Hebrews tells us today to rid of every sin that clings to us. “Well father, I’ve been trying!” To quote Rose Dawson from Titanic, “it’s been 84 years…” Hebrews is not naïve, it is not something we can do on our own, which is why we are also told that in your struggle against sin, to keep your eyes on the leader and perfecter of faith, only he resisted sin to the point of shedding blood.

So, let’s do that! Let’s set our eyes on Jesus today and the three puzzling but important spiritual lessons he spoke in the gospel today as the only way you and I can rid of the sin the clings to us.

 First, Jesus says “There is a baptism with which I must be baptized, and how great is my anguish until it is completed.” This is a puzzling statement because Jesus was already baptized by John the Baptist.

That baptism was a symbolic act. John was baptizing sinners as a sign of their desire to change. However, Jesus had no need to change, but he chooses to be baptized as a sign of solidarity with us in our struggle. It was his way of saying “I am choosing to enter your own need for baptism, into your condition of sin.”

By then water had become a symbol of God’s judgment. We see that represented in the waters of chaos and disorder in Genesis. It is the Spirit of God that hovers over them to begin to bring order in the world, separating land from water, giving us the land to continue the work of bringing order into creation. But, due to the condition of sin, humans where not capable of moderating themselves and made a mess out of the earth. So, then we see the symbol of water being used but in reverse in the story of Noah’s Ark. In the flood, God allowed the world to revert back to that chaos because of the growth of sin. Think of it as symbolic of God’s great reset.

The spiritual meaning of water as chaos is to teach us: this is what life is like if we lose contact with God: we lose order, we drown in our many disfunctions and it is really difficult to overcome them, to rid ourselves of every burden and sin. So, Jesus’ first baptism is symbolic that Jesus will have to enter into our struggle to overcome the disorder in our lives for us, and that happens, not in a symbolic way, but in actuality, on the cross, that which caused him great anguish until it was accomplished.

The cross is the ultimate sign of human failure, our tendency to use human power to promulgate hate, blame, criticize, accuse, slander and kill not just anyone, but the most innocent upright human being who happened to also be God himself. It is the culmination of ultimate human chaos, the furthest you can get from God. Jesus will allow Himself to be drowned in chaos, and at the resurrection, human weakness is transformed through the power of forgiveness. The waters that were once symbolic for God’s judgment are transformed into the entryway to a life of healing.

Second, Jesus says, “I have come to set fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already blazing!” The symbol of fire comes after the Genesis flood. God promised in the covenant with Noah that the world would never again be judged by water. Jesus then uses the symbol of fire, which was in line with the way ancient people viewed the world: air, earth, water, and fire were the essential elements that made up the universe for the people of Jesus’ time.

It’s pretty easy for us now to imagine fire and water as symbols of destruction. Every year for the past decade, we witness the devastation of fires in our own backyard. We recently saw the devastation of water in Texas with the floods. They are again images of nature that devastate when they go out of control. When we allow our own lives to go uncontrolled, controlled by sin, we not only live in chaos, but create chaos for others. So, when Jesus says, “I have come to set fire on the earth.” He is announcing that the final judgment of the world will begin.

The Old Testament teachers expected that the final judgment would involve the resurrection of people to face judgment. And Jesus is saying, “With My Resurrection, the final judgment begins now. But if you are united with Me, you have the ability to avoid the fire of judgment.”

This sounds like something we should fear, but as the New Testament tells us: in Jesus, the fire of destruction can be transformed into the purifying fire of the Holy Spirit. God doesn’t want to destroy us, he wants to transform us. The way of transformation is through Jesus, as we follow His example in baptism, as we place ourselves in solidarity with the suffering, the struggles of others, Jesus gives us power to transform the negative consequences of our sinful condition into love.

The First Letter of Peter really expresses this very beautifully. Right at the beginning, it says: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who in His great mercy gave us a new birth to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to a salvation that is ready to be revealed, we who, by the power of God, are safeguarded through faith. In this we rejoice, although now, for a little while, we may have to suffer through various trials, so that the genuineness of our faith, more precious than gold that is refined by fire, may prove to be for the praise, glory, and honor of Jesus Christ.”

In Jesus, even the sufferings of our life can become part of this purification process that leads us forward in our life with God.

And then the third surprising thing that Jesus says today which offers us an important spiritual lesson: “Do you think that I have come to establish peace on the earth? No, I tell you, I will be the cause of division.”

This is puzzling because during Christmas we talk about Jesus the prince of peace, peace on earth to all people of good will. This is true, but we humans are not good at prolonging peace. Jesus therefore says: if you want that peace, then you are going to have to make a decision. With My Resurrection, the final judgment begins and the judgment is now in your hands.

Jesus says that He will bring division to the earth. But clearly, He knows that there’s already division in the world. Division is really the essence of the condition of sin that we live in. What He’s saying is: if you do not follow the way of peace that I’m showing you, this division is only going to get worse. You have to make a choice.

During this time, the Roman Empire promised to unite the world through violence, by conquering everything around it. That tends to happen when kingdoms and nations get too powerful for their own good, they want to extend their power and conquer the world.

When the Gospel of Luke was written, the threat of Roman persecution loomed in the background. There was the possibility that someone might, out of fear, turn a family member over to the authorities. Jesus is making a commentary about that: “Yeah, it’s possible. From now on, a household of five may be divided, father against son, mother against daughter… You have to decide: Are you going to worship the Roman Emperor, or are you going to worship the Father who sent Me? If you choose the Roman Empire, division is only going to get worse. War is going to be a way of life for you.”

In our modern day we encounter new types of war that continue to divide us. We could say that social media is a key player in sowing division in the human family today, because we just don’t know how to moderate ourselves under our condition of sin.

Facebook came out my senior year of high school. I remember the vision for Facebook was to make the world a better place by encouraging self-expression and conversation, a mission that would lead to building a global community that works for everyone.

While there is a lot of great things about platforms like Facebook, studies continue to show mixed results. While it is effective in keeping millions connected no matter the distance, I recently posted videos and photos of my birthday hike on top of mt rainier, it has also come with a heavy price. We cannot ignore that it has become an instrument of division in society by people who do not know how to moderate themselves, who lose the natural filter one would have in sharing certain opinions face to face, making public discourse impossible at times, not to mention how much it affects our self-image as we are constantly comparing ourselves with ideals.

Then we have AI which is now offering rapid change in the way we communicate with each other. It will only be a matter of time before we see, yes, the incredible fruits that this new technology will bring, Chat GPT has become an incredibly helpful resource for my ministry, but we can anticipate the negative consequences it will bring as we come in contact with yet another tool that we do not yet know how to moderate ourselves with.

As Christians, our guiding principle is always the Gospel and the wisdom of the Church. It is the foundation by which we relate to the world. If we are on social media, we constantly have to do some self-checking: what is more important to me, what I think others need to see of me to feel approved, or what Jesus thinks about me?

Part of Revelation is to help us realize our identity lies in being children of God, not children of the world. In our culture, it is all about self-image, which is defined as “the mental image that I have of my appearance, my abilities, and my strengths and weaknesses.” Society offers many critiques about who and how we should be. But Jesus says: you have to make a choice in the image of God. We have to separate ourselves from what others think of us. While social media and AI might make that difficult, tempting us to show either an exaggerated version of ourselves or even a false self-image, Jesus gives us the power to do it.

And Jesus is so radical: He says even our own families cannot finally be the source of our confidence in who we are. It has to be God. As I mentioned before, dear parents, you have to be careful not to mold your children in your own likeness of who you wish them to be.

The ideal and our hope is that our families will support us in living a Christian life. For some of you that was the case, for others it was not. Some of you had poor examples of Christian discipleship. The ideal and our hope is that we’ll receive the love and understanding that we need from our families. If that was our experience, then God’s love is necessary to flood that void, and it has to be God’s love otherwise something else will fill it.  

Finally, the letter to the Hebrews tells us today that Jesus, for the joy set before Him, endured the Cross, despising its shame. The Cross was not only a painful death, but it was also public humiliation.

So how could Jesus go through that without feeling ashamed? Because His complete focus, for every minute, was on the love that He shared with the Father, and being faithful to the mission that He had been given.

Family, the world continues to move forward, but now we have been given a choice for good to confront all the challenges that come with change.

First: Jesus enters into our chaos through baptism and transforms judgment into healing.

Second: He sets fire to the earth—not to destroy, but to purify us through the Holy Spirit.

Third: He brings not false peace, but a decision point that may cause division, yet leads to true peace for those who follow Him.

As the Letter to the Hebrews invites us today:
“Let us rid ourselves of every burden and sin that clings to us, and persevere in running the race that lies before us. Let us keep our eyes fixed on Jesus, the leader and perfecter of our faith.”

So keep your eyes on Him. Not on the chaos. Not on the crowd. Not on the algorithm. Let Jesus, not the world, define your worth, your identity, and your mission. And may the fire He came to cast on the earth burn in us, not to condemn, but to strengthen.