Sermon: Pentecost 10, Luke 12:49-56
August 17, 2025
Faith-La Fe Lutheran Church
Pastor Jonathan Linman
Many thoughtful people want nothing to do with religion, because they see religion as the cause of division, strife, bloodshed and war.
And there’s enormous historical evidence to support that view. Innumerable wars have been fought throughout the ages in the name of religion. Today’s reading from Jeremiah gives a sense of the destructive force of religion: “Is not my word like fire, says the Lord, and like a hammer that breaks a rock in pieces?”
Jesus himself engages in some serious reality therapy about how religion can divide people. Listen again to what Jesus forebodingly said in today’s gospel reading: “Do you think that I have come to bring peace on 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; they will be divided…”
And so it came to pass in Jesus’ own time. Division was the inevitable bitter fruit of his bold proclamation of God’s kingdom. Jesus’ teaching came into conflict with his own Jewish heritage and practices. The religious leaders of his day thus opposed Jesus. Jesus’ teaching was also a threat to the Roman empire, so they crucified him.
And so it has been down through the ages. Division even in the church has been a sad hallmark of all of Christian history. Our own Lutheran tradition is the result of unresolved fights in the church. Some of those fights turned into bloody conflicts, such as the 30 Years War in the early decades of the 17th Century that pitted Catholics against Protestants.
Such bitter divides wreak havoc on us. At its worst, religious conflict ends in bloodshed and death. But more commonly, religious conflicts can consume us, and make our lives miserable. Countless people have understandably left the church because of divisions in the church.
But how can this be? We proclaim Jesus as the Prince of Peace! Jesus calls us to be reconciled with each other, not to divide and conquer each other. And yet Jesus himself says that he has not come to bring peace, but division.
In apocalyptic, fire and brimstone terms, Jesus also proclaims this in today’s gospel reading: “I have come to cast fire upon the earth, and how I wish it were already ablaze! I have a baptism with which to be baptized, and what constraint I am under until it is completed!”
On first glance, it sounds as though Jesus’ mission is about anything but peace and reconciliation. But that’s on first glance. Let’s take a deeper look.
Jesus says that he has a baptism with which to be baptized. He had already been baptized by John in the River Jordan. So, Jesus here refers to a different baptism. What Jesus is talking about is the baptism of his own death on the cross. It’s his immersion into the ordeal of his Passion.
And the fire that Jesus is eager to cast upon the earth is not just a destructive fire of judgment, but a purifying fire that ultimately and paradoxically saves the world. Jesus’ mission to purify the earth for its redemption was inevitably met with opposition.
This great, cosmic conflict came to a head on the cross. And the battle there between life and death, light and darkness, good and evil, love and hate, led to the victory of the resurrection. The cross unleashed in one focal point the worst of what humans were capable of when they fight. But it is Jesus’ embrace of the whole world on the cross that ultimately makes peace and brings reconciliation. No wonder Jesus was eager and passionate about bringing his mission to completion. For it is in the end good news for the whole world.
And here’s more good news: Our own sacramental baptism immerses us in the baptism of Christ’s Passion, his death and resurrection, which purifies us and which then joins us to Christ’s reconciling work that begins on the other side of conflict and division. We come out of those fiery waters cleansed, purified.
And here’s more: Jesus’ prophetic words and the words of the prophets like Jeremiah in the Bible ignite a fire among us that continues to burn even today, judging the world’s ways that defy God, afflicting the comfortable, but also comforting the afflicted.
And there’s still more good news! The Sunday Eucharistic banquet is a share in and a foretaste of the reconciled feast to come where father and son, daughter and mother, mother-in-law and daughter-in-law find themselves together once again, now reconciled, at the table of gracious fellowship. Thanks be to God!
Washed and fed with both the word and the sacramental word made flesh, we are thus given the gift of faith to courageously engage our own ordeals of conflict in our own day – much as we’re seeing and enduring in our own nation right now.
The power of faith, of trust in God’s promises, is what propels us forward to proclaim the good news of Christ amidst a bitterly divided world. As we heard in today’s reading from Hebrews, faith is what led God’s people through the Red Sea to begin their journey to the promised land.
Faith toppled the walls of Jericho. Faith empowered God’s people “to administer justice, obtain promises… quench the power of fire, escape the edge of the sword.” Faith made people strong who were at first weak. Faith in the end led God’s people to the promised land.
And faith leads us onward as well. By faith, we leave this place Sunday after Sunday fed and strengthened to advance Christ’s ongoing mission of peace-making and reconciliation. And we do this even as our own proclamation of the gospel in word and deed may well provoke still more division and strife.
But the gift of faith unleashed among us through the word and sacraments gives us what we need to do the heavy lifting that God in Christ entrusted to us – to do justice, to love kindness and to walk humbly with God.
So, on we go, and out we go, in the power of the Spirit, spurred on by faith always “looking to Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith, who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross, disregarding its shame…
Rooted in grace, we lead and serve in word and deed, living up to and drawing strength from the very name of our beloved congregation: Faith.
So…. God help us. God in Christ save us. Holy Spirit lead us – in the power of faith for the healing of conflict in our bitterly divided nation and world. Amen.
