DON’T PLAY WITH FIRE
(Preached on Sunday, August 22, 2004)
...for indeed our God is a consuming fire.
-Hebrews 12:29
In many respects, life was simpler when our view of the world was less complex. Long centuries ago, human beings didn’t understand the science behind the world. We didn’t understand the meteorology behind the hurricane or the geology behind the volcano or earthquake.
Those awesome, powerful forces of nature were attributed to the activity of the gods. So the Greeks and Romans understood Vulcan, the god of fire, to be behind the eruptions of Mount Aetna and Mount Vesuvius; Hera and Zeus were the source of lightening bolts; Poseidon ruled the waves and the storms at sea.
The Scandinavians had Thor, the god of thunder.
The Polynesians had Pele, the goddess of fire and volcanos.
Even the Israelites understood Yahweh, the One God, to be the force behind all the storms, wind, waves, fire and earthquakes and volcanos.
Their imagery for God in the Hebrew Scriptures is always associated with awesome, powerful manifestations of nature: smoke and fire and shaking earth, bushes that burn but are not consumed, pillars of fire and smoke, shaking the foundations of the earth.
God was awesome and mighty and powerful and not to be trifled with.
It’s not quite so easy for us today.
Our view of the world is much more complex.
We understand the dynamics in the oceans and atmosphere that create hurricanes; we understand the geological construction of the earth and what causes earthquakes and volcanos to erupt.
He have split the atom and sent men to the moon and we have telescopes that allow us to see back almost to the beginning of time.
Yet we are not quite sure what to do with God in all of this knowledge and understanding.
Our faith teaches us that God is the Creator, and our insurance policies even speak of “acts of God”, yet we are not sure we want to blame events like hurricanes on God. Something about that is good, for ancient people lived not just in fear of nature, but of God. As the author of Hebrews, in recalling the story of the experience of the Israelite people at the base of Mount Sinai when they encountered the power and majesty of God reminds us, even Moses “trembled with fear.”
No, Jesus and his teachings have helped us to understand that God is loving and compassionate, full of mercy, forgiveness and tender care for all of us. We are not as “fearful” of God as we once were.
But, have we become too familiar? In many respects we seem to have lost our sense of the mystery of life, of the universe, of God.
We begin to look to God to affirm our own thinking, our own actions, our own beliefs. President Bush has declared that he understands now, after September 11th, that it was his destiny, chosen by God, to lead the United States — that he is God’s chosen servant to lead the war on terrorism. Jerry Falwell, founder of the Moral Majority and pastor of Lynchburg Baptist Church in Virginia recently sent out an e-mail stating that “for conservative people of faith, voting for principle this year means voting for the reelection of George W. Bush.”
All of which sounds just a bit presumptuous.
Or, if we don’t suppose to control or manipulate God for our own purposes, many more of us have fallen into a state of indifference — listless, blase and detached.
We move through much of life never astonished, awestruck or surprised, because we are either overwhelmed or underwhelmed.
When we are overwhelmed we don’t notice the subtle blessings in our surroundings; we don’t take the time to stop and smell the roses.
Feeling underwhelmed, we couldn’t care less.
“So what?” becomes our response instead of “ah-ha!”
We have lost contact with the “fire” of God.
Much of the time we feel tired, feeling we have tried and tried, and nothing seems to work. We are worn down by life, feel our hands are drooping and our knees are weak. We are tired of serving the world, tired of worship, tired of Christian education, tired of being peculiar and whispered about in society, tired of the spiritual struggle, tired of trying to keep our prayer life going, tired even of Jesus.
It is so easy to slip into dejection and disappointment.
But our God is a consuming fire!
Not a fire of judgement, but a fire of excitement, that cannot be controlled, won’t be controlled, and, as all fire is, is dangerous to us.
That is what frightens us, even though we know God to be loving, caring and compassionate, we also know God to be uncontrollable.
After all, fire is uncontrollable.
In the spring of 2000, National Park Service workers intentionally set a brush fire in some park lands in New Mexico. The fire was supposed to be a controlled burn, limited to a particular area, for the purpose of allowing new growth to begin in that area.
The problem, however, was that the fire got out of control.
The Park Service miscalculated the wind speed and direction, and the flames spread beyond their ability to contain them, destroying thousands of acres, including much of the town of Los Alamos.
While we often think we can manage God and contain God to limited portions of our lives, it is always possible God will burn beyond any boundaries that we might try to set up. If God does this, it is always for our growth, to bring us to fuller and more exciting life.
But it always comes about through change, fire always transforms, and we do not control the outcome.
Our tendency as human beings, then, is to avoid that fire if we cannot control it. We have done that well in the church for centuries. Even in the first century, the author of Hebrews challenges the readers of this letter to be sure “you do not refuse the one who is speaking,” that is, God through Jesus.
Walter Brueggeman, UCC theologian and seminary professor, once led a workshop entitled something like “Recovering Our Prophetic Voice” for a bunch of Baptist and Presbyterian clergy in Kentucky, all of whom had at least 20 years in the ministry. He began his talk with a number of examples of how the average minister had been tamed into an innocuous pet rather than a fiery prophet of the Old Testament.
Then he quoted several passages from the major prophets (Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekial, Daniel, Hosea) where vivid and searing condemnations were invoked against those who had settled for the easy life. Brueggeman suggested that we had lost the use of subversive language to call into question the principalities and powers of our day.
He wondered aloud what kind of language would shock modern hearers the way that the prophets of old shocked their audience in Jerusalem.
He then proceeded to let loose a string of curse words to describe various situations of injustice and oprression that existed all around us.
The room of graying gentleman sat there ever so politely as expletive after expletive zipped by them to the back of the room (a blue streak equal to that from any sailor.) You could see jaws drop slack and hair blow straight backwards, but Brueggeman made his point.
What we too often do is confuse good manners with good morals in the church. We keep everything at a nice, genteel surface level, but we never get around to dealing with real life, real issues, real pain and sufferings, real support for one another.
To deal with that we need to deal honestly. But in the church we are more likely to not deal with something because it is messy.
So we don’t talk about money; we don’t talk about divorce; we don’t talk about ongoing racial tensions in our society; we don’t talk about wars our country wages; we don’t talk about depression or other mental or emotional difficulties; we don’t talk about employment practices; we don’t talk about suicide; we don’t talk about teenage sexuality, or teen pregnancy rates; we don’t talk about real life.
For many of us we look around at those we worship with and think: “These are all nice people, but this is the last place in the world I would feel safe to actually deal with the real issues that are happening to the real me.” Church has become a place where we put on our Sunday best, bring out our best selves, and put them on display for ourselves and others for a couple hours. It is an important goal, in and of itself, but it is not enough, and I suspect that this remains one of the principal reasons that young people are skittish about the church.
It is also one reason why many people today find more spirituality, more connection to God, more honesty and support for their real lives, in Alcoholic Anonymous meetings.
A good AA meeting will occur where the people in the group have been together for several years.
They will share deeply about their lives.
They will be bluntly honest with each other.
They will be free to acknowledge their shortcomings and struggles.
They will reach out to each other in support.
They will build up one another.
As old-time preacher Carlyle Marney would have said, church meets amongst them. That is what real church is all about.
In real church, you can hear a word of confrontation because you know deeply that you are accepted, supported, loved.
In real church, the context opens you up for the possibility of profound change and genuine commitment because that is what the community is about.
In real church, God indeed shakes things up because we are on an adventure toward spiritual transformation.
That is the point of our lives.
In real church, we stop “playing” with fire and allow the fire of God, the fire of honesty to bring real support and real growth to our lives.
May that fire break lose in our church this day.