“I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!” Luke 12:49
The word “fire” from the Gospel reading can provide an acronym with which to think about difficult teaching: “F” for “fire”; “I” for “I” in which Jesus speaks about himself; “R” for “reward”; and “E” for “eternity.”
“F” for fire, pictures of which were used to terrify people.
There was a time when artists preached sermons far more powerful than any words a poor cleric might manage. The medieval pictures of Jesus bringing fire on the earth, the Last Day, the Dies Irae, the Day of Wrath, the great judgment day, would have frightened uneducated, unsophisticated peasant populations. Some of the greatest artists of former centuries, the foremost among them being Hieronymus Bosch, painted great canvases with the Last Judgment depicted in lurid detail.
The medieval church used to use terrifying judgment scenes to frighten people into church attendance, into outward expressions of belief, even if there was no inward faith. Faith meant not just believing, it meant believing in a precisely right way, failure to do so meant that you would burn forever in hellfire. One can read James Joyce’s “Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man” and almost smile as poor Stephen Dedalus, the central character, listens to the Jesuit preacher striking fear into the hearts of teenage boys with visions of hell, but such preaching is still common in many places.
Looking back on times when religious conformity was enforced with threats of being burned at the stake, it seems strange that preachers of one religious tradition would suggest that the ordinary people of the opposing religious tradition would be sent to eternal punishment because they feared to believe anything other than what their rulers enforced. What sort of God made such rules? What sort of God punished working people because they obeyed what they were told? What sort of God punished the poor for believing the stories told to them by the rich and the educated? The Last Judgment, as preached by the church through the centuries, seemed to have more to do with the control of people than with the love of God.
A God who judged people on obscure points of theological doctrine, rewarding the rich and the comfortable, while turning his back on common folk, seems not much of a God. If he is a God of medieval hellfire, then is he the God who is met in Jesus?
“I” for “I”, in which Jesus speaks of himself; what does he say and what is made of what he says?
“I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!” says Jesus in Saint Luke Chapter 12 Verse 49. Jesus’ words about coming in power and in judgement and in bringing division in families would have inspired medieval artists to see depict a coming Last Day in the most terrifying of terms. In their defence they might have pointed out that on repeated occasions Jesus talks about the coming judgment as a disaster falling from heaven. He says in Verse 51, “Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division!”
What can one make of such words? One cannot read the Gospels with integrity if one simply skips over all the awkward bit, all the bits that cause discomfort.
Jesus uses the teaching styles, ideas and stories of the people of his time. Jesus wasn’t the only person telling stories like this; he warns against “false messiahs”, the wandering preachers threatening people with impending doom and disaster. There was no shortage of terrifying words to prompt fear and trembling in the hearts of listeners.
How can one reconcile the image of a terrifying deity worthy of medieval art with the Jesus encountered in the broken body and shed blood of the Holy Communion? Why does Jesus uses such language? Why conjure up these pictures in people’s minds? Perhaps not to frighten people, but to tell them about justice.
Thoughts about justice bring the third letter, “R” for “reward.”
If one believe in justice, then, I think, one has to believe in judgment. If God is to be a God who means anything, then he must be a God who keeps his word. Time and time again throughout the Bible he promises justice for his people; but how shall there be justice, if there is no judgment? How can there be justice if there is no reward?
In the book of Revelation, another of those parts of the Bible that can discomfit Anglicans, Chapter 20 Verse 12-13 say, “And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Another book was opened, which is the book of life. The dead were judged according to what they had done as recorded in the books.”
“The dead were judged according to what they had done.” Perhaps Heaven is reached not through being born in the right place, or the right community; not through being able to recite the right words; not through being able to claim a particular experience; but through struggling for a better world; through struggling to love one’s neighbour as oneself; through struggling to keep Jesus’ commandments because he is the only one who promises to be there at the end.
There needs to be judgment. To think that a child who was murdered, and the person who had murdered that child, both received the same reward, would mean having to ask what meaning or purpose there is in Scripture or in the whole of God’s dealings with his people. Why would anyone try to lead good and faithful lives if actions have no consequence? A final reward is important to to belief the world is a moral place, to belief that lives have a meaning.
“F” for “fire”; “I” for “I”; “R” for “reward”; and “E” for “eternity.”
“When you see a cloud rising in the west, you immediately say, ‘It is going to rain’; and so it happens. And when you see the south wind blowing, you say, ‘There will be scorching heat’; and it happens,” says Jesus in Verse 54-55. They can see the signs of rain and heat, but they cannot see the signs of the infinitely greater presence that is with them. “You hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky, but why do you not know how to interpret the present time?” declares Jesus in Verse 56. They have failed to understand that the present time is one in which the eternal God has come to be with them, they have failed to interpret that eternity itself has broken into their time.
Is there a danger of being like the hypocrites, of missing what is to be seen, or are the the signs of eternity seen?
“Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division!” “Fire is a reminder of the need to be on the right side of that division.