FINDINGS IV By Harry T. Cook
By Harry T. Cook
8/12/13
Luke 12: 49-56 Jesus said (to his disciples): "I have come to bring fire to the earth and I wish it were already kindled. I am awaiting a baptism, and I am under a lot of stress until it is perfected. What? Do you think I am here to bring peace on Earth? No, I tell you. I am here to be a divider. From here on out five people in a household will be divided three against two and vice versa: father against son, son against father; mother against daughter, daughter against mother, mother-in-law against daughter-in-law; daughter-in-law against mother-in-law." Jesus then spoke to the crowd saying, "When you see a cloud rising in the west, you figure that it is going to rain, and it does. And when you see the south wind blowing, you figure that it's going to get hot, and it does. You are just acting when you say you don't know what to do next! You know how to predict the weather, so why can't you figure out what's going on around you right now?" (Translated and paraphrased by Harry T. Cook.)
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From the call to be ready for the new dispensation (last week's FINDINGS IV), to an actual preview of its actual advent. Jesus said he did not come to bring peace on Earth, which is not what the heavenly host is said to have proclaimed at Luke 2:14. And what fire is this that he shall bring instead? Can it be the fire that Luke depicts dancing upon the heads of the apostolic company at Pentecost (Acts 2:3)? Is it the fire of purification (Malachi 3:2b) or the fire of damnation? Is the fire of baptism, not the one at the Jordan but at Calvary? What's going on here?
Just as the coming of the new dispensation or rule of God requires an interim ethic (see Luke 12:32ff), so it has the potential to divide because it puts such radical demands on those of the "little flock" who would receive it. There will be division because each person will respond to the new dispensation differently. All do not, in fact, divest of possessions and give alms. They do not necessarily concede that such a radical gesture is required by the acceptance of the new rule. Thus division.
It does not take much imagination to see that division must have been rending the late first century communities of Jesus Judaism. The farther away from synagogue Judaism the Jesus movement became, the more divisive and conflicted things must have become. People had to choose one or the other, and did choose. Choice is sometimes a baptism. Baptism should always be a choice.
The new dispensation of love (or rule of God) can not only bring peace; it is peace, but peace with a price. The ethic of the new dispensation is communal in nature; it is not capitalism but socialism. It does not, cannot tolerate vast chasms of disparity in wealth and poverty, of satiety and need. That is why the rule or dispensation, which can bring peace, brings division. That seems to be why the rule does not come on its own, even at the behest of a deity. Human will can and will keep it at bay. That may be the ultimate tragedy of human existence.
The Gospel of Thomas may shed some light here, even in its strangeness. Thomas 82 reads: "Jesus said, 'He who is near me is near the fire, and he who is far from me is far from the rule (or kingdom).'" This makes the point that the rule or dispensation involves whatever "fire" represents. An old Protestant hymn by a Methodist bishop named Ralph Spaulding Cushman (1879-1960) begins this way: "Set us afire, Lord; stir us, we pray." That lyric may capture well what Luke meant here by "fire."
The address to the crowd reveals some impatience on the part of Luke's Jesus with the people's inability or unwillingness to discern the meaning of the signs of their own time. Jesus is depicted as insisting that the signs of the time are as revealing of outcomes as the winds. Thomas 91 puts it this way: "You assess the look of the sky and earth . . . but you do not know how to read this moment."
The problem is the difference between χρονος (chronos: "linear time") and κρισις (krisis: "time of judgment or decision"). It is not the passage of time and its exquisite measurement that should concern us -- the humdrum lock-step procession of minute-to-minute, hour-to-hour, day-to-day, week-to-week routines, but rather the conditions, and potential of a season in which change is in the air, when anything can happen, when time is pregnant with the possibility for good or ill.
Part of interpreting the present time is actually seizing the initiative. The new dispensation or rule of God has been given. It is for those to whom it has been given to receive it and live under it, to live out its ethic. The correct interpretation of time and season that is always upon us is to open the eyes to its presence and to embrace it for all it is and we are worth.
Americans are being warned of impending changes, some of which are thought to be positive, others negative. Several economists are predicting a fiscal collapse if the government is shut down at the end of September due to partisan bickering. Such a collapse would hurt the poor first and most.
The widening disparity between the super-rich and the poor and getting-poorer is another. The Arctic icecap is sign of environmental degradation from which the poor in coastal lands will suffer first and most from rising sea levels.
Syria and Egypt are their own signs.
With such signs all but crying out, why do some parts of institutional Christianity devote such energy to denying women their reproductive rights or to preventing so-called gay marriage? That women wish to make decisions about their own bodies or that people of the same sex wish to settle into marriage with one another is not a sign of societal decay. What is such a sign is the abandonment of the poor to their own devices. So also is the continued degradation of the planet.
"You know how to predict the weather," Luke's Jesus said, "So why can't you figure out what's going on around you right now?" And maybe even attempt to deal effectively with it.
