Fire
John Wilkinson Third
Presbyterian Church December 7, 2003 Malachi
3:1-4/Luke 3:1-6
I do hope you will visit the Celebration Center following worship
for the Advent Festival and Alternative Christmas Market. Spend
liberally to support worthy causes. Make an Advent wreath and
do some crafts. And thanks to all who have labored to help this
fine tradition continue and to tweak it just a bit so that more
may enjoy and celebrate the season together.
Let us pray. Eternal God, God of all times and places and of
this time and place, be with us now as we seek your presence.
Be with the people of Central Ohio as they face the terror of
gunfire. Be with the people to our south and east as they face
another day of difficult weather. Be with us as we remember
the events of 62 years ago. We remember those who died and those
who yet mourn, and we pray for the day when warfare and fighting
will be no more. Open your word now unto us, a word of spirit
and truth, for we pray in the name of the one whose coming we
await, even Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.
***
You may remember the name Norman Maclean as a fine writer whose
novella A River Runs Through It remains a classic of American
literature. Prior to his becoming a writer and English professor,
Maclean did many things, including serving as a fire fighter
in the American west in the middle part of the last century.
What Maclean really was was something called a “smokejumper,”
a kind of adventurer firefighter who would parachute from an
airplane to fight massive forest fighters. His extraordinary
book called Young Men and Fire tells the tale of the Mann Gulch
fire in Montana in 1949, a fire that claimed the lives of many
of his young colleagues.
Maclean writes: “At first it was no bigger than a small
campfire, looking more like something you could move up close
to and warm your hands against than something that in a few
minutes could leave your remains lying in prayer with nothing
on but a belt…As a fire up a hillside closes in, everything
becomes a mode of exhaustion – fear, thirst, terror, a
twitch in the flesh that still has a preference to live, all
become simply exhaustion...So upon closer examination, burning
to death on a mountainside is dying at least three times –
first, considerably ahead of the fire, you reach the verge of
death in your boots and in your legs; next, as you fail, you
sink back in the region of strange gases and red and blue darts
where there is no oxygen and here you die in your lungs; then
you sink in prayer into the main fire that consumes.”
(Pages 5-7)
I could not help but think of recent weeks in Southern California
as I recalled Maclean’s story, wildfires burning out of
control, taking life and home. In a world where we seek such
control and where technology seemingly allows us to do anything,
control anything, the idea of a fire burning out of control,
like a hurricane or blizzard, seems beyond our comprehension.
And yet we know fire’s strength. We build a fire in our
den to warm us against the winter chill, and a little spark
flies out, and we instantly recognize what damage it could do.
So that when we hear these words this morning – “…who
can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he
appears? For he is like a refiner’s fire…”
– we are perhaps not as comforted as we might be.
We are living in two seasons right now, are we not? I am not
sure exactly what to call the first one. Perhaps “December,”
though it began long before December 1 rolled around. Perhaps
“Christmas,” though it began sometime around the
Fourth of July. It began when stores changed their displays,
when the holiday catalogs started appearing, when radio stations
began an endless parade of Elvis’ “Blue Christmas”
and “Jingle Bell Rock” and “Grandma Got Run
Over By a Reindeer.”
Now mind you, as a person who professionally enjoys kicking
it up a notch as the big day approaches, I am neither Scrooge
nor Grinch when faced by a certain amount of cultural commercialism.
In the right context, it is society’s way of seeking something
good, giving, hopeful. Who can’t be for that? Yet I worry
what it does to us, when we are driven into states of frenetic
despair over buying and consuming. It is little wonder that
the holidays produce depression, fuel anxiety, the sense that
we can’t quite do enough, and do it on time, to everyone’s
satisfaction.
That is where the second season comes into play. We call it
Advent. You don’t hear much about Advent at Target or
Wal-mart. That’s OK. It is our little gift to give one
another and to the world. A season of preparation and anticipation,
of getting ready. You will perceive bits and pieces of it sprinkled
here and there. Music. Linus’ soliloquy in “A Charlie
Brown Christmas.” A late night or early morning, when
the lists have been made and the packages taken to the post
office, and we just ponder, even for the briefest of instances.
At church we sing hymns nobody’s heard of, with big and
ancient words like “Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence”
and “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” and “Come,
Thou Long-Expected Jesus.” We wonder if there is some
secret DaVinci Code-like society somewhere whose only rite of
initiation is to refuse to sing Christmas music in church in
December. Rest assured, it will come soon enough.
But it is Advent, and our task is to provide a bit of leaven
to the world and to our own souls, to slow down, to listen,
to prepare. Our task is also to join the great tradition of
the Old Testament prophets and to look around, to sense what
is out of kilter, to do something, to say something. Perhaps
to the world. Perhaps to the church.
And so it is that a messenger, a prophet, Malachi, said some
2500 years ago that God was sending a messenger to prepare the
world, to prepare the people, and God will come to be with us.
The messenger is coming, we are assured, and we are to delight
in that good news.
It is not an easy delight, however, nor is it cheap. Nor should
it be. “For he is like a refiner’s fire and like
fuller’s soap,” and he will purify us, and refine
us, and make us righteous offerings. That is good news, filled
with hope, but it is rather daunting.
The world in which we live promotes a kind of numbness to reality,
when even the reality shows offer extreme avenues of fantasy
and escape. And yet this faith of ours, this good news we share,
would suggest that we are some kind of raw material, ore from
some deep mine that needs polished, fabric that is intended
– but not quite ready – to be made into a beautiful
garment. Left to our own devices we would remain as such, raw,
unrefined, wrinkly and frayed around the edges.
But the promise into which we live day after day after day
is that God desires something entirely different, transformation,
redemption. Having created us, God does not abandon us.
“Who can endure the day of his coming,” the prophet
asks, and it feels a little too in-our-face. But the truth of
the matter is that none of us could, if we had to. Yet we do
not. We will be refined like gold and silver. We will be cleansed
and transformed, very nearly, I believe, like receiving the
waters of baptism. And what we offer to God will please God,
and will therefore be a blessing to those with whom we live,
and even to the world.
What we offer to the world, and to one another, allows us to
live through these days a little differently. We cannot avoid
the pressure, the expectations, the intensity. But how we live
even in these days can suggest to a world sorely needing a bit
of grace-filled refinement that one is coming who will bring
peace and hope. We can even be as those prophets of old, or
the angels who said time after time, “fear not.”
Messengers of grace.
And we will continue to sing the odd hymns. The familiar carols
will arrive soon enough. We will gather, for the moment, not
at the manger but at the table, because we need always to be
fed for the journey.
Then an old man, Norman Maclean recalls the fire that took
quickly and savagely the lives of too many of his friends. He
writes: “After the bodies had fallen, most of them had
risen again, taken a few steps, and fallen again, this final
time like pilgrims in prayer, facing the top of the hill, which
on that slope is nearly east…The evidence, then,”
Maclean continued, “is that at the very end beyond thought
and beyond fear…there remains some firm intention to continue
doing forever and ever what we had at last hoped to do on earth.
By this final act they had come about as close as body and spirit
can to establishing a unity of themselves with earth, fire and
perhaps the sky.”
We will present offerings to the Lord in righteousness, and
they will be pleasing to the Lord. That is the promise and the
vision. And for a moment, even the briefest of moments, the
fire of the Advent candle will be all the illumination, and
the warmth, that we need. “Shining beyond the frosty weather,
Bright as sun and moon together.” Amen.
