 | The Geelong City Parish, UCA |
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Some well known names in recent history have described God as a delusion. God, according to people like Feuerbach, Marx, Freud and Dawkins, is nothing more than a projection of human need … a wish on the part of us human beings for something transcendent (beyond us), the ultimate Father-figure, a fantasy, a delusion on our part.
Yet as Alistair McGrath points out, if this were so, then most probably the god we would create would be a very conservative god – a god who conserves the world as it is!1 If we created god surely we would create a god of comfort, a god who meets our needs, a convenience store kind of god?
But that is not the God we meet in Jesus: the God we meet in Jesus is all about upsetting the status quo; about pushing boundaries, about bringing change in individual lives and the life of the world.
| 49“I’ve
come to start a fire on this earth—how I wish it were
blazing right now! 50I’ve come to change everything,
turn everything rightside up—how I long for it to be finished! 51Do
you think I came to smooth things over and make everything nice?
Not so. I’ve come to disrupt and confront! 52From
now on, when you find five in a house, it will be— Three against two … etc. I’ve come to start a fire on this earth—how I wish it were blazing right now!2 |
Jesus is not about putting fires out and keeping things comfortable. He is about lighting them a getting a blaze going.
Chemically,
the fire we normally think of as fire is an exothermic reaction
– which means it gives out heat. It involves carbon being
oxidised to carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide.
But fire is far more than a chemical reaction, just as music is
far more than the vibration of violin strings, fire like music stirs
up deep emotions.
Most of us have wonderful memories of fire when it is contained and safe … most of us can remember occasions when we have enjoyed pleasant evenings with good company in front of an open fire on a cold night.
But when fire gets out of control … the emotions it evokes are very different.
Did you see the pictures on the news the other night of those huge wild fires that were racing down the road in the outskirts of Athens? They were absolutely terrifying, even to watch, let alone be caught up in.
Maybe you have been caught up in such a fire! No doubt the impact is engraved on your mind.
An out of control fire hardly is comfort producing and yet it is an out of control fire that Jesus is about creating on this earth!
| “I’ve come to start a fire on this earth—how I wish it were blazing right now! 50I’ve come to change everything, turn everything rightside up—how I long for it to be finished! 51Do you think I came to smooth things over and make everything nice? Not so. I’ve come to disrupt and confront! |
Of course the wildfire Jesus is about lighting is not just about causing loads of heat and wanton destruction, the fire Jesus lights is a blaze that brings in the kingdom that causes the spread of faith, hope and love – that puts us and the world “rightside up.”
This fire Jesus lights burns in three ways:
| 1. It purifies
and judges; 2. It is a sign of the presence of God; 3. and it is a sign of the vision God has for us and the world. |
The
fire of Jesus purifies and judges
Remember Luke tells us early in his gospel3 that John
the Baptist preached of the coming Messiah as baptising not only
with water, but with the Holy Spirit and fire. This fire clearly
involves purification and judgement, for the John Baptist, spoke
of the coming One separating the wheat from the chaff and a destroying
the chaff in the unquenchable fire!
I still remember, as I hope some of you do, even though it is now some years ago now, the sermon Harry Wardlaw preached on this text. In that sermon Harry suggested that while often this image of the wheat and the chaff is understood to involve individuals being counted as either wheat or chaff, maybe there is another way of looking at this text. Maybe Jesus seeks to separate the wheat from the chaff within each of us; and will burn up all those elements (the chaff) of each of our beings that are dark and negative – revealing the wheat - those aspects of each of us that reflect the image of God!
Fire is a sign
of the presence of God
Eugene Peterson (the writer whose name is associated with The Message
bible) has some wonderful observations to make about fire in the
Bible.
Peterson says that in Old Testament days that the altar fires of the people of Israel were associated with the presence of God – think of the fire Abraham lit at Moriah and on which he eventually sacrificed a ram rather than his son Isaac; or Aaron keeping the fires alive in the tabernacle; or the altar fires in the temple. There is of course that most famous example of the presence of God signed by fire: the bush that confronted Moses; which burned but was not consumed.
Peterson connects this observation with the fire that fell upon the disciples of Jesus on that famous Pentecost day. He writes about how at Pentecost: “..each person individually was signed with a tongue of fire, each person an altar, visibly on fire with the presence of God.” Each person “... now a sign of God alive, God present.”4
The first Pentecost after the resurrection of Jesus involved those first disciples being set ablaze with the very presence of the Spirit of the living God.
Fire
is a sign of the vision God has for us and the world.
Some of you will remember well the teaching last year of John Fuellenbach.
He has written a wonderful book about what it means to be a Christian
entitled Throw Fire; and you might remember he sees Luke 11:49 (“I’ve
come to start a fire on this earth—how I wish it were blazing
right now!) as Jesus’ vision statement.
Fuellenbach asks:
| What is this FIRE …. Jesus came to throw in the world and with which he himself was …burning? … This much is sure, fire … indicate[s] something dangerous, revolutionary, not leaving things as they are. Jesus’ message is not just an idea, not even a grand idea which one can store with many other ideas without it affecting any change in one’s life. … his vision aims at transformation … Jesus is saying: “Do not think that I came to leave you in peace, no. I came to disturb, to upset and to change things. The world will never be the same after I have thrown fire on it.5 |
Jesus wants to throw fire on the world and on each of us, so we all burn with presence and love of God; with the things of the kingdom of God; with faith, with hope and with love.
*************
And when Jesus has kindled this fire within us, this Holy Spirit fire, Jesus wants to keep it blazing … constantly burning up the chaff in our lives, giving us a concrete sense of hope in life and life beyond life, and leading us to make the world a better place.
I suspect that when we get comfortable, when we think we have things sorted out and when we begin to think we are in touch with the heart of things then probably we are about to feel some heat … because I think it is then that Jesus throw’s fire at us and seeks to remake us.
Thomas Merton wrote on one occasion:
| All sin starts with the assumption that my false self, the self that exits only in my own egocentric desires, is the fundamental reality of life to which everything else in the universe is ordered.6 |
Jesus throws fire at such ideas.
Jesus wants
us to burn with the life and presence of the Spirit of God not our
own egocentric desires – our delusions!
Jesus wants us to be so on fire with the gracious love he offers
which is so wonderful, so life giving that as Fuellenbach says,
it is something;
| …to live for, to work for and ultimately to die for; something one cannot keep to oneself; something one is so caught you with that one has to communicate it, let it out, spread it.7 |
Sadly, of course, because some oppose or cannot grasp this gospel path we know from our experience that Jesus does bring division and that we see:
| 53Father
against son, and son against father; Mother against daughter, and daughter against mother; Mother-in-law against bride, and bride against mother-in-law.” |
But in a sense while this may distress us, we are not to worry about it, the question for us concerns our response.
Are we open
to receive and throw fire?
Are we ready to see the presence of God and respond?
| 54Then he turned to the crowd: “When you see clouds coming in from the west, you say, ‘Storm’s coming’—and you’re right. 55And when the wind comes out of the south, you say, ‘This’ll be a hot one’—and you’re right. 56Frauds! You know how to tell a change in the weather, so don’t tell me you can’t tell a change in the season, the God-season we’re in right now. |
It is God-season
now!
God is present and alive in the life of the disciples here!
May the fire continue to burn in all our lives and in all the world. And may Jesus so upset things, so disturb things, so change things that everything is indeed turned “rightside up.”!
Resources:
1
Alister McGrath et. al., The Dawkins delusion: atheist fundamentalism
and the denial of the divine, SPCK, London, 2007, pp.28, 29 &
35.
2 All Biblical quotes are from The Message.
3 Luke 3:16-17.
4 Eugene H. Peterson, Christ Play in Ten Thousand Places,
Eerdmans, p.25.
5 J. Fuellenbach, Throw fire, Manila, Society of Divine
Word, 1998, p. 21
6 Robert Inchausti, The Pocket Thomas Merton, New Seeds,
Boston, 2005, p.3.
7 J. Fuellenbach, ibid.
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