Got a Light?

I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled! [Luke 12:49].

The church within which my brothers and I were baptized and “raised up,” Olney Presbyterian, formed in 1793 by half a dozen southern Gaston County (N.C.) families—including the Robinsons—was no more than half a mile from our mother’s home place, the D.D. Grier house on Old York Road. During the 1950s, because of the proximity of the church to our grandparents’ home—it was actually owned by our great-grandmother, “Granny Grier, who lived there as well—we’d sometimes eat “Sunday dinner” at the Griers. We’d also sometimes stop by on Wednesday evenings after Olney’s “prayer meeting,” before we circled back around Little Mountain (Jackson’s Knob) to return to our home on Union Road.

I vividly remember the porch that stretched three-quarters of the way around the house. I fondly recall the house’s huge front yard. But, I particularly remember the fireplaces. Eight rooms and seven fireplaces; there was, of course, no central heating in a house that old. The fireplaces burned coal. If you stood less than six feet away and faced the fire, your face and front would be hot, almost sizzling. Your backside, however, might still be cold.

The house itself had been the fortress from which Granny, who in 1911, at the age of 31, became a widow, raised her brood on her own. My maternal grandparents, with the help of Granny, raised our mother and her two younger brothers in the house during the mid-1920s to the 1940s. For a few years during the mid-1950s, when Jack, our mother’s youngest brother, married a pretty young girl named Joanne, the newlyweds lived there as well. In many respects, the entire environment at the D.D. Grier house was not unlike “The Waltons,” by Earl Hamner.

Our lives on Union Road, at Olney Church, and at the Grier house on South York Road could easily be described as a living mosaic of American middle-class family values. Dad came home from work at 5:30 p.m., to a cacophony of sounds from “his” four boys. Mother, who did not work outside the home, timed her suppers to coincide with his arrival. We dressed for church each Sunday, said our prayers each night, and snuggled deeply within the security of that life. And during those years at Olney, I’d wager we never read the Gospel lesson appointed for this Sunday, Luke 12:49-56 (Tenth Sunday after Pentecost, RCL, Year C).

Olney and most of her sister churches avoided this lesson in which Jesus announces that he came “to bring fire to the earth.” Woah! I thought that at His birth, the angels announced a promise of “peace” and “good will” [Luke 2:14]. And where would we be without His marvelous soothing words:

Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid [John 14:27 KJV].

To be sure, who wouldn’t prefer a sort of “flower-child” Jesus, who touches and heals and soothes? Do we really want a barnburner? Surely, Jesus is speaking in hyperbole when he says:

Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division! From now on five in one household will be divided, three against two and two against three [Luke 12:52].

He goes on to say that son will be divided against father, daughter against mother, and in-laws against in-laws. Aloud we might cry, “What happened to family values?”

As we move toward the answer to that question, might we first recall earlier signs that the presence of Jesus would cause at least some divisiveness? For example, even before the birth of Christ, Mary offers up her Magnificat [Luke 1:46-56), in which the unwed mother allows that her Son’s birth will mean a reversal of fortunes for many, with the poor being lifted up and the rich laid low.

When Mary and Joseph took Jesus to Jerusalem, to offer him up to the Lord as their firstborn, they met a righteous and devout man named Simeon who blesses them all, but also tells them that the child will cause great conflict in Israel. Turning to Mary, Simeon says, “and a sword will pierce your own soul too” [Luke 2:35].

Many scholars draw a parallel between Simeon’s statement and the pain that Mary will feel as she sees the centurion pierce the side of her son as he is suspended upon the Cross. Others agree, but also point to an uncomfortable encounter between Jesus and his family during his early ministry, when someone—was it Mary or one of His brothers—intimated that Jesus might be mentally ill or otherwise “possessed.” When His family goes to retrieve him and He’s told that his mother and brothers are standing outside, Jesus responds:

My mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and do it [Luke 8:21].

If Jesus’ own family is rearranged and reoriented in light of God’s larger priorities, should our own be considered sacrosanct? In the years following the Resurrection, the church offered the Pax Christi, which sometimes meant being stoned or fed to the lions. The first century civic world offered the Pax Romana, the world of greased palms, winks and nods, of “pay to play.” It was a world that might allow one to profess Christianity, as long as you didn’t think that the Christian God was exclusive. After all, we wouldn’t want to offend these other folks who have different beliefs. Humanity, it’s just one big happy family, after all. Isn’t that right? Well, not so, according to Jesus.

If I’m honest with myself, Jesus’ talk about fire and conflict makes me uncomfortable. No, I’m not thinking about Sodom and Gomorrah [Genesis 19:24]. Nor am I thinking about the “Lake of Fire” mentioned in The Revelation of John [20:14]. I probably should be thinking more about the fire that Moses saw in the wilderness, the kind that burned, yet didn’t consume the bush [Exodus 3:2].

To be sure, Yahweh’s fire was (and is) the sort that often leads to confrontation and conflict, i.e., to division. Yahweh’s fire meant that Moses would have to confront the most powerful forces in the world. Yahweh’s fire would eventually even lead to conflict among the Israelites after they had fled Egypt for the 40-year sojourn in the wilderness. Yahweh’s fire would lead them on their journey.

But my mind is strangely drawn back instead to the the coal fires in the seven fireplaces in Granny Grier’s house so long ago. Again, if one stood too close to the heat source, one’s front would almost fry, and yet, one’s back could still be chilly. It seemed as if my body was experiencing a strange sort of division. And that division has sometimes returned at times in my life. Part of me runs to the fire that is represented in Christ and its warmth is overwhelming. And yet, there is still sometimes a coldness that remains within me. It is at odds with Christ’s warmth—Christ’s fire. I’m sometimes left with a deep feeling of fragmentation.

Our brother, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, wrote poignantly about such “fragmentation.” In a letter to his parents from his prison cell in 1944, less than a year before he would be hung by the Nazi authorities, he said that he saw his own life split into fragments, “like bombs falling on houses.” And yet, he added, “This very fragmentariness may, in fact, point toward a fulfillment beyond the limits of human achievement.” He told his parents:

The important thing today is that we should be able to discern from the fragment of our life how the whole was arranged and planned, and what material it consists of. For really, there are some fragments that are only worth throwing into the dustbin … and others whose importance lasts for centuries, because their completion can only be a matter for God, and so they are fragments that must be fragments.

As I look back at my life, as I look upon it in its present form, I recognize that I have many, many fragments that must be hoisted upon the trash heap, that must be consumed by the sort of fire that Jesus has in mind in this Sunday’s Gospel passage. The warmth of a coal fire might be welcoming on a cold, January evening. And yet, the fire of Christ, which comes to the world to rid it of its “fragmentariness,” points toward wholeness and fulfillment, the kind that is impossible for humanity to achieve on its own.

Christ intends for us to recognize that His presence in our lives is nothing less than all-encompassing, all-consuming. He will stop at nothing to reclaim you and me for His kingdom. He wants Wholeness and Righteousness for each of us. To get that, He’ll certainly strike a match.