The Fires of Heaven, a sermon based on Luke 3:15-17, Acts 2:1-4, preached by the Rev. Dr. Andrew Purves, at the Fox Chapel Presbyterian Church on May 11, 2008, Pentecost
Are you fascinated by fire? Put those matches down! Don’t play with fire, my Mother used to tell me. You will get burned. Fire is very dangerous. Get a little burn just once, and the lesson is learned. When I was around 15 years old I well remember the Saturday morning when the Mayfield Parish Church burned, two blocks from my parents’ home in Edinburgh. Flames leapt hundreds of feet into the air as the dry roof timbers ignited. Perhaps it was as magnificent as spectacle as I have ever seen. Fire is elemental, primal – we can’t live without it. Without fire there is no heating or cooking. Yet out of control, fire is totally destructive. The hospital burn unit is a genuinely scary place to visit. The one prohibition on freedom of speech is to shout ‘Fire!’ in a crowed space because the panic would be murderous. Fire is dangerous as it is necessary.
The calm and lovely image of the dove seems to be the dominant image for the Holy Spirit in popular piety. Certainly it is a biblical image and has its place. Much more true to Pentecost, however, is the association of Spirit with fire, and there is nothing calm or lovely about it.
I find this to be a perplexing and challenging association – Spirit with fire. In the first place, fire is used biblically in the context of judgment. We all know about the fires of Hell. On the other hand, and what is not so clear and known, are the fires of heaven. Consider the burning bush before which stood the mystified Moses, yet the fire did not consume it. Consider the pillar of fire by night to guide the people in their wilderness journey. Consider the Seraphim around the throne of God in Isaiah 6 – the seraphim were thought to be the highest known rank of angels. The word itself literally means “fiery flying serpents.” God is surrounded by fire. The end of the Elijah story is captured by the prophet returning to God as he is separated from his successor Elisha by a chariot of fire and horses of fire. And then there are the enigmatic words of John the Baptist, who answered the enquiry whether or not he was the messiah, contrasting his own baptism with water with reference to Jesus who would baptize us with Spirit and with fire. This association is again repeated with the basic Pentecost story itself. There was the sound of a violent wind, and finger-like flames of fire were seen to alight on the disciples as they were filled with the Holy Spirit. Spirit and fire. The fires of heaven.
What is this about? As I noted a moment ago, we have here in the image of fire a reminder of the judgment of God at the end of the age. Isaiah 66:15-16 have terrifying associations: “The Lord will come in fire, and his chariots like the whirlwind, to pay back his anger in fury, and his rebuke in flames of fire. For by fire will the Lord execute judgment.” The fire of God is most certainly not to be taken lightly. In fact, I am not sure how one would preach such a text, so far are we mainstream Protestants from our comfort zone with such fearful images of divine judgment. Even the gentler tones of John 15 contain the notion that God will burn the dead dross of our lives – John 15:6. The association of God’s fire and judgment is a not so subtle reminder that issues concerning God are utterly serious, and that the consequences of faithlessness, and of failure to honor God in all things, are dire indeed. In a time when we throw around God talk willy-nilly, from common cursing to political convenience, it is terrifyingly salutary to reflect on the judgment for dishonoring God, or of co-opting God for our own ends. There is altogether too much casual speech concerning God. We are dealing with the Ancient of Day who will not be mocked. Fire and brimstone may be the butt of the liberal Christian’s joke, but let us be very careful. Dante’s inferno may be a poem, but let us be very careful. Don’t play with fire; you will get burned.
On the other hand, there is no gift of the Spirit without fire. For what we have here in the Pentecost story is a special kind of anointing with fire. When the Holy Spirit descends upon us we become the burned men and the burned women, but burned not upon our skin, but burned, as it were, in our souls, in our person, on fire from the inside out. When the fire of the Holy Spirit comes upon us and moves within us, we are cauterized in our sin, illumined in our judgments, and warmed in our hearts. When God the Spirit alights upon us, we are on fire and therefore fired up. Enspirited people are incendiary people. The disciples were told that they would receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon them – they would become dynamite people with a mission. Christians as fire crackers, exploding with Holy Spirit giftedness – I like the image! Or, in another image I find provocative: pyrotechnic discipleship – that’s the anointing of Pentecost.
The association of fire with the powerful and transforming presence of God was unforgettably recorded in Pascal’s famous memorial. There the 17th century French philosopher and mathematician recorded his encounter with God in a fiery experience while reading the 17th chapter of John’s Gospel in a hotel room in Rome. These are a portion of Pascal’s words:
“The year of grace 1654,
Monday, 23 November… From about half past ten at night until about half past midnight,
FIRE.
GOD of Abraham, GOD of Isaac, GOD of Jacob
not of the philosophers and of the learned.
Certitude. Certitude. Feeling. Joy. Peace.
GOD of Jesus Christ.
My God and your God.
Your GOD will be my God.”
Here Pascal associates the dramatic transforming power of God of the Bible with fire. This is Pentecostal reality: FIRE! Let’s say this loudly. There is nothing timid, or meek, or cautious, about this fire. Pascal capitalized the word in his text. Encountered by the fire of God, anointed by the fire Spirit of God, we experience a dangerous God, an all-consuming God, a God associated with power both to warn and to warm, a combustible God, a God loosed upon his creation with purpose, sometimes with dramatic effect, a God of fierce intention who will tolerate no opposition to his searing love.
The power of the association between God the Spirit and fire makes me reflect on how much of our Christianity has become tame, safe, conventional, unexceptional, even non-dangerous, as if we have painted God the Holy Spirit within the lines. Spirit without fire may be no Spirit at all, and at the very least that makes for both boredom and powerless. It leads to a piety that is heedless of warning, and with no capacity for warming. Paul exhorts the Thessalonians not to quench the Spirit (1 Thes. 5:19). Perhaps we could paraphrase that instruction this way: See to it that you don’t put out the fire! I look around and fear that is just what we may have done.
The challenge of Pentecost is to put back together again the association of Spirit with fire. But not in our minds only. For truth in our minds without fire in our hearts is an incomplete Pentecost experience. We Presbyterians have felt often that the illumination of our minds was all we needed, and we have forgotten that truth of John Wesley’s experience, who knew the intimacy and power of transformation by God when his heart was strangely warmed. His brother, Charles Wesley, in a little known Pentecost hymn, prayed
Jesus, confirm my heart’s desire
To work, and speak, and think for thee;
Still let me guard the holy fire,
And still stir up thy gift in me.
If we have the Spirit, and we do, we also have the fire. The challenge is to pray God to stir up the gift within us, for God to fan the flames. So I challenge you: pray for the burning of the fire. Pray for the flames of enspirited passion to leap high. Pray that on fire with Spirit power you will become a dangerous, incendiary Christian, and that evangelism therefore becomes a kind of spontaneous combustion whenever you draw near to another person. Pray for the courage to ask God to burn the dross and withered branches of your lives, so that you may be purified for ministry. Pray, that aflame with the Holy Spirit, your light will shine like a burning beacon, and so give glory to your Father in heaven. Pray that you will indeed be one of the burned people. Come Holy Spirit, come, and set your people on fire!