Jesus and Peace, Division and Fire

“I came to bring fire upon the earth and I long to see it kindled. Do you think I came to bring peace in earth? Not that, I tell you, but division.” (Lk 12, v49. v51 - from this Sunday's Gospel)

These are rather surprising words to hear from Jesus. Did not the angels who announced the birth of Jesus sing, “glory to God in the highest, and PEACE to his people on earth”? What is Jesus up to now, when he says he brings fire, and wants to see it burn, and that he did not come to bring peace, but division?

We have to understand what Jesus meant when he said, peace, and division, and fire that burns.

By peace hear meant here, the people of his time’s (or even of our own time) wrong notion of peace. For them peace was the absence of conflict, peace was when no one contradicts each other, peace is when no one meddles with the affairs of others, peace was when they pleased each other, or when they pleased those who had power, and/or money, and/or influence – even at the expense of truth, justice, fairness, morality, goodness. Jesus brings not complacency but disturbance. He wants us to be disturbed by falsehood, injustice, immorality and evil.

By fires, he meant the light of truth, which should burn and bring to light all that is false, unjust, immoral and evil.

What Jesus came to bring is the knowledge of God – a knowledge that is to bring us to a commitment to what is true, just, moral and good, and the disturbance that moves us to resolve to expose, condemn and fight against what is false, unjust, immoral and evil.

Let this (attributed to Sir Francis Drake, 1577) be our Sunday Prayer:

Disturb us Lord,
when we are too well pleased with ourselves,
when our dreams have come true
because we have dreamt too little,
when we arrived safely
because we sailed too close to the shore.

Disturb us, Lord,
when with the abundance of things we possess
we have lost our thirst
for the waters of life;
or having fallen in love with life,
we have ceased to dream of eternity
or in out efforts to build a new earth,
we have allowed our vision
of the new Heaven to dim.

Disturb us, Lord,
to dare more boldly,
to venture into wider seas
where storms will show us your mastery;
where losing sight of land,
we shall find the stars.
We ask You to push back
the horizons of our hopes;
and to push into the future with us
in strength, courage, hope, and love.

Have a blessed Sunday. May the Lord disturb you.