an increasingly noisy world though, may we move our feet and lift our voices from deep abiding love. This is the way we will get through these difficult days of division. Love is the only way! 

In the words of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, 

“The day will come when, after harnessing the winds, the tides, and gravitation, we shall harness for God the energies of love. And on that day, for the second time in the history of the world, humankind will have discovered fire.”

Amen