(Notes of a sermon preached at Glen Eira Christian Community Church, Melbourne, Australia, May 4th, 2003)

Jesus: ‘I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled’ (Luke 12:49).

Yesterday I had a vision. Your former pastors/spiritual leaders from India and other places were all together in one place, with one question: ‘Why have some of our people lost their fire since coming to Australia / your church?’

What was I supposed to say? When I was a staffworker with students and graduates of our Australian universities, I discovered that about 50% of ‘fired-up’ Christian students lost that fire within ten years. Why?

When Billy Graham started preaching in his twenties there were two other very gifted young men with more promise than Billy Graham’s. A seminary president called Chuck Templeton the most gifted young preacher in America. When Bron Cliffort went to Baylor University to speak, some students cut the ropes of the bells in the tower, so that nothing would interfere with his preaching. He held them spell-bound for two and a half hours with a discourse on ‘Christ and the Philosopher’s Stone’. At the age of 25 he preached to more people than anyone his age in America. But why haven’t you heard of those other two talented preachers? Templeton left and ministry and lost his faith. Cliffort died of alcoholic poisoning in a rundown hotel at the age of 35.

Yesterday, Saturday, the Anglican Prayer Book for Australia which I use for daily devotions had this prayer:

As we rejoice in the gift of this new day,

so may the light of your presence, O God,

set our hearts on fire with love for you;

now and for ever. Amen.

There’s a Hillsong chorus which Charismatics/Pentecostals (but not Evangelicals or Liberal Christians) sing in some of the churches I visit, about being ‘a church on fire’.

What does that mean?

A village priest in England was called out late one evening with the alarming news that the church building was ablaze. By the time he reached the scene the church was half destroyed, and he stood helplessly watching the leaping flames. Then among the spectators he saw old Tom, the village drunk, renowned for his stealing and poaching habits. ‘Well, Tom,’ said the pastor, ‘I see you’ve come along to the church at last.’ The old man smiled naughtily. ‘Weel, ye see, meenister,’ he said, ‘Your kirk has never been on fire before.’

We are soon to celebrate Pentecost. On that day the Holy Spirit fell on the church like a rushing mighty wind, ‘and tongues as of fire appeared among them and rested on each of them’ (Acts 2:1-4). Pentecost is ‘the birthday of the church’.

Fire is associated in the Judeo-Christian faith (and indeed in all religions) with mystery, healing and power, purity and judgment, and luminosity.

MYSTERY

Rudolf Otto suggests, with his idea of Mysterium Tremendum, that humans have a deep predisposition for profound religious experience. The tremendum component of the ‘numinous’ comprises three elements: awfulness (inspiring awe, a sort of profound unease), overpoweringness (that which, among other things, inspires a feeling of humility), and energy (creating immense vigour).

Ancients marvelled at fire. In the Hunter Valley region of NSW a seam of coal 100 metres below the earth’s surface has been burning for at least 2,000 years. Local aborigines associated the place with the god Turramulan, who would speak to them from the smoke.

God revealed himself to Moses in a fiery burning bush, which was not consumed. The Israelites were guided by a pillar of fire at night. Our God is a ‘consuming fire’.

HEALING AND POWER

Solar energy comes from the sun in the form of calorific (and other) rays, without which life as we know it would not be possible. Malachi (4:2) writes about ‘the Sun of Righteousness’ arising with ‘healing in his wings’.

God’s fire warms us, heals us, and energizes us.

Jeremiah (20:9) said to his persecutors: ‘If I say “I will not mention [the Lord], or speak any more in his name,” then within me there is something like a burning fire, shut up in my bones; I am weary with holding it in, and I cannot.’ While the psalmist meditated on the ways of God ‘the fire burned’ within him (Psalm 39: 3). The two on the road to Emmaus said ‘Wasn’t it like a fire burning within us, when he talked to us on the road, and explained the Scriptures to us?’ (Luke 24:32). Result? They walked seven miles through the night, over a dark and lonely road to share the wonderful resurrection news with others. They’d already walked that journey, and were tired. But now they had new energy. ‘The embers of their failing might / into a flame was fanned’ as the words of the great hymn by Thomas Lynch puts it (‘My faith it is an Oaken Staff’). There was ‘fire in their belly’. When the fire of God burns within us we’ll love the Scriptures and want to share the Good News.

Should we pray for ‘revival fire’? Yes, but that’s not all we do. I’ve met sincere believers who pray incessantly ‘O God, let the fire fall!’ when they should also be out there doing the sorts of things Jesus did with people – teaching, works of compassion and justice, and so on. There is a time to pray and also a time to act. The Israelites, after escaping from Egypt were hesitating beside the Red Sea (Exodus 14:15) and the Lord said to Moses ‘Why do you cry out to me? Tell the Israelites to go forward.’ Prayer and action belong together.

In the two letters to the young man Timothy (1 Timothy 4:14-15, 2 Timothy 1:6) Paul exhorts him to ‘stir into a flame, rekindle the gift of God that is within you through the laying on of the elders’ / my hands’. (In 1 Timothy Paul mentions a prophetic word that was given to him at that time). He was prayed for, now it’s up to him to practise the spiritual disciplines to keep his life aflame. A fire that is not rekindled regularly goes out.

PURITY AND JUDGMENT

The Scriptures are full of references to the fire of God’s wrath, cleansing his people of their ‘dross’ (see, e.g., Ezekiel 22:17ff.). ‘Actinic’ fire causes chemical change, so God’s fire purges us and the world of its sin.

A fiery sword guarded the Garden of Eden after our ancestors sinned. When Elijah staged his famous test of deities on Mount Carmel the power and glory of Yahweh were displayed with an avalanche of fire. John the Baptist, Jesus said, was a ‘bright and shining light’: but John had earlier said that Christ would baptise with the Holy Spirit and with fire. That which is unproductive in us is cut away and burned (John 15: 6). At the end of time this sinful universe will be consumed by fire.

LUMINOSITY

Fire, for the ancients, was their only source of light when the sun went down.

God is light; in him is no darkness at all (1 John 1:5).

Billy Graham once preached a sermon entitled ‘A Religion of Fire’: ‘God’s Spirit produces divine light and spiritual illumination. When the disciples were baptized with fire on the day of Pentecost, their intellects were sharpened, their understanding was quickened, and their powers of comprehension were transformed. Who would have guessed that among that crowd of fishermen, tax-gatherers, and nondescript people, were men who through the experiences of that upper room would change the course of history, write some of the world’s greatest literature and be the initial instruments God would use to build his Church?’ The “light” the apostles had was not their own, but came through a miracle of God when they were filled with the Holy Spirit. The luminescence of soul and mind was not acquired – it was imparted.’

So search for a faith – and a church – which has an equal mix of ‘heat’ and ‘light’. ‘Dead churches are afraid of the fire of enthusiasm’: that’s true, but enthusiasm has a history that justifies this fear to some extent. ‘Enthusiasts’ were sometimes people who had plenty of heat but not too much light. They got all excited about minor things. Fanatics are enthusiastic, but such enthusiasm can sometimes lead to stupidity or even violence. Paul said before he was a Christian he was zealous. But his zeal was misdirected: he persecuted the church.

W B Yeats in his poem ‘The Second Coming’ says ‘the best lack all conviction’ while ‘the worst are full of passionate intensity.’ We must search for the dividing line between enthusiasm and fanaticism. A person without judgment is like a car without brakes; but a person without enthusiasm is like a car without a motor.

The great Presbyterian James Stewart said: ‘The supreme need of the church is the same in the twentieth century as in the first: it is people on fire for Christ.’

Thou who camest from above The pure celestial fire to impart, Kindle a flame of sacred love, On the mean altar of my heart!

A cold church is like cold butter: it doesn’t spread very easily. A selfish church is like a glee club, existing for the benefit of its members rather than those outside it. Other churches through their preaching offer all sorts of goodies like a trouble-free or sickness-free life – which is foreign to the teaching of the New Testament. (Never forget, Jesus promises you three things: constant trouble, and constant joy, because of his constant presence with you!).

Those who have achieved great things for God have been people of infectious zeal and unquenchable enthusiasm. How do we get on fire for God like that?

There are two classically wise responses: personal spiritual disciplines, and belonging to a fervent church.

We cultivate our spiritual life by setting aside daily times of withdrawal from the world for prayer and Bible/devotional reading.

Quintilian laid it down as a ‘first principle of rhetoric’ that the orator who wishes to set the people on fire must himself be burning. But, as the old illustration reminds us, if a coal is to stay alight, it must be with other burning coals.

New Christians especially should find a church that’s alive, enthusiastic, and join it. Be a committed member.

Finally, think about this: ‘You are no fool if you give up what you cannot keep, to gain what you cannot lose!’ The prayer by Cardinal Newman sums up this motivation: ‘Teach me, dear Lord, frequently and attentively to consider this truth: that if I gain the whole world and lose [you], in the end I have lost everything. Whereas, if I lose this world and gain [you], in the end I have lost nothing.’

But the greatest incentive to complete commitment to Jesus Christ is in response to his love, shown ultimately in his death for us. ‘Love so amazing, so divine demands my soul, my life, my all!

~~

Discuss:

1. First, a prayer: “Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of the faithful and kindle in them the fire of your love. Lord, send out your Spirit, and renew the face of the earth.”

2. The great ‘church father’ John Chrysostom writes about those who because of ‘indolence and of a supine disposition, are destitute of the fire of the Holy Spirit.’ How does that happen? How can we have the ‘fire in our belly’ Jeremiah experienced?

3. Our God is a ‘consuming fire’. God’s Spirit cleans and clears away all that hinders life and vitality in us. How does the fire of the Spirit do that?

4. In the Greek Orthodox Church in the cool darkness of an early spring night, the celebration of Easter begins with blessing of new fire. Struck from flint, this new fire passes from one candle to another until the church is filled with light. And then the people walk out of the church through the darkness to their own houses, and light a candle in each of their windows, the Easter fire. From one light, many, first filling a church and then an entire village, the Easter fire. Does your church have any similar helpful rituals?

5. Bruce Chilton’s book, “Rabbi Jesus” notes that in the Second Temple “a cavalcade of animals was tethered, trussed, and slaughtered” every day. The altar where they were cooked “was enormous, according to Josephus, a square structure of unhewn stones, twenty-three feet high and seventy-five feet in both length and width. . . The Altar was the center of the Temple and the focus of much of Caiaphas’ attention. He was the master of what we can think of as an incredibly complex barbecue pit. . . despite the altar fire’s huge size, it had to be carefully managed by the priests for the different tasks of burning, cooking, and parching.” Talk about fire and sacrifices. What relevance has all this for us?

6. With Yeats, let us pray for our pastors:

O sages standing in God’s holy fire As in the gold mosaic of a wall, Come from the holy fire, . . . And be the singing-masters of my soul. 7. Robert Frost reported: ‘Some say the world will end in fire, /Some say in ice. /From what I’ve tasted of desire /I hold with those who favor fire. /But if I had to perish twice, /I think I know enough of hate /to say that for destruction ice /Is also great /And would suffice’. What’s he really saying?

8. What sense does the idea of ‘the fire of hell’ make for you?

9. Benediction: Consider yourself sent—sent out with a smile, with fire in your heart, with the wind of God’s love at your back—consider yourself sent to bring the Spirit of Pentecost to the world beneath your feet, to a world in need of hope and help.

Rowland Croucher