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“Is not my word like fire, declares, the Lord, and like a hammer that breaks the rock in pieces?” Jeremiah 23:29Fire Upon the Earth“I came to cast fire on the earth, and would that it were already kindled! I have a baptism to be baptised with, and how great is my distress until it is accomplished!”At first glance, today’s Gospel reading might be hard to understand. It might also be hard to accept when we do indeed understand its meaning. But it teaches us such an important lesson that we must attend closely to it. So, let’s follow the flow of thought in Jesus words.What is Christ meaning when he speaks of casting fire upon the earth and being baptised with a certain baptism?The Greek word for baptism is baptizo and in means “immersion” or to be covered with something. Christ therefore refers to something that will completely overwhelm and overshadow him. Commentators agree that this refers to his passion and death upon the cross.This might be surprising for us at first since we associate the word “baptism” with the sacrament of baptism. And yet we can remember here that baptisms were and are regularly carried out by so-called full immersion in which a person is literally immersed completely in the water of a large baptismal font or pool.In comparing the sacrament of baptism to the baptism of his death, he is making a point about the comprehensiveness, the awfulness of what is going to happen to him. Like a shroud, his passion and suffering will be cast over him and will immerse him completely.And this thought leads to the second image: Christ’s casting fire upon the earth. The image of fire is used in many ways in Scripture: most notably to represent the Holy Spirit, and to speak of the word of God. But whatever image we prefer, fire here represents the powerful working of God in the world after Christ’s death, resurrection and ascension. In other words, it represents the work of the Gospel and the Church in the age in which we live now.Fire is powerful: it consumes, it burns, it creates chaos, it divides, it kindles, heats and makes alive. It is the perfect image for the Gospel.Christ tells us plainly: he is ready for this baptism and distressed before it is accomplished. He longs for the fire of the Gospel to be cast upon the earth.Peace or DivisionAnd then perhaps the hardest part of the reading: “I have not come to bring peace but rather division.”In other words: “You thought I came to bring unity and peaceful co-existence upon the earth within the human family. Not so. My identity, my ministry, and especially my death and resurrection will in fact be a source of great division and heartache.”He chooses the most intimate image of the human family to make this point: even within a household, father will be divided against son, son against father, mother against daughter, daughter against mother, and so on.Notice here that Christ is not saying that this sort of division is a positive thing and he is certainly not saying it should be sought out by his followers. Rather, it is an inevitable consequence of his ministry.Nor is this a contradiction of the fifth commandment – honour thy father and thy mother – which is upheld by Christ in various ways, not least in his rebuking of the religious leaders of the day for giving financial contributions to the Temple but not supporting their parents in their old age.The point Christ makes here – as he does at other times – is that God is to come before all. And that honouring God must come even before the highest earthly obligation which is to honour our parents.Cyril of Alexandria puts this well:“If honour is to be paid to parents, how much more to your parents’ Creator, to whom you owe gratitude for your parents!...You are not forbidden to love your parents, but you are forbidden to prefer them to God.”We might also wonder what to do with the words Christ spoke to his disciples when he appeared to them after his resurrection: “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you, not as the