What does it burn? When? And, most obscurely, why?
by Phyllis Tickle
Gospel Reading: Luke 12:49–56
For Sunday, August 15, 2010: Year C - Ordinary 20
Even as he speaks the horrific words of this text to those who follow him, Jesus is on his way toward Jerusalem and toward the end that is to be the beginning for which he came in the first place. In story and didactic observation and direct address, he has cajoled and harangued and entertained them for verse after verse and, in Luke’s Gospel, for chapter after chapter. Now he comes to the point:
“I came to bring fire to the earth,” he says, “and how I wish it were already kindled!”
Come again, Jesus?
“You thought I had come to bring peace to the earth? Heavens, no! Rather, I have come to bring division and dissent and interruption of all earth’s natural relationships!”
And having made that very clear and unequivocal statement, Jesus concludes by warning them to read with care the times in which He is speaking and in which they are, so far, anyway, only dispassionately listening. The era changes. Time grows short. Act as do those who understand. It is true, of course, that Luke is not the only Gospeler to record Jesus’ frequent comments about peace. John also quotes him on the subject, the most famous of those Johannine quotes being the much loved and probably too often cited: “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you.”
At first blush, there might seem to be an internal or intra-textural inconsistency between Luke and John. But that small problem rather handily evaporates when one reads the entire passage. What John reports Jesus as having said in toto is: “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.”
Two Types of Peace
Clearly, in John’s Gospel as in Luke’s, Our Lord is distinguishing between two types of peace, secular and sacred, temporal and eternal, which is hardly a difficult distinction even for a casual reader to grasp. But it is Matthew’s Gospel, not Luke’s or John’s, that drives the nail home. Matthew quotes Jesus as saying the same words that Luke records, “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.”
Jesus, according to both Matthew and Luke, goes on to describe the interruptions and divisions that will result from his coming: man against father, and daughter against mother. Even the members of one’s own household will become enemies. But then, the boom is lowered: “Whoever loves father or mother more than me, is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever does not take up his or her cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.” This is Abraham facing the sacrifice of Isaac all over again, but with us playing the lead this time.
Being True at All Costs
Intentionally giving up one’s life and its natural loves for the sake of being true at all costs to God’s logos and his prescribed way of mercy, justice, compassion, humility, and love of the other as of one’s self is a hard command. It lays upon humanity a demand or condition that can be rendered neither imaginable nor feasible save only in one...or perhaps both?...of two ways. Intentionally sacrificing one’s own self-ness for Jesus’ unnatural way requires absolute, unflinching intellectual belief in his resurrection and ascension into a life that exists beyond, or is external to, the reach and dimension of Time. And/or it requires an unmediated wholeness of love so attuned as to know beyond fear and any hesitation that by following his way in time, we escape it into him.
The Hardest Question
In either case, though, it is Luke’s telling of the tale that would have the last and cautionary word: “You hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of the earth and sky, but why do you not know how to interpret the present time?”
It is a hard question, but not the hardest one raised here, I think. The hardest, rather, is about that fire that flashes through the words of both Jeremiah and Jesus. It is Jeremiah asking what has wheat to do with straw and then crying out, “Is not my word like fire, says the Lord, and like a hammer that breaks a rock in pieces?” What does it burn? When? And most obscure of all, why?
Phyllis Tickle is the award-winning author of many books and the founding religion editor at Publisher's Weekly. Tickle is an authority on religion in America and a much sought after lecturer and writer on the subject. She is a lay eucharistic minister and lector in the Episcopal Church, the mother of seven children, and, with her physician-husband, Phyllis makes her home on a small farm in Lucy, Tennessee.
