Preparing for the Fire

[This was shared during worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, earlier today.]

2 Peter 3:8-15a
Mark 1:1-8
Every few years, there are forest fires out west not caused by the carelessness of campers or the crimes of arsonists. They happen as a result of spontaneous combustion. The fires simply erupt when the trees in forest have become brittle and lifeless.

Foresters tell us this is a good thing. The canopies of dead and dying trees prevent sunlight and rain from reaching any plants or trees trying to take root and grow beneath. Fires take those canopies away.

But often, within days of such massive natural conflagrations end, a TV camera crew will be allowed to go into forests seemingly devastated and dead and find, amid the charred remains of once enormous trees and the still-swirling smoke of the fire, signs of new life: sprigs of mighty oaks or sequoias starting to sprout all around.

Any of you who has ever endured a fire in your home know how destructive fires can be. But, it seems, fires can also be the engines by which new life supplants the dead.

Fire can bring life.

The Bible knows this truth. In fact, the Bible associates fire with God, the giver of all life.

Hebrews 12: 29, for example, finds the Christian preacher who is its author say, “Our God is a consuming fire.”

That phrase “consuming fire” carries with it the notion that our God, like forest fires, consumes or destroys that which is dead or not filled with the life that only He can give.

No wonder then, that the ancient Israelites were afraid of God. Remember when Moses returned from spending time with God on a mountaintop while he and Israelites were in wilderness? Go to Exodus 34, starting on v. 29 pew Bibles and read what it says:

Moses came down from Mount Sinai. As he came down from the mountain with the two tablets of the covenant in his hand, Moses did not know that the skin of his face shone because he had been talking with God. ³⁰When Aaron and all the Israelites saw Moses, the skin of his face was shining, and they were afraid to come near him. 

Moses had been in the presence of God, the consuming fire.

This is why the Old Testament prophets warned the people about what the Bible, both the Old and New Testaments, calls the "day of Lord." The day of the Lord is when God will set all things right. Jesus will return. The dead in Jesus will rise. And Jesus will judge all. All that is not of God will be burned in the fires of hell for eternity. Those who have turned from sin and believed in Jesus will live with God for eternity. And Jesus will destroy the old to give rise to new heavens and a new earth in which His kingdom will be fully established for all eternity.

The day of the Lord isn't an occasion to be anticipated casually. It will be wonderful. But it won't be peaches and cream for everyone. Turn to Amos 5:18-20 in the pew Bibles to see what the Old Testament prophet Amos said about the day of the Lord back in the 8th century BC:

Alas for you who desire the day of the Lord! Why do you want the day of the Lord? It is darkness, not light; as if someone fled from a lion, and was met by a bear; or went into the house and rested a hand against the wall, and was bitten by a snake. Is not the day of the Lord darkness, not light, and gloom with no brightness in it?

¹⁹²⁰The Season of Advent is a time when we remember that just as Jesus once came into our world to reveal the glory of God, to die for our sins,and to rise again in order to give life to all Who believe in Him, He is returning when God brings an end to this world and supplants all that is evil and dead with the kingdom of God.

Look at how Peter explains the day of the Lord, the second Advent (or coming) of Jesus, in our second lesson:

...the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a loud noise, and the elements will be dissolved with fire, and the earth and everything that is done on it will be disclosed.  [After all, things can be seen clearly with fire.]

¹¹Since all these things are to be dissolved in this way, what sort of persons ought you to be in leading lives of holiness and godliness, ¹²waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be set ablaze and dissolved, and the elements will melt with fire? ¹³But, in accordance with his promise, we wait for new heavens and a new earth, where righteousness is at home.

Our Gospel lesson from Mark, written of events that occurred two-thousand years ago, just before Jesus began His ministry, John the Baptizer points both to Jesus’ first advent (remember advent means coming) and to His advent at the end of this world’s history, when He will judge the living and the dead.

Look at last thing John says in verse 8 of Gospel lesson: “I have baptized you with water; but He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.” Matthew indicates that John said not only that Jesus would baptize with the Holy Spirit, but "with the Holy Spirit and fire."

We believe that when we are baptized, the Holy Spirit comes to burn or purge us of all sin and fill us with the life of God. That's exactly what happened on the first Pentecost, you'll remember. Jesus' first followers gathered in prayer, awaiting the risen and ascended Jesus' direction for their lives. As they prayed, the Holy Spirit came on each of them with tongues of fire!

At Christmas, we celebrate and remember the act of deep selflessness and love that caused the mighty God of the universe to lay His glory by in order to live as servant for our salvation. But when Jesus returns, He will come in His full blazing glory.

This is why the prophet Malachi, writing about 430 years before Jesus, considered the day of the Lord and asked, “Who can endure the day of his coming…?...For He is like a refiner's fire...”

The bottom line of all this fire talk is simple. God is not our buddy. God is our Friend, for sure. But God is also our Master, our Lord, our Creator, our King, our Savior. And at the end of history, God intends to destroy all that is not of God, whether it resides within us as believers or in the unbelieving universe around us.

God has already come into the lives of Christians with the fire of His Holy Spirit, of course. But, the fact is that most Christians only toy with God. They like to bank the fire of God, turning Him into a pilot light they can turn up when things are going badly and they need help and then turn down whenever having God in their lives is inconvenient.

A pastor friend of mine once said that "The problem with Church is that we're afraid of the Holy Spirit." The fear he was talking about isn't the holy awe we all should have before almighty God.  Rather, the fear we have of God most of the time is the fear of turning over the keys of our lives to the God we know in Jesus. We want to be in control. Our inborn human arrogance, our sin, makes us want to leave God out of our lives, to leave God standing in a corner until we're ready to call Him.

But this approach to God will never do on the day of the Lord, when all that is within us and all around us not of God will be dissolved in the fire of His holiness.


Years ago, I heard the true story of a group of engineers and their wives having dinner together. The talk turned to all the projects the engineers had been working on: bridges, buildings, towers, water treatment facilities. The whole talk seemed to be turning into an ode to their accomplishments. But then, one of the engineers, thinking of the day of the Lord, put things in perspective. "Some day," he said, "all of this will burn."

So, how can we be ready for Jesus’ second great advent? Three ways, I think.

First: We repent for sin. We let God’s holy fire burn away all that is not pleasing to Him, all our sin.

As we've said before, repentance is not a "one and done" proposition. Just as was true of the crowds who came to be baptized by John, we prepare the way of the Lord into our lives and into the lives of those we touch by engaging daily in repentance.

In repentance, we submit to God’s holy fire putting torch to all our sin, egotism, selfishness. We say, "Thy will be done."

It's in repentant believers, long before the return of Jesus, that God begins the process of replacing the dead and sinful in us with His life. One of my favorite passages of Scripture, 2 Corinthians 5:17, says, "If anyone is in Christ Jesus, there is a new creation; everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new." We make way for the new life Christ wants to give us each day through repentance.

Second: We trust in the Lord. That is, we believe in Jesus Christ. We trust that Christ, the fiery light of the world, will guide us from here to eternity. This is essential. The Bible teaches that we are saved not by our works, but by our faith--our belief, our trust--in, our surrender to Jesus Christ.

Our eternal destinies, whether we will be with God or the devil, depend on whether we entrust our lives to Christ. In Luke 18:7, after saying that He would make things right—bring God’s justice to those who call on Him, Jesus asks chilling question: “When the Son of Man comes, will He find faith?”

When we believe in Jesus Christ, our priorities are no longer the most important thing to us. God’s priorities are. I’ve told the true story before of the experience of a woman Ann and I came to know years ago through her daughter, Valerie. When Valerie was two years old, she got away from the watchful eye of her mother, as two year olds can do, and made her way to the family pool and, without a soul in sight, then fell to the very bottom.

Now, you should know by way of background that just two years before, another daughter, just one year older than Valerie, had died from leukemia. From that moment, this woman made Valerie the center of her universe. She did everything for Valerie, at the expense of her husband and their marriage, all her friendships, her work, everything.

When Valerie was found in the pool, some time had passed and her life hung in the balance. She was taken to a hospital ER. Valerie's mother was understandably hysterical. She went to a room in the hospital and began screaming at God: "Not again! Not again! You can't do this to me again!"

Finally, she had no more words and, sobbing in silence, she heard within herself the voice of God: "You shall have no gods before me."

She realized at that moment that she had made Valerie her god. All was done for Valerie. You see, if we make the things we see--whether it's a loved one, our families, our jobs, our finances, our possessions, our status--the most important things in our lives, we can fool ourselves into thinking that we have control.

What God was telling that woman was simple, "Stand aside. Let me be your God. I can take care of Valerie. I can take care you. I can take care of everything, now and for eternity."

When Jesus returns, all the worldly things we have thought so important, including our pretense of control, will die. Only that which is under the Lordship of Jesus will stand. Jesus tells us, "Even in the face of things you will not understand until you see me face to face, believe in Me."

Third: We share Good News with others. We pass on the life-giving fire of our crucified and risen Jesus to others.

In our second lesson, Peter says that God is not slow about day of Jesus’ return, but is patient. God is waiting for not only the Church to repent and believe in Christ, but for world to repent and believe in Christ. God is giving all of us the chance to get our lives in order and get in sync with Him.

Our job—the job of every Christian—is to share that Good News with others. Jesus has given each of us the Great Commission to go and make disciples.

Paul writes about that commission when he asks about those who need to know and believe in Jesus: “But how are they to call on one in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in one of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone to proclaim him? And how are they to proclaim him unless they are sent?”

Jesus sends us to be His witnesses to everyone we know, because everyone we know is someone Jesus wants with Him for eternity.

Repentance, belief, and witnessing for Christ. This is the lifestyle of "holiness and godliness" that Peter describes in our second lesson. These are the things we need to be about as prepare the way for Jesus' second advent.  

One day, Peter says at the very end of our lesson for today, God's righteousness will be at home in all of God’s universe.

Until that day, may God’s righteousness be at home in us.

And until that day, may we live in God’s grace through lifestyles of repentance, belief, and witness. Amen

"People Get Ready": A Look at This Sunday's Gospel Lesson (December 7, 2008)

[This week, to help people prepare for worship at Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, the congregation I serve as pastor, and at other churches that use the lectionary associated with the Church Year, I'm not going to discuss all the appointed lessons. You might want to read all of them, linked below. But my focus here will be on the Gospel lesson only. I hope that you find it helpful.]

Bible Lessons for the First Sunday in Advent (Year B):
Isaiah 40:1-11
Psalm 85:1-2, 8-13
2 Peter 3:8-15a
Mark 1:1-8

The Prayer of the Day:
Stir up our hearts, Lord God, to prepare the way of your only Son. By his coming strengthen us to serve you with purified lives; through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen

A Few Comments:
1. For background on the Gospel of Mark, go here. For background on the Season of Advent, go here.

2. The first lesson, from Isaiah, was likely written by the person scholars refer to as "Second Isaiah" (or "Deutero-Isaiah), a prophet schooled in the teachings of the original Isaiah. Second Isaiah, the scholars tell us, began committing his prophecies to paper just before Cyrus of Persia conquered Babylon. The Babylonian empire had earlier conquered God's people, taking many of them into slavery. For more, go here, looking under the section dealing with last Sunday's lesson from Isaiah.

3. Advent is not just a season anticipating Christmas, of course. In fact, it originally had nothing to do with Christmas. The season mainly anticipates that the God Who entered our world in Jesus Christ has said that He will come back. The question is, "How do we wait?"

Last Sunday's lessons dealt with one aspect of how we should wait for Christ's return. The lessons for this week further address that question, pointing to repentance.

The earliest Christians, as evidenced by the writings of Paul and Peter in the New Testament letters, had expected Jesus' quick return. In last Sunday's Gospel lesson, Jesus said that all of the world conditions requisite for His return already existed during His earthly ministry. We need look for no further signs for the Second Coming. The perception of a delayed parousia was a source of consternation to the first Christians. It broke the faith of some. Others saw it as license to commit sin. Still others either claimed that Jesus wasn't returning or that His return would be symbolic rather than actual.

In our second lesson, Peter says that the perception of delay was based on impatient human measurement, not the timetable of God. He says, in fact, that God's supposed slowness gives more people time to repent, that is, turn from sin and turn to God. (By the way, it also affords Christians more opportunity to spread the Good News about Jesus.)

This all dovetails nicely with this Sunday's Gospel lesson.

Verse-by-Verse Comments on Mark 1:1-8
v.1: "The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God": Mark's Gospel begins with a sentence fragment, which I believe, serves as a title for the entire book. The account of Jesus' life, death, and the report of His resurrection--more on that phrasing in a moment--which Mark presents is just "the beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ." This is so in two ways.

First: Mark, and the other Gospel writers, Matthew, Luke, and John, aren't just telling a story. They're telling the true story of what happened when God came to the earth in Jesus Christ. (By the way, contrary to one of the popular urban legends going around today, Jesus' life is more well attested by more disparate sources than were the lives of many ancient figures whose existences are not questioned. The assertion that Jesus never existed may be around because Jesus is a greater threat to our self-driven life styles, including my own, than someone like Alexander the Great. We can look at someone like Alexander and keep him safely in the vaults of history. But Jesus, the Savior Who wouldn't stay dead, will change us from the inside out if we give Him access to our lives, psyches, and thinking.)

The story of Jesus will, if we let it, change our lives for eternity. His time on earth is only the beginning of Jesus' story. It can continue in us and can continue forever.

Second: Many modern scholars believe that Mark originally ended his Gospel account of Jesus with Mark 16:8. There, we're told simply that on the first Easter, the women to whom Jesus' resurrection was announced fled from the tomb in terror and amazement, saying nothing to anybody because fear overcame them.

That would seem, from Mark's vantage point, to be a good coda for his writing. Mark's first readers, like you and me, were people who hadn't seen a dead man rise to life. Their call, like ours, was to step into this mystery, letting it take hold of them while the Holy Spirit built faith in them.

The sentence fragment in verse 1 immerses us in the mystery of Jesus. Mark doesn't try to win you over with factoids. Instead, in rapid succession, he gives you vignettes from Jesus' earthly ministry and the report of His resurrection to nudge you toward faith, rather than bludgeoning you to it.*

"good news": The word is a Greek compound, euaggelion (pronounced you-ahn-gay-lee-own). The eu- prefix means good. Aggelion means message. (It's related to the Greek word for messenger, angelos, in English rendered as angel.)

In ordinary Greek usage, the singular form of this word, as it shows up in our lesson, never appeared. It was always used in a way that seems awkward in the English language, a plural that, if translated literally, would mean "good newses."

It was a term used of the victories achieved by great kings. The Romans, who it should be pointed out, regarded their emperors as gods or sons of gods, hailed the good newses of their victorious god-kings.

You can see how, first of all, Mark's use of the singular of this word would have been jarring to those who hadn't really heard the word in that way before. More than that, it would have been a gauntlet thrown down at the worship of emperors, military heroes, or little deities. There is really only one thing that we can speak of as good news, of true victory, Mark was saying, and that's the story of Jesus' life, death, and resurrection.

"Son of God": This also would have been a provocative designation. The emperors were called "sons of gods." Mark is saying that Jesus is the Son of the God.

In using these terms for Jesus though, Mark was, in essence, setting his audience up. Jesus wouldn't be a king who conquered through military, economic, or political muscle, but as a suffering servant who dealt with the real problems of the human race, sin and death, by sharing our deaths and rising to give new lives to those who surrender to Him.

vv.2-3: Mark wastes no time in telling his story. He dives in.

He also claims that the whole of what he cites from the Old Testament comes from Isaiah. Actually, only v. 3 does, specifically Isaiah 40:3. V. 2 actually references Exodus 23:20 and the similar Malachi 3:1. The Exodus passage, from the Old Testament account of the Hebrews' journey from Egypt, where they had been slaves, to their promised land, finds God promising "an angel," a messenger, would guard them on their way in order to take them to the place God had prepared for them.

Malachi may have been a title, rather than the name of the writer of the Old Testament book that bears that name. It's the Hebrew word for messenger. Malachi says that a messenger is coming from God and it has been seen by some to refer to both John the Baptizer and Jesus.

Mark's use of the Exodus passage is particularly interesting. John's ministry happened at the Jordan River, which the Exodus people crossed to get to the promised land. Without a relationship with God, without forgiveness of sin, we wander in the wilderness, far from God.

"the wilderness": Interestingly, as pointed out by Pastor Ed Markquart, wilderness was always a place of promise, a place through which God's people travel to be shaped by God and ushered into his presence. John the Baptizer's place of ministry was fraught with promise.

v.4: "John the Baptizer": It's better to refer to John in this way. "Baptist" as in "John the Baptist" creates confusion. John the Baptizer had nothing to do with the Baptist movement within Christianity, which started in the 16th.-century.

"a baptism of repentance": This contrasts with the baptism instituted by Jesus. John's baptism was a rite of commitment to repentance on the part of the person who came forward to be baptized. In the baptism of Jesus, a sacrament, God acts; the baptized is the passive recipient of God's act of grace and salvation in Christ.

The word in the New Testament Greek for repentance is metanoia, meaning change of mind. Repentance, turning away from sin, is an essential response to the grace God offers in Christ. God will not force Himself on us. God will act when we turn to Him, willing to be changed from an enemy to a friend of God.

The Biblical teaching on repentance flies in the face of the pop psychology of our day that claims that people can't change, that they're the hapless victims of genes and experience, nature and nurture. The Bible says that in fact, people can change, and a rich history of thousands of years' worth of changed lives supports the teaching.

In Christ, God calls us to live in what Martin Luther called, "daily repentance and renewal," daily submission to God's power to change us. If we're willing to change for the better, away from self-centered and destructive behaviors toward lives of love for God and neighbor, we can become what Luther also called, "the Holy Spirit's workshop."

This process of gratifying change, which the New Testament calls sanctification, isn't easy and none of us will be fully reformed this side of the grave. But repentant people can be changed by the grace of God.

"sins": The word is the plural form of the Greek word, 'amartia. It has the idea of "missing the mark," of failing to be what God has made us to be and which, when we are honest, we want to be. This is what Paul spoke about in Romans 7:15.

"forgiveness": The word in Greek is a form of the verb, aphiemi, meaning release. When we repent, turning to the God we know in Christ, He lifts the oppressing load of sin off of our shoulders. We're freed to be God's people again, entering "the promised land" of God's eternal reign.

v.5: "confessing their sins": This is how we prepare for Christ coming into our lives, not just at the end of history, but every day we confess our sins to God.

"baptized": There were baptisms practiced as religious rites of purification by some Jews and by people of other faiths. But those rites were self-administered, particularly among the Qumran community who produced the Dead Sea Scrolls. John's baptism was unique in that it was administered by someone else and was a public act of repentance and commitment.

v.6: "Now John was clothed...he ate locusts and wild honey": God often uses people the world considers weird and marginal to proclaim His message. Maybe weird and marginal people are the best candidates for this because they're not concerned about what the neighbors think. They only care about what God thinks.

John's attire was similar to that of the Old Testament prophet, Elijah, who it was thought, might come back to be the forerunning announcer of the Messiah.

v.7: "more power than I...I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thongs of his sandals": John emphasizes the surpassing greatness of the one "coming after" him.

v.8: "I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit": John again underscores the contrast between his baptism and the one to be instituted by Christ. John's baptism is water only, a symbol of repentance. Jesus' baptism brings the Holy Spirit's power into the life of the baptized. Just as Jesus came into the world at Bethlehem, in Holy Baptism, the Holy Spirit comes into our lives. Every time Holy Baptism happens, another advent, a coming of God into our world, happens.

[For more, see here. You might also like N.T. Wright's readable, insightful, and fun commentary.]

*Most scholars today believe that the accounts of Jesus' resurrection appearances that make up the rest of Mark 16, were added later. That doesn't mean that they're inauthentic though.

[Background on the Church Year and the three years of the lectionary cycle can be found here.]