How could 'Gentle Jesus, meek & mild' ever have come into being? Whoever thought it up didn't have this passage in their Bible? Maybe there are bits we all either exclude or haven't ever seriously encountered? Could we make a 'phantom' list of them? Might it make interesting reading? I once read through the index of a great preacher's sermon collections only to find he'd never, in 50 years or more, preached about whatever it was I was then trying to look up. My own collection of notes over many years makes interesting reading, too! For what's there, & for what's missing. Does yours?

Let's face it, this is hard stuff. The Jesus here is not the hail-fellow-well-met, user-friendly, peace-loving, unifying character we normally portray him as. That's exactly what gets him crucified, brings him to his baptism of blood. The Jesus we often portray wouldn't have been worth crucifying any more than most of us are.

I believe the only fire God has - no, 'is'! - the only fire God is is love. Fire may be the other side of the coin, but it's still love. The hardest of all laws to operate by. Because it inevitably will bring disunity, division, judgment, even destruction, as well as the Fruits & Gifts of the Spirit.
In the Gospel of Thomas (10) Jesus says he's 'guarding the fire until it blazes' (Complete Gospels, ed. Miller, Polebridge, '94) Maybe that's the kind of imagery Charles Wesley had in mind in his great hymn,  "O thou who camest from above......'

Baptism in water is one thing; often, in fact, what Bonhoeffer calls 'cheap grace' the way we practise it. Baptism in blood is another thing altogether. We're all under stress while it works itself out. Before we can say "It is finished"! (Accomplished, or,  personally I prefer, "Ive done it!!!"). It's only God's great positive that makes any sense out of such a dreadful thing as a cross.

Can we live divided, yet as fire; in love, in peace? Jesus' answer is a hard one: Yes! You can! I take him to mean that doing that, even if it leads to our being baptized in blood, is his own approach to faith & life, so why not ours?

Is it time we were, by grace, better at taking spiritual temperatures, measuring & responding in a godly way to the pressures of society (of God or not of God), reading the Wind of the Spirit & its blowing where God will, rather than being mere windbags?

Are we in churches & groups resorting more to love, or to law? What's this 'very last penny' God will demand of us? In some parts, the civil Law is in process of demanding, maybe at God's behest, the very last penny from our structures & institutions because of our indifference to abuse perpetrated over years, & covered up by leaders & others who've found it 'too hard'.