I’ve come to start a fire on this earth—how I wish it were blazing right now! I’ve come to change everything, turn everything rightside up—how I long for it to be finished! Do you think I came to smooth things over and make everything nice? Not so. I’ve come to disrupt and confront! From now on, when you find five in a house, it will be—

Three against two,
and two against three;
Father against son,
and son against father;
Mother against daughter,
and daughter against mother;
Mother-in-law against bride,
and bride against mother-in-law.”

^54-56 Then he turned to the crowd: “When you see clouds coming in from the west, you say, ‘Storm’s coming’—and you’re right. And when the wind comes out of the south, you say, ‘This’ll be a hot one’—and you’re right. Frauds! You know how to tell a change in the weather, so don’t tell me you can’t tell a change in the season, the God-season we’re in right now.

"Do you think I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division.

Jesus brings the fire in this scripture, and you might feel a little scorched by his words. What happened to the Jesus who prayed for his disciples, "That they may all be one," which is the United Church of Christ motto. United is literally in the title of our denomination! (Though many say "the Untied Church of Christ" would be more accurate.) Where is the Christ Paul described as the one who reconciles us to God and each other, who brought down the dividing walls of hostility? Where is the Christ proclaiming that when we are baptized in Christ, we are all one, neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male and female?

I heard fiery Evangelical preachers warn of Hellfire and division between the righteous and the unrighteous, but they never compelled me. Augustine said long ago that if we turn to God because of a fear of Hellfire, that isn't true love. We just don't want to be punished. Perfect love casts out fear and empowers us to seek God from love.

Jonathan Edwards, the first great American-born preacher, was one of the best at flaming imagery. His classic sermon, "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," depicts Hell as a great furnace of angry wrath, and sinners dangle over it, like a spider by a thin strand of webbing, so repentance is urgent before the strand melts, and we are lost.

Ironically, I preached from Edwards' original Northampton Church for nine years, with a giant bronze relief of Edwards glowering over the congregation from the side wall.

Ron Story, a local historian and church member, told me that Edwards' famous sermon was not well-received in Northampton. It was a little over the top emotionally for New Englanders. They eventually tired of his scolding and forced him out. Story wrote an alternative history of Edwards titled, "John Edwards and the Gospel of Love." He believed that Edwards's best work focused on seeing God's wonder in creation, aligning theology with science and the works of Isaac Newton, and a theology sympathetic to the rise of individual liberty in John Locke. Edwards was a complicated man, full of flame and wonder, and American religion divided along those fault lines. Do we follow the path of the angry God of Hellfire, or the wondrous God of "rainbow, fiery pillar, leading where the eagles soar?"

As I re-read Jesus' words about fire and division this week, I kept thinking about the multiple ways we use fire as a symbol. We say someone has fire in the belly to express passion. We hope our ideas will catch fire. We would like to light a fire under some people. Or we might sing, "Come on, baby, light my fire," with the Doors. We would rather not have a trial by fire or go out of the frying pan and into the fire. Keeping the home fires burning is a good thing, but we also encourage some people to stop playing with fire.

Fire is essential to humanity. The discovery of fire transformed us. Cooking food was an evolutionary leap. Roasting things made them taste better and allowed humans to take in more calories for less work. We put more energy into brain development. Burning wood allowed us to adapt to a broader range of cold climates. Burning coal and oil led to the Industrial Revolution and made trains, planes, and automobiles possible. Fire also destroys things. We learned to package fiery destruction into gunpowder, TNT, and later an atomic bomb from nuclear fission. As the Canadian wildfires burned last week, we had some bad air quality days, and a reminder that we are burning down our house in slow motion, a gallon at a time. Fire gives us the ability to adapt and create, but we must also respect its destructive impact.

When Jesus says he brings fire, it can mean more than divine wrath or judgment. A full exploration of fire in scriptures shows us that fire can light our way, refine our moral purpose, and empower our efforts.

The most famous biblical fire encounter is the story of Moses and the burning bush. Curiosity led Moses to take a closer look at a bush that flamed without being consumed. People often describe a moment when God is near, when we sense a clarity of sacred duty or insight, as a burning bush moment. Fire is a symbol of light and enlightenment. All light requires fire: a candle, an oil lamp, a lightbulb, and the sun that lights the earth. So fire can symbolize the Spirit's presence and a deeper spiritual awareness. Think of the Quakers focusing on maintaining the inner flame. Or the disciples who saw the risen Christ on the road to Emaus said, "Did not our hearts burn while he taught us!" Jesus bringing the fire here in Luke can mean he is bringing people near God so that they can see the light.

A second metaphor is fire as refining. Scripture often refers to the process of refining gold and silver to God's Spirit working in us as we go through challenges and conflict. Refining gold requires intense heat, since it has a melting point of 1947 degrees Fahrenheit. Lead or zinc has much lower melting points, under 400 degrees. This process allows for separation, or the elements oxidize and create dross that can be stripped away.

Job compared his suffering to the refining process:

“(God) knows the way that I take; when I'm tested, I shall come out like gold." (Job 23:10)

Proverbs 17:3 states,

“The crucible is for silver, and the furnace is for gold, but the Lord tests the heart.”

The Hymn, "How Firm a Foundation," makes the spiritual metaphor clear:

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.

As Jesus speaks about bringing the fire, and bringing division, not peace, it can be understood as a refining away of some of the impurities, not necessarily ultimate damnation and Hellfire. Transformation often costs us something and frequently comes through a challenging process.

If we never faced conflict or had our assumptions challenged, we would not be transformed into something golden. We would remain covered in dross that keeps us from shining. That dross could be:

· The ego that needs applause.

· The selfishness that neglects the neighbor.

· The apathy that refuses action.

I love how The Message Bible translation comes right to the point about refining fire and even conflict are sometimes necessary:

I've come to start a fire on this earth… I've come to change everything, turn everything right-side up! Do you think I came to smooth things over and make everything nice? Not so.

Every fiber of my midwestern-nice soul cringes at this sentence. I will forever be a recovering people-pleaser and a recovering fixer, who wants to smooth things over! A little diplomacy is good, a gentle word can turn away wrath, but we also must be clear, set boundaries, or take on injustice. Because if the world is upside down, we must work to tip it right-side up again. We can’t nicely accept the unacceptable.

One of the most important crucibles of my life was going through divorce, leaving ministry for a time, and taking a job at a shelter and transitional housing program. Almost everyone I knew was angry at me. At first, that was devastating, but then it was freeing. If everyone is already angry, I was free to live my life. You don't like my choices? Get in line! More importantly, to help people with substance abuse addictions and severe mental illness, I needed to set boundaries. I learned to tell people "no" for the common good. Our housing was mandated to be clean and sober. A second relapse meant moving out. My heart wanted to give another chance, but that would create problems for everyone working hard on their sobriety.

And I learned the importance of honesty from some remarkable people in recovery. People who had lived on the streets and lost everything taught me the real meaning of a fearless moral inventory. To turn a life right-side up again takes some refining fire.

The fire Jesus brings doesn’t just change who we are—it ignites what we do.

To speak truth in love.
To set boundaries that heal.
To name what's broken, and choose what's just.
To stand with the scorched and the silenced.

This fire does not consume us—it transforms us.
It burns away pretense and fear.
It clears the way for light, for courage, for clarity.

May we be a people lit with holy fire—
Burning not with rage, but with compassion.
Not with condemnation, but with conviction.

Let the fire fall.
Let the dross be consumed.
Let love shine like refined gold.

Burn, Baby, Burn.