The fire of truth and love St. Martin’s Brighton 17th August 2025
Jeremiah 38:4-6,8-10; Heb.12:1-4; Luke 12:49-53.
Jesus said to his disciples, ‘I came to cast fire on earth and would that it were already kindled! I have a baptism to be baptised with, and how great is my distress until it is accomplished!’ Luke 12.49
The Gospel today presents us with three difficult saying of our Lord Jesus Christ.
First, are his words of ‘coming to cast fire on earth and how he wishes it were already kindled!’
Secondly, he speaks of ‘having a baptism to be baptised with and how great is his distress until it is accomplished.’
Finally, he speaks of ‘not bringing peace, but rather division.’
The Belgian Benedictine monk and liturgical theologian Dom Adrien Nocent makes a striking comment on Jesus’ words.
He writes; ‘ [Jesus words] do not present a Christian life of sweet and easy peace and a facile observance of the commandment of love. [Take note President Trump!] Instead, the Lord tells us that violence marks the climate proper to an authentic Christianity. This should make us stop and think. The ideal we have to offer today’s world does not rest on a kind of resignation in the face of God’s demands. Neither do we propose an earthly happiness and human peace to be won by religious practice, no matter how exemplary.
We have only one thing to offer: the Cross of Christ, which we must take up uncompromisingly. This means we must be a sign of contradiction in the eyes of the world.
The Christian cannot compromise with the world’s demands but must speak to the world the language of God, even though he or she must suffer for it.’
Jesus longs for that Spirit that comes at Pentecost. This Spirit, Act of the Apostles describes as ‘fire.’ It came from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind, and it filled the entire house where the Apostles were sitting. And divided tongues as of fire appeared to them and rested on each one of them.’
This Pentecostal fire transforms and burns up all that is not God in us, all that is not good and true, dividing evil from good. Above all it is revealed in the sacrificial fire of love of God on the Cross of Christ as he commends his spirit to the Father saying ‘It is accomplished!’
At every Eucharist the Church is obedient to the Lord’s command remembers his sacrifice. And as the priest extends his hands over the gifts and invokes the invisible fire of the Holy Spirit, it comes down on the gifts which are transformed into the precious Body and Blood of our Saviour. And as we receive Holy Communion in thanksgiving we united in the same Spirit as members of the body Christ.
Secondly, Jesus speaks of his having a baptism to be baptised with and how great is his distress until it is accomplished.
We ask what does this mean? What is his baptism?
And what does he mean by his distress until it is accomplished ?
Jesus here is not speaking of the baptism he received from John the Baptist in the river Jordan. The baptism John proclaimed was for those who repented of their sins and had them washed away by water. Here Jesus uses the word ‘baptism’ to refer to his forthcoming passion and the shedding of his blood. This is the blood of the New Covenant which he pours out for the forgiveness of our sins.
By this Sacrament of Christian Baptism the believer enters the Kingdom of God through the Lord’s passion.
The early Christians spoke of baptism as the enlightenment which comes as a gift of the Holy Spirit, filling the believer with the light of Christ and making us partakers in the divine nature.
So Paul tells us that through the transforming power of baptism we enter into Christ’ death and are now raised to life with him. Paul’s words in Romans are to be frequently reflected on when he writes:
Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.
We are now to live a life of continuing radical change, led by the Holy Spirit, who reminds us that while we are still in this world, we are not of the world - ‘For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God.’ So we are God’s spies in the world, living incognito!
Yet this brings division between the believer and non-believers, even between members of a family! In his compassion for us, Jesus knew how attached we are to things in this world – our relationships with people and material things.
He knew that all people suffer distress through sin and loss of grace. He knows our spiritual darkness and need to repent and turn to the light of Christ.
His distress therefore continues until the Kingdom of God has come and our final enemy death is put to death. For while Christ died once and for all on the Cross, his sacrifice is now and always, for the Cross lies in the heart of God.
Hard though Jesus’ words may seem in today’s Gospel, he is encouraging us to become what we are: people born again in the Holy Spirit, called to live by faith in that Spirit and in that faith and in that Spirit to continue to pray for ourselves and the world with the words of the Athonite monk St. Silouan
‘I pray thee O merciful Lord for all the people of the earth that they come to know Thee by Thy Holy Spirit.’ Amen
Father Andrew.