After a quick reading of this text, we might dismiss it as being an obvious mis-remembering of what Jesus actually said. Perhaps Luke has injected his own political perspective into a conversation which, many years after the fact, he can only dimly recall. However, a closer look at Jesus’ manic outburst is telling - telling us that he said what he meant and meant what he said.
Jesus said some harsh things during the brief, three years of his public life.
It’s like he didn’t even try to be nice. Instead, he used expressions and idioms that left no mistake as to his meaning words like “vipers” and “serpents,” “hypocrites” and “liars,” “weeping” and “gnashing of teeth,” “death” and “destruction.”1 He referred to his enemies as whitewashed tombs full of rotting dead people and said that they - his detractors - were the devil’s spawn.2 Their destiny, he said in no uncertain terms, was damnation and “eternal fire.”3
One could argue, however, that Jesus’ harshest words were reserved for hard-working, earnest families who thought they were living in connubial bliss and enjoying the best that life could offer - if you could ignore the Roman soldiers patrolling the streets. “I came to bring fire to the earth,” he roared at astonished families. “Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth?” Well, yes, that’s exactly what we thought. But Jesus went on to explain that, to the contrary, his mission was to bring division and discord; he came to rip clans and tribes asunder. Families would be set against families. Relationships would unravel. In the apocalyptic vision of Jesus, the earth would be scorched, and not even the bonds of love would withstand the searing heat of the coming conflagration.
This is not the Jesus we know. Who is this person, we ask, and what have you done with the Jesus who said “let the little children come to me”?4 Clearly, the Jesus of this text is losing it; he’s mad enough to drown puppies. He’s not just in a bad mood: he’s like a mule chewing on bumblebees. The fire of Jesus is coming and there will be blood.
The words - if not from Jesus - might have been attributed to the disciples who wanted to rain fire down upon the heads of those who had been hostile to them. Oddly, Jesus in that case rebuked them.5 Or, if we didn’t know better, we might assume that Jesus’ words here were lifted from some of the imprecatory psalms, calling down calamity and destruction upon the enemies of Yahweh.6 “I came to bring fire to the earth,” Jesus said, but the words sound like something that might have come from the mouth of God himself, searing the edges of the Hebrew Bible with evocations of wrath, fire and brimstone: “Happy shall they be who take your little ones and dash them against the rock!”7 Happy, indeed!
But the harsh words of our text come
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