Okay, here it is—case study. “Divine Disruption, Creative Destruction” August 18, 2013, First Church in Cambridge Luke 12:49–56 (bible.oremus.org/?ql=243865430) “I came to bring fire to the earth”—or better translated, “I came to throw fire on the earth”; Βαλειν, to “cast” it, in the old RSV translation. Like a farmer casting seed. “I came to cast fire on the earth.” Excuse me, Jesus—Smokey Bear would like a word with you. Did you grow up with Smokey? I haven’t seen him in a while, so maybe he’s gone quietly into retirement. I can still see his resolute figure gripping a shovel—his finger pointing directly at me, his eyes boring into mine under that park ranger hat he always wore— “Only YOU can prevent forest fires,” he would tell me, from posters set up in my local library, or at the visitor’s center at the national park. I studied his admonitions carefully: • Never play with matches or lighters. • Inspect your campsite before leaving. • Build campfires away from low-hanging tree branches and all vegetation. …none of which had the slightest relevance to my book-loving, camping-hating family, but when Smokey said it, it had the solemnity of the 10 Commandments—if the 10 Commandments had made it into my educational curriculum, which I’m sorry to say they hadn’t. Anyway, the point was made: Fire, bad. Putting out fires, good. Then, starting in the 70s, ecologists began to wonder if the whole fire-prevention thing had gone too far. It turns out that wildfires are a natural occurrence in some habitats. They restore the ecological balance and help feed the soil, allowing diverse plant species to thrive. Too much prevention can end up doing more harm than good, ecologists told us. Fire prevention was out; control burning was in. But now climate change has altered everything. At last count there were 44 wildfires raging across the western United States. These fires aren’t restoring the ecological balance; they’re destroying it. Heat, drought, increased levels of C02 leading to surges in plant growth; this is disruption of nature on a global scale. Are we seeing the beginning of the end of life as we’ve known it? Or will this turn out to be the turning point?—the terrifying wake-up call that teaches us to interpret the appearance of earth and sky in our own time, and rouses even the climate-change deniers among us to action? Is fire the enemy, or a friend in disguise, come to wake us up and save us from ourselves? Has it come to destroy, or to renew? The Bible is full of fire imagery, always with overtones of this same question. There is the fire of God’s wrath—sometimes metaphoric and sometimes literal, like the fire that rained down on Sodom and Gomorrah. The destruction was terrible, but so was the death-dealing culture that had called it forth. There’s the fire that purifies, consuming what is ungodly—like the burning coal with which the angel touched Isaiah’s mouth so he could speak God’s word to his people, or the refiner’s fire of Malachi that was to purify the priesthood so they could serve in holiness. And of course there are the fires that laid waste to Jerusalem—first in the days of the Babylonian siege and captivity, and then again under the Romans, a few years before Luke began composing his gospel. But not all the fire images in the Bible are about destruction. Think of the fire of the burning bush, the fire that burned but did not consume. Or the pillar of fire that guarded the Israelites by night in their wilderness wandering. Think of the fire of God’s glory on Mt. Sinai, where Moses stood before God and received the tablets of the law—so dazzling he had to wear a veil when he went back down the mountain so people could stand to look at him. Think of the fire that burned in Jeremiah’s bones when he tried to keep God’s word to himself. And the light of the gospel, bright as an oil lamp flame, shining in each one of us. And the flames that danced over the disciples heads’ at Pentecost. And the light which shines in the darkness, which the darkness has not overcome. What kind of fire has Jesus has come to cast upon the earth? The urgency of his words is almost too much to bear. “I have a baptism with which to be baptized, and what stress I am under until it is completed!” He is speaking of his crucifixion, the death he is walking toward at that very moment—purposely, willfully walking toward. “Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth?” he bursts out. “No, I tell you, but rather division! From now on five in one household will be divided, three against two and two against three…” Fire? Division? Family conflict? As if we don’t have enough fires to contend with—fires of prejudice and hatred and distrust and resentment burning, burning away in our hearts—progressives against conservatives, white against brown, citizens against immigrants, men against women… We’re so focused on our divisions, it sometimes seems as if they’re all we can see. With a host of urgent issues confronting us, from climate change to economic inequality to global conflict, we squander our energies demonizing one another, while the systems that perpetuate injustice remain firmly in place. Perhaps that’s the point. Perhaps that’s exactly what all of these them/us divisions are meant to accomplish. Large oppressive systems exist for one simple reason, and that’s to benefit the powerful. In Jesus’ day, those forces included the Roman occupation, the palace and Temple, the land-owning class, and the apparatus of the state that kept all these powers in place. Hierarchies of power, wealth, and status were a fact of life. Under the occupation the country had experienced large-scale economic disruption and dispossession, as small farmers lost their holdings to large absentee landlords and became tenants on their own land. (Does this seem at all familiar?) in our day the shots are being called by large financial institutions, giant corporations, and the national security apparatus, backed up by an increasingly militarized police force. Low wages, poor working conditions, widespread mortgage abuses, debt slavery, and the highest rate of incarceration in the world have contributed to a massive upward transfer of wealth, with over half of Americans now living at or near the poverty level. Luke, more than any other gospel, emphasizes Jesus’ confrontation with the death-dealing systems and attitudes that keep some in positions of privilege while relegating others to the margins. Then as now, these were systems that most people had simply learned to fit into. They did what we all do: They accommodated. They did what they could to get by, and tried not to rock the boat—all the while longing for a savior who would throw out the ruling class and give them a chance on top for a while. But the truth is, it’s hard to give much thought to injustice when the rent is coming due. The problems are right in front of us. But most of us can’t really bear to look at them. We can’t bring ourselves to interpret the present time, let alone push back against it. We’re too invested in the system. Our “peace” and “security” are as wrapped up in the status quo as anyone else’s. Rejecting that status quo for the radical reorientation of the gospel is not going to happen without disruption, as Luke’s listeners would have known all too well. “Father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother…” You can imagine a lot of first-century Christians nodding when that passage was read in church. Been there, done that. We may not like the systems that hold our world together, but no one wants be the one to take the blame when they start to crumble. Or suffer the consequences. Which is why the saving, liberating, lifegiving word can’t come from inside. It must break in from above. “I have heard the cry of my people…” God says in words of fire from the burning bush. And then God says, “Go tell Pharaoh…” and Moses says, “No thank you. Not me. Not this guy. Please, oh please send someone else.” When liberation comes, it hardly ever feels like the 4th of July. More like the end of the world. Divine disruption, creative destruction. How hard it feels to be in the middle of the mess when things begin to fall apart. How hard it is to recognize the change God is bringing about, even when it’s staring us right in the face. Please, Jesus, can’t you just come in and fix things? That’s what my mother-in-law wants to know. Every time the subject of religion comes up, she says the same thing. “Why couldn’t Jesus heal everyone?” Why did he only lay hands on a few? Why didn’t he just make everything all better? Instead we get: “I have come to cast fire on the earth!” The fire of truth, of burning indignation, of visionary hope, of courage in the face of evil… of love for the oppressed and love for the oppressor, all caught up in the same death-trap of our own devising. Fire in the heart. Not the destructive fire that falls from heaven, or the angry raging of a wildfire destroying everything in its path, but the flame of the burning bush speaking justice and mercy to the shepherd as he goes about his day. Almost no one noticed the bearer of the flame we each of us bring to this place today. Neither Jesus’ life nor his death made much of an impression at the time. Nothing happened that anyone thought of any great importance. There was no entry to any official record. God was born into our world, and lived, and died, and rose from death, and hardly anyone registered it. It was all hidden in plain sight—tiny, seemingly insignificant— small as the flame of the candle we hold out to our neighbor on Christmas eve, who passes it to her neighbor, who passes it to his— on and on and on… generation to generation… God’s quiet, invisible victory over the powers of death, shared person to person to person. What does that look like in your life? For me it’s a newfound flame of love for homeless ministry and the homeless community, kindled by a priest down at the Episcopal Cathedral—a change so unlooked for, so unexpected and so totally lifegiving in ways I couldn’t have imagined even a year ago, it could only have come from God. Where is that flame burning for you? What makes you come alive, giving life to people around you? What quiet work are you doing to help the mighty down from their thrones and lift up the lowly? Or to heal this sacred earth, God’s handiwork, God’s creation? Whatever it is, it probably doesn’t seem like much, compared to what we’re up against— oil companies and global banks, corporate campaign spending and the NSA and the whole sticky web that holds it all together. But this is God’s way. You and I are God’s way. We are the flame that burns but does not consume. We are the light that goes on shining in the darkness. We got that light from someone, who got it from someone else, through the rising and falling of empires, through the slow, painful growth of liberation movements— burning restlessly until God’s will for justice and joy and fullness of life is realized in the earth. May the light of Christ burn brightly in your life. May you face today with courage, knowing that with every tiny act of love, that fire is going forth upon the earth. So be of good heart. And to God be glory and blessing and praise, now and forever. Amen.
Posted on: Sun, 18 Aug 2013 22:37:43 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015