Sermon: The fire Next Time  Proper C 15

They call them smoke jumpers.  They parachute into forest fires to combat blazes. 

On a hot and windy day in August, almost 60 years ago 18 smokejumpers were dispatched from Missoula, Montana to the Mann Gulch fire.  The leader of the crew was Wagner Dodge and he noticed that the 20 mile an hour wind had changed directions and was blowing right into their faces as traveled down the canyon.  They suddenly realized that fire was blocking their route to the Missouri river and they could see fires in the timber ahead of them.  Soon the tree crowns caught fire, and the strong gusty winds pushed the fire through the crowns and could be seen between them and the river.  At first the spot fires produced a relatively slow-moving fire, but the strong winds and the unstable atmosphere fanned the blaze so that it began to race toward the crew at 120 feet a minute and it was only 150 yards away when the crew turned and ran for their lives.

 

As the crew raced up the canyon, the timber began to thin, but the lighter grass and brush produced a faster moving fire that was now moving at about 280 feet per minute.  The men ran fast, but the fire went even faster.  There was no trail to follow as the canyon floor grew steeper and steeper.    Dodge ordered his men to drop their packs and tools and now the fire was only 75 yards behind them.  Dodge realized that his men had just 60 seconds before the fire over came them and somehow in the midst of fear and panic, he had a tremendous idea.  He knelt on the ground and did something no man had ever done before.  He started another fire, an “escape fire,” that would quickly clear an area where the crew could go safe wait.  No one had ever done this before, and the crew were confused and unbelieving. The men split up, the majority continuing to run up the canyon.  The slowest of the runners only got a hundred yards before being caught by the fire.  But fortunately two of the crew figured out what their leader was doing and took cover near by.  Only Dodge and these two smoke jumpers survived.

 

The Gospel today is a chilling passage.  Jesus says:  I have come to bring fire on the earth and how I wish it was blazing already!  Is Jesus speaking of the fire of Judgment, the purifying fire? Does Jesus want a disaster of apocalyptic proportions.  The bible has many images of destructive fire and the psalmist even gives us the nightmare image of God with Smoke “coming from his  nostrils and devouring fire from his mouth; glowing  coals flaming forth from him.  John the Baptist predicted that Jesus would come with a baptism of spirit and fire.   And saint Paul presents an even more gruesome picture:

... when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance upon those who do not know God and upon those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They shall suffer the punishment of eternal destruction and exclusion from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might, when he comes on that day to be glorified in his saints, and to be marveled at in all who have believed, because our testimony to you was believed. {1 Th 1:7b-10 RSV}

It is surprising to find these words from Jesus in Luke for Luke’s Gospel has been called the Gospel of Peace.  In Luke’s Gospel Jesus eats with tax collectors and sinners, he does not Judge them.  In Luke, Jesus dines with that wealthy and evil cheater Zachaeus, but he does not judge him.  In Luke Jesus stares down the Pharisees who would stone the woman caught in adultery until they all walk away, and only Jesus and the woman remain. Although the earth is wicked and you and I are sometimes faithless, Jesus does not want to torch our souls.

But there is another fire.  We speak of hearts on fire.  We speak of the fire of love.  We speak of the spark of divine fire which is our souls.  St Bonaventure that disciple of St Francis once said,

If you want to know the fate of the world, ask it of grace not dogmas; ask it of desire not intellect;  ask it of the romantics who pray, not of the academicians and the universities; ask it not of intellectual insight, but of the fire that enflames us all and sets us ablaze in God with sweetness and ardent love.  This fire most truly is God, and its hearth is in Jerusalem.

As a human being Jesus truly knows all our desires.  Jesus knows that we want silly things too.  He knows our obsessions with malls and those moods that tell us “I shop therefore I am.” He knows our obsession with sex, and fruitless relationships. Jesus knows that we run after all kinds of substitutes for that deepest desire we have for our God.  The fire that Jesus would cast upon the earth is not the conflagration that caught up with those smoke jumpers in 1949.  Jesus knows that there is a spark, a  tiny divine ember in each of us and when he sighs, I have come to bring fire on the earth and how I wish it was blazing already!  Jesus is sighing his wish, his desire that the spark of love that is within us will be fanned into a roaring blaze of love.

Please pray with me now that prayer in your bulletin.

Almighty and most merciful God, kindle within us the fire of love, that by its cleansing flame we may be purged of all our sins and made worthy to worship you in spirit and in truth; through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen