August 19, 2007 at Saint Mark Church in Norman, OK
Jeremiah 38:4-6, 8-10 + Psalm 40 + Hebrews 12: 1-4 + Luke 12: 49-53
“The day will come when, after harnessing the winds, tides, and gravitation, we shall harness for God the energies of love. And, on that day, for the second time in the history of the world, human beings will have discovered fire.” I wish I had written those words! I remember the first time I read them.I remember where I was, and what I was feeling.It was in the 60s, and the book I was holding had a pictureof a nuclear bomb explosion.That all too familiar mushroom cloud with its shock wavelooking like the ripples in a glassy pondafter throwing a rock off the shore.The war in Vietnam was out of everyone’s control.We were polarized as a nation.A young Jesuit scholastic had just set himself on fire in Washington DCand the Archbishop of that place had scorned his self sacrifice.I was his age, trying to figure out what my life was all aboutand what faith and God was asking of me.In Spiritual direction one dark Indiana winter’s evening,feeling alone and helpless I sat with an old Benedictinewho handed me a little book called: “Toward the Future” by Teilhard du Chardin.
Since that time, I have understood this passage from Luke’s Gospel in a profoundly different way than I had heard it before. I always wondered how the preacher of love, this peaceful, generous, compassionate Jesus of Nazareth should find himself saying these things. I was learning in class how to read Luke, with his symbols, his images, his focus and perspective on the life, words, and deeds of Jesus.
Luke, you remember is the fire breathing writer who has powerful winds and tongues of fire descending upon the apostles in that upper room. Luke is the writer who has disciples with burning hearts in the presence of a stranger who breaks bread with them. Luke is the one who has John Baptist promise one who will Baptize with the Holy Spirit and Fire. We have read today from Jeremiah the prophet who said:
”There is within me something like a burning fire shut up in my bones.” Jeremiah who hears God say to him: “I am now making my words in your mouth a fire, and this people wood, and the fire shall devour them.”
At the same time, it is a constant challenge to understand and reconcile the passion of Jesus Christ for unity, tolerance, respect, and love with his words about the inevitability of family conflict. There are not many parents in this church who have not felt the sting and experienced the sadness of child’s refusal and share faith and worship, to share prayer and a sacramental life in this tradition. It is painful, and a profound feeling of emptiness helplessness sweeps through this place and every heart when another gifted life is seduced by the lure of pleasure and materialism, consumerism and shallow ambition.
Between here and the exits for Moore, palaces of entertainment are going up as fast as the steel and concrete can be set in place. In the other direction a casino bigger than any Cathedral of Europe bears witness to our need to be entertained. The truth is we are entertaining ourselves to death, and it will be a painful, lonely kind of death.
Old Zorba in the musical bearing his name called domesticity the “full catastrophe.” The drag of sedentary life, the temptation to settle down, relax and take it easy is the greatest of all temptations because it keeps us from growing, changing and realizing what God has called us to become. In this kind of life there is no fire, no passion, no burning desire, and no vision of things to come. There is only nagging loneliness and a cold empty fear that this might be all there is.
The fire Jesus came to ignite is more than excitement about our children’s soccer league or OU football. Would that there could be as much passion, interest, and commitment to Christ as there is to our contests and entertainment. The kind of Faith Jesus calls for makes us face reality and see ourselves as we really are, citizens of God’s kingdom, not really at home here, and always feeling just a little out of place. If you ever have even a hint of that feeling, the embers of the fire Jesus came to ignite are still smoldering and filled with promise. The wind of God’s Spirit will stir these embers and warm us back to life. On that day we shall be bold enough to risk scorn and disapproval by choosing peace in a world that has been persuaded that violence, bombs, and power can ever somehow make people love us, believe us, and want what we dream of.
There is a fire yet to come that will purify, warm, and make us bold. Like the fire that Moses found in a bush, it will not consume as much as make us holy. For that fire, for that love, we ought to pray.