Healing Flames [Proper 15C - Luke 12:49-56]
The Rt. Rev. Jeremiah Williamson
Luke 12:49-56
Healing Flames
St. Eustice, Lake Placid
The dog defiantly held an empty raisin box in his mouth. What we did not know was whether the dog
discovered an empty raisin box, or whether the dog emptied the raisin box. And the dog, being a dog, wasn’t
talking. But the answer to the question
was important. In fact, it carried life
and death implications.
My wife quickly called the emergency line and was instructed
to hastily head to the store for the medicine – in this case, hydrogen
peroxide: to make the dog, the dog with the raisin box, vomit. It was immediately and abundantly clear: this
would not be the relaxing evening we had planned.
I am sure the dog, quite pleased with himself for finding
that box, was puzzled by the concerned looks and panicked energy in the
house. Little did he know: his happy
evening of box chewing and attention was about to take an unpleasant turn. He did not enjoy the flavor of the hydrogen
peroxide, neither did he enjoy its effect – which happened a number of times
over a period of about 30 minutes. The
box, it turns out, was not empty – and we had a pile of proof on the kitchen
floor.
The dog did not enjoy that evening. But the unpleasant medicine saved his life.
The featured speaker in today’s Gospel lesson knows a thing
or two about saving lives. Jesus’
ultimate saving act comes at the end of the Gospel story, on Good Friday and
Even Better Sunday, but the entire Gospel story is a story of salvations. Jesus heals and restores, reconciles and
helps; Jesus teaches and tells, exorcizes and excites. Jesus saves lives. The lame walk. The blind see. The hungry are fed. The dead are restored to life. The oppressed are set free. The anxious find peace. And, generally speaking, the people Jesus
saves are happy and the witnesses are amazed.
And it feels like, for much of the Gospel, that Jesus has
come to bring smiles, but Jesus is apparently bringing something else. This Gospel starts with a jarring
proclamation: “I came to bring fire to the earth.”
The smoke was there all along. John the Baptist warned people about
Jesus. Before Jesus showed up on the
scene, when people were asking John if he was the Messiah, he said, “I baptize
you with water, but one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy
to untie the strap of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy
Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand to
clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary, but the
chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”
Fire feels wild and dangerous. It burns.
Many of us have been taught from a young age to put fires out. This tendency even found its way into land
management practice in our country. We
were afraid to let the fire do its work.
And so things just built up.
This has only made the wild become sicker, filling it with
deadfall and overgrowth, making it ripe for devastating and uncontrollable
blazes. We've learned the hard way that not all fires are bad.
Some fires are necessary. For thousands of years, indigenous
peoples practiced cultural burning, deliberately using small, controlled burns
to clear underbrush, regenerate the soil, and foster new growth. They
understood that fire is not just a force of destruction, but a tool for health
and renewal, a way of caring for creation. This fire, though it seems violent
and destructive, prevents a far more terrible and random fire from consuming
everything. According to Frank Kanawha Lake, a research ecologist with the USDA
Forest Service, and a wildland firefighter of Karuk descent, “[Cultural
burning] links back to the tribal philosophy of fire as medicine. When you
prescribe it, you’re getting the right dose to maintain the abundance of
productivity of all ecosystem services to support the ecology in your culture.”[1] It is a fire that saves.
Sometimes for the sake of this world, and for the salvation
of our souls, Jesus needs to hold our feet to the fire. That fire makes room in our hearts, renews
our Gospel passion, and refines our love.
That fire makes room in this world for God’s reign of justice. It clears out the junk so that the dream of
God can burst forth. Jesus blesses us in
countless ways. Some of the gifts are obvious.
Repentance is a gift too. The fire burns but, more importantly, it
saves.
The dog, the dog with the raisins, did not understand why his
people would give him something so unpleasant, something that would purge his
system. But the people knew. We gave the dog the medicine because we loved
him too much to allow the poison to stay inside. We loved him and so we had to save him.
Jesus loves this world too much to allow the evil and
injustice to keep building up. Without
the fire of his love, this human race would suffocate under the weight of our
treasured hatreds. Yes, we do need a
Jesus who will wipe away our tears and take away our pain, a Jesus who is
tender with us in this abrasive world.
But we also need Jesus to call us to repentance, to displace this broken
world of broken systems with the coming Kingdom of God, with his reign of
justice and true peace.
The Holy Spirit and fire with which Jesus baptizes us is not
meant to hurt us, though at times it will feel painful. Sometimes there is a singe in his healing
touch. Jesus comes, though, with fire
because he loves us. Jesus comes with
fire, but there is salvation in the flames.
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