"SETTING THE WORLD ON FIRE"

“SETTING THE WORLD ON FIRE”

            “I have come to set the world on fire!”  Those are Jesus’ words about himself in the 12^th chapter of Luke, where he indicates that he has come to bring division, not peace.  I want to suggest that this side of Jesus comes from his relationship to the man on fire, John the Baptizer.  But, before I do that, I must note that a lot of the world is on fire, whether it is the wildfires in Australia, or the rainforests in the Amazon River basin, or the wildfires in California, or the drones falling from the sky in Iraq.  The world is on fire, and it is a scary time, especially with the kind of leadership that we see in the White House and the Senate.  Let us be clear here – it is not a lack of leadership that is holding us back from dealing with climate change.  It is a very deliberate style of leadership that wishes to divert us from the problems of climate change, so that the rich can get richer and build alternatives for themselves when the fires burn even more out of control.  If you want to know how that turns out, read Octavia Butler’s novel “The Parable of the Sower.”

            But now, back to John the Baptizer.  In Luke’s gospel, he seems to be the cousin of Jesus.  In John’s gospel, he seems to be the rival of Jesus.  In all four gospels, he is seen as the forerunner of Jesus, the one who prepares the way for Jesus.  John’s style and substance is about doing our own individual soul work and in seeking justice as one of the main results of that soul work.  On one level, John preaches repentance in the old-fashioned way that I grew up on in the white, supremacist South.  It emphasized that I (and other individuals) needed to get right with God and stop drinking and smoking and chasing hedonistic pleasures.   My religious upbringing not only denied that justice and community equity have anything to do with salvation – it actively worked to put asunder spirituality and justice.  Like white evangelical religion now in the USA, the idea is to maintain white patriarchy and to deny the importance of justice in the eyes of God.

            Even a cursory reading of John the Baptizer’s life in the gospels will show how ridiculous that kind of a notion, that kind of a split, is in relation to John’s ministry.  When the religious leaders like Franklin Graham come out to hear John the Baptizer speak, they ask him what they should do to get right with God.  Per my upbringing, I always believed that John answered by saying that they should proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior.  Once I went back to actually read the New Testament stories about John, this is what he gave as the answer:  “If you have more than one coat, give the second (or third and fourth) to those who have none;  if you have more food than you can eat, give it to those who are starving.”  For John, salvation was intimately connected to a life of recognition, repentance, and reparations.  No worries about getting into heaven for John – the main emphasis was to be set on fire for God in this life.  Being set on fire for God meant seeking equity and justice. 

            If you are wondering if I am making this up or twisting the narrative, go back and read it for yourself, as I did.  And, please note that John is also arrested and executed by Herod (not the same Herod of Jesus’ birth, but not far from him in temperament) for calling Herod’s ethics into question.   Jesus’ leanings towards justice and equity in his movement are undoubtedly derived in part from his relationship to John the Baptizer.  

So, if you are like me and grew in the stream of American Christianity that makes the goal of our lives seem to be getting into heaven when we die, check out John the Baptizer.  If you let him, he will set you on fire, as he did Jesus.   We need these kinds of folk desperately in our time - folks willing to do soul work in an age of superficiality, folks able to see the intertwining of justice and spirituality, folks willing to be set on fire for the God movement, as were John the Baptizer and Jesus of Nazareth.  Let us listen for John’s voice and John’s calling out, and let us find the fire within us, so that the fires we set will be ones for justice and equity and not those of greed and destruction of the earth and humanity.