Sermon: Fire and Water [1]
Texts: 1 Genesis 1:1-5; Acts19: 1-7; Mark 1:4-11
Date: January 11, 2009
Rev. Dee Eisenhauer
Fire and water. Water and fire. Two powerful, life-giving forces. So fundamental to life on earth that we name them as elements.
Elements—earth, air, fire, water—speak to us at a subconscious or pre-conscious level. They have an almost magnetic pull on our psyches. I noticed that again this week as I listened to a seminarian revisit the Bible’s second creation story, marveling at the story of humans being made of the dust of the earth and the breath of God. Earth and air, combined to create you and I in an ancient tale of origins. Mud and God’s breath, combined but at the same time competing for command of our souls. Doesn’t that tug at your imagination?
The other elements, fire and water, show up in another tale of beginnings, the story of Jesus’ baptism. John the Baptist appears in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. He says, “I have baptized you with water, but he [who is coming after me] will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.” Matthew and Luke both recount this saying as “He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.” Fire is one of our central symbols for the Holy Spirit; you may remember that the Spirit appeared as tongues of fire at Pentecost, the day we celebrate as the birthday of the church. The gospel of John brings these elements together, saying we must be born of water and the Spirit.
In the physical realm, fire and water tend to cancel each other out. We bring fire and water together when we want to be rid of one of them, especially when we want to reign in a fire. When we bring fire and water together we expect that it’s going to be a battle and one of the elements is going to win out over the other one. We don’t expect them to co-exist.
Yet these two powerful elemental symbols are brought together in Christian baptism. They are held together in creative tension. I want to appeal to your pre-conscious, subconscious imagination to envision them together. You’ll have to tell your scientific persona who can only see water and fire together resulting in a cloud of steam to crouch down in the back of your mind and be quiet. Instruct the historian persona who quickly thinks of whiskey being dubbed “firewater” to sit down with the scientist. Coax your artist persona out instead. Try to imagine fire and water present in the same space. If your inner artist is accessing a portrait of the scary lake of fire in Revelation, over which sinners dangle by a thread, erase that. Can you see fire and water in a balance in which neither overcomes the other, and which is ultimately generative, not destructive? Maybe you can put a picture of pristine blue water together in your artistic imagination with the dazzling blue flame of a really hot fire. Can you see that? Can you see liquid flame pour out in a sizzling ice-blue stream? Can you imagine these elements married together in a symbol of the grace we call baptism?
Water and fire. Dying to the old life and rising to the new. A cleansing from sin. Power given to live a new way. Initiation into the community of faith and the Spirit that steers that community. Turning from the past and spinning into the future. Water and fire, coming together in baptism.
In the story from Acts, Paul makes it clear in his encounter with the disciples in Ephesus that both elements are needed. The dozen or so Christians he met had only gone halfway. He asked them if they had received the Holy Spirit when they became believers. I suspect that he might have observed them first and had a good reason to raise this question. It’s likely that they called themselves Christian but lacked a certain spark in the way they lived. So he asks the question.
Here the Christians of Ephesus reveal that their Christian education was incomplete. They said they hadn’t even heard that there was such a thing as the Holy Spirit, much less had they received it. That’s a heck of a gap in their knowledge of basic Christian theology. I’d like to say that such a thing would never happen in our church, but I’m afraid that almost all the young people I’ve had in confirmation classes in 23 years of teaching 8th and 9th graders do an awful lot of hemming and hawing when I ask them to tell me what the Holy Spirit is. And it’s a bit hard for many adults to define as well. So we can, perhaps, relate to those folk long ago who must have looked like so many deer in the headlights when the charismatic Saint Paul quizzes them about whether they received the Holy Spirit when they became believers.
Paul was appalled. “Into what , then, were you baptized?” he demands. They answer, “Into John’s baptism.” Well, that explains it. They had received a baptism of water and repentance, John’s baptism. But not Jesus’ baptism, which is water and fire, repentance and the Holy Spirit. Jesus’ baptism is conversion from something and to something. So Paul explains things to them and baptizes them in Jesus’ name, laying hands on them as has been the practice of the faithful from time immemorial when they wanted to symbolize and invite the gift of the Holy Spirit. Then the disciples have their own mini-Pentecost, right then and there; they speak in tongues and prophesy.
Water and fire; gotta have both to have true Christian baptism. They balance and complement each other, symbolizing what we believe happens to people of faith at baptism. If you have one without the other, the balance is skewed, something’s missing from the life of faith.
Let’s stand on the fulcrum of balance between the two and see-saw back and forth for a bit. What if you had the baptism of fire without the water? For some reason a picture popped into my head from that great archetypal film “The Wizard of Oz.” I’ll sing a little of the movie score to you and see if your mind goes to the same scene. The nasty old neighbor of Dorothy’s, Almira Gulch, is furiously peddling her bicycle along the country road when the tornado comes along and picks her up. She keeps peddling away, never apparently noticing or changing direction in the middle of the whirlwind. There is no stopping, no re-orientation; just a relocation to a furious speed in mid-air.
What if one were swept away by the Holy Spirit’s fire without ever having stopped for the purpose of evaluating one’s life and deciding to make a change? What if one did what one had always done only with amplified speed, passion or sanctimoniousness? I don’t know if such a thing is even possible, although when I look at some of the folk on TV who claim to have been baptized with the Holy Spirit I have to wonder. Being on fire with the Spirit—or at least making that claim—is no guarantee that one’s moral house is in order. The water of baptism is a water of cleansing, repentance, conversion. Repentance means that you pull up short on the road you’re on, stop, think, grieve your sins, receive forgiveness, and turn to a new life. Your life may require a swerve or a complete about-face. Whatever it is, repentance means you stop, reflect, turn. You die to your old self and put on a new self. You don’t just speed up your old self on holy roller skates. You need the water to balance the fire.
The water needs the fire as much as the fire needs the water. Suppose someone was baptized then figured they had fulfilled all the requirements for the Christian life? Let’s return to the scene of Jesus’ baptism for a moment. There he is in the River Jordan. John has baptized him, and there is that wondrous moment when he sees the heavens open, the Spirit descend, and hears that voice speaking words we all long to hear: “You are my Son [or daughter], the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” We know from the old song that “the Jordan river is chilly and cold.” But suppose there was a little hot spring there in the pool in which Jesus was baptized, and it was comfortable to sit back and just soak in the warmth and the grace of that moment of new life and the affirmation that came with it. You couldn’t blame Jesus, could you, if he had wanted to settle in and bask in that moment as long as possible, maybe forever?
It would be wonderful if every time someone was baptized they understood that we are each blessed with an affirmation of love from God who is pleased with us. We need to soak up that love like the thirsty souls that we are. But that’s not the end of it. After we have been baptized, turned from the old life, affirmed by God’s grace, we rise up out of the water like Jesus did. Mark minces no words as he tells Jesus’ story; he reports that the Spirit “immediately drove him out into the wilderness.” We, too, rise to new life. The water is barely dry, the old life is still gasping its last breath when the new life of the Spirit drives us into adventure. The life of the Spirit is a life of constant change, novelty, compassion, love and courage. No lolling about in the pool.
Without the fire of the Spirit, the water of baptism may leave us directionless or even mired down. The church as an institution is not exactly a mirror of the Spirit’s fluidity and spontaneity. We can get pretty bogged down in tradition and custom. It’s a special irony that sacraments themselves, the ways we Christians think about them and practice them, can wind up inhibiting the Spirit’s movement as each faith community sets all sorts of rules about who, how and when a person may be baptized or receive communion. If all the church claims is the water of baptism, we may all end up soaking in those waters until we’re a bunch of old prunes. We churches need the fire of the spirit to dry up some of our water-logged habits and send us on new adventures.
Fire and water, water and fire; striking a balance between the two in the spiritual life is an everlasting undertaking. Martin Luther, pioneering reformer, spoke of baptism as a once-for-all event that takes your whole life to do. He said that baptism means “that our sinful self, with all its evil deeds and desires, should be drowned daily through repentance, and that day after day a new self should arise to live with God in righteousness and purity forever.” In other words, we must be born of water and the spirit—again and again and again. The fire plunges us into the water over and over, and we rise newly born to live as Spirited people.
Lee Philips describes the work of the Holy Spirit in this piece titled “A Personal Testament.” I think you can hear elements of the work of both fire and water here:
The Holy Spirit works in my mind and total personality
Enabling me to discern
Needs that weren’t needs before,
Directions in which to move that I did not know existed,
Areas in my personality that need altering and change,
Places to refrain from going that I had not previously considered,
Ways to relate to difficult situations that I had given up on,
Applying the truths of the biblical revelation
To the painful hurts and appalling injustices
Of a splintered and aching world…
The Holy Spirit of God, living, present,
Working with who I am,
Challenging me to grow,
Inspires me to deeds of unselfish charity,
Undergirds me in the flailing winds of temptation,
Plants in me great joy beyond worldly comprehension,
Chastises me, in the sensitive depths of my soul,
Calms my inner turmoil with a holy peace,
Shapes my subconscious in slumber for service when I am awake,
Seals truth in my heart
Guiding me into a knowledge of God
Through Jesus Christ
That fits me for life on earth
And shapes me for…[life beyond earth].
Water and fire; what one starts, the other finishes.
In times of great doubt and despair, Martin Luther said that the only thing that kept him afloat was to touch his forehead and repeat the words “Baptismatus sum”—“I am baptized.” The gesture brought comfort in the dark nights of his soul. Why? Because, said Luther, we know our God to be a jealous God, a God who does not easily part with that which God owns, and baptism is a continual reminder that God owns me. It is a reason to be thankful even in the darkest hours.
In a few moments, we’ll have an opportunity to remember and give thanks for the gift of baptism as Luther did so many times. As we remember our baptism we are reminded of the past, called to be thankful for the sacrament which was a sign of grace and new life for us. Feel the refreshing water and be thankful. I am baptized.
I invite you also, as you renew your vows, to remember the fire of baptism, to listen again for the call of the Holy Spirit in your life as we begin a new year. To what depth of faith and height of courage and width of love are you being called? Feel the driving fire of the Holy Spirit and be thankful. I am being baptized.
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[1] This sermon is based on a sermon of the same title I wrote in 1994.