August 14, 20th Sunday in Ordinary Time: Jeremiah 23:23-29; Luke 12:49-56
"Our Lord Jesus Christ is not tame, not nice,” began the sermon, and then the preacher’s voice trembled as he paraphrased Jesus’ words: “I have come to bring fire to this earth.” Ten years later, I can still hear that tremble—perhaps because the voice belonged to Gordon Lathrop, whose theology I had always regarded as steadfast. Maybe in that moment I imagined a similar tremble in Jesus’ voice, not from lack of nerve but from depth of fully human feeling.
Or perhaps I recall Lathrop’s voice because it so audibly captured the gravity of Jesus’ terrible words. What kind of savior would bring division instead of peace, would deliberately separate family members? What kind of God would bring fire to the earth?
These questions are not merely abstract. Jesus’ fire imagery is disturbingly concrete. When I worked as a hospital chaplain I experienced the look and smell of human flesh destroyed by fire. I witnessed the torturous tedium of the layers of healing that happen with human skin, painstakingly slowly, after it has been burned. Nearly every burn victim I came to know addressed, directly and courageously, the question of God’s role in causing the fire that harmed them. None found easy answers.
