Gospel Reading: Luke 12:49-56
For Sunday, August 18, 2013—Lectionary 20
Prometheus felt sorry for us.
He shaped us from the mud, made us to walked upright like the gods, over the objection of Zeus, but we still seemed a little pitiful to him. We were scratching around on earth, dim, stagnant and eating raw meat. We needed something, to sort of get us moving in the right anthropological direction.
Fire.
Absolutely Not
Prometheus wanted to bring fire to the earth. He thought if he gave humans fire we could better ourselves, start a civilization, make him proud.
Zeus said absolutely not. Zeus already thought we were too full of ourselves, he thought if we had fire we would turn away from the gods and start worshiping ourselves.
Prometheus behind Zeus’ back. He stole fire from Mount Olympus, brought it to earth—and it worked. We started civilization, but Prometheus got caught and Zeus tied him to a rock and had an eagle eat out his liver every day for eternity. Now that is a sacrificial god. Prometheus was willing to be punished eternally so that we could have fire and start civilization.
Inspiring Fear
Jesus wanted to bring fire to the earth really badly too, but his motivation seems very different. When Jesus says, “I came to bring fire to the earth and how I wish it were already kindled,” he is seething! Jesus is about to go off. He sounds scary and threatening.
James Baldwin, writes about cultivating that kind of delivery as a fifteen year old revivalist preacher, in his 1963 book, The Fire Next Time. Baldwin said he felt like he must learn to inspire fear in others to be a preacher.
Threat or Promise?
The title of the book comes from a line in an old slave song (although I learned from the Carter Family), God gave Noah the rainbow sign/no more water the fire next time. The lyric combines the symbol of God’s promise never to destroy the world again by water, with a read-between-the lines-threat. God never follows God’s promise in the Genesis story with the threat of fire next time—Bob Dylan says it, however in a song off Under a Red Sky—which is close.
What does it say about peoples understanding of God when so many hear an underlying threat in God’s beautiful rainbow promise? What did God do to be treated with such suspicion? Oh yeah, never mind. God never qualifies God’s promise, but if your creator nearly wiped out everybody on the entire earth once because He was super mad, when ever he starts yelling its hard not imagine it might be coming again. So, when Jesus starts seething and talking about bringing fire to the earth, it carries the weight of the flood narrative—more inspiring fear, than concern for the advancement of civilization.
The Hardest Question
God is love, God brings peace, but God—and God in Christ—also threaten and scare us in our holy book.
Is there something that only fear can communicate to us or is it just bullying of the highest order?
Russell Rathbun is a preacher at House of Mercy in St. Paul, Minnesota, the author of Midrash on the Juanitos (Cathedral Hill Press, 2010) and the curator of The Hardest Question. Russell's researching his next book and has decided to let us in on the process. Check out the latest at: http://russellrathbun.com/
