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In these weeks of the season of creation, we are looking at the Scriptures to pay particular notice to what they mention about creation. You’ll notice the display up here in front of the altar—last week, we added a watering can to highlight God’s outpouring of water upon creation to make for new green growth. The children helped to fill the watering can with water from the baptismal font, and after worship, we watered the thirsty flowers in the yard!
This week the theme is fire, but I wasn’t going to set an extra fire up here in the front of the church. We always have some fire, on the tops of these candles. We can use fire responsibly: to grab our attention to this sacred space, to remind us of Pentecost and the presence of the Holy Spirit, to remind us that Jesus calls us to be the light of the world.
With all this fire, of course, it’s important to be careful. We have worship assistants tasked with lighting and un-lighting the candles every week. If you’ve never served as a worship assistant, there’s training for this. And in the hallway next to the closet where the robes are kept, there’s even a big sign to remind worship assistants: did you extinguish the candles in the sanctuary?
We don’t want a disaster to happen, we take great care around flames but we’re also prepared. In case of emergency, there is a fire extinguisher here in the pulpit.
In case you can’t tell what this pile is up here in front of the altar: these are dried stalks of leaves from our Palm Sunday worship back in the spring. Every year, we save some of the palms until they are very dry, and the following year, on Transfiguration Sunday—the last Sunday before Ash Wednesday which is the beginning of Lent—on Transfiguration Sunday, the confirmation students burn the very dry palm leaves to make the ashes we use on Ash Wednesday. It’s true—confirmation students happen to love this liturgical task.
Fire can be necessary and can also be destructive. As far as creation is concerned, and human interaction with nature, how can fire be useful or used responsibly? Many of us grew up with the words of Smokey Bear: “Only you can prevent forest fires.”[1]
Forest fires are pretty destructive and also terrifying—the effects are far-reaching. Just in the past week, I was checking the weather here in St. Louis and reading that the sky would appear hazy because of wildfires. And the wildfires aren’t even anywhere near here—they’re many hundreds of miles west in California and Oregon! What happens far away still affects us here, even if we’re not at risk of catching fire here.
I heard this week about a conservationist who would say “There are no natural disasters” because nature makes space for occasional events like wildfires. Wildfires are disasters for humans because our homes can burn down, our buildings and property are destroyed. But nature accounts for things like wildfires—some species of trees release their seeds only in the event of extreme heat that would come from a forest fire. When there’s no one to clear the dead limbs and brush from a forest, a fire will sweep up the dead matter and return it to ash, enriching the soil for new growth.
Some forestry professionals recommend the use of controlled burns, setting prescribed fires to clear out dead and dry plant matter, and carefully monitoring the fire so that it doesn’t spread. This reduces the risk of out-of-control wildfires burning many more acres.
Perhaps you have witnessed a controlled burn on a small scale. I remember being a kid and one winter watching my own dad in the front yard, lighting the dry grass on fire with the expectation it would grow in greener in the springtime, which it probably did. Of course, we did not live in a city, and I wouldn’t try burning up yard grass here now, because the risk would be too great.
But my point is: fire can be a useful tool, even if it is terrifying. No wonder the letter-writer James uses a forest fire as an illustration for the damage that can be done by an out-of-control tongue. “How great a forest is set ablaze by such a small fire! And the tongue is a fire,”[2] he writes.
How can a tongue be a fire? Gossip, rumors, lies, name-calling, hateful speech, all the things that can poison human relationships. It doesn’t take long for bad news and negative words to spread. And James wrote all this back when the main way humans could convey information was by word-of-mouth. James never even experienced social media, where hurtful or embarrassing images, silly memes, and hateful words can spread all the way across the world in mere seconds.
And do hateful words ever do anything helpful or praiseworthy? Not that I’m aware of. So what are we mortals supposed to do to tame our tongues? Should we never speak?
Of course not. Speaking is important and necessary, but speak with care. When Jesus asks his disciples, “Who do people say that I am?” he’s trying to get a sense of how people are talking about him, how his disciples are understanding what’s going on. And when they’re not quite getting it, Jesus explains that he will undergo suffering and rejection and be killed but will rise on the third day. That’s hard news to hear, and Peter is not having it, so Peter tries to instruct Jesus that no, this isn’t what’s supposed to happen.
What’s interesting is that Jesus doesn’t tell Peter that he’s wrong—instead he says “Get behind me, Satan!” Which is the kind of name-calling we might identify as a “sick burn,” but perhaps what Jesus is doing is masterfully applying the forestry equivalent of a controlled burn.
Peter is ready for Jesus to ascend to some kind of earthly power, maybe as a political leader; but Jesus has to burn down Peter’s ideas about what power really looks like. Burn down your ideas about human power and strength, burn down your ideas about a secure future. Let the ashes make way for new growth in the kind of self-giving power that is God’s trademark. Whoever loses their life, Jesus says, for my sake and for the sake of the good news, will save it.
So what dead, dry growth do you see in your life that needs to be burned away? Are there rumors you’ve heard that can just die out without your fanning the flames? Is there some hateful meme that made you laugh but not in a way that made your soul sing—can that image be burned away? What harmful words are you saying to yourself, about yourself, without any compassion or grace for the person God created you to be? Where is God looking to clear away that dead material in your heart, to make room for new life to spring up?
And beyond your own life, might God be calling you to participate in a controlled burn, training your own tongue to sustain the weary with a word, as Isaiah so artfully puts it? Is God calling you to speak up on behalf of justice, to burn away someone else’s misunderstanding?
We’re several months away yet from Transfiguration Sunday, from burning these palm leaves to make ashes, but we’ll use those ashes to trace the shape of the cross on our foreheads. It’s a symbol full of meaning—the penitential use of ashes to signify mourning, and the shape of the cross to signify the new life we claim through Christ’s death and resurrection.
May God burn away everything in us that does not proclaim good news, and may the Holy Spirit make space for new growth, here in the land of the living.
Amen.
Pastor Cheryl
[1] https://smokeybear.com/en/smokeys-history?decade=1940&gad_source=1&gclid=CjwKCAjw6JS3BhBAEiwAO9waF3EB6Ch9cRqqwDqqjlSzU0jJ_ApxraQwNuND7ZY53CNfWQ51xi-XgBoCPnYQAvD_BwE
[2] James 3:5b-6a
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