Sermon for the Seventh Sunday after Trinity

preached by The Revd Lucie Spiers, on Sunday 3 August 2025

Just a few verses ago in Luke’s Gospel we heard Jesus disclaiming any role in division ‘Who made me a judge or arbitrator over you?’ he had asked someone, who was underestimating the value of community and family. However, in today’s gospel his tone changes significantly. ‘Do you think that I have come to give peace on earth? No, I tell you, but rather division.’ And he uses family ties to illustrate his point – emphasising how these divisions will cut to the heart of our most intimate relationships.

This illustration of tension raises a familiar issue for Christian ethics and for the nature of the church itself. Unity or division? Which does the gospel demand or offer? And more simply, especially given the closeness of these statements in the Gospel text, is Jesus contradicting himself? Presumably not but it is for us to discern this seeming paradox.

In this gospel, as in the others, the ultimate aim of Jesus’ proclamation and actions is always the reconciliation of all those who are estranged from God. Indeed, Luke’s Gospel has a particular focus on recounting Jesus' reconciling work, with an emphasis on the needs of the poor, women playing significant roles, and the healing and restoration of those suffering from physical and other forms of affliction. And ultimately, proclaiming how all nations will be called to hear and respond to the Good News.

So, how do we react to this talk of bringing fire to the earth - fire and division. What sort of Jesus is this? For as we look at our world, it could seem that we are indeed living in such a time, through war, climate change, and unprecedented uncertainty in many areas of life. What happened to the coming of the Prince of Peace?

Faith does indeed take delight in the peace of the kingdom, but it is insightful enough not to cut corners on the journey there: first comes the gospel in the world, then life in the kingdom and the gospel is not a tranquil balm but a cleansing flame. In the presence of Christ, our false self is burned away. We are separated from all the masks, illusions and facades that we have built and created through our lifetime.

Our interior landscape has been refined by a holy fire. And this land is fruitful; able to grow and sustain something new. A community, the body of Christ, rising from the ashes of darkness, falsehood and fear. We are not simply kin by family relationships. We are also kin by Spirit, united by Christ, which has touched us all. Burned, but not consumed.

The holy fire that Jesus longs to see will pass through all boundaries and enable us to be one people at last, a community baptized in water and flame. Fire has not just the power to destroy but to bring forth new life. It is not a symbol to be categorised as one idea. We see fire both in the context of the coming judgement of the human race, and also of the Holy Spirit, the comforter, coming at Pentecost, which burns in the hearts of the righteous. It is a paradoxical holy fire which will both purge and create. For the work of God does not conform to our own understanding.

We are often tempted to see this flaming division in the terms of our own biases - those who we deem faithful and those who are wayward but we often fail to consider, and rarely actively acknowledge, that our side of any fracture could be the wrong one.

And so the value of us hearing this Gospel text is likely to depend on our willingness to be open to that difficult act of imagining that this Holy fire might illuminate something that we habitually shy away from. It asks us to question not how the fire of God’s presence discloses others failings, but instead where we remain in need of reconciliation to God and to our neighbour.

As fire destroys, it also reveals, refines, and renews. Jesus brings this fire, burning and leading us like the pillar of fire that guided the people of Israel long ago. We follow not only a fire but a great cloud of witnesses, those we heard of in our epistle reading, whose faith endured, keeping their sights set on Jesus and now encourage us as we too run this race.

This aspiration is given to us directly in the words of our Lord Jesus Christ who has come, he says, ‘to cast fire on the earth and would that it were already kindled’. It can be found in the sayings of the Desert Fathers, where we find this story of a conversation between two of the Fathers:

Abba Lot went to Abbot Joseph and said to him ‘Abba, as far as I can, I say my little office, I fast a little, I pray and meditate, and I live in peace, and as far as I can, I purify my thoughts. What else can I do?’ Then the old man stood up and stretched his hands towards heaven and his fingers became like ten lamps of fire and he said to him “If you will, you can become fire.”

“If you will, you can become fire.”

This challenge presented to us; a challenge that we must take up mindful that the answer we give does not only concern ourselves, but is given for the sake of all. Our wholehearted ‘yes’, even if hidden, can bring about the wellbeing of many.

There are no easy answers to the issues we face in our anxiety-ridden world at this present time, but whatever we seek to do must be grounded first and foremost in compassion and mercy. This need not be any grand gesture, but instead in simple acts, such as showing hospitality to strangers. For in God’s eyes all ‘strangers’ are simply friends we are meeting for the first time. Indeed, this happens each Sunday here at Mass, when we gather beside those we have not chosen to be with, but whom God has chosen us to share this moment with. How we choose to act and speak allows us to add light to our world, a world where the level of darkness - of hatred, death and suffering - is unsustainable but not insurmountable.

Our calling is to not grow weary or be overwhelmed by a world of despair, denial, and disillusionment, but to live as if on fire. Struggling against immaturity and pettiness, dying to our selfishness, no longer united merely by tribe but by the one baptism we find in Jesus, who is water and fire. To reclaim our voices and relentlessly point to Jesus as the deepest reality in the world and in our lives.

For this is our hope, our faith, and it is the world’s salvation.