Let's talk about fire

Text: Matthew 3:1-12

Let’s talk about fire. 

It’s all over our sacred writings. A pillar of fire led the Israelites out of Egypt across the Red Sea; the Angel of the Lord spoke to Moses from the burning bush; a flaming torch represented promises made to Abraham. Fire appeared on the holy mountain and fire appeared in the holy sanctuary, and tongues of fire suddenly came to rest on the disciples’ heads at Pentecost. Fire, eternal and mysterious, is how God chooses to reveal the Divine Self to us mere mortals, again and again.

And years later, in the writings of the desert fathers, young Abba Lot wondered what he should do besides pray and fast and meditate, and the elder Abba Joseph stretched out his hands toward heaven and his fingers became like ten torches of fire as he replied: if you wish you can become all flame.

Less poetically, perhaps, John the Baptist also gives us an image of fire today, one that feels more disconcerting. Unquenchable fire that destroys the trees that bear no fruit and incinerates the husks of wheat puts into mind neither Spirit nor divine love but rather eternal torment. That eternal flame threatens those who do not stop and repent of their ethical lapses and instead figure that somehow everything will probably turn out all right if they just keep going as they are. 

No doubt John used the image to shock his listeners. And he got their attention - all of Jerusalem and Judea and all the region of the Jordan - pretty much everyone in the land of God’s people - streamed out to him in the wilderness, confessing, confessing, confessing. 

But the point of John is not the fire, it’s the repentance. John too, embodies that truth: that one cannot get to transformation without recognition of what is wrong and showing contrition for it.

There’s another property of fire to consider, and that is fire as a refiner, a purifier. Precious metals, gold and silver, are plunged into the heart of a fire not to destroy them but to burn away their dross, their impurities. And that’s the fire that Jesus, Messiah, Prince of Peace, brings when John says that Jesus will baptize us with the Holy Spirit and fire: it is divine, eternal, purifying fire in which all the ugly is burned away until all that is left is the beautiful.

This is the sweep of Advent: recognition, repentance, transformation. This is why we have to go through John the Baptist, that gruff wild man who calls people names, to get to Jesus, our savior, during this season of preparation. So we must not be afraid of holy fire. Jesus is coming and he is bringing holy fire to us. And through it God would have us be the light of the world. 

We must not then be afraid to express sorrow and remorse for wrongs past and present. And I say that knowing how high my defenses are at all times and in all places and how hard that feels to me because it brings on feelings of shame and guilt and a sense of having fallen short again and again. And I say that knowing that most of us (individually and collectively) just want to leave the past behind us and pretend that it is all over now and why keep bringing it up? But John’s crucial reminder is that our transformation (individual and collective) will come only after we can recognize and ask forgiveness for the things we have done and left undone, as a church, as a society, as mere mortals who are just trying to get by.

Confession, owning up to our errings and strayings, is the way to reconciliation; it is how we prepare the way through our own wilderness for our savior. Recognition and repentance is how we get to the joy of letting go of our deep burdens of guilt and shame and regret, those burdens that we carry around with us or drag along behind us that weigh us down so heavily.

Jesus is coming to us and for no reason other than out of heavenly love, he is bringing this celestial fire to us and through it we can be changed. His divine, eternal, purifying fire will burn away the shame and the pain and the guilt and fearfulness, and the feelings of unworthiness and inadequacy, all the stuff we wish we hadn’t said or done, all the stuff we wish we had said or done but didn’t have the courage or wisdom  in our frailty and fear or ignorance to say or do until all that is left is the beautiful, and we have become all flame.