Week 3 June 2025, Devotion Part 1

I came to cast fire upon the earth; and would that it were already kindled. I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how I am constrained until it is accomplished! Do you think that I have come to give peace on earth? No, I tell you, but rather division…  Luke 12:49-51

Some of us may have a hunch that the story of Sodom and Gomorrah will always have a say in the discussion of – ahem – sexual immorality. But as the context shall reveal, that is not the issue here. True, fire rained from heaven to destroy those cities; the word sodomy is still current even when years ago stricken from the law books of our land. So, is Jesus fired up about our moral outrage of choice, or should we make room for His? On Isaiah’s watch 700 years earlier, God addressed the leaders of Israel as “rulers of Sodom!” He despised their impeccably displayed religiosity and urged them to defend the fatherless and plead for the widow (Isaiah 1:10-17). Ezekiel 16:49 hits even closer to home as the prophet elaborates on the guilt of Israel’s “sister Sodom.” She had arrogance, abundant food, and careless ease but refused to “grasp the hand” of the poor and needy. If sexual perversion and social injustice are sibling issues, as it were, we may have to adjust our hunches accordingly.

Jesus is talking about the most radical revolution unleashed in human history, singularly so by His death, resurrection, and ascension. It will send the age of compromise on a dizzying skid right smack into the age of confrontation. This Pentecostal fire will not singe the crown of our hair but rage in our minds and reign in our hearts to impart purity and righteous passion – consuming the dross of our dim-witted perceptions and forging a crown of imperishable glory to Jesus Christ, the Head of His Church.  Part 1 of 2

Comment: With Pentecost still fresh on our mind, we probably continue to see red. The liturgical color was dominant in how we dressed and the balloons that flew en masse up to the sanctuary ceiling.  Was there a massive mess to clean up the next morning?  I was the butt of a very dated joke, “What’s black and white and red all over?”  Indeed, I “read” my paper with black coffee and white milk, and the news made me see red.  I abhor the thought of bullfights, but if the “bull” of barbaric politics is getting to me, I could easily spar with some barbs from my sharp tongue as a wordsmith.  At the historical Pentecost, words were spoken in “other tongues,” but what mattered most was that the hearers were pricked in their hearts and asked, “What must we do to be saved?”  John 3:16 is at the heart of the Gospel, but John 3:36 is just as much God’s Word that must be heeded, “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God’s wrath remains on him.”  So, do we “hope for the best”, as the saying goes, or heed the solace of 1 Peter 1:3, “In his great mercy [God] has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead…”?