Fire
Jesus said, “I came to bring fire to the earth! Do you think I have come to bring peace? No, I tell you, but rather division! Father against son, son against father, mother against daughter, and daughter against mother.”
Jesus says he came not to bring peace, but fire — not harmony, but division. It’s tempting to shut our ears and turn away. But fire isn’t a thing one can safely ignore.
What came into your mind when you heard today’s Gospel? Maybe it was a conflict within your family—a child or a parent or a sibling you can’t come to terms with. Or maybe you thought of news headlines that warn us day after day of spreading fire and deepening conflict. I heard an echo of Abraham Lincoln declaring, “a house divided against itself cannot stand.”
The conflicts we know all too well—conflicts in our families, our community, our nation, and our world—those conflicts are real. They’re the stuff of our prayers, as they should be.
But I think Jesus is talking here about a particular kind of conflict—the kind that comes when the Gospel meets the world as it is, when God’s truth clashes with the comfortable ways we arrange our lives and our communities.
Every age has conflicts of that sort, and maybe those conflicts serve a purpose. Jesus brings fire. But it’s not a fire that destroys. It’s a fire that refines, that clarifies, that tempers us into something stronger than we were before.
Think of the words we just heard from Jeremiah: “Is not my word like fire,” says the Lord, “and like a hammer that breaks a rock in pieces?” God’s word doesn’t shatter real peace. It shatters the illusion of peace. And good can come from that sort of shattering. And whether we like it or not, conflict is a part of life.
I was reminded of this truth recently. I came across a history of our parish that I believe was written by our second rector, the Rev. James Hervey Lee. He wrote of the earliest days in Manhattan and of the people who built this place. They lived in a time of trial, scarcity, and uncertainty. They settled in Kansas before it became a state. They witnessed the time known as Bleeding Kansas and the Civil War. They knew fire all too well — the fire of war, of drought, of loss. And yet from that fire came a church that still stands and a legacy that can inspire us still today.
Rev. Lee wrote this, looking back on those difficult early years: “How few are now left here to tell the story of early pioneer experiences, with their trials, their triumphs, their thrilling romance, and fierce conflicts with adverse circumstances. Those were times that tried men’s souls, and they developed heroes who endured their trials with unflinching courage and fortitude. But where are those heroes now? Most of them have gone to their final reward. The place on the hill shows where many of them rest. We shall do well if, when called to follow them, we can leave as worthy a record.”
Their path wasn’t always straight or clear. There were few Episcopalians in Kansas because the Episcopal Church hadn’t taken a stand on the issue of slavery. Other churches sent settlers to try to keep Kansas a free state, but ours wasn’t one of them. But still the few who were here met the struggle of their time and built something that endured.
When the building we’re in this morning finally opened for regular worship in 1867 (after a pause in construction during the Civil War), the windows held no glass, the congregation sat on chairs and boxes, and the pulpit was made from plain wooden boards. But they sang, they prayed, they gathered, and they worshiped together.
Those early years are part of our history. Part of our inheritance.
Those who came before us here are part of the “great cloud of witnesses” the letter to the Hebrews speaks of. They’re among those who ran with perseverance the race that was set before them. A race they didn’t choose, in a world they couldn’t control, in circumstances they couldn’t predict.
Every age has its trials. Theirs were war and drought; ours are change and division and distrust. The details differ, but the test is the same: will we face fire with faith, or let it consume us?
Perhaps our forebears weren’t so different from us. Perhaps their time wasn’t so different from our time. If they could endure their refining fire, perhaps we can endure our own.
Fire, division, and conflict are real. Within families and among neighbors. But there is hope for healing.
Divisions aren’t healed by silence. Divisions aren’t healed by pretending they aren’t there. They aren’t healed by plastering over conflict with false peace.
Divisions can be healed when we welcome the fire that Christ brings. The refining fire that burns away all our self-delusion. The fire that clears the ground so that truth can breathe. The fire that tempers us into something stronger than we were before. To endure that fire, we must speak honestly. We must listen deeply. We must forgive—not once, but again and again.
That’s how Christ’s fire works in our midst. It makes possible a new kind of communion—born of truth, held together by love, sustained by forgiveness. To follow Jesus isn’t to avoid the fire, but to walk through it, trusting that on the other side we’ll find a peace far deeper than the fragile illusions we too often cling to.
As we do that work, we should remember that we’re not the first to face such times and such struggles. We can look to those who came before us. We can look ahead with courage to the place Jesus calls us to. We can trust that the fire of God’s presence won’t consume us, but will instead refine us and make us whole.
So let us run the race set before us, as those who came before us did in their day—with perseverance, with faith, and with courage. And when the story of our time is told, may it not be said only that we kept the lights on or tended this beautiful building. Let it be said that we faced the fires of our age with honesty and love. That we forgave one another. That we chose truth over false peace, and hope over despair. That we left behind a record not of survival alone, but of faithfulness to Christ, whose refining fire still burns in us and through us.