Baptized by Fire

"If you will, you can become all flame"

Homily preached at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church
August 17, 2025
Luke 12: 49-56

“Fire Within” by Paz Méndez Art

“Why do you not know how to interpret the present time?”

This is the question Jesus asks this large ragtag crowd of folks who have been following him around, trying to listen to his teachings… Probably not a lot unlike this circle at St. Peter’s this morning.

And as he’s standing before them, he’s troubled, he’s upset. Another translation says he is anguished. There’s something that people aren’t getting, that they aren’t able to see or comprehend.

“Why do you not know how to interpret the present time?”

I don’t know exactly how those in that crowd might have responded. But I know that for me and for us today, it may be because the present time is pretty freaking wild. It’s so much just to try to take in, much less interpret or understand.

And it struck me that this passage starts out with Jesus saying “I came to bring fire to the earth and how I wish it were already kindled.” Because in many ways, it actually does feel like the world is on fire right now.

Right now, as we speak…

• There are fires smouldering in the wake of bombs dropped on Gaza, Syria, and Yemen, all paid for by our U.S. tax dollars

• Canadian wildfires are burning, and even thousands of miles away we are experiencing the effects of them.

• The Grand Canyon caught flame this week, with almost 150,000 acres already being burned.

• Not to mention the countless metaphorical fires popping up all around our government and political systems, and the searing fire of ICE that is sweeping across the country and taking so many people with it as it goes.

In so many ways it feels like the world is already on fire.

So what does it mean for Jesus to say that he came here to bring the fire, and he wishes it were already kindled?

The fact that this passage references fire and baptism so close together is likely a reference to a few chapters earlier, the third chapter of Luke, when John the Baptist is talking to the crowds who have come out to him at the river. This is when he says, “I baptize you with water, but one who is more powerful than I is coming… He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.”

The kind of fire Jesus brings is not the kind of destructive fires that are so present in our world today. Jesus brings the kind of fire that does what a baptism does: that renews, that rebirths, that awakens, that transforms. I imagine this is the kind of fire that he wishes were already kindled.

But what if these two kinds of fires, the destructive ones and the baptizing ones, are not unrelated? What if it is actually through the fires of the world today, the world as it is, the present time, that we need to be baptized in?

It is one thing for me to stand here and name that list of fires that are raging in our world today – the genocides, the wars, the climate crises, the political horrors – but it is another thing for me to actually sit with those facts, to try to take in their realities, to allow them to wash over me to the point that they might actually transform me, might actually change my life.

It is so hard to do. There are so many things that I keep at an arms length. So many realities that it is easier to avoid or deny or numb out. And so of course I am unable to interpret the present time – there are so many ways in which I haven’t allowed myself to enter it fully.

Peace activist and Catholic Worker Jim Douglass wrote a book in the early 70s called “Resistance and Contemplation: The Way of Liberation.” He was writing out of another time when so much of the world seemed to be on fire – amidst the ongoing horrors of the Vietnam War, U.S. political fires, the threat of global nuclear war. This book is his attempt to try to face the reality of the times, and interpret them, and ask what they would require of those trying to follow this Christian faith.

The opening line of the book reads: “The way of liberation passes through fire.”

He repeats this line again and again throughout the book, later asking: “If the way of liberation passes through fire, to what extent am I willing to pass through that fire myself?”

It is a tall order.
It is a tall order to be with reality as it is, to allow ourselves to be fully immersed in it.

And not just on the global scale, but in our personal lives too. All those things we find ourselves avoiding, all those things we would rather not look at, all those truths that we keep pretending are not true…

It is SO hard to face certain parts of reality as it is. The fire of truth can be hot and uncomfortable and painful. The last thing we’d want to step into and immerse ourselves in.

And yet this is what I hear us being called to do. Because every place that we deny or avoid or turn away from reality is a place that we are not opening ourselves up to God. A place that we are not allowing ourselves to be baptized. A place that we are not allowing ourselves (and therefore also the world) to be renewed, to be liberated, to be transformed, to be healed.

“The way of liberation passes through fire. To what extent are we willing to pass through the fire ourselves?”

It is SO hard, yes. But can you imagine how incredible it would feel to actually be fully present with what is? To hold back nothing of yourself ? To turn away from nothing that is front of you ? To be fully immersed in the fire of the present time, allowing it to burn away all that is not real and true?

There is a story about two Desert Fathers, the early Christian monastics who left the Roman cities for simpler lives of faith and contemplation.

The story goes that Abba Lot went to Abba Joseph and said, “Abba, as far as I can I say my little office, I fast a little, I pray and meditate, 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. His fingers became like ten lamps of fire and he said to him, “If you will, you can become all flame.”

I think this is how Jesus must have walked through the world every day, every moment of his life. All flame. Totally locked in. And look how bright his flame shone – is still shining all these 2,000 years later and thousands of miles away.

Entering the fire of reality, being fully baptized into the present time, can be hard and scary and painful. But I don’t think it is impossible. And as today’s Hebrews reading reminds us, “We are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses.”

There are so many who have gone before us who have taken the risk of being wholly baptized, wholly immersed in their present time. Even at the cost of their own lives.

This week we commemorated a few of these witnesses…

• St. Maximilian Kolbe — a Franciscan friar who was put into the concentration camps at Auschwitz and provided spiritual care and support until he volunteered to be killed in someone else’s place. When he was canonized decades later, that man attended the service.

• Jonathan Daniels — the young white Episcopalian priest who decided to baptize his life into the civil rights struggle, and ended up stepping in front of a bullet to save the life of a young black woman named Ruby Sales, who is also still alive and working for peace and justice today.

• St. Oscar Romero — who became archbishop of San Salvador and was radicalized into the struggle for peasant farmers, which ultimately led to his murder while celebrating Eucharist.

And we remember and mourn the life of Anas Al-Sharif, the young journalist from Gaza who was recently killed in a targeted Israeli strike along with five other journalists. He was fully baptized into the horror of his present time, refusing to look away, refusing to not tell the truth of what he was seeing. In the letter he wrote before his death, he said, “I have lived through pain in all its details, tasted suffering and loss many times, yet I never once hesitated to convey the truth as it is, without distortion or falsification.”

There are so many who have gone before us, who have dared offer their whole selves up to the fire of their present times, some like these martyrs whose lights flared up short and bright, and others who lived long lives in a sustaining glow. All of their lights guide our path.

As we try to face these fires of our own time today, we have this cloud of witnesses, and we have each other. To encourage one another, support one another, to bear witness to one another.

I think so often of the banner that hung in the stairwell of Jonah House, the house of nonviolent resistance in Baltimore started by Phil Berrigan and Liz McAlister. It read: “The most apostolic duty of all is to keep one another’s courage up.”

We couldn’t face the fires of this world alone. We need one another to keep our courage up and keep reminding ourselves why we’d choose to do something so foolish as try to follow this wild fiery man named Jesus.

And of course, becoming all flame doesn’t usually happen all at once. But I really believe that any move that any of us makes, no matter how small, to be more fully present with this world as it is, to more fully enter the fire, is a move towards liberation and healing for us all.

Is there something you’ve been avoiding, in yourself or in the world, that you might be able to turn more fully towards?
Is there some truth you could let truly wash over you in a way you haven’t before?
Is there some way you could be more present with the moment as it is, right here and now?

I want to close with a little collage poem that I pieced together as I was working on this homily this week. It’s made up of quotes that I referenced in this homily as well as a few others from Isaiah, Mark, and Detroit’s Heidelberg project. I wrote it in an attempt to keep my own courage up and wanted to share it with you all too.

***

Why do you not know how to interpret the present time?
The time is now.
The way of liberation passes through fire.
If you will, you can become all flame.
What are you afraid of?
We are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses.
The most apostolic duty of all is to keep one another’s courage up.
When you walk through the fire you will not be burned, and the flame will not consume you.
The time has come, and the Kingdom of God is close at hand.
The time is now.
The way of liberation passes through fire.
Why do you not know how to interpret the present time?
What are you afraid of?
If you will, you can become all flame.
When you walk through the fire you will not be burned, and the flame will not consume you.
We are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses.
What are you afraid of?
The most apostolic duty of all is to keep one another’s courage up.
The time is now.
The time has come, and the Kingdom of God is close at hand.
The way of liberation passes through fire.
When you walk through the fire you will not be burned, and the flame will not consume you.
The way of liberation passes through fire.
The time is now.
What are you afraid of?
The time is now.
What are you afraid of?
The way of liberation passes through fire.
The time has come, and the Kingdom of God is close at hand.
Amen.