The Fire of the Gospel
The great composer Ludwig van Beethoven would sometimes play a trick on polite salon audiences, especially when he guessed that they weren’t really interested in his music. He would perform a piece on the piano, one of his own slow movements perhaps, which would be so gentle and beautiful that everyone would be lulled into thinking the world was a soft and cozy place, where they could think beautiful thoughts and relax into semi-slumber. Then, just as the final notes were dying away, Beethoven would bring his whole forearm down with a crash across the keyboard, and laugh at the shock he gave to the assembled crowd.
A bit cruel and impolite, perhaps. And of course, in many of his own compositions Beethoven found less antisocial ways of telling his hearers that the world was full of pain as well as of beauty – and also of making the transition in the other direction, bringing joy out of tragedy, including his own tragic life, in wonderful and lasting ways. But the shock of that crash of notes interrupting the haunting melody is a good image for what Jesus had to say here at the end of Luke.[1]
Before we dig in to this jolting text, we need to remember that we’ve been traveling with Jesus to Jerusalem for some time now. We aren’t even close to Easter by any means but the lectionary has us at a precarious time when Jesus is focused on his death in Jerusalem. Remember a couple months back Jesus had finally turned his face to the Holy City and nothing, I mean absolutely nothing, was going to turn him around or away from his goal. He had a mission, a burning passion in his heart to change the world, to refine the culture, to enrage the empire.
And it is no doubt that hundreds of the poor and the outcast and the disenfranchised were following him by now. They were mesmerized by his captivating stories and his deeds of goodwill and love. They heard words from Jesus’ mouth that were both uplifting and peaceful. Don’t you remember, “Don’t be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” That’s the Jesus I love to preach about and that’s the Jesus who is easy to follow. Unfortunately, that’s not the Jesus of Luke. That sweet and fluffy Jesus with a peaceful word isn’t the kind of gospel that’s going to turn the world upside down. Luke knew that in order for things to change, and I mean really change, to be transformed, a different kind of gospel would have to be written, a gospel of fire.
You see, in our text for today, Jesus is getting down to business. Jesus is fed up. Jesus is aggravated. Jesus is burning inside. “I have come to bring fire to the earth, and oh how I wish it were blazing already! Do you think I have come to bring peace to the earth? No! I’ve come for division!” Jesus is spittin’ mad. His words sizzle across the ears of his hearers. And I’m sure for all those who had followed him to this point, it would’ve been easier to abandon Jesus and his fiery message. I get it. I mean, I don’t know about you, but it seems that most days I want to leave social media, stop listening to the news, hide in a mountain cabin somewhere away from the vitriol and animosity. With all of the divisiveness in our country and in the world, the last thing we want to hear Jesus talk about is more division and more destruction. I want to believe in a nice God, a God of passivity and laid-back love. A God of cool waters and green pastures. A God of niceties and tenderness.
But, that is not ultimately who God is and that is definitely not the Jesus of Luke. In the face of all the systemic injustices in that 1st century world, the gospel needed teeth. For the word of Jesus to be the true gospel, the good news, it needed a fire and passion that would burn away inequality and hate. Jesus couldn’t sit around and preach a surface and soft peace. No, he needed things to be burned up, changed, remade, regrown into what they should be. Because if you’re poor, you don’t want God to simply keep things the way that they are. No, you want God to singe the spirits of the greedy. No, you want God convict the hearts of the wealthy. No, you want God to make things right and just. Sometimes, division must happen. Sometimes surgery is required for healing. The Christian life isn’t easy. But we need the refiner’s fire, the fire that hurts but changes things for the better. Because ultimately, if we look at the Bible as a whole, we do see a God of peace, not war. We do see a God of love, not hate. We do see a God of transformation, not complacency. Sometimes we need the fire to push us into the waters of baptism that change and refine us in order that we can be transformed, transformed so we can change and refine the world.
The fire of the gospel is biblical, by the way. We do see fires in the Bible that burn, but do not destroy. Fires aren’t just cataclysmic events that burn down forests and churches and homes. Indeed, fires in Scripture are definitely a sign of God’s anger and God’s justice. But we also see that fires are a sign of God’s transformation, like Moses. Moses was transformed to be a prophet. Being one on one with God gave Moses the confidence and the power to take on Pharaoh and liberate his people from slavery in Egypt. The burning bush was a fire that did not destroy. It physically did not burn that bush. The “Great I Am” used the fire to speak boldly into Moses’s heart and to enflame the prophet to change the world and save his people.
In the book of Daniel, three Jewish boys, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego found themselves at the door of a fiery furnace, facing execution for not bowing down and worshipping King Nebuchadnezzar’s idol. They were ultimately thrown in and engulfed in the flames. But as you know from hearing this Bible story again and again, the boys were not harmed. They were not burned up by the fire. The angry and evil King looked into the furnace, hoping his eyes would see three burning boys, only to find that his eyes were transformed and open to the power and presence of God.
And the prophet Malachi says this: “But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears? For he is like a refiner’s fire and like fullers’ soap; he will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify the descendants of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, until they present offerings to the Lord in righteousness.” We don’t really see many refiners these days. But in Near Eastern history, they were basically silversmiths or goldsmiths. These workers would remove all of the impurities and imperfections from the metal in order to mold and make it, structure and shape it, into something beautiful and valuable. It was a carefully crafted art that required special attention. The refiner painstakingly and lovingly held the metal in the fire until it was purified. The fire burned and transformed, but it didn’t destroy.
There is a story of a woman who visited a silversmith. As she watched the silversmith, he held a piece of silver over the fire and let it heat up. He explained that in refining silver, one needed to hold the silver in the middle of the fire where the flames were hottest as to burn away all the impurities. The woman thought about God holding us in such a hot spot; then she thought again about the verse that says: ‘He sits as a refiner and purifier of silver.’ She asked the silversmith if it was true that he had to sit there in front of the fire the whole time the silver was being refined. The man answered that yes, he not only had to sit there holding the silver, but he had to keep his eyes on the silver the entire time it was in the fire. If the silver was left a moment too long in the flames, it would be destroyed. The woman was silent for a moment. Then she asked the silversmith, ‘How do you know when the silver is fully refined?’ He smiled at her and answered, ‘Oh, that’s easy — when I see my image in it.’
Friends, God has sent us a fiery gospel. God has said that all people and powers, the close ties of family and friends, the systems and structures that hurt and harm others, all of that must be burned away. Pastor Richard P. Carlson says, “The harsh sayings and indictments resounding in this text remind us that Jesus has not come to validate the social realities and values we have constructed. Such social realities and values have a propensity to seek a harmony that favors those who hold positions of power at the expense of those who are powerless and expendable. Jesus’ missional agenda of compassion, mercy, and justice shatters such a status quo. This is a missional agenda that compels [Jesus] toward his divine destiny to be accomplished in his death and resurrection.”
In other words, all of the things we feel we have a duty to uphold, like we can’t ordain women, or we must condemn the LGBTQ community, or we have to preach that others are going to hell, or that we must send those foreign to this land back where they came from, or that we have nothing to offer the families of people gunned down in schools and malls and churches and mosques other than our thoughts and prayers, all of that needs to fall under the fire of the gospel. And I know that it hurts too much and it is painful to speak up and to have a fiery passion for real transformation. But that is what Jesus wanted to burn away.
Rev. Meghan Feldmeyer says, “The fire of God’s anger is directed at injustice, at oppression, at the sin of the world and of our lives… at a systemic level and at an individual level… and it burns away until what is precious and beautiful is revealed. This fire edifies us so that we are transformed into the likeness of Christ. And we all know that fire does burn. And burns hurt. The process of transformation is not always without pain. Anyone who has been through significant personal transformation knows this pain first hand.” It hurts to be refined. It hurts to be transformed. And the stretching and molding and refining can take us up to the edge of what we are comfortable with. We feel like we are at the edge of crisis! Rev. Feldmeyer mentions a prominent social advocate and voice for justice in the 1970s named Lisa Fithian. In an interview, Fithian said, “When people ask me, ‘What do you do?’ I say I create crisis, because crisis is at the edge where change is possible’”
I know it feels like we are in crisis mode all of the time and that our city, our nation, and our world is on the edge. I know life is heated and we feel the singeing spirit of hate rather than love. We feel as if we are about to be destroyed and devoured. But what we often don’t see when we are engulfed in the flames is that God is right there with us. When Nebuchadnezzar looked into the fiery furnace, hoping to see the burning bodies of the boys, what he saw was three boys, not only alive, but accompanied by a fourth figure, accompanied by God. As we seek the hard task of transforming our lives so that we can transform this city, we are not alone. God is not only holding us in the fire until we shine with the reflection of Christ, but God is IN the fire with us. That is the fire of the gospel of Jesus Christ. The fire of the gospel tells us that transformation is coming and that God is right there in the flames with us.
“As you walk through the fire, I will be with you. And the flames will not consume you,” says the Lord our God. When you do the transforming work in your life and as you do the hard work of bringing transformation to this city, know that you are not alone. The presence of God goes with you. That the God who played in the ash and dust of the earth to create human beings in the Garden of Eden, is standing with you in the ashes of your life, kneeling and playing in the soil, breathing into you new life, shining the face of Christ in those areas that feel charred and ruined. The fire burns, but it does not destroy.
So, there may come a time when we find, like Beethoven with his salon audiences, that we have become too comfortable and cozy. Maybe there are times when, like Jesus himself in this text, that we need to wake people up with a crash, that we need to spread the fire of the gospel. Do we see ourselves in the refiner’s fire? Do we need to remember that fire is where transformation happens, where change is possible? I want us to go this week remembering that the gospel is sometimes impolite and aggressive and powerful and transformative. And it is in that smoldering edge where true change happens. We must remember that there is fire in this gospel.
Amen.
[1] N.T. Wright, Luke for Everybody. P 158-159.