The disciples were confused. When the Messiah came, peace and righteousness would reign from one end of the earth to the other. All the prophets agreed. And if Jesus was the Messiah as they were all now pretty sure he was, he would be the one who brought it about. He would be the Prince of Peace Isaiah described: “His authority shall grow continually and there shall be endless peace for the throne of David and his kingdom.” [Is 9:7] But now Jesus is saying something else. Jesus is telling them that there isn’t going to be peace after all. Hadn’t he said he hadn’t come to judge the world, but to save the world? But here he is saying that he’s going to bring fire, and he wants it to hurry up and get here! This isn’t at all what they expected.
And it’s not what Jesus’ followers nowadays expect, either, is it.
One of the problems the Old Testament prophets had to combat was the complacency of the Israelites - the ones convinced that on the Day of the Lord - you know, the final day of judgment when God would separate the good from the evil - that on that day they’d have nothing to worry about because, after all, weren’t they the chosen ones? And in Jesus' day the self-righteous Pharisees had the same sense of invulnerability. The disciples may very well have figured out by this time that the Pharisees would be in trouble on the day; after all, didn’t Jesus himself call them a brood of vipers, and whited sepulchres, and other choice epithets?
What they didn’t expect was that the Messiah himself, and his followers, would also be caught up in the conflict. They thought they would be non-combatants, safe above the fray, watching the ungodly swept past them in the great spring cleaning.
“I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!” [v.49] says Jesus. In this passage we get a rare glimpse of Jesus thinking aloud, instead of teaching. It provides the same kind of window into his state of mind that we get in much more poignant detail later on in the garden of Gethsemane, when he prays for the cup of crucifixion to pass. At this point in his mission the looming crisis of his trial and death are weighing heavily upon him, and he’s impatient to hurry up and get it over and done with! At the same time, he’s not looking forward to it, and his disciples still aren’t ready, and there is no way he can make them ready. Jesus has warned them of his coming death more than once, and they still don’t understand. No matter how clearly he tries to put it, they still don’t get it, and they won’t until it actually happens. They can't imagine that he'll ask them to go through the same sort of testing that the rest of the world will get.
Fire, of course, means judgment. But the point isn’t to burn people up. He did say in John 3:17 that he hadn’t come to condemn, but to save. And he meant it. The fire Jesus brings refines; it separates the pure from the impure. The good metal is better off: the fire cleans it, purifies it, strengthens it. So, of course, the disciples have to go through it for their own sake as well as to verify their credentials.
Jesus then goes on to say “I have a baptism with which to be baptized.” [v. 50] Now you may recall that in the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, John the Baptizer said that the Messiah would baptize “with the Holy Spirit and fire.” [Lk 3:16] The water baptism in which all Christians participate is a beginning of a new life. It represents both cleansing from sin and our participation in Jesus’ death and resurrection. Being sinless, of course, Jesus did not need to be cleansed. The baptism Jesus awaits now is the real thing: it bought the peace with God which our baptism enables us to share. But the wait isn’t easy.
“And what stress I am under until it is completed!” Verse 49 shows his impatience, this one hints at his reluctance. The word used, ‘synecho,’ “to be dominated by a thought,” indicates preoccupation, even obsession, with the thought of what lies ahead. What a contrast! While Jesus is laboring under the burden of the ordeal to come, the disciples are filled with carefree and confident expectation of the coming messianic kingdom and their anticipated role in it.
People naturally tend to think that peace means being trouble free. People then, just like people now, wanted their lives to be smooth and easy. They wanted their neighbors to be nice and their employers to be generous and their rulers to be just. People always assume that the most important things in their lives are the externals, and so when Jesus comes along talking about peace, they don’t realize that their primary problem is that they’re at war with God.
And Jesus is trying to get across to his disciples that that’s not how discipleship works. He is trying to explain that the peace with God doesn’t look like the kind of peace the world wants and that they expect. On the contrary: the peace that Jesus brings will cause the world which is still at war with God to turn on God’s allies as well. Jesus paid the price of our peace with God our peace with God is free for the taking but peace with God means war with the world.
"For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. For this reason, the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God's law indeed it cannot, and those who are in the flesh cannot please God." [Rom 8:587]
Jesus made a lot of people angry with his teaching and behavior – still does - because he so rarely endorses the popular agenda. In some eras and cultures, the main purpose of religion seems to be the preservation of the status quo. In our day, religion’s main purpose seems to be to ensure a sense of personal well being. But Jesus asks for something higher and harder, which makes people committed to lesser goals uncomfortable, even hostile.
The Prince of Peace. The Price of Peace. There’s only one letter’s difference between the two. At the risk of being altogether too cute, let me suggest that the missing “n” in “price” stands for the nails of the cross. We can choose peace with the world or peace with God. There’s a price either way, and Jesus paid the biggest one of all. Jesus doesn’t desire the conflict, and he doesn’t relish the conflict. But people who reject Jesus’ message will try to silence him and his followers, and that means conflict. And the world will demand a cut from us as well. Even within families. Even if it looks like dishonoring your parents.
Next Jesus quotes the prophet Micah about what happens when Israel abandons God. “For the son treats the father with contempt, the daughter rises up against her mother, the daughter in law against her mother in law; your enemies are members of your own household.” [Mic 7:6]
In Micah, the breakup of families is a consequence of the disappearance of righteousness. While this is shocking enough, it’s even more so in Matthew’s gospel. According to Matthew, instead of quoting Micah directly, Jesus says, “For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and one's foes will be members of one's own household. Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.” [Mt 10:34-37] This verse hints that the conflict is between the older and younger generations, without specifying which generation would be on the side of Christ. Jesus is calling for his followers to be more loyal to him than to their own families. He is warning them that the consequences of following him will be painful and disruptive, and that they’d better be prepared for it. They must love Jesus more than they love peace. They must hunger and thirst after righteousness more than they hunger and thirst after a trouble-free life.
I’m fairly lucky, as far as family reaction goes. Even though until a few years ago when my brother got baptized, I was still the only Christian in my family, after they recovered from the shock they’ve been very polite. They don’t agree with me, but I haven’t been disowned and they’ve pretty much stopped disparaging Christianity in my presence. (Although it’s in my mother’s will that I can’t speak at her funeral.) My sister even makes a real attempt to understand. But many Islamic and Hindu and even some Jewish families consider the convert to be dead, and actually mourn their loss. In literally hundreds of cases families have beaten or starved the new Christian in an attempt to make them renounce Jesus. Jesus' words are not metaphorical or exaggerated; they are literal descriptions of the reception the gospel can often expect.
You can almost hear Jesus say ”Woe to you who think that following me is going to be easy!” He’s doing his disciples a major favor by warning them what’s ahead so that they can be prepared. One of the favorite metaphors of extra-biblical literature for the “day of the Lord,” that is the day of judgment, is the pangs of childbirth. Now we all know that the birth of a child is a wonderful, miraculous thing - afterwards. The actual delivery is not pretty. It is painful and messy and, in many ways, rather ugly. When it’s all over everybody rejoices, especially mom (although she may say “never again!”) but the labor itself is forgotten as soon as possible. Can you imagine how dreadful it would be for someone who didn't know what her growing belly meant? Can you imagine how unprepared and frightened she would be when the pains came? It's always better to know in advance. Women who remember those mixed feelings of dread and anticipation of impending motherhood can identify with Jesus. He wants it over with, yet he knows that the cross, this giving birth to a new creation, will hurt. He doesn’t look forward to it. But it’s worth it.
Some doctors avoid telling their patients the truth about their condition, in the interest, they say, of their patient’s peace of mind. And some do people prefer it that way. But doing that simply robs the person of the opportunity to prepare, to do what needs to be done, to deal, in fact, with reality. Truth - even when it’s unpleasant truth about sin and death - empowers people.
Dysfunctional families tend to organize themselves around a dirty secret of one kind or another. It may be Dad’s drinking, or Mom’s mental illness, or Aunt Irma’s illegitimate baby. In these families exposing the secret is the worst imaginable sin. They define keeping the secret under wraps as being in the interest of “peace.” And if one member gets healthy, and refuses to buy into the dishonest system any more, the rest of the family will often turn on them and drive them out.
A society can organize itself in much the same way. Jeremiah spoke against this kind of denial of reality as “peace at any price,” and so not true peace at all, but a sham and superficial peace, a deceptive and dangerous peace. There was, however, no shortage of false prophets: loyal party spokesmen who defended the deception to their last breath, right up to the moment the sword fell. And both the princes and the prophets blamed Jeremiah for the lack of peace, the siege of Jerusalem and the discord and dissent among the military and people. They tried to kill him more than once, and even his own family was in on one of the assassination attempts.
Jesus is warning his disciples not to let mistaken loyalties keep them from following the truth. We are not to let a mistaken sense of obligation to keep the peace keep us from doing the right thing and speaking up for God. We are indeed to “make every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace,” [Eph 4:3] but not at the price of truth. The peace Jesus brings is not superficial, not a mere absence of conflict, noise or argument. It is a profound unity based on a reality deeper than family. The blood bond between family members pales before the blood bond between Christ and his church. If the cost of being true to Christ is giving up family harmony, then it must be paid. Baptism transfers “family loyalty” from one’s natural family to Christ.
Later on, the night before he was betrayed, Jesus said, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives.” [Jn 14:27b] and “I have said this to you, so that in me you may have peace.” [Jn 16:33a]
The peace that Jesus bought is in him, not in the world. In the world, he said, we will experience persecution. Christ’s peace is the presence of God, and it passes understanding because it can be felt even amidst all the noise and tension of hostilities. It is so far beyond the cheap imitation that is all the world can offer that it is a real favor to disturb someone’s “peace,” if by so doing we can bring about real peace, Christ’s peace, lasting peace. People who use the term “peace” for truce or cessation of hostilities in order to shame a Christian into not standing on principle are simply desperate to avoid facing themselves. Maintaining a simplistic sort of “I’m OK, you’re OK” attitude may look like a safe choice. But as Christians, of course we know that we're not OK. We need fixing.
Jesus cautions us against falling into that trap. Some forms of religion may either cause denial-based dysfunction or encourage it, but Christianity is not one of them. Christ calls us to face reality squarely, with our eyes open.
When they say, “There is peace and security, then sudden destruction will come upon them, as labor pains come upon a pregnant woman, and there will be no escape! But you, beloved, are not in darkness, for that day to surprise you like a thief; for you are all children of light and children of the day.” [1 Th 5:3 5]
Children of light do not close their eyes to the unpleasant reality of the human condition. They face it, confess it, and abandon it.
