The Episcopal Diocese of Tennessee



The First Sunday after the Epiphany, January 10, 2010., St.Joseph of Arimathea Church Hendersonville

“I baptize you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals. He will baptize you with* the Holy Spirit and fire*” (Lk. 3:16).

           

There’s a great description of the Mann Gulch Fire of 1949 in Norman Maclean’s book Young Men and Fire, the story of how a group of “smokejumpers” from the United States Forestry Service perished while fighting a very large Montana forest fire; it’s Maclean’s reconstruction based on the testimony of the few survivors and other witnesses.  “The unstable air started to spiral and the flames began to swirl like little dust devils.  Soon… they united to become something like a tornado, caused by fire and causing fire and perfectly named ‘a fire whirl’… Their rotating action is that of a giant vortex” (pg. 88).  Maclean has some things to say about divine providence and mortality in his book, and asks some searching questions; but the main impression I took away was about fire itself: it’s destructive power, and the way in which it can move from one place to another, driven by the convergence of fuel, wind, and slope in such a way as to seem almost alive and conscious.

 

Fire bears its own part in our Gospel today, which gives us (along with an account of Jesus’ baptism) some of John the Baptist’s preaching as he paves the way for the coming of the Messiah, pointing toward the one who will baptize God’s People with the Holy Spirit and with fire.  The fire here connotes the theme of judgment; as John says, “His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire” (Lk. 3:17).  There it is, the note of judgment, the fire called down from heaven as solemn warning of the need for repentance.  This fire from God bears more than a little resemblance to the destructive force of the Mann Gulch fire, intimidating and forbidding in its power and intensity.

 

Yet there is more to the fire of God than this note of judgment.  We are baptized with the Holy Spirit and fire, as John prophesies; and the main fire that God kindles is not the fire of judgment, but another fire which warms and enlivens God’s People.  The fire of God is first and foremost love itself: God’s love for us that transforms us by its power.  When the Letter to the Hebrews says, “Our God is a consuming fire” (Heb. 12:29) it’s pointing beyond judgment toward a power of love which is like the tornado of flame that Maclean describes, taking up everything in its path and turning it all into the same power of love.

 

The fire of God that is alive and conscious is the Holy Spirit.  In the words of the old hymn, newly translated: “O Holy Spirit, by whose breath/ life rises vibrant out of death:/Come to create, renew, inspire; /Come kindle in our hearts your fire./You are the seeker's sure resource,/of burning love and living source,/Protector in the midst of strife,/Thou giver and the Lord of Life”(Rabanus Marus, Hymnal 502).

 

Our baptism is by the Holy Spirit and by fire.  On Wednesday night when we celebrated a new beginning for St Joseph’s Church, we opened ourselves up to the possibility of transformation by recalling our baptismal vows, reaffirming them and remembering the power of God that is within us through the grace of baptism.  The fire of God’s love still smolders within us, no matter how much we have damped down the flames.  “Come kindle in our hearts your fire.. This flame must be kindled and become a firestorm, catching us up and transforming us by its power.  We cannot be content to be dry and dead, but like good kindling we need to be ignited by God’s Spirit so that we can burn with the love of God.

This is going to require us to do things differently, both personally and also as a community.  A final story, from the early monastic tradition.  “Abba Lot came to Abba Joseph and said: Father, according as I am able, I keep my little rule, and my little fast, my prayer, meditation and contemplative silence; and, according as I am able, I strive to cleanse my heart of thoughts: now what more should I do? The elder rose up in reply and stretched out his hands to heaven, and his fingers became like ten lamps of fire. He said: Why not be changed into fire?” (The Wisdom of the Desert).

 

-          The Rt Rev’d John Bauerschmidt, Bishop of Tennessee

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