What is the Fire?

Jeremiah 23:23-29
Psalm 82
Hebrews 11:29-12:2
Luke 12:49-56

Tim Christoffersen
Holy Cross
August 15, 2004

Good morning.  I came over last Saturday to see Mark and to learn about how the worship services unfold here at Holy Cross.  I saw the tell tale signs of Vacation Bible School and it reminded me of Mark’s tenure at St. Timothy’s, my home parish.  Mark is kind of a Vacation Bible School legend at St. Tim’s.  His energy and creativity…not to mention his musical gifts are still remembered with fondness and affection.  Mark is a great talent and you chose well.

I think the image of “choosing well” provides a jumping off point for the gospel reading from Luke today.  For the central theme is making a decision, making a choice and being prepared for the consequences of that choice.

We encounter the central image in the first half sentence of the reading. Jesus says, “I came to bring fire to the earth.” What is the fire?  A lot of theologians over the centuries have weighed in on that question…what is the fire?

Before we take a look at ‘what is the fire’, we might logically ask how ‘the fire’ is connected to the central theme of making a choice.  I suspect most of you might agree with me that the ‘fire’ is what forces the hearer of Jesus’ words to make the choice.  It forces one to decide between following Jesus or turning away.

When we connect the fire with being forced to make a choice, the rest of the first verse makes more sense.  Jesus says, “I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled.” If the fire is not started, there is no fire to force making a choice.

So what exactly is the fire?  The setting is the road to Jerusalem and Jesus’ awareness of the human death that awaits him there. The second verse makes that clear.  The baptism he refers to is clearly his human death.  His human agony in the face of his impending death is what he refers to when he emphasizes, “What stress I am under until it is completed.”

One way to understand the fire is a form of purification.  The fire forces his followers to choose between remaining his followers and turning away.  For the road he promises is one of trial and great tribulation.  The images of separating the sheep from the goats or the unfruitful trees from the fruitful trees immediately come to mind. We also think of separating the wheat from the chaff.

Another way to understand the fire is the presence of God.  We have the image from Luke where Jesus baptizes with the Holy Spirit and with fire.  In Acts, the Holy Spirit is visualized as tongues of fire. We have the image of the angel in the burning bush from the story of Moses in the Old Testament.

Several of these images were gathered by a pastor named Brian Stoffregen.  Stoffregen also sees Paul’s words in Romans (12:20), taken from Proverbs (25:21-22), as another way to understand the fire. “If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.”

I think the connection between the disciples and crowds to whom Jesus was speaking directly and you and I today is how we ‘see’ or recognize the fire.  I mean ‘see’ in the figurative sense and not in the literal sense with our eyes.  It fundamentally has to do with seeing things as they really are.

I won’t speak for any of you, but I don’t want to count the times I manage to kid myself and not to face seeing things as they really are.  It can be as simple as the part we play in a misunderstanding or fight we have with a spouse or a friend.  Most of us have no trouble at all in recognizing the speck in our neighbor’s eye. We can be so out of touch with things as they really that we actual see a log rather than a speck in our neighbor’s eye.

Jesus says to the crowds at the end of the passage, “When you see a cloud rising in the west, you immediately say, ‘It is going to rain; and so it happens….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?”

I believe he is referring to the fire.  We don’t see that Jesus’ words, the fire, confront us with a choice.  The fire forces us to face what is fundamentally important in our lives.  But the fire is not a fire that we see with our eyes.  The fire confronts our total being, our heart and our soul. Some of you might remember the song by Tracy Chapman called “All that you have is your soul.” Or we might recall the verse from last week:  “Where your treasure is there will be your heart also.”

Do you remember the story last week about the Rich Fool who built a bigger barn to store his possessions and his life was taken that very night?  My personal story about attachment to possessions involves my books.  Susan, my wife, and I moved to Rossmoor, a retirement community, last fall.  I had two rooms with book shelves in Alamo and my new allotment was one room.  That meant I had to get rid of about 1/3 of my books.  Talk about where your treasure is!  I managed giving away the books. Surprisingly I feel pretty good now about letting go of them. It certainly was not easy at the time.

The ‘fire’ confronts us with the question: where is our treasure.  Is it our equivalent of the bigger barn? Now that we know what the question is, it really doesn’t matter exactly what the fire is.  If the image is separating the fruitful trees from the unfruitful ones, our question is which tree are we?  If the image is giving water and bread to our enemies, the question is are we the one heaping the coals on the head of our enemy or are we, in fact, the enemy?

Going back to the verses from last week, we heard “provide purses for yourselves that will not wear out, a treasure in heaven that will not be exhausted…for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

The fire confronts us with the question of what is our treasure.  To answer the question with our mind, our heart and our soul all having a say, we need to see things as they really are.

Shakespeare frames the question for us pretty well.  “Why so large a cost, having so short a lease, dost thou upon thy fading mansion spend?...within be fed, without be rich no more.”

Amen.