Tending the Fire Well--June 24, 2024

Tending the Fire Well--June 24, 2024

"Do not quench the Spirit. Do not despise the words of prophets, but test everything; hold fast to what is good; abstain from every form of evil." [1 Thessalonians 5:9-12]

Not every fire is a good one. The opening line of Ray Bradbury's classic, Fahrenheit 451, which is all about a society which burns every book it finds, along with the houses where they are found, is a haunting enough reminder of that: "It was a pleasure to burn. It was a special pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and changed." And you never want to be on the side of the book-burners. Quite likely, we don't need fiction to tell us that fire is often an awful, awful thing--having known people who have been burned or lived through fires in houses or workplaces. Too many local stories include a chapter that begins, "Then the barn burned..." or "That was before the house-fire changed everything..." for us not to know that fire is often a wickedly destructive thing.

That said, however, there is such a thing as a good fire. And where such a fire can be found, you don't want to put it out--you want to let it blaze and shine and radiate a good heat, the kind that pulses out in waves. This is the way Paul talks about the Spirit of God--like a good fire. Maybe he's got the stories of that Pentecost day on his mind, and how the Spirit descended on the first followers of Jesus like little flames of fire on their heads, transforming them from cowardly fishermen into courageous witnesses who passed the news of Jesus along like one candle wick lighting another. Maybe Paul has just the seen the Holy Spirit work in ways that could only be described as catching fire--the way the light from one person just catches another person, until they are both shining witnesses, and then both keep burning bright for others, so that they can be brought in, too. Maybe Paul is thinking about the way a flame resists being tamed or boxed in, the way a fire moves with a restless energy that can never stay in one place, or the way it radiates an energy that has to be respected. Maybe the answer is "D: All of the above." But in any case, Paul pictures the Holy Spirit like a moving, blazing, stirring fire--and a good fire, at that.

...Which is why Paul's direct command here is not to quench the Spirit. Don't stifle, don't choke out, don't box in the living movement of God, even though it seems risky and dangerous and means giving up control. Don't insist on being the boss of the fire--let the flames go where they will and move as they will (the same way the wind "blows where it wills," as Jesus says about the Spirit in the Gospel according to John...). Don't let the desire to control the burn or the fear of fire lead you to put it out all together, in other words. You can't master the flames, of course, but you can squelch them, and then your world would be a darker place.

In other words, Paul's most basic direction here is not to trample on the places you see the Spirit shining brightly and moving with restless energy. Where you see the Spirit at work--in someone else's life, in the ministries of God's people, in a moment of conversation with someone hungry for good news, in an opportunity to serve with reckless love in Jesus' name--don't be so obsessed about controlling the moment or keeping it contained that you put out the flames. Or, to cut to the chase, let God be God--which means admitting that God will move in ways you cannot predict or box in... maybe, even that God will move in ways you wouldn't have picked.

The rest of these verses, then, flow out of this command to let a good fire keep burning--when the Spirit inspires (or kindles, if you prefer) other faithful saints to speak with the same fierce brilliance as on that Pentecost morning, let the Spirit do his work there. In the early church, of course, the idea of "prophets" was not limited to the books and scrolls of Isaiah and Jeremiah and their fellow centuries-old-and-dead colleagues--the word "prophet" was a wider term that included those who were still being raised up to speak and preach and teach in the name of Jesus. (For example, in the book of Acts, you've got several different figures who were not from the original twelve apostles who are called prophets, who speak forth a Word from God.) So now that Paul has said categorically not to quench the Spirit, he adds now specifically, "...And don't mess up what the Spirit is doing in speaking through someone else! The Spirit doesn't have to ask your permission, after all!" Paul would have us give a holy respect to the people through whom the Spirit speaks and moves and acts--even though, again, it means admitting that God's work and motion and designs will not always (or even often) be under our control.

We have known people like that before, haven't we? People who just burn with a light and an energy that is not their own--that is a sure sign of the Holy Spirit's moving. We find our lives challenged and encouraged by theirs at the same time, the way a good fire keeps you on your toes but can also brighten and warm you when you need it. It is a gift--if not always an easy gift--to have such blazing people in our lives. Jon Foreman, the lead singer and songwriter for the band Switchfoot, had a song about someone he knew whose life burning like a fire that was kindled by the Spirit. In "Amy's Song," he sings, "Salvation is a fire in the midnight of the soul... it lights up like a can of gasoline.... yeah, she's a freedom fighter, she's a stand-up kind of girl. She's out to start a fire in a bar-code plastic world." Marilynne Robinson has the narrator of her novel Gilead say, "It was the most natural thing in the world that my grandfather's grave would look like a place where someone had tried to smother a fire."

That is what Paul has in mind when he pictures the Spirit at work in us--as a good fire, one that catches in the lives of the blessed saints around us--and spreads. Of course, not every fire is a good one, and not everybody who is excited about something is burning with the Spirit. That's why Paul says to test everything, and everyone, who is all hot and bothered about something, to discern which are the good fires--the bonfire beacons, the roaring hearths, and the campfire rings on a dark, starry night--and which are the ones not worth adding any fuel to. (Because, yeah, there are fusses that religious folks sometimes make that produce only hot air but shed no light....)

And once we've done the testing, Paul says, we keep the good stuff--we let the Spirit shine and blaze and burn where and how he will--and then we let the bad stuff go out. There is the triple challenge of this day: letting go and surrendering enough to let the Spirit move and act beyond our boxes and attempts to control what God does on the one hand, and on the other, letting the frivolous or the destructive flames go out--and learning to tell which is which. That may not be easy, but that is part of what we do as followers of Jesus--and part of why we don't do it alone.

O Spirit of Life, burn brightly around us, among us, and within us--and shine in us as you will it.