Fire

Spirit of God, bless us with your presence, help us to understand your purposes, and guide us to follow you with faith and courage. Amen.

The Spirit of God brings passion and new life and unity to the world.

That is what the Pentecost story is all about.

Through fire and wind, and through the very breath of life, God’s Spirit moves among us and helps us to change the world. 

As we well know, fire and wind have the capability to bring destruction as well as life.

The presence that the Spirit of God sends to us may not be easy to accept, and it certainly isn’t gentle. It may even frighten us. But it is passionate and powerful. And it is critically important for our future.

I spent the first summer of my college years working at Sky Ranch Lutheran Camp, in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. Right on the edge of the camp’s property, part of the forest had recently been destroyed in a forest fire. Any tree trunks that were still standing were charred and blackened. When I arrived in the spring, the burned landscape appeared to be lifeless and barren.

But as spring turned into summer, the scenery changed.

Baby trees started appearing among the charred remains of their parent plants.

Native plants that couldn’t get enough sun in the heavily forested areas were able to thrive in the sunny burn area.

Living there, I learned that fire is both healthy and necessary for a forest to thrive.

Trees like birch spring up quickly after a fire and provide shade and protection for the more long-lived trees that grow a little slower. Jack pines have seeds that will only open in the heat of a fire – if the forest never burned, that species of tree would become extinct.

Fire causes destruction, yes. If the old forest had been our home, our place of comfort, we wouldn’t have wanted to see it destroyed.

But it was going to be destroyed eventually, one way or another – nothing lasts forever. Destruction by fire was the only way to really ensure that what came next would be at least as wonderful as what was being left behind.

Now imagine that, instead of a forest, we are talking about the church. And instead of a literal forest fire, we are talking about the fire of the Holy Spirit.

On the first Pentecost, the disciples were torn away from their familiar surroundings and shoved into a new world in which, suddenly, they were to take Jesus’ place as teachers and healers to their community.

God’s work wasn’t something that they could expect Jesus to do for them any more – he had ascended into heaven, he was no longer with them.

God’s work was something that they were going to have to do with their own hands.

That is the Holy Spirit at work. The flames of passion tore the disciples from their old lives and pushed them toward something new.

That is how it is with us as well.

The Spirit comes into our lives unexpectedly, and completely changes us.

Suddenly we find ourselves living out our faith in unfamiliar surroundings – while the terrain seems familiar, all our old landmarks have been consumed by the Spirit’s fire, and so we need to create a new path through the wilderness.

Like that burn area in the forest, new life is all around us.

Like the disciples, we might be confused about where the Spirit is guiding us.

But at the end of the day, God’s Spirit brings passion to our lives and inspires us to love and serve in new ways.

Some of you probably saw the video that I posted on our church’s Facebook page yesterday. https://youtu.be/rmweXyEeoBw “It’s Pentecost”

Basically it said that, when the disciples were in dire straits – when they had no idea how to carry on after Jesus’ death and resurrection and ascension, when they were realizing that they had abandoned their families and their livelihoods to follow him, and now that chapter of their life was over – when the disciples wanted nothing more than a savior, the savior didn’t come.

Instead, the Holy Spirit showed up and created a new problem for them.

         The disciples had a story to tell, about Jesus.

         And the Holy Spirit wouldn’t let them not tell it.

On Pentecost, the disciples learned that staying behind closed doors, worrying about the future of their community, was not a faithful response to Jesus.

On Pentecost, the disciples learned that, as faithful followers of Jesus, they had no choice but to go out into the world, to serve and preach and care and teach and pray and love and invite others to be part of this community as well.

The passion, the fire, of the Spirit that showed up on Pentecost pushed them outside of their comfort zone and made them consider how to build a new future together, in Jesus’ name.

         That is what Pentecost is all about, for us as it was for the disciples.

There is nothing more Christian than welcoming a cycle of death and rebirth. We believe in a God who was born as a baby, lived a mostly normal human life, and was executed as a criminal – and then, we believe that our God was raised from the dead.

Our faith promises that when our earthly days have come to an end, we will be reborn into the kingdom of God, and that our eternal lives in God’s presence will begin only once our human selves have died.

The cycle of life, death, and rebirth that happens with fires in nature is reminiscent of the cycle of life, death, and rebirth that happens in our lives of faith when we let the Holy Spirit in.

There are some dangers with this analogy, I realize. Whenever we talk about fires in the church, we are moving into sensitive territory.

For example. Some of you are familiar with the Lutheran church two towns over. Several years ago, their original church building burned down.

That fire was not a good thing. Lives were endangered and property was lost.

But as a result of that fire, the congregation was able to rebuild in a new location. They now have a larger, more accessible building, that has been able to respond to the needs of their congregation and the community around them. They built on the growing edge of town, which gave them natural potential to reach out to their new neighbors.

The fire that consumed their building wasn’t a good thing, but as a result of the fire, many good things have happened.

In our country, unfortunately, our history of churches and fire has often been much darker than the story of our neighboring Lutheran church. Sometimes a church fire isn’t accidental and doesn’t seem to result in new life.

During the Civil Rights Movement, in the 1950s and 60s, a number of black churches were burned down across the South. These hate crimes were committed out of fear of loss and change.

In the 1990s, another wave of church burnings prompted new legislation and tougher punishment for people who intentionally set fire to places of worship.

Last year, more black churches in the South burned down, and while some were ruled to be accidental, some most certainly were not.

This legacy of church burnings is a tragic piece of our nation’s history. And I hope and pray that the pattern of burnings will remain there – in history – never to be repeated again.

The flames of the Holy Spirit are not the flames of hate crimes.

And yet.

God’s Spirit can work in the most mysterious of ways.

The most recent series of church burnings has resulted in many communities, including ours, starting a dialogue around race and prejudice in this country.

And that is good news, even in the midst of tragedy.

If that dialogue leads to more understanding, peace, and unity, that will be even better news.

Perhaps the only thing more impressive than the fiery passion of the Holy Spirit is the unity that can be created by that Spirit.

On the first Pentecost, the disciples began speaking in nearly every language in the known world, so that anyone around would be able to hear and understand.

It was a miracle.

It was God, speaking through the disciples.

The crowd asked themselves, “How can they be talking in so many languages at once? We are from Afghanistan and Turkmenistan, Iran and Iraq, Israel and many parts of Turkey, including near Istanbul and Ankara; some of us are from Egypt and northern Libya, or visiting from Rome in Italy, from the island of Crete or from Saudi Arabia. But still we all hear the apostles speaking about God’s deeds of power in our own languages!”   

(Updated locations, courtesy Katie Rohloff, via The Young Clergy Women Project)

The Holy Spirit breaks down the linguistic, cultural, ideological, and theological barriers that separate people from one another.

Today the headlines might say,

“We are Israelis and Palestinians, Muslims and conservative Christians, Nuer and Dinka, Boko Haram and Nigerian civilians, NRA leaders and pacifists. How is it that these people are speaking so that they make sense to all of us?”

The miracle of Pentecost is that God comes to everyone.

God speaks to everyone. And somehow, everyone can understand!

And not only can they understand – but everyone can relate, and take the inspiration of the Spirit to heart!

Imagine what it would be like to have the Spirit of God as the moderator of our presidential debates. With that level of understanding, cultural awareness, and sensitivity to each person’s needs – our political landscape would be turned on its head.

Now imagine what it would be like to have the passion of the fiery Spirit of God behind those politicians, and behind the structure of our society.

Instead of people getting up on their soapboxes and trying to steal the media spotlight from one another, you would actually have leaders who listen to one another and passionately work for the good of all people.

This is not the political structure that we have in our society.

But it is the structure that is possible with the Holy Spirit.

The disciples were in what they thought was a hopeless place. They had come to rely on Jesus while they were doing ministry with him, but since he had ascended to heaven, they were left without a guide.

Until the Spirit arrived.

And the Spirit told them, get up off your backsides and do something about it!

You have a story to tell, you have people to visit and a message to preach, neighbors to care for and brokenness to heal.

So get to it.

The disciples were filled with the unique passion and life of the Spirit of God.

And so are we.

From the unexpected fire of the Spirit comes forth incredible unity among all people.

That is what Pentecost is all about.

Thanks be to God. Amen. 

5/15/16 Pentecost Sunday
Acts 2:1-21