“Remove the Fuel”
Matthew 3:1-12
Allen Huff
Jonesborough Presbyterian Church
12/4/16 – Advent 2
After weeks of
choking on the gray haze of forest fires, and after watching videos of flames
consuming Gatlinburg, Lake Lure, and precious woodlands close to home, I almost
laid this text aside. John the Baptist ignites the early chapters of the
synoptic Gospels with images of fire. And he appears to blister his audience
with menacing, even vengeful proclamations.
Over the centuries, the Church
seems to have taken its homiletical and evangelical cues from a corruption of John’s
prophetic firestorm more than from an embrace of Jesus’ outpouring of Living
Water. Jesus calls us to wade courageously into the darkness where the
voiceless poor, despised, and forgotten cry for help. He calls the Church to be
an eternal flame that reveals God’s creative presence and redeeming activity in
and for the world.
Under the influence of wealth and
power, though, the Church has built contiguous perimeter fires of self-preservation
that shed more in the way of raging heat than guiding light. Inside this
self-made hell, we’ve done far too much to point fingers at broods of vipers
and to pronounce judgment on useless chaff. Much of the Church’s own fruit,
then, has been preaching and practice that aims to terrify people into a
scorched and withering conformity rather than to invite one another to gather
at the fertile riverbank of shared gratitude, holiness, and wholeness.
Thanks be to
God for Advent, the preparatory season that reminds us that fire does more than
destroy. Fire can purify – as you might purify a needle before digging a
splinter out of your finger. Fire can refine – as gold is refined to remove
baser metals and stone. Fire transforms, too. It takes many years to experience
the full effect, of course, but forest fires tend to hit a kind of reset button
on an ecosystem. And isn’t that what repentance is all about? Resetting hearts
overgrown with deadfall and invasive species?
Janisse Ray is
an environmentalist and writer who inhabits – in body and spirit – the ecology
of the longleaf pine forests of the deep south. In her book Wild Card Quilt:
The Ecology of Home, she writes that the entire “intricate and intriguing
ecosystem [of the longleaf pine] is…bound to fire…Periodic wildfires thwart the
encroachment of hardwoods such as oak and sweetgum into the pinelands, so the
trees have evolved not only to survive fire but to depend on it.”1
Beneath the longleaf pines grows a
particular kind of grass called wiregrass. “Wiregrass,” says Ray, “has evolved
toward flammability to help push fire quickly through the forest, and it needs
burning in order to reproduce well. Some of the [flowers] that grow with
wiregrass won’t even seed unless they have been scored by fire.”2
Now, I know
that the fires on which longleaf pine forests depend have almost nothing in
common with wildfires started by human ignorance and criminal intent. And I do
not presume to say that those fires have the same “ancestor.” Nonetheless, from
stones and ashes alike, God raises new life and new hope.
Even in
Advent, Sunday worship celebrates first and foremost the promise of Resurrection.
And while John does seem to strike steel to flint with inflammatory warnings, I
think he is really, whether he knows it or not, shining a light on the
conflagration of grace. Speaking of the more powerful one who is on the verge
of arrival, John says, “He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.”
Since the
Exodus, flame has served as a symbol for the presence of God. Remember the
burning bush. At Pentecost, flame becomes the specific symbol for the presence
and the refining work of God the Holy Spirit. So, even if John holds the feet of
Pharisees and Sadducees to the fire, frightening and shaming them – and others
– toward repentance, his announcement of the coming of the Christ declares that
God always intends healing and wholeness for the Creation.
For three years, I was a part-time firefighter
down in Statesboro, GA. Don’t be impressed. I should have had a big sign on my
turnout gear that said, “Hose Roller.” With few exceptions, that was the extent
of my contribution. At one of our drills, the director of the local Forestry
Commission came and talked to us about wildfire suppression. Things may have
changed since then, but at the time, the principal strategy used in fighting
wildfires was to remove the fuel. To
stop the progression of a burn, firefighters would get ahead of the fire, cut
trees, harrow fire breaks, and then start controlled burns that would burn back
to the fire line where the two fires would simply extinguish each other for
lack of fuel. In the absence of draught and 80 mile-per-hour winds, such
tactics usually worked.
John’s baptism of repentance is an
act of removing the fuel. In repentance, we deliberately burn away the
attitudes and judgments that reduce us to arsonists. We singe off all our pride,
greed, fear, vengeance, and despair. Such incendiary rubbish fuels today’s most
devastating firestorms.
Having said that, we cannot earn God’s mercy. So, true repentance is
always our grateful response to God’s unrelenting grace already at work in our
lives.
In the baptism Jesus offers, we
begin to agree with God. We agree that we are God’s Beloved. We agree that we are
capable of giving and receiving more Love that we ever thought possible. We
agree that we are more than we have given ourselves credit for being. We agree
that this is true for the rest of God’s good Creation, as well. And we agree to
live the new life to which these agreements give birth.
Jesus’ baptism by Spirit and fire
refines us and transforms us. Jesus’ baptism resurrects us. It prepares us to
receive and share with joy the good news of Christmas by lighting within us our
light as prophets of and participants in God’s ever-arriving Christ.
1Janisse Ray, Wildcard Quilt: The Ecology of Home.
Milkweed Editions, 2003, pp. 36-37.
2Ibid. p. 37.
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