There is a seemingly curious discrepancy between peace and fiery division that Jesus takes up in St. Luke’s Gospel today. And this curious discrepancy may give us reasonable pause. Jesus provides the potent example of familial division to only intensify the general lack of peace which the advent of the Son of Man will apparently bring. Indeed, the present time that Jesus refers to can be nothing but the imminent reality of the coming of God’s kingdom with and in the Word made Flesh; the Word who has in St. Luke’s Gospel healed, taught, reconciled, and is on the road to Jerusalem to be crucified at the hands of a very divided world. Where did the Prince of Peace go?
Part of the dilemma here may be that we see Jesus with a very specific notion of “peace.” At the beginning of St. Luke’s Gospel, we hear of a bright throng of angels who sing about God’s peace to shepherds in the countryside. Our imaginations may be colored by wondrous and majestic images of some of kind of supremely pleasant union between God and humankind, wherein there is certainly nothing of the fiery discomfort about which Jesus speaks today.
But for St. Luke, there would seem to be no contradiction between the advent of the Word made Flesh and a lack of peace. The less comfortable and the more glorious attributes of light and fire tell us something more profound about the nature of our life in Christ than a simple dichotomy between comfort and discomfort can afford.
Thousands of years before St. Luke, the prophet Jeremiah had spoken about the imminent word of God as being like fire.[1] And so, according to St. Luke, when the old prophet Simeon takes the infant Jesus in his arms, recognizing him as the blazing light that will enlighten the nations, he immediately afterwards tells the Virgin Mary that this blazing light will cause the rise and fall of many nations—and that a sword will pierce her own soul, too.
“And would that the fire were already kindled!” Jesus cries. Where did the Prince of Peace go?
And yet, in a strange mystery, what would this kindling be other than the paradox of the way of the Cross and the rising again of the Word made Flesh? The paradox that the division of the world does not hinder God’s purpose but has, in the person of Jesus, shown that even the most cruel and horrendous divisions will not put out the blazing fire of God’s eternal light?
None of this is because God desires the pain of division. The point of St. Luke’s Gospel is that division—in our imperfect world, whether in ourselves or between one another—can often only be the result of the reconciling Gospel truth.
Jesus’ words, then, do not become a kind of fire that we can wield against one another. This is not a kind of fire that we can imagine ourselves always on the right side of and those with whom we disagree always on the wrong side of. There is one true blazing fire, and its true love will always be a challenge for the humanity that finds itself wielding God’s reconciliation against itself.
Most extraordinarily, the blaze of divine love is undertaken by Jesus himself. It is his great baptism. This is why division will not hinder the blaze that Jesus has brought. The Messiah, the great God who will redeem his people, precisely does not cast fire to the earth to destroy, but rather himself undergoes and transforms the fiery costs of true love in his own body in order to draw humanity into himself. The most ardent showing forth of that blaze is, as we have already suggested, the paradox of the Cross and Resurrection. But the nature of the divine blaze was shown to us, too, in the countless healings and professions of love and compassion that humans very often struggle to show.
That Jesus himself has undergone the lack of peace that true love will always bring in this world also provides a mysterious hope for those who share in the baptism of Jesus Christ. This hope is not rooted in a perverted resignation to the divisions of this world or within ourselves. Rather, the hope is precisely in the fact that the peace of God lies in the flaming heart of Jesus who has already redeemed us—even amid our divisiveness.
Having listed the manifold ways that the saints and prophets of old were not worthy of this world, the letter to the Hebrews puts the fiery hope like this: “Therefore since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin that clings so closely.” This cloud of witnesses is gathered round the blazing Sun of Righteousness, whose own fire evermore consumes the dross of division and refines our gold in the long and imperfect work of following Jesus Christ.
This place—and you and I—are in that work even now. In a parish that may have seemed for a time to be defined only by the divisiveness the Gospel can bring, the hope of the Prince of Peace’s fire has shown forth to us the transforming possibilities of that mysterious fire. Our gathering round the Sun of Righteousness with the witnesses of all time and space will be imperfect, too; but I suspect that there is a special blaze burning here. I saw something of it last week at summer camp, for instance, when curious and buoyant children showed forth the quiet love of the divine fire while climbing trees and worshipping at Mass.
Indeed, the arc of fiery light in St. Luke’s Gospel has not ended. We saw it at the beginning with Simeon and we see it today—at something of a mid-point—in Jesus’ startling words. And the fire comes back in a quiet moment at the end of this Gospel with what must be one of the most beautiful lines in all of scripture. Two disciples have walked with the risen Jesus to Emmaus, and they do not recognize the transformed Son of Man until he breaks bread and disappears. But they later recall: “Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking with us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?”[2]At last, the fire of the Word made Flesh is known, awakened, kindled in the hearts of two disciples; only now, after the Son of Man has undergone the fulness of his baptism in dying and rising again. Only now, after so much division, abandonment, and uncertainty is the Word of Fire understood to be shared by and with these disciples. The cost of true love has been borne, and it burns. And it will still burn with and in those who share mysteriously in the fire of the Prince of Peace.
Sermon by Mr. John Hager, Summer Seminarian Intern
The Tenth Sunday after Pentecost
August 17, 2025
[1] Jeremiah 23:29
[2] St. Luke 24:32.