August 14, 2016
Jeremiah
23.23-29; Hebrews 11:29-12.2; Luke 12.49-56
+ I know this might come as a shock
to some of you. And I apologize in advance. But…I have, more than once, been very
tempted to leave the Church. The Church here being the Capital “C” Church—the larger
Church—the BIG church organization. There are times, we all have to admit, in
which the Church—Capital C—is just not a great place to be. (Not St. Stephen’s)
There are people running it, after
all. Fallible human beings. And, because there are, there will be divisions in the Church.
There are divisions among us, even
in this congregation. Those divisions,
at least here at St. Stephen’s, are, for the most part, little ones. Minor ones.
In the larger Church, they are much
bigger ones. Issues of interpretation
and personal convictions continue to divine the Church.
I get pretty firm about such things,
as many of you know. Although I am
patient when it comes to people telling me there are certain things about the
Church they might not like personally—trust me there are many things I too
personally don’t like about the Church and the way things are—even then, you
have no doubt heard me say, “this is not an issue of any one of us.”
We must proclaim what needs to be
proclaimed. We love what needs to be
loved. We must move
forward. And when it happens to me—and
it happens to me quite a lot—I will occasionally speak out.
And we must plow forward together because that
is what Jesus intends us to do as his followers. He makes this quite clear.
What? Did he just say that? The
Price of Peace just said he did not come to bring peace? He came to bring what?
Division? You mean, Jesus isn’t all peace and love and compassion? We want
Jesus to bring peace, right?
Well, his message, of loving God and
loving one another, is a message that does divide. We, who rebel against it, who inwardly stiffen
at it, we rebel. We say, “no.” We freeze up.
But, Jesus makes this very clear to
us. It is not our job, as his followers,
to freeze up. It not an option for us to
let our blood harden into ice. For, he
came to bring fire to the earth. To us,
his followers. When we were baptized, we were baptized with water, yes. But we
are also baptized with fire! With the
fire of the Holy Spirit that came to us as we came out of those waters. And that fire burned away the ice within us
that slows us down, that hardens us, that prevents us from loving fully. That
fire that Jesus tells us he
is bringing to this earth, is the fire of his love. And it will burn.
Now, for most of us, when we think
of fire in relation to God, think of the fires of hell. Ah, but not so. (I actually think that is there is an eternal
hell, it is a place of ice and cold—a place so far removed from God’s love) Again
and again in scripture, certainly for our scriptures for today, fire in relation to God is seen
as a purifying fire, a fire that burns away the chaff of our complacent selves.
Fire from God is ultimately a good
thing, although maybe not always a pleasant thing. The fire of God burns away our peripheral
nature and presents us pure and spiritually naked before God. And that is how we are to go before God.
But this fire, as we’ve made clear,
is not a fire of anger or wrath. It is a
fire of God’s love. It is the fire that burns within God’s heart for each of us.
And that fire is an all-consuming fire.
When that consuming fire burns away
our flimsy exteriors, when we stand pure and spiritually exposed before God, it
is then we realize who we are.
For us, as followers of Jesus, we
are not to be fire retardant, at least to the fire of love that blazes from our
God. As unpleasant and uncomfortable it might seem at times, we need to let
that fire burn away the chaff from us. And
when we do, when we allow ourselves to be humbled by that fire of God’s love,
then, we will see those divisions dying. We will see them slowly dying off. And we will see that the Church is more than
just us, who struggle on, here on this side of the veil. We will see that we are only a part of a much
larger Church. We will see that we are a
part of a Church that also makes up that “great cloud of witnesses” Paul speaks
of in today’s Epistle. We will see, once
our divisions are gone and we have been purified in that fire of God’s love,
that that cloud of witnesses truly does surround us. And we will see that we truly are running a
race as the Church.
Paul is clear here too: that the
only way to win the race is with perseverance. And perseverance of this sort is only tried
and perfected in the fire of God’s love.
Yes, this is the Church. This is what we are called to be here, and
now, as followers of Jesus. This is what
we, baptized in the fire of God’s love, are compelled to be in this world.
So, let us be just that. Let us be the Church, on fire
with the love of God, fighting to erase the divisions that separate us. Let us be the prophets in whom God’s Word is
like a fire, or a hammer that breaks a rock—or ice—in pieces. And when we are, finally and completely, those
divisions will end, and we will be what the Church is on the other side of the
veil.
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