Weekly Seeds: Cast Fire
Sunday, August 17, 2025
Tenth Sunday after Pentecost| Year C
Focus Theme:
“Cast Fire”
Focus Prayer:
God of Fire, help us interpret the present time. Amen.
Focus Scripture:
Luke 12:49-56
49 “I have come to cast fire upon the earth, and how I wish it were already ablaze! 50 I have a baptism with which to be baptized, and what constraint I am under until it is completed! 51 Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division! 52 From now on five in one household will be divided, three against two and two against three; 53 they will be divided:
father against son
and son against father,
mother against daughter
and daughter against mother,
mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law
and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.”
54 He also said to the crowds, “When you see a cloud rising in the west, you immediately say, ‘It is going to rain,’ and so it happens. 55 And when you see the south wind blowing, you say, ‘There will be scorching heat,’ and it happens. 56 You hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky, but why do you not know how to interpret the present time?
All readings for this Sunday:
Isaiah 5:1-7 and Psalm 80:1-2, 8-19 • Jeremiah 23:23-29 and Psalm 82 • Hebrews 11:29-12:2 • Luke 12:49-56
Focus Questions:
What are uses for fire?
How is the power of fire used for regeneration?
How do you perceive the earth to be on fire today?
What refining may be taking place?
How do you interpret the present time and our participation in it?
Reflection
By Cheryl A. Lindsay
Here enters the Jesus that makes many of us uncomfortable. This Jesus seems more aligned with the fiery prophecy found in the Old Testament and the sometimes vicious pleas of the psalmist for what seems more like vengeance than grace. The One who commanded us to love not only our friends but also our enemies casts a vision of division and hate forged first in the family unit. What is Jesus saying? Who is this Jesus? Where is Jesus going with this?
This Jesus makes us question God’s tactics and strategies as well as the nature of Godself. The very ministry of Jesus and the purpose of incarnation comes into doubt as Jesus says, “I have come to cast fire upon the earth, and how I wish it were already ablaze!” The passage begins with these words, no warning, no context, just inescapable judgement seemingly incongruous with the person who had recently—and humbly—refused to serve as an arbiter in a domestic dispute over an inheritance. What is happening?
Certainly, the association between the divine and fire does not originate with this passage. Imagery as God employing fire and embodied in fire permeates the biblical narrative. There’s the burning bush, representative of God’s abiding presence and power. The use of fire in temple worship honored and revered God through burnt offerings. The resulting flame and smoke lifted from the altar to the nostrils of God provided a tangible means of reaching for the Holy One who remained transcendent yet near and accessible. Imagery and analogies of the pruning and refining power of fire also reminds the audience that the destructive forces of fire also serve their purposes.
The reference to an earth on fire, therefore, would not necessarily mean that Jesus seeks destruction. That is, after all, the enemy’s work—to steal, kill, and destroy. Jesus, in their own declaration, came to give abundant life. How does the household schism described in this passage advance that cause?
The context of this section of Luke proves helpful in consideration of this text. Jesus has spent several chapters acquainting both disciples and crowds with the expectations of living in the kindom.
Jesus ends by portraying conflicts that God’s commonwealth faces (12:49–59). Jesus comes with fire (12:49). The Baptizer associated fire with Jesus’ baptism with the Spirit (3:16). But instead of baptizing, Jesus faces baptism (12:50). The range of associations with fire for Luke’s audience would stretch from “enthusiasm” to “empowerment” to “purification” to “destruction.” Here it is closely associated with division—surprisingly focused on households (12:52–53). This portrait ends before a magistrate, a local imperial collaborator (12:57–59). Luke’s audience would not assume that the accused is in the wrong. Magistrates favored elite Roman citizens over peasants (Garnsey, 128–41; Lintott, 97–123). So Jesus advises prudent accommodation to avoid debtor’s prison. Such prudence also transfers to making judgments about God’s commonwealth.
Robert L. Brawley
Unlike the Sermon on the Plain that describes in broad terms the blessings (and woes) of the kindom, this discourse warns in detail the hardship to be endured when following Jesus. What they describe is no less than what Jesus will experience and also builds upon the prophetic tradition found in the Hebrew Scriptures and continued in the ministry of John the Baptist.
The discourse suddenly shifts to a new key in v. 49, as Jesus comments in first-person voice about his mission (vv. 49–51), then advances from parable talk about household managers being cut in two (v. 46) to plain talk about real-world households rent asunder as a result of his mission (vv. 52–53). John the baptizing prophet used the image of “fire” when prefiguring the Messiah’s vocation (3:16), with fire (despite its pairing with Holy Spirit) implying destructive judgment (cf. 3:7, 9, 17), yet to this point Jesus has declined to appropriate fire for his kingdom’s arsenal, even granting, instead, a reprieve to hostile Samaritans whom the disciples James and John deemed deserving of fiery condemnation (9:54–55). Now, though, Jesus picks up the contrasting images of baptism (water) and fire to present a revised mission statement (“I’ve come to cast fire upon earth”), framed in negative terms that correspond to the intensifying resistance greeting his activity. His desires remain unfulfilled until that fire is kindled (v. 49), and he experiences distress until he undergoes a life-completing washing—his own approaching, metaphorical baptism of death (v. 50).
John T. Carroll
Water and fire work against each other in nature. The presence of water may make a fire impossible to ignite or be used to put a fire out. At the same time, once a fire has enough momentum and spread, it causes water to evaporate, changing its nature if not its elemental properties. Further, both water and fire have benefits necessary for life. It’s the fire of the sun that energizes and warms our solar system, and water on earth makes life possible. At the same time, both fire and water have the power to destroy and do so routinely as a means of renewing the earth. Is the blaze Jesus seeks the renewing and refining kind that uses division and destruction as a means of making space for new life? Could the relationship between water and fire aid understanding of the costs and consequences of discipleship?
So Jesus seeks to engender not peace but division (v. 51). Because his proclamation and enactment of God’s reign provoke opposition alongside the offer of peace (7:50; 8:48; 10:5–6), the promised era of peace heralded by his arrival (1:79; 2:14) is elusive (cf. 19:38, 42). The division of which Jesus speaks takes shape within households. Although the angel Gabriel announced that John’s arrival would launch a family-restoration movement (“hearts of fathers [turning] toward their children,” 1:17), Jesus offers a less sanguine assessment of household relationships under the influence of his activity. He later affirms the Decalogue commandment to honor parents (18:20), but 8:21 has redefined family in terms of readiness to hear and do God’s will, and 9:59–62 has summoned potential followers to radical disengagement from primary household relationships—a distancing from household that receives even more radical form in 14:26 and deadlier expression in 21:16. The depiction of Jesus’ firedealing, division-engendering mission in 12:49–53 thus stands in tension with some aspects of the preceding narrative but also anticipates the heightened conflict that his activity will provoke en route to Jerusalem. Jesus’ diagnosis of his contemporaries’ powers of discernment in 12:54–13:9 supplies additional perspective on this growing division.
John T. Carroll
Jesus ends the discourse with a question that gives insight into what underlies this particular teaching, “Why do you not know how to interpret the present time?” This is a question for today. Does the division stem from a God who loves division or from the God of Truth who reveals what has been hidden? In recent years, many have bemoaned the state of divisiveness at all levels of human interaction: nation to nation, state to state, community to community, neighbor to neighbor, family member to family member. Some have even suggested that we have never experienced this level of divisiveness. (Perhaps, they have not encountered it, but history as well as the biblical witness would like a word.) Individuals with high profiles have been named as divisive figures as if they have chosen to be divisive. Certainly, some may have that as a goal, but often it is the presence, character, vision, and values of someone on the margins being moved to the center that offends the sensibilities of the privileged that leads to public divisiveness. The divisions were always there, but until the powerful felt discomfort, the tension remained significantly suppressed in a shallow and distorted semblance of peace.
Jesus did not come for such peace. Real peace requires confrontation, resolution, and restoration. Divisions must be brought into the open; sides must be declared; stances must be taken. This is not the time to shrink from public discourse and bold proclamation of the gospel. The present time calls for a faith unafraid of offending a parent, sibling, or child with truth, justice, righteousness, and love. In the present age, love, compassion, and mercy are divisive. Jesus brought them all into their ministry, casting the fire that reveals, redeems, and re-creates in a world broken and bound by an oppressive and exploitive empire.
May we, who claim their ministry and follow in their way, cast fire today.
Reflection from Voices of People of African Descent
The 33rd General Synod adopted a Resolution to Recognize the United Nations International Decade for People of African Descent (2015-2024). As part of its implementation, Sermon and Weekly Seeds offers Reflection from Voices of People of African Descent related to the season or overall theme for additional consideration in sermon preparation and for individual and congregational study.
“I know what the world has done to my brother and how narrowly he has survived it. And I know, which is much worse, and this is the crime of which I accuse my country and my countrymen, and for which neither I nor time nor history will ever forgive them, that they have destroyed and are destroying hundreds of thousands of lives and do not know it and do not want to know it. One can be, indeed one must strive to become, tough and philosophical concerning destruction and death, for this is what most of mankind has been best at since we have heard of man. (But remember: most of mankind is not all of mankind.) But it is not permissible that the authors of devastation should also be innocent. It is the innocence which constitutes the crime.”
― James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time
For Further Reflection
“Each of us is born with a box of matches inside us but we can’t strike them all by ourselves” ― Laura Esquivel
“Love, like fire, goes out without fuel.” ― Mikhail Lermontov
“Fire and water looked so lovely together. It was a pity they destroyed each other by nature.” ― R.F. Kuang
A preaching commentary on this text (with works cited) is at //ucc.org/SermonSeeds.
The Rev. Dr. Cheryl A. Lindsay, Minister for Worship and Theology (lindsayc@ucc.org), also serves a local church pastor, public theologian, and worship-practitioner with a particular interest in the proclamation of the word in gathered communities. You’re invited to share your reflections on this text in the comments below this post on our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/SermonSeeds.
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