St. Andrew’s Pictou, October 9^th Thanksgiving, PFD attending

 

Spiritual Fire Prevention

 

Isaiah 40: 28-31

Psalm 1

Matthew 5:13-16

 

Life is not fair!

 

There you have heard it said.

 

People always seemed surprised when they find bad things happen to good people, when the good die young, when a good employee gets passed over, when a hurricane or earthquake destroys the homes of the poor, when a great parent of a loved child is taken from the family.

 

There is nothing in the Bible that I can show you that says that if you believe in God you will be exempted from bad things; There is no Biblical logic that says that the storm surge will take the atheist and leave the Christian standing to live another day.

 

To the contrary, Jesus said “the rain falls on the just and the unjust.” He would probably tell us that if you build a house below sea level and there is a storm, your house will be swamped no matter who you are, so you better get to higher ground.

 

If you read the book of Job you will find that Job was a great believer in God who suffered greatly; you can read about his complaining for 37 chapters, his wife taunts him and he complains to God about his suffering. Things get sorted out in chapter 38 with a kind of spiritual awakening: Job finally grows up, becomes a man, and the unanswered questions about the universe fall into place.

 

Let me make it clear that there are just two points:

 

1 Christian faith and spirituality are not about exempting you and I from the storms of life,

2 Faith in God and the message of Jesus were sent to help us deal with the storms of life.

 

No matter who we are, we will all have to deal with calamity: sickness, losses of all kinds, and death. In the journey of human life, there are absolutely no exemptions.

 

The purpose of Fire Prevention Week is to show us ways that we might be exempted from having to deal with a fire that could destroy our home, business or our lives.

 

Fire is destructive, and we have means at our disposal to exempt ourselves from some if not all of fire’s destruction.

 

Smoke detectors can wake us up and save our lives, and maybe even our property:

-carbon monoxide detectors can wake us up from a different problem, and save our lives,

-fire extinguishers can put out small fires before they become big fires that can destroy property and life,

-fire departments can come to our rescue when the fire it too big for us to fight as individuals, and they can give first aid when we are in distress.

 

One of the most important things that we can do is to prevent fires by not providing an opportunity for a fire to happen. With proper protocols, some fires just never happen.

 

Years ago, it came to be known that there was such a thing as “spontaneous combustion.” You didn’t need a person to light a match to start a fire, you just leave dirty oily rags clumped in a pile and they can spontaneously ignite and cause a devastating fire.

 

Don’t smoke in bed. Don’t build a camp fire in a dry wooded area. Keep matches away from children.

 

We can prevent fires by eliminating the opportunity for the fire to happen.

 

The exact same kind of rules and logic apply to our personal spiritual fires.

 

As fires are destructive to buildings and life, so are spiritual fires destructive to the soul.

 

Death, sickness, betrayal, grief, and disappointment can literally tear us apart.

 

The same two issues that hold true for house fires apply to spiritual fires: we either need prevention, or to be rescued from our distress.

 

Listen as the prophet Isaiah describes God’s help:

 

“…those who wait upon the Lord

shall renew their strength,

they shall mount up with wings like eagles,

they shall run and not be weary,

they shall walk and not faint.”

 

So God rescues, but what about prevention? Since we know that calamity is part of life and we will all be subject to the pain and suffering of life, is there a way to prepare for it? Is there a way to prevent ourselves from being totally devastated by spiritual fires?

 

I was taking a course in chaplaincy at The Toronto General Hospital in 1989. My supervisor, Sister Mary and I didn’t get along. (It was weeks later that she confessed to us that she felt that she had a gift for eliciting anger.)

 

One day in our group session trying to light my fuse, she told me that I needed psychiatric help.

 

I didn’t get angry, I was devastated!

 

While I agree that I needed improvement like everyone else, I had no idea that I was psychiatrically ill! I went up to the 10^th floor which was my project: people who had liver transplants, pancreatic cancer; it was a heavy duty place. I told the head nurse Carolyn what Sister Mary had said.

 

The medical team on that floor valued my work with them. She was surprised and said some wise words that have helped me ever since: “Consider the source.”

 

She asked if I wanted to be like Sister Mary, did I want to emulate her, did I admire her?

 

I said, “No.” and she said “Consider the source.”

 

I am asking each one of you to consider that God loves you and to consider that source.

 

When anyone shames or humiliates you, consider that the God who knows all, loves you. Which of the two sources are you going to believe? Consider which source of the information you wish to admire, emulate, and believe.

 

If you believe in the God who believes in you, is that not good prevention for the spiritual fires you will inevitably face?

 

If Jesus tells you that “You are the salt of the earth,” and “You are the light of the world,” (consider the source) why would you believe anyone else who tells you anything different?

 

Grief and anger from pain we might have suffered in the past can rise up inside of us like spontaneous combustion making us sad, upset or depressed. But remember that Jesus promised that we would never be alone. “I will never leave you or forsake you,” He said. Aren’t we better able to handle the grief of life, knowing that we are not alone, that we are fortified and guided by the King of love, the Prince of peace.

 

We have churches as communities because we need each other and to share our gifts, to share our grief as well as to celebrate our joy. Faith communities have always been church families where we are strengthened by each other in our friendships, and the sharing of our gifts.

 

Faith in the God who loves us is available 24/7. God is always ready when we sound the alarm. We are supposed to change the batteries in our smoke detectors every year, but God’s batteries are always fully charged: the line is always open; we are never alone, we are never without God’s love, and is that not the best protection from the fallout of the fires of life that seek to bring us down?

 

We have fire fighters in our fire department, who respond to an alarm; there are also fire fighters for our spiritual fires when we respond to each other’s alarm. The only credentials needed are to care for other people: if you care for and believe in someone you are equipped to douse the flames of their anxiety and chaos with your love. But your care has to be the real thing, you can’t fake love any more than you can put out a gasoline fire without the proper repellant.

 

I don’t know if they were reading the Bible when they designed fire trucks, but each of them has at least one light on the top, flashing when they come for the rescue.

 

When we see those lights flashing, we know that help is on the way.

 

Individually, by our lives we can do the same thing for each other.

 

Jesus said something that relates to the same theory about the light showing that help is on the way, and the happiness and relief that it brings: “…Let your light so shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.”

 

AMEN                     Rev. Alan Stewart