Luke 12:49-53 (English Standard Version)
“I came to cast fire on the earth, and would that it were already kindled! I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how great is my distress until it is accomplished! Do you think that I have come to give peace on earth? No, I tell you, but rather division. For from now on in one house there will be five divided, three against two and two against three. They will be divided, father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.”
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"There is [...] one saying of Jesus that switches the whole meaning of fire and it gives an indication of how he was changing [John the Baptist's] entire symbolic scheme [of the fire of judgment]. He said, “I have come to set the earth on fire, and how I wish it were already blazing! There is a baptism with which I must be baptized, and how great is my anguish until it is accomplished” (Luke 12:49-50).
"The image of setting fire to the whole earth is very different from [John the Baptist's metaphor of] burning the separated chaff. It is also connected to a baptism that Jesus has yet to undergo, and so is diverse from John's meaning. John's promise of a baptism with “spirit and fire” refers to the final cataclysm of God's in-breaking in history. The water baptism at the Jordan that he offered stood as a powerful symbolic alternative to fire, the possibility of entering into a repentance and purification that pre-empted this fearsome eventuality.
"Jesus' putting together of “fire” and “baptism” in respect of something he had still to undergo suggests that he accepted John's symbols but at a deeper and decisive level he opted to bring the crisis down on himself in a totally exceptional sense. He would thereby release fire on earth, but in a transformed, generative sense. Here we have the absolutely characteristic gesture of Jesus that unites an apocalyptic viewpoint with something else, something that changes the orientation and content of apocalyptic itself."
- Anthony Bartlett, Virtually Christian, pp. 233-34
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"[H]uman desire, rivalry, competition, which had previously been kept in some sort of check by a system of prohibitions, rituals, sacrifices and myths, lest human groups collapse in perpetual and irresoluble mutual vengeance, can no longer be controlled in this way. This is the sense in which Jesus' coming brings not peace to the earth, but a sword and division. All the sacred structures which hold groups together start to collapse, because desire has been unleashed.
"So the sacred bonds within families are weakened, different generations will be run by different worlds, give their loyalty to different and incompatible causes, the pattern of desire constantly shifting. All in fact will be afloat on a sea of wrath, because the traditional means to curb wrath, the creation by sacrifice of spaces of temporary peace within the group, has been undone forever.
"The only alternative is to undergo the forgiveness which comes from the lamb, and start to find oneself recreated from within by a peace which is not from this world, and involves learning how to resist the evil one by not resisting evil. This means: you effectively resist, have no part in, the structures and flows of desire which are synonymous with the prince of this world, that is to say with the world of wrath, only by refusing to acquire an identity over against evil-done-to you."
- James Alison, Broken Hearts and New Creations, pg. 44
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In his video homily for this week, James Alison makes a number of interesting connections and observations that subvert to some extent the usual interpretation of this passage:
- the "fire" to be kindled can be linked to the tongues of flame on the people on the day of Pentecost (Act 2); this fire is destructive in regards to the human way of violence, but is also generative of God's way of forgiveness and peace, as suggested also in the passage quoted just above from "Virtually Christian";
- the Greek work translated as "distress" (v.50) has a root of 'hold fast' or 'press together' so can be thought of as holding back of emotion, feeling constrained or compelled; hence it is not necessarily a 'negative' emotion but can be seen as related to Hebrews 12:2, "for the sake of the joy that was set before him."
- what is interesting about the number 5 is that it is the lowest number which can be divided in more than one way *unevenly*, so it draws attention to the way society normally divides to create peace: 4 against 1, not 3 against 2; hence Jesus' prophecy can be seen, in a way (this is my own extrapolation), as a prediction of modern democracy, where peace in society is not reached by the mob in unifying against a 'scapegoat' other, or by the one dictator imposing his will by force on the many (1 against 4), but instead reached through acceptance of the decision of the majority (slim as it may be) - an 'uncomfortable' peace, if we can even call it that, as we know too well these days.
- the familial antagonisms mentioned are notable as being democratic, two-way, which subverts the hierarchical antagonisms spoken of in Micah 7:6 (which Jesus is clearly alluding to), where it is the son, daughter, daughter-in-law, who are condemned for opposition to their elders.
Alison concludes:
"So the notion here [from Jesus] is: “I came to bring fire, I wish it were all kindled. How tough it is to constrain what I want to give until it is completed.” And what he wants to give is going to look to some awfully like wrath, but in fact it's the possibility of living without wrath in the midst of a world that is going to become visibly or apparently more wrathful. But we're going to know where the source of peace and unity, real peace and real unity is.
"And the challenge for us - and that's going to be the challenge we see in the next couple of passages in Luke is going to be - how do we interpret which side to be on? How do we interpret where the path to looking for real unity, a real togetherness, respecting all the differences between fathers/sons, mothers/daughters, mothers and daughters in law - all those real differences that are shown up by collapses in culture, collapses in generation, impossibility to keep fake unity together.
"So that I think is this week's challenge to remember that the gift of the Holy Spirit is the most destabilizing entrance of the Spirit, of the Creator, into our midst. It leads to a constant world of re-signifying, of making all things new, of working out how, in whatever space of disaster or catastrophe we are, as fake unity collapses, we can begin to usher in the new world."
- James Alison, from video "Homily for Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time 2022 C" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmtBy0KnqGw)
[Source of quotes from Anthony Bartlett and James Alison's Broken Hearts and New Creations, and for analysis and discussion on all the lectionary texts for this Sunday: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-c/proper15c/]