Fire!

They have been graded, and a God of only justice would have cast them to the fire, a fire that cannot be safely controlled, but one that burns far and deeply.

The holy God cannot abide unholy behavior, and by rational decision should simply burn it away.

That is the bad news of the day, and we dare not forget it.

But there is good news also; there is more to be said.

By the gift of God, we have the opportunity to know not only the God of justice, but also to cling to a God of mercy.

The architect who designed this room for worship understood this.

When a visitor steps from the low-ceiling narthex into this room, the inevitable reaction is “Wow!”

This room is about the majesty of God, the otherness of God, his justice,... ...and also his great mercy.

--The cross, that instrument of horrible death, is proclaimed to be the way to eternal life with the Lord Jesus.

It is God's justice and mercy.

--The first window is about how we have messed up our place in the good creation, and how God reaches out to us, to entice us to come back from our wanderings, to confess our self-centeredness, to amend our lives, and to grasp God's future.

It is God's justice and mercy.

--The windows on the south side detail how God calls us together in this place and what he leads us to comprehend,

and the windows on the north side are how God sends us out from this place to live as he has shown us.

It is God's justice and mercy.

--And in the very middle of the space is the table of the Lord, giving us the promised reality in word and action:

You are mine.

I choose you, now and forever.

I will continue to give you good gifts.

I will hold onto you, even when you would like to pull away from me.

My word has stood up to every test, including death, and my word will prevail.

Those are the things of the God of mercy; and we thank God most heartily that they are here for us, that there is more to God than his holiness, otherness, and fiery justice which we deserve.

But then we fall into complacency.

“God will forgive; that's his business,” some will say in an offhand manner.

“It doesn't matter what you believe, as long as you are sincere,” others opine.

And add to that all of the times that we ignore the worshiping assembly, ignore opportunities for Christian education, ignore the physical and spiritual needs of those around us, and so on.

Even if the mercy of God saves us from the destroying fire, it does not keep us from the purifying kind of fire, the kind of fire that burns away the junk and guides us to concentrate on what is important, true, and enduring.

The images that the writer of Hebrews uses in the beginning of today's lesson are to remind us of the people of Israel at Mt. Sinai,

the ones who were in the midst of that fiery process of being purified, giving up old things and learning that life is about their connection with God and not about themselves.

They had quite a hard time in the wilderness, in the purifying process.

Those are the same painful things that we must learn also.

It would be so much easier to make God in our own image, a god to our liking, a god who would do our bidding, one who simply affirms us wherever we are: “There, there, everything is just fine.”

It is the golden calf of old and its equivalents in our own day.

The Lord God Almighty cannot be domesticated, tamed, shaped comfortably to our wishes.

The Bible is not our book, but the word of God.

We should not put recliners in this place and turn it into a comfy living room; it should always remain a place that reminds us of God's otherness, his holiness, his intentions for us.

The Bible must be translated again and again, but it must never be transformed into something comfy and pleasant.

It is always prickly and acerbic;

it always accuses us as well as comforting us;

it always means to transform us, and not the other way around.

There is great confusion in the church these days because this truth is being ignored.

I'll give just one instance, which took place on July 25 in San Francisco, at an official service with three bishops in attendance.

The Lord's Prayer was changed into several different forms including the following:

Our Mother who is within us, we celebrate your many names. Your wisdom come, your will be done, unfolding from the depths within us. Each day you give us all that we need. You remind us of our limits and we let go. You support us in our power and we act in courage. For you are the dwelling place within us, the empowerment around us, and the celebration among us, now and forever.

We may not like to throw around the word “heresy” too quickly, but in this case it does apply.

This prayer is simply and completely addressing a different god, not the God of the Bible.

The prayer is all about what is within us, not the Lord God who is outside of us and who invites us into relationship with him on his terms.

This prayer is addressed to the very same goddess that is condemned throughout scripture

such as by Elijah in 1 Kings 19

and Judges 2 and 6,

and Micah 5, Isaiah 27

Jeremiah 17, 1 Corinthians 10, etc.

The prayer is not a translation of the Lord's Prayer, it is a total transformation into its very opposite.

May we not fall into the spider web of thinking that such a prayer is an appropriate kind of diversity.

Instead it is the very thing from which we need to be purified: the worship of ourselves, our own attitudes and our own desires.

The third stanza of our next hymn expresses well God's intention:

When through fiery trials your pathway shall lie,

My grace, all sufficient, shall be your supply.

The flames shall not hurt you; I only design

Your dross to consume and your gold to refine.

May our prayer be:

Lord, with your righteous fire,

--purify us from gross error,

--set us free from whatever ails us,

--let us see what wonderful things you intend to do in us,

--give us your grace...

in the name Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen.

Please note: The preceding sermon is provided as a resource for the thought, prayer, and meditation of the members and friends of St. Mark's. It is the residue of a verbal event, and thus it does not have academic footnotes and other details that would be expected in a written document. The writer gladly acknowledges the prior thought and work of many Christians before him.