Sermon – June 12, 2011 – On Fire

On Fire

A sermon preached by Rev. Ginger Gaines-Cirelli at St. Matthew’s UMC June 12, 2011, Pentecost Sunday.

Texts:  Acts 2:1-21, 1 Corinthians 12:3b-13, John 7:37-39

Today is Pentecost Sunday, the day in our Christian tradition when we commemorate and celebrate the fulfillment of Jesus’ promise to send the Holy Spirit—to pour out the Spirit in to the community of believers.  We recognize that it is through this gift of the Spirit that the church—that is, the community of Jesus’ followers—gained strength to grow and to share the good news of Jesus Christ.  So today we are invited to reflect on the church—the Christian community.

As I thought about the church, I began to reflect on the perceptions that many folks—both outside and sometimes inside the church—may have…  One description of the church is as a football huddle:  you have a sense that something important is happening there, but you can’t make out a word that’s being said and all you see is their behinds.  Other descriptions of the church I came across as I did a little research:  the church is often like a boat that doesn’t want to be rocked.  The church has been perceived as a place of “limited sympathy and unlimited certainty.”[1] Such “limited sympathy and unlimited certainty” is the reason why I heard—just a couple of days ago—about one woman’s experience of being kicked out of her church when she finally had the strength to separate her and her children from an abusive husband—because, well, the Bible says that divorce is a sin.  The church has also been perceived as valuing—even above the Gospel of Jesus Christ—whatever will keep the peace…whatever will avoid conflict.

[We all know these perceptions of the church…as turned in on themselves, as fearful of change, as incapable of living with—much less celebrating—diversity, as being so certain that their views grow narrow and judgmental in the worst of ways…  I would hope that these perceptions, where they are real and lived to the extremes (as in the case of that exclusive church), would be rejected by all of us at some level.  But I also know—because I know myself!—that the issues that are reflected in the perceptions are real.  Selfishness that turns in on itself, change, diversity, conflict, and ambiguity are—to varying degrees—difficult for us as human beings—for all of us!]

But as I think about these images of the church, I’m struck by the contrast of what we see and hear in the scriptures—the accounts of the earliest Christian communities.  Far from being private or hard to hear, the first event of Christian community was public and spoken in such a way that all could understand.  Far from being controlled and comfortable, the story in Acts describes an experience of something so new and indescribable that the only words they could use were metaphors:  wind and fire.  The scene is one of bewilderment and confusion—not certainty.  The prophecy from Joel that Peter draws upon is both mysterious and frightening.  The Spirit is poured out on “all flesh”—and the community gathered is one of great diversity (Acts 2:9-10) in race, culture, language, age, and gender.  Far from the status quo, this experience described in Acts 2 is something radical, something new.  Change is afoot…God is doing a new thing.

It always strikes me how we in the church so often want things to be smooth, conflict-free, easy, predictable, and comfortable.  And yet, when we gather, we kneel before a cross—the cross of Jesus Christ and as we gaze upon the cross, we are reminded that what we’re really called to as Christians is faithful discipleship—we’re called to follow Jesus.  And that means that there will be conflict, that sometimes people will reject us, that if we’re truly serving the purposes of abundant life, the journey will bring us into places of confusion and fear, that we will be confronted with boundary issues, with choices about whether we can cross over into “alien territory,” whether we can love and embrace those who are different, whether we can love those who persecute us, whether we can embody in our thoughts, words, and deeds the saving, reconciling love of God in the midst of our relationships and communities.

On that first day of Pentecost we catch a glimpse of what’s coming, of what the church is called to be about and will experience…and yet we continue to want something different.  Somehow we seem to be missing the point; we seem to miss the reality of the power of God that we come to experience.  In the words of writer Annie Dillard:  “On the whole, I do not find Christians, outside of the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of conditions.  Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke?  Or as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it?  The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews.”[2]

One of the images that artists through the ages have picked up on from the story of Pentecost is the image of tongues of fire resting on the disciples.  It’s kind of a funny image.  But fire is a common metaphor used for the presence and power of God.  And it makes sense when we think about the nature of fire:  fire is energy, it provides light and warmth, it purifies and refines, it changes things—from liquid to vapor, from solid to ash.  Emotions that we connect with fire are things like love and passion…emotions that themselves are energizing and transforming.  Fire is one of the images traditionally associated with the Holy Spirit—one of the reasons the symbol of United Methodism includes tongues of fire is that our spiritual heritage is grounded in a passion for helping Christians become “sensible of conditions” as Dillard writes, to be attentive to our lives of faith in such a way that we become filled with the Holy Spirit, that we are set “on fire” with love for God and for others.  Is Annie Dillard’s suspicion correct?  Does no one believe any of this?  Do we believe that the Holy Spirit has been poured out on all flesh and that we are all tinder, just waiting to go up in flames of love, praise, commitment, and proclamation?  Do you believe that the fire of the Holy Spirit wants to change your mind, your heart, your life?  Are we more interested in being a community of comfort and certainty, than a Holy Spirit-infused community that expects God to challenge us and purify us and guide us into a more inclusive, intentional, transforming, committed group of disciples?  Over the Great Fifty Days of Easter, you’ve heard me talk about how we are all shepherds with a responsibility to seek out and care for the lost, we are all ministers who together can do greater works than Jesus, that we can let go of our fears of the unknown and step out in greater freedom and love, that the Holy Spirit wants to enlighten our hearts so that our attitudes and perceptions are guided by faith, hope, and love.  Can you believe a word of it?  And if so, where is the Holy Spirit lighting a fire under you to do something about it?

Robert Fulghum tells of a tabloid story he came across one time:  “a small-town emergency squad was summoned to a house where smoke was pouring from an upstairs window.  The crew broke in and found a man in a smoldering bed.  After the man was rescued and the mattress doused, the obvious question was asked:  ‘How did this happen?’  [The man replied,] ‘I don’t know.  It was on fire when I lay down on it.’”[3] Why would anyone do such a thing?  I wonder whether we all want to get closer to fire somehow…closer to greater love and passion and so we take a risk sometimes and put ourselves close to fire.  I feel like when I arrived here at St. Matthew’s just under a year ago, the place was already smoldering—“It was on fire when I lay down on it!”  And yet the Holy Spirit continues to be poured out!  My vision for St. Matthew’s is of a Body of Christ where each and every member of the Body is manifesting the gifts and services and activities that the Holy Spirit activates.  The vision is of a Church that is a powerful agent of change in the community and that inspires and strengthens its people to be agents of care, healing, and love in all the places we live, work, and play.  The vision is a Body of Christ enflamed with love and power and creativity and joy and transformation.  Put on your crash helmets, grab a signal flare, and get in on whatever radical, new thing God wants to do in and through us.  Whatever it is, it’ll be hot!  Will it ever be good!