Burning Presence

Has Jesus come to bring peace or consuming fire?

Reading: Luke 12:49-53

The following homily was preached during compline. You can watch here or read below:

What exactly is this fire which Jesus has come to cast upon the earth? One could read this in different ways. The more obvious reading is the fire of judgment. Our readings in the last few days have frequently brought the theme of judgment to mind – we heard in the Gospel yesterday that ‘you must be ready, for the Son of man is coming at an unexpected hour’.

And fire is a common biblical metaphor for judgment. The tree that doesn’t bear good fruit is thrown into the fire, and so too the chaff is separated from the wheat and cast into the furnace. James and John famously ask whether they can cast down fire upon the Samaritan village that doesn’t receive Jesus, and Jesus himself quotes Genesis speaking of the fire that rained down upon Sodom. Fire destroys and consumes. Is this what Jesus has come to cast upon the earth?

The rest of today’s Gospel supports this reading too: ‘do you think I have come to bring peace on earth? No, rather division!’. It isn’t a Gospel that sits easily with the message of the angels at Jesus’ birth: ‘Glory to God on high, and peace to people of good will’. Has Jesus come to bring peace or consuming fire?

The unity of the Scriptural witness suggests we should look a little deeper. There is another meaning to ‘fire’ in the Christian imagination: the presence of God. We can trace a clear line through Scripture from Moses before the burning bush and the pillar of fire in the Exodus to those tongues of flame that appear on the heads of the apostles at Pentecost. Does not John the Baptist say of Jesus that he will come to Baptise with fire and the Holy Spirit?

To be in the presence of God is to be purified by a consuming fire. The fire that Jesus has come to cast upon the earth is himself, the purifying power of his presence. It is a presence both destructive and peaceful. Christ stands before us and purges and burns away all that does not belong: every vicious habit, every branch that does not bear fruit, the stain of every decision made against God. All of this is thrown into the fire and destroyed.

The change demanded of each of us is dramatic: no wonder there is some household division as we struggle to accommodate the call of the Gospel on ourselves and on others. But slowly this purifying fire transforms and conforms us into its own image: Christ makes us unto himself. As Pope Benedict so beautifully put it, “His love, like a fire, burns through us, enabling us to become totally ourselves and so totally of God”

This is the power of the presence of God. “Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road?”. Is not the heart on fire the heart at peace?