August 19, 2007

By Harry T. Cook

Luke 12: 49-56

“Appropriate” is a word that we hear a lot these days – sometimes used to describe an overture or incursion into personal space that is not appropriate, or, in a more positive way, to say that just now is the appropriate moment, occasion, day or hour to do or say a thing. Today’s gospel text addresses the issue of when it is appropriate to act on one’s religious conviction. It is when one discerns the time and season of decision.

The passage begins arrestingly enough with words placed in Jesus’ mouth to the effect that he had come to bring fire to the earth, wishing that it were already kindled. So much for the Prince of Peace on Earth, good will among men.

After fire comes “division” and then a scold about not knowing how to interpret natural phenomenon. Even A.A. Milne’s Christopher Robin knew a cloud when he saw one: Tut, tut. Looks like rain.

What’s going on in this text?

Luke is usually the gentle evangelist loath to speak the evil or exclusionary word. But here the pressure is on. What is the “fire” of which Luke spoke?

Can it be the fire Luke is later in the Book of Acts to depict dancing upon the heads of the disciples at Pentecost making them apostles? Is it the fire of damnation or purification? Is it the baptism by fire some early Christians may have been experiencing for the trouble of believing as they did? Maybe “fire” is a metaphor for the pain of division, which is also a factor in this text.

Luke has Jesus say he came to “divide” – down to members of a family and household. The rule of love (which is our latter-day understanding of the biblical phrase kingdom of God) certainly has the potential to divide because it places such radical demands on those who would live under it – like loving their enemies and forgiving as often as required. There will inevitably be division under such a rule because people receive or avoid it in different ways.

Such division surely represents what must have been going on among late First Century communities who were organizing around the memory of Jesus and his ethic. The farther away from tradition Judaism members of the new Jesus movement got, the more division and conflict must have ensued. People had to choose and did choose. Choice is sometimes a baptism, sometimes even a baptism as it were by fire.

The rule of love is surely one of peace, but peace has a price. The rule of love is communal by nature. It is not capitalism but socialism.

It does not and cannot tolerate vast chasms of disparity between wealth and poverty. That’s why the rule of love, which can bring peace, brings division. The idea that Jesus came from God and that the rule of love came through Jesus arose from experience. Human beings seem to hold the rule of love at bay. Maybe an unseen deity can force it upon us. Such belief partakes in what may be the ultimate tragedy of human existence.

In the Gospel of Thomas the sentence about fire reads this way: He who is near me is near the fire, and he who is far from me is far from the kingdom (rule). So whatever the fire in this reading is, it may be a good thing. There is an old Methodist hymn with the line Set us afire, Lord. Stir us we pray. While the world perishes, we go our way, purposeless, passionless, day after day; Set us afire, Lord. Stir us, we pray.

That lyric may capture what Luke meant by “fire.”

The whole passage reflects impatience with members of the community, with people’s complacency, perhaps, or unwillingness or inability to sense the pregnancy of the moment.

Time” seems to be a big factor in the passage – but not time as in clock or calendar time, but time as in the sense of the moment. It is not the exquisite measurement of time that should concern us – the humdrum, lock-step progression of minute-to-minute, day-to-day routine. Rather, it is the condition, the possibilities and potential of a season in which change is in the air, when anything can happen, when time is on the verge of possibility for good or ill.

We might suppose that people in every age think they are living at just such a moment. But of course they have, they do and they will. We’re living in just such a moment now. The season of choice is once again upon those who make bold to say they follow Jesus. To follow Jesus is to accept the rule of love and to live under it – and not only as a member of a to-whom-it-may-concern Christianity. Such a rule touches upon our political, social and economic lives, the decisions we make, the ballots we cast and the practical, every-day choices we make in life.

Embracing the time and season spoken of in the gospel text at hand will require one to lay aside all previous assumptions and pre-conceived notions and ask at every juncture at which choices are presented: How will what I say or do or decide (or not say or not do or not decide)

advance the rule of love?

Once a person discerns the signs of the time and knows what season it is, he or she will embrace the opportunity. If he or she claims in any way to be a follower of Jesus, the task ahead will be clear. And if you think this is a political as well as a religious statement, you would be correct.

© Copyright 2007, Harry T. Cook. All rights reserved. This article may not be used or reproduced without proper credit.