Sermons at St. John’s Presbyterian Church

Fire

Transcribed from the sermon preached October 28, 2007

The Reverend Max Lynn, Pastor

St. John’s Presbyterian Church

2727 College Avenue, Berkeley, CA 94705

Telephone 510-845-6830    Fax 510-845-6837

office@stjohns.presbychurch.net    http://www.stjohns.presbychurch.net

Scripture Readings: Exod.3: 1-8  James 3:3-12  I Thes. 5: 12-28

Fire is a fundamental part of life. The harnessing of fire could be the single greatest technological advance of the human race.  Imagine the moment at which humans decided to not merely be afraid like the rest of the animal kingdom, and to entertain the idea of using it?  The mythical vision of fire giving life and taking life is an archetype deeply rooted in the human psyche.

Fire consumes, burns and destroys.  It uses up energy and resilience and makes things brittle and ash.  But fire also cooks and refines, warms, protects, enlightens, empowers and liberates.  As a metaphor spiritually and psychologically, fire does the same things to our soul and self. There is fire of God and fire of Hell.

Most often we hear fire associated with passion, usually erotic passion.  Certainly fire likes freedom and erotic fire is no different.  Neither is it different in its destructive power.  Innocence and trust are burned, marriages and families are burned, children’s homes are burned by the raging fires of passion that get out of control.

Not that a bon fire of passion can’t be a good thing, and we hope that the fire of passion can find solid fuel so that it can last beyond a flash fire. 

James is talking to a group, which has an issue with destructive gossip or propaganda.  He says of such rumors and gossip, “How great a forest is set ablaze by a small fire.

Joseph Goebbels, minister of propaganda in Nazi Germany, 1933-1945 is attributed with the following:

"If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the state can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie ... The truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the state." --

"The tongue is a fire," says James.  "The tongue is an unrighteous world among our members, staining the whole body, setting on fire the cycle of nature, and set on fire by hell."  One thinks of the Enron scandal and the misinformation about Iraq’s chemical weapon capability, which led the nation into the literal fire of war.

There is a destructive fire in the human soul that can set whole communities or nations ablaze with hate, jealously or fear.  James is suggesting that such negative words, words intending to maim, twist or injure, are not isolated but connected to the negative destructive fire of hell. 

I know that personally, as one who likes to talk, I find it incredibly hard to refrain from derogatory or negative gossip of someone who has hurt me or is threatening me in some way.  It is also very hard to avoid repaying negative words when you find someone else is saying bad or untrue things about you.  The recent movie Mean Girls reflected the destructive power of words for middle and high school girls.  I still remember being verbally burned by popular mean girls in school. And even now it is hard not to take another shot back at them. 

James suggests, not only do the negative words that we use hurt or burn others, they burn inward, or come from a fire that burns, destroys and consumes us within.  It gets away from us, or is never in our control in the first place.  Lies beget more lies until we no longer know what the truth is.  But we have to watch out because even the truth can be used for negative and evil purposes. Enough negative talk begets a negative world and a negative self.  And we have to live with ourselves even after we burn others.

But thankfully there is fire of inspiration, creativity and passion, a fire that burns but does not consume.  There is a difference between criticism to destroy and criticism to build up.  And so in Thessalonians we are told to be careful not to put out the fire of the Holy Spirit in people.  Here is how we stoke the fire of the Spirit:  “Respect those who labor among you.  Esteem them highly in love because of their work.  Be at peace among yourselves…Admonish the idlers, encourage the fainthearted, help the weak, be patient with them all.  See that none of you repays evil with evil, but always seek to do good to one another and to all. Rejoice always, pray constantly, give thanks in all circumstances…for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. “Do not put out the fire of the Spirit, do not despise prophesying, but test everything; hold fast what is good, abstain from every form of evil.” 

Sometimes our life gets so hot with activity that it feels like an out of control fire.  Every once in a while I feel like that here at church.  For instance, we had a German school start upstairs the beginning of this year.  They have ten cute little kindergarteners, who come down for our Wednesday after school program and run back and forth on the half pipe.  Also, our childcare program in the basement decided it might like to expand into a room on the second story. 

Celeste, the director of the childcare looked into the possibility and discovered that in order to get permits to have children under eight on the second floor, we would need two exits and a fire sprinkler system. 

We checked on putting sprinklers in the two rooms in question and the bid came in at a burning $54,000.  Ouch! 

We were hoping then that perhaps we could get away with just having the two exits, which we thought we had.  So, we called the fire department to ask.  That was like adding Santa Ana winds.  The marshal told us that if we were to have kids under eight on the second floor, not only did we need two exits, we would need a fire sprinkler system throughout the whole building.  Not only that, but regardless of whether or not we had kids upstairs, we would need a functioning fire alarm system throughout the whole building.  And, because we didn’t have one, we are in violation with our childcare and preschool in the basement as well. 

Nellie started working on bids for the sprinklers in July and we got our first two last week, $120,000 and $90,000.  For the fire alarm system we have had a verbal estimate of between $80 -$100,000. 

The temporary permit for the German school ran out so we had to hurry and paint and shampoo Sproul Conference room so they could move downstairs.  But we are still required to have the fire alarm no matter where they are and so their next permit is going to be tough. 

My first thought was no way we do the sprinklers.  We will just have to have no kids upstairs.  But that was before I called my sister last week to find that she had been evacuated from her home in Escondido.  The flames came within 2000 feet of her home. She had fires on three sides of her home.  Mark, her husband, has been working twelve-hour shifts for the police. It was a hot week.  Fifteen fires torched thousands of buildings across Southern California. 

The same week in October of '91, the firestorm of Oakland came to within a mile of this building, scorching over 3,000 homes.  A house across the street on college caught fire and burned a couple of months ago.

On any given day here at St. John’s we have about 80 children in this building and another 20 adults.  We have a preschool, a daycare, a German school, a posture school, a senior center, a Buddhist meditation groups, a Korean Christian college fellowship, a French African congregation, five recovery groups, a youth orchestra, a bunch of other small groups and dozens of weddings and concerts and conferences.   Oh, yes, and St. Johns Presbyterian Church is on fire for God here.

Of course there are all sorts of things we can and should spend money on when and if we get it.  The wish list is long and diverse, so just because we finished a successful financial campaign last year, doesn’t mean spending $200,000 on something we would likely never notice or use is easy.  Most of the world doesn't even have sprinklers to grow their food. I am sure this is the reason why the plans were originally scrapped when the building was built.  Money is always tight.

Still, it wouldn’t be the first time the word of God has come in the form of the law.  And certainly fire and building safety are a concern to our God who puts the fire of compassion in our hearts.  Nor is it unimaginable that the Word of God would come to St. John’s in the form of a fire marshal?  I will never leave or forsake you says our God.  “Where can I go from your spirit?  Where can I flee from your presence?  Asks the psalmist.  I will walk up the highest burning building, dig like a dog in earthquake rubble; whether it's a fire, a flood or a fall, even these your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast. 

God could be setting a little fire under us to get us moving, a fire that burns but doesn’t consume: a message from the burning bush. I would hate to be the one who had a chance to bolster the levies of New Orleans and chose to spend it on something prettier.  It wouldn’t help excite or bolster our membership, but it would be nice to say, “We had the chance to make this building fire safe, and we did it.”

Fire will burn what it wants when it wants, regardless of whether there are sprinklers or alarms.  I am sure that Malibu Presbyterian Church had sprinklers and alarms when it burned to the ground last week.  But it didn’t have any people in it.  The building is gone; the church is alive.

This is stewardship time: the time when we are reminded that every area of our life and faith belong to God.  Everything is sacred.  Nothing is out of bounds for the Holy Spirit.  The fire of the human Spirit is the fire of the Holy Spirit, the spirit that draws us to harness fire and the Spirit that guides us and protects us from its destruction.