For Indeed Our God Is a Consuming Fire | A Sermon on Purification, Christian Community, and Our One God
A Sermon by the Reverend Mother Crystal J. Hardin on The Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost (C), August 21, 2022.
Isaiah 58:9b-14; Psalm 103:1-8; Hebrews 12:18-29; Luke 13:10-17
Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us give thanks, by which we offer to God an acceptable worship with reverence and awe; for indeed our God is a consuming fire (Heb. 12:29).
For indeed our God is a consuming fire.
Today’s reading from Hebrews speaks of a God who provokes awe, even terror, in those who would take him seriously.
His is a voice whose words made the hearers beg that not another word be spoken to them . . . Indeed, so terrifying was the sight that Moses said, ‘I tremble with fear.’ (Heb. 12:18-21).
Perhaps we expect this characterization of God in the Old Testament. I often hear from people that the God of the Old Testament just doesn’t connect for them; doesn’t seem compatible with the God of the New.
As if there is a God of Wrath and a God of Grace.
A God of Judgment and a God of Mercy.
I understand this instinct. I really do. Many people come by it quite honestly. And yet this understanding is an unfortunate injustice to Holy Scripture, which holds together even where we cannot comprehend its continuity.
And it’s worth noting that this understanding of a wrathful God of old and a loving God of New can quickly lapse into a very problematic comparison between Judaism and Christianity, with Christianity coming out on top.
Why then, do we find it so hard sometimes to get beyond this false dichotomy?
Like so many things, this says more about us than it does about God. At times, we may experience God as angry, the idea of God as terrifying. At other times, God appears in our lives as a loving presence, a still small voice.
Thanks be to God that Scripture is more dialogue than instruction manual and that our wrestling with God around God’s very nature is Scripture approved.
Remember our ancestor Jacob, who in Genesis wrestled with God till daybreak and was blessed by God for it.
With that said, there is only One God. As my ten-year-old would say, “Them’s the facts.” And that God, in both the Old Testament and the New, is said to be a consuming fire.
So, we must get clear about what that means.
For many, it sounds like punishment; provokes fear. For many, it calls to mind wrath and judgment and has little to nothing to do with grace and mercy. And yet, the Biblical authors, theologians of many stripes, and, perhaps, Jesus himself would gently suggest that these notions are mistaken. Fire is not punishment; is not torture. Instead, it is purification [1].
Those who work with fire know its power to shape, refine, and purify. Consider the ancient practice of blacksmithing, appreciated in days of old for its almost magical and mystical quality of drawing close to intense heat, to fire, working alongside it to coax along the intended product.
Fire is essential in the work of a blacksmith. You cannot begin to effectively manipulate metal without first heating it to the perfect temperature by way of a forge, torch, or open fire. Under extreme temperatures, metal is refined and made malleable. Pulled glowing from the forge’s inferno and under the craftsman’s skilled touch, it becomes a new creation.
Consider Michael Martin, a Mennonite blacksmith in Colorado City who started the nonprofit “Raw Tools,” an organization dedicated to converting America’s “swords,” things like handguns and assault rifles, into garden tools [2]. A fulfillment of the Old Testament mandate calling for turning swords to plowshares, it acts as a public ritual to process grief. Victims of gun violence coming from near and far intent upon turning weapons of death and destruction into the opposite, a tool to bring forth life.
And closer to home, Charlottesville has approved a plan to melt down the Robert E. Lee statue central to the violent rally five years ago and to create a public art installation with its materials and in its place.
These seem as good of metaphors as any for God’s consuming fire and its power to make all things new.
And we are promised that under God’s skilled and loving touch, we too may be purified and made new.
But how does that work? What is it that needs purification in us? Certainly, our various sins could be burned away, but would that truly make us different. Or would it simply make us clean (if not a bit crispy) until we dirtied ourselves up again?
One commentator writes:
To be a cogent image, the fire of God must consume something in each of us that goes deeper than our sins. God’s fire must purge away the false self from which our worst sins arise. The self that God created can emerge only as the self that I construct to retail to others is consumed [3].
What goes deeper than our sins? This commentator suggests that it is our false selves. Those ways that we move through this life under the mistaken belief that our very beings, as we were created by God, are not fit for public consumption (and perhaps not even private).
This mistaken belief is why we reach for idols. We seek control. We want to hide. We feel ashamed. We give in to pride. We envy our neighbor and lack trust in our friends. And we worry that if people really knew us, they would not like us very much at all.
And if that’s people, then what about God?
Almost as if our loving God will turn to wrath should we present our truest selves to Him. And yet our God is the one from whom no secrets are hid and so, in the end, he sees us, he knows us, and believe it or not, he loves us.
C.S. Lewis once wrote:
When Christianity says that God loves man, it means that God loves man: not that He has some ‘disinterested,’ . . . indifferent concern for our welfare, but that, in awful and surprising truth, we are the objects of His love. You asked for a loving God: you have one. The great spirit you so lightly invoked, the ‘lord of terrible aspect,’ is present: not a senile benevolence that drowsily wishes you to be happy in your own way, not the cold philanthropy of a conscientious magistrate, nor the care of a host who feels responsible for the comfort of his guests, but the consuming fire Himself, the Love that made the worlds [4].
This love is a consuming fire, and how could it be any other way. Because it sees right through us, and thanks be to God for that. Because it sees the true us.
As Hebrews instructs us, we have not come to something that can be touched, and yet that something touches us, longs to melt away all that hides us, all that shames us, all that keeps us trapped, so that we might be seen, so that we might be free
For indeed our God is a consuming fire.
So let us give thanks, by which we offer to God an acceptable worship with reverence and awe.
In a world such as ours, we rightly seek out God in places like this –offering ourselves to God in an acceptable worship. (We know it’s acceptable because we’re Episcopalians obviously). We pray together, sing together, lift up our hearts together, and stretch out our hands together. We confess our sins together and admit our need of God and of one another.
We practice self-forgetfulness in favor of communal awareness and responsiveness.
Our vulnerability is, as we speak, being forged in the fire of Christian community so that “I” am forgotten in favor of “we.” From Sunday to Sunday, showing up to one another here in this place affects a change in us that is truly transformative
So often we feel as if engaging in small things, weekly worship being one of them, is not important enough, powerful enough, meaningful enough, to combat life’s hardships. And certainly, we question whether it is doing anything at all to effectuate positive change in a needy and hurting world.
Remember Mr. Martin, the Mennonite blacksmith? He does not pretend that the work he is doing, turning weapons into garden tools, will solve the nation’s gun problem. How could it?
And yet, he says, “symbols can be powerful and public rituals can heal. For those who have survived violence or lost loved ones, turning a weapon into a productive tool ‘can mark a time in one’s life when violence is behind them and creation in front of them.’” [5]
Our worship is full of powerful symbols and our rituals do have the power to heal. Each time we come to the altar we leave what is old behind and step forward into the promise of a new creation.
For indeed our God is a consuming fire.
If this image makes you uncomfortable, fearful, then you are not alone. And yet, here’s the Good News:
The match has already been lit, in your heart and in mine. Refinement is already underway. We know it by its honesty. We know it by the way it breaks through all our defenses. We know it by its love, an unavoidable mercy. It’s what we’ve been seeking all along.
We fear what might happen to us.
And yet, God’s consuming fire is already happening for us.
So, do not be afraid.
Since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us give thanks, by which we offer to God an acceptable worship with reverence and awe; for indeed our God is a consuming fire
Amen.
*Image in the public domain and courtesy of WikiCommons.
[1] Gray Temple, “Theological Perspective: Hebrews 12:18-29,” Feasting on the Word, Year C, Vol. 3), eds. David L. Bartlett & Barbara Brown Taylor (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2010), 378.
[2] Patricia Leigh Brown, “Melt Thy Rifles Into Garden Tools,” The New York Times, 6 November 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/06/opinion/gun-violence-america.html.
[3] Temple, “Theological Perspective.”
[4] C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain (Touchstone: New York, 1996), 41-43.
[5] Brown, “Melt Thy Rifles Into Garden Tools.”
