Page 2  August 22  2010

But now Luke—the same Luke who announced “Peace on earth”—records these words from Jesus, “Do you think I came to bring peace on earth? No, I tell you, but division.” How can Jesus, the Prince of Peace, come to bring division on earth and not peace? What is Jesus saying? Do we wish he wouldn’t have said it? How are we to explain this one to the agnostics and skeptics—those who are searching for the truth? Jesus is the Prince of Peace, but he came to bring division. Jesus is the one who said, “Blessed are the peacemakers”? Is he the greatest hypocrite who ever lived?

Before we abandon the ship of Christianity, let’s take the time to understand what Jesus is saying here. Let’s not take such a superficial look at the words which Jesus most certainly and openly spoke. Two significant words accentuate the already emphatic words of Jesus, and neither of them are very calming or peaceful: FIRE and BAPTISM. “Fire I came to throw down upon the earth, and how I wish that it was already kindled! And a baptism I must be baptized with, and how I am distressed until it is completed!”

As Jesus speaks of bringing fire upon the earth, he acknowledges that it has not as yet been ignited. And in an immediate parallel thought, even parallel sentence structure, he speaks of undergoing a baptism, and also acknowledges that this has not as yet been completed. The baptism and the fire are synonymous. And who would experience the baptism and the fire? At first glance it may seem that Jesus is wreaking havoc on the world, but a closer look shows that Jesus himself would endure this fire and baptism! “I have a baptism to undergo, and how distressed I am until it is completed!”  What is this baptism that Jesus must undergo, the fire that must be ignited? It is nothing else than the passion and death of Jesus himself!

We can now sympathize with Jesus as we sense the anguish even in the very words that he spoke and the way that he spoke them. He speaks with almost the same intensity with which he prayed to his heavenly Father in the Garden of Gethsemane, “Father, if it be your will, take this cup of suffering from me.” Jesus is aware of the coming suffering that he must endure, the fire that must be kindled by him and the baptism that he would undergo. The weight of all the sins of the entire world has been placed on his shoulders, and he is now in anguish bearing them up to the climactic moment when he would cry out, “It is finished!” It is completed. How distressed he is now until it is completed he says. How relieved he would be to cry out that it was accomplished. There on the cross, in his death, at the height of his anguish, the baptism, the washing, the cleansing of the sins of the world—It is finished!

Even though we see the anguish in Jesus’ words, we marvel as we note that he never flinched to go forward and endure every moment of suffering that was laid out for him.

This fire, this baptism, this the suffering and death of Jesus on the cross—this is our washing. This is our purifying. But why does he continue with the words, “Do you think I came to bring peace on earth? No, I tell you, but division.”? In what sense does this act of cleansing—this act of purification for the whole world—bring division in the world?