August 19, 2007, Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost, All Soul's Episcopal Church

Friendly Fire
Luke 12: 19-53

In about 3 weeks, we will experience another anniversary of the horror of 9/11. This remembrance not only provokes fear and anger. For some of us, it also induces fear and bafflement as to how anyone could perpetuate such violence and destruction in the name of God.

Such a Divine Creator, the source of love and life, would not endorse such destruction and, of course, He doesn’t! In fact, Christians recall that Jesus warned that whoever lived by the sword would die by the sword. Sadly, however, extremist groups of Muslims are not the only ones who have justified terrorism in the name of God. Even our Christian history has twisted the message of the Prince of Peace into terror, killing and war. The Crusades in the Middle Ages are perhaps the most blatant example of people putting the Christian symbol on their shields and proclaiming their mission to be of Divine command. The name of Jesus has also been invoked to justify the burning at the stake of some whose beliefs were called into question.

One might wonder if Jesus would sue for misrepresentation if He were to operate in the arena of these 2000 years since His Resurrection.

Christians by definition are those who live according to the example and teachings of Jesus. But Jesus neither exemplified nor taught violence towards anyone. In fact, He did just the opposite. “Learn from me for I am meek and humble of heart”. Blessed are the peacemakers”. “Love your enemies and do good to those who hate you.” ”What you do unto others, you do unto me.”

But Jesus did not say that it was wrong to protect ourselves. Today, we are at war, and we are trying to protect ourselves. Many men and women are dying in battle honorably and selflessly because of this fact. We have been dangerously provoked and are defending our God given freedom trying to save in many ways our heritage and civilization as a whole for our children and our grandchildren.

My friends, I feel that we are now a new Nation facing new realities. There are those who would have us believe, once more, that it is possible to abolish strife in the affairs of man. But until our Lord comes again, “Thy Kingdom Come”, and as long as man has freewill, an inheritance acknowledged by Christian theology and a fact proven by reality, there will always be those who will seek to over-come, overthrow, and enslave their fellowman. There will always be those who will plot and plan to take away the God given freedoms, dignity, and free will of others. Blaise Pascal, the French philosopher, once said, “ Men never do evil more completely and cheerfully as when they do it with religious conviction.” And because of them, and people like them, there will also have to be those others who will lay down their lives for freedom, for truth and for goodness. We, of course have seen this in the conflicts of the past, and, of course, we saw this in the horrible death and carnage on 9/11 and the terror attacks we see daily all over the world.

World War III started many years ago when the seeds of terrorism started to grow. It was not defined so much then, but we definitely see the blossoming of this devilish poisonous weed now. The choice is not between one culture and another culture or between belief and ideology, the choice is between freedom or slavery, dignity or degradation. Our way of life! What God has given us we must protect; God depends on us.

So where does this leave us in attempting to understand the words of Jesus in today’s gospel reading? In our selection from Luke we hear him say, “I am come to send fire on the earth.” This is not even a simple statement. Luke puts it in the context of an impassioned pronouncement. We even hear Jesus say that he cannot wait for it to happen. And then he predicts the division that his teaching will bring. How do we read this? How do we reconcile a Jesus who said he came to bring fire with the notion of a loving Jesus? It is vital that we understanding the meaning of His words today, and that we hear them in the context of everything else that He said and did. It might also help to reflect for a moment on the power and meaning of fire.

Certainly fire is used to destroy. Ask anyone who lost their home to a fire. Talk to those who have lived in the ongoing inferno of war in the East. The graphic details are enough to burn a hole an any sensitive heart.

But Jesus came to tell us that He did not come to destroy people’s lives; rather, He came to save them. Despite the way that the Pharisees treated Him, and ultimately sent Him to His death, He did not call down destructive fire on them. Even Pilate, who handed Him over to a frenzied mob of executioners, was not destroyed. Nor were those who scourged Him within an inch of His live, destroyed by fire. The fire of which Jesus spoke was not destructive.

All of us have been warmed by a furnace. Many of us have experienced the dark night of a campsite brightened by a campfire. We know that fire does so much more than destroy. In many ways, fire can and does replace the cold with warmth and the darkness with the light. It can even be used to cauterize dangerous bleeding and preserve life. Fire can be used for life as well as death, and the fire of which Jesus spoke, the fire of the Spirit, is for life! We might call it friendly fire.

We speak of the fire of love. We are also familiar with the Pentecost message in which the Holy Spirit is said to have come to rest on the heads of the Apostles as tongues of fire. Even in our own use of the language, we speak of firing up one’s heart. We put a fire under ourselves as it were to get us moving in the right direction. A coach fires up his or her team. Jesus came to do all of these things.

Think of the fire that must have been in Jesus’ own heart. Jesus knew what He had to give. He knew that his message, if it were taken into the hearts of His hearers, would forever change lives and even the world. He was passionate about this.

What would happen if those who are so on fire with twisting the world to their own way of thinking and calling it “God’s way”, were to redirect the fire of their passion toward hearing what God’s way truly is—even when it is contrary to their own expectations?

You know, the recipe for perpetual ignorance is to be satisfied with your own opinion and content with your own knowledge…….in other words to be totally unteachable.

What would happen if you and I, who meet here today, were wide open to learning what we do not know about Jesus instead of insisting upon what we think we already know about Him? What if we were as willing to hear those parts of Jesus’ message that challenge our religious “comfort zones” as we are to filter through our own prisms those parts of His message that are in accord to our cherished notions? What kind of fire would we light for the lives we live and the world we touch, if we were as impassioned as He was about the power of love? What kind of a fire could we light!

If we dare to enter the process, Jesus warns us in part of what will happen. He says that it will cause division. We have already seen this. While some groups say they worship God while endorsing terror and the sword and suicide bombings, most others condemn it.

We must admit that one of the greatest scandals within religion is the vociferousness with which one group vilifies another. Some would have us believe that the only Christian values are the ones that feed their comfort zones without adherence to Biblical truth. the process, the real Jesus, along with the fire of His message and the morality of His message, is diminished to a flicker and even smothered.

Yes, Jesus did indeed come to bring fire. And such a fire it was meant to be! But Jesus did not come to destroy. If we believe that the Spirit of God lives within us as Jesus promised, then we are empowered to rekindle His fire, a fire of love, a fire of truth, a fire of justice, a fire of freedom that must be protected. Whether we are willing to let God set us on fire with love and a thirst for justice and, whether we are willing to light His kind of fire could not matter more.

The next time we spend some quality time with Jesus in prayer, we should pray that we allow Him to fill our hearts and minds with His love ……..that we will burn with His fire…………….

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost

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