Year C
 Jeremiah 23:23-29
 Psalm 82
 Hebrews 11:29-12:2
 Luke 12:49-56

May the words of my mouth O God…  speak your truth…

There’s a mental health crisis in this country…  not only are there widespread shortages of mental health professionals…  like at Pine Rest…  but there are people whose emotional landscapes have suffered earthquakes…  not only from traumas they’ve experienced…  not only because of the pandemic…  but from a whole slew of economic…  environmental…  and social issues…  and I commend to you a series that’s available on Apple TV…  if you have it…  it’s called The Me You Can’t See…  and it’s produced by Oprah Winfrey and Prince Harry…  who suffered for years after his mother’s death…  because the royal family just simply refused to speak about it…  and you can’t just think yourself out of that kind of trauma… because it takes up residence in our physiology…  and the series features some people we know…  like Oprah herself…  and Lady Gaga…  and actress Glenn Close…  talking candidly about their mental health and how they cope…  and others we don’t know…  being just as vulnerable…  and sharing their own stories…  and the series brings out into the open…  shines more of a light on the fact…  that mental health issues are no more shameful than broken bones…  or the common cold…  or any kind of cancer…  or that they emerge because of some moral failing…  my point is…  that for some of us…  on the surface…  and by all appearances…  everything may seem to be fine…  we may put on a brave face…  but under the surface…  in the roots of things…  we may not get the kind of nourishment we need…  we may not get the kind of support we need…  to heal…  and to flourish qualitatively above the soil…  to produce the kind of fruit we desire…

When that happens in nature…  when there’s simply too much ground cover in a forest…  forest rangers may use what’s called controlled burning…  a tactic which is used to protect…  and refresh…  forests…  it’s a centuries-old practice that burns off the dense…  but shallow-rooted ground cover which builds up over time…  ground cover which could fuel a major forest fire…  it’s a practice which allows indigenous plants and wildlife to thrive…  restoring a more natural and diverse ecosystem…  and when the ground cover has been burned away…  the shallow roots will die off too…  even today’s Prayers of the People refers to this process when we will ask God…  to transform the devastation of floods and fires into fertile ground for new life and growth…

Earlier in Luke’s Gospel (9:51-56)…  when Jesus set his face to go to Jerusalem…  and those in a village of the Samaritans refused to receive him…  James and John…  aka the Sons of Thunder…  asked Jesus if he wanted them to command fire to come down from Heaven and consume them…  and Jesus told them No!…  but in today’s Gospel…  Jesus not only says that he came to bring fire to the earth…  but he wishes it were already kindled…  and that there’s a baptism with which he’s to be baptized…  and he’s in anguish until it’s all accomplished…

John Shea explains that these are not the measured words of someone following a game plan…  this is an impassioned outburst…  the eruption of Jesus’ heart which reveals what drives him…  and as important and powerful as Jesus’ teaching is…  it doesn’t have the revelatory power of his death and resurrection…  but when the disciples understand the revelation as Jesus’ death and resurrection…  his fire will pass on to them…  and Jesus’ words echo what Jeremiah said in 20:9 when he said…  Within me there is something like a burning fire shut up in my bones…  I am weary with holding it in…  and I cannot!

In Mark 1:7-8 John the Baptist proclaimed that while he baptized with water…  the One who was coming after him would baptize with the Holy Spirit…  and while both Matthew (3:11) and Luke (3:16) mirror Mark’s mention of the Holy Spirit…  they also reveal that Jesus will baptize with fire…  in the Acts of the Apostles the coming of the Holy Spirit upon the gathering of disciples is symbolized as tongues of fire…  which suggest that it’s their speech which will be the way the fire of the Holy Spirit will spread upon the earth…  so in the deepest sense…  the casting of fire…  means releasing the Spirit…  and the fire that is within Jesus’ bones…  is eager to find the wood of the people of the world… purifying them…  even as it empowers them… 

But in what may seem like an obscure question…  Jesus asks…  Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth…  and we want to answer YES…  after all…  as Shea continues…  the song of the angels at Jesus’ birth suggested that his mission was peace (Luke 2:14)…  he made reconciliation and peace the center of his preaching and teaching (Luke 15:11-32, 23:34, 6:27-36)…  at his arrest at Gethsemane…  he stopped the ear-hacking sword of his disciples with the command…  No more of this! (Luke 22:51)…  but in this particular question…  the focus isn’t on his teaching…  but on it’s effects…  since some people will accept the teaching and follow him…  and others will reject it and walk away…  and as people decide…  they divide…  and so Jesus’ offer of peace and reconciliation will lead to inevitable division…  why even at his circumcision…  Simeon predicted that he would be a sign of contradiction…  someone who would be opposed…  and it’s in the contradiction and opposition that we find the division… and in his litany of family schisms…  we may remember his words in Luke 14:26…  Whoever comes to me and does not love father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, less than they love me…  cannot be my disciple… 

We are all physically…  emotionally…  psychologically…  and spiritually wounded…  we all fall short of God’s will for us…  we are all sinners…  that’s what the Greek word…  hamartia…  means…  it’s an archery term that means to miss the mark…

It doesn’t matter whether we’re rich…  middle class…  poor…  Caucasian…  Hispanic…  Latino…  African-American…  lesbian…  gay…  bisexual…  transgender…  underweight…  overweight…  Democrat…  Republican…  Independent…  Jewish…  Christian…  Muslim…  Buddhist…  Hindu…  or whatever label we might think to

use…  try as we might…  we cannot redeem ourselves…  only the light of God in Christ…  by whatever name we call it…  and which transcends any divisions we can imagine…  can do that…  in fact…  my former bishop in the Diocese of Southern Ohio framed it this way when he said that the divisions between us are lies…  and what that means…  is that we are united in ways we cannot imagine…

There are things to which we are attached…  some things in which some of us are rooted…  if you will…  ideas…  abstractions…  hypotheses…  notions…  concepts…  which don’t serve us or each other well…  and that don’t reflect God’s will for us individually and corporately…  and these things are like the forest ground cover…  their roots are shallow…  and when… in the hymn…  How Firm a Foundation when God says:  When through fiery trials…  thy pathway shall lie… my grace all sufficient…  shall be thy supply…  the flame shall not hurt thee…  I only design…  thy dross to consume…  and thy gold to refine…  it’s like Jesus is wanting to set us on fire…  so that our ground cover is burned away…  and our shallow roots die…  so it becomes increasingly difficult to kindle the fires of division…  and so that there are more resources available to the deeper rootedness…  and broader interconnectedness…  we share in Christ…  and from which our Being is nourished with forgiveness and grace…  and with bread and wine…  and so that the Me You Can’t See…  becomes the same me…  as the Me You Can See…