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January 15, 2012
Are you old enough to remember when the words “Baptist preaching” were nearly synonymous with the words “hellfire and damnation”? Do you remember the day when if the preacher wasn’t shoutin’, then he—and it was always “he”—wasn’t preachin’?
Several years ago, I supervised an African-American Baptist seminary student in an internship for his field education experience in seminary, and one of his internship opportunities was to preach in worship at First Baptist Greenville. As we were getting ready for worship the morning he was to preach, he said his wife had told him as he was leaving the house, “Now John, don’t you get to shoutin’ this mornin’. White people don’t like to be shouted at.”
But out and about on the highways and byways of white Baptist life in the American South, the enthusiastic revivalism of what Baptist historians call the “Sandy Creek tradition” birthed and bred generations of loud-shoutin’, high-whinin’, Baptist preachers dedicated to scaring the hell out of people in order to get them into heaven and into the church.
I confess that I don’t understand the psychology of coming to church Sunday after Sunday to be yelled at from the pulpit, but I also admit that I have never lived the hard-scrabble life of tooth-and-claw existence of so many of our Baptist forebears in the woods and on the farm and in the mill.
Not all Baptist preaching was that way, even “back in the day.” Among the genteel and cultured representatives of what Baptist historians call the “Charleston tradition,” modeled on the worship and preaching of the stately and orderly First Baptist Church of Charleston, shoutin’ preachers and hellfire and damnation sermons were the exception rather than the rule.
Over time, as we Baptists—especially we citified First Baptists—have left the woods and the farms and the mills, as we have become more educated and our lives have become more comfortable, we have become less and less comfortable with whinin’ and shoutin’ and hellfire and damnation. And along the way, we have lost something entirely biblical that we would do well to reclaim in our preaching and our teaching and our living.
It’s the Holy Spirit and fire. In this morning’s gospel lesson from the third chapter of Luke, John the Baptist says to the crowds who are coming to hear him preach, “I baptize you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming. . . . He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire” (Luke 3:16).
If I were a Pentecostal preacher, I would point out to you that when it comes to baptism, Baptists have spent a whole lot of time fussin’ and fumin’ over how much water is to be used and when it is to be applied when all the while, the Bible says that the baptism of John was a baptism of water; but the baptism of Jesus is a baptism of the Holy Spirit and fire.
So how come we Baptists almost never talk about the Holy Spirit and fire, and especially so at baptism when Luke’s gospel, at least, suggests that the Holy Spirit and fire are distinguishing marks of the ministry of Jesus Christ?
At the beginning of the book of Acts, Jesus says to the disciples, “This is what you have heard from me; for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.” (Acts 1:5). So this morning, let’s talk about the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit and fire.
First the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the constant and continuing presence of God in the world and in the church and in the life of every baptized believer.
In the historic Christian doctrine of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit is the “third person” in the distinctively Christian understanding of God as Three in One and One in Three: Father, Son, and Holy Ghost; Creator, Christ, and Holy Spirit; Lover, Beloved, and Love.
Outside the enthusiastic confines of Pentecostal and charismatic congregations, the “third person” in the Trinity is routinely overlooked—or at least underemphasized—compared to the Father and the Son, the Creator and the Christ, the Lover and the Beloved. But the gospel of Luke doesn’t overlook or underemphasize the Holy Spirit at all.
At the baptism of Jesus, as Luke tells the story in chapter 3, “when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove.” From the baptism of Jesus on, in the gospel of Luke, the ministry of Jesus himself is driven and empowered by the Holy Spirit.
In Luke 4:1 we are told that following his baptism, “Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness.” In Luke 4:14 we read, “Then Jesus, filled with the power of the Holy Spirit returned to Galilee” where he began his ministry of teaching and preaching and healing. Luke 4 also tells us that when Jesus returned home to Nazareth to teach in the synagogue there, he read from Isaiah 61, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” (Luke 4:18-19).
After the resurrection, Jesus said to the disciples, “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you” (Acts 1:8), which is precisely what happens on the day of Pentecost in Acts 2:2-4 when “suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit.”
From Pentecost on in the book of Acts, individuals who minister in Jesus’ name are said again and again and again to be “filled with the Holy Spirit” (Acts 4:8,31; 7:55; 9:17; 13:9,52) and “full of the Holy Spirit” (Acts 11:24). In fact, the Holy Spirit plays so prominent a role in the life of the early church in the book of Acts that more than one commentator has suggested that instead of being called “The Book of the Acts of the Apostles,” as the church has traditionally named it, it should be called “The Book of the Acts of the Holy Spirit.”
According to the gospel of Luke, the Holy Spirit empowered life and ministry of Jesus Christ; and according to the book of Acts, the Holy Spirit empowers the life and ministry of the church and empowers the life of every baptized believer. One and the same empowering presence of God was at work in Jesus Christ, in the church of Jesus Christ, and in every baptized believer in Jesus Christ.
So don’t make the mistake that most non-Pentecostals and non-charismatics have made by reducing the Holy Spirit to the “third person of the Trinity.” Instead, “receive the Holy Spirit,” as Jesus puts in John 20:22. Embrace the Holy Spirit as the constant, continuing, empowering presence of God in your life.
Now for the fire. Fire as a biblical sign and symbol of the presence of God is as old as the covenant of God with Abraham (Genesis 15:17), the appearance of God to Moses at the bush that was burning but not consumed (Exodus 3:2) and to all Israel at Mt. Sinai (Exodus 19:18). Consider this fire imagery on Mt. Sinai in Exodus 24:17: “Now the appearance of the glory of the Lord was like a devouring fire on top of the mountain in the sight of the people of Israel.” A devouring fire.
In this morning’s gospel lesson, fire is an image of judgment. John the Baptizer says that the one who is coming “will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire” (Luke 2:16-17). There it is. “Unquenchable fire.” Can’t you just smell the sulfuric vapors of the brimstone? “Hellfire and damnation,” anyone?
The fire reminds us that in addition to being the constant, continuing, and empowering presence of God in our lives, the Holy Spirit is the constant, continuing, and purifying presence of God in our lives. The fire that burns the chaff, the husk, the waste material of the wheat is like the “refiner’s fire” of our Old Testament lesson this morning from the prophet Malachi: “For he is like a refiner’s fire and like fullers’ soap; he will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify the descendants of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, until they present offerings to the Lord in righteousness. Then the offering of Judah and Jerusalem will be pleasing to the Lord” (Malachi 3:2-4).
Malachi speaks hard words of judgment with the imagery of fire, but notice that the point of that judgment is to purify rather than to destroy. The refiner’s fire burns away the dross, the impurities, and leaves behind only the pure metal. In our citified Baptist discomfort with hellfire-and-damnation preaching, we run from the refiner’s fire. And when we do, we are left with nothing to burn away the useless stuff, the wasteful stuff, the unnecessary, and impure stuff that weighs down our hearts and minds and souls and lives and separates us from God.
The image of the fire of judgment in this morning’s gospel lesson is a reminder that none of us is so pure that we don’t need the fire of judgment, the refiner’s fire, in our lives to burn away what is useless, wasteful, unnecessary, and impure. No church is so pure that it doesn’t need the fire of judgment, the refiner’s fire, in its life to burn away what is useless, wasteful, unnecessary, and impure. As individuals and as a church, we must not reduce the Holy Spirit to the “third person of the Trinity” but embrace the Holy Spirit as the constant, continuing, and purifying presence of God in our lives and in our church.
The image of the refiner’s fire in Malachi 3 and fire of judgment in Luke 3 is also a reminder that your “Stop-Doing List” is every bit as important as your “To-Do List.” Do you have a “Stop-Doing List”? Probably not. If you don’t have a Stop-Doing list, then you need to start one. I learned about Stop-Doing lists several years ago from an article in Harvard Business Review.
Effective companies and organizations plan for and implement abandonment strategies for their products and services and processes every bit as carefully and thoroughly as they plan for and implement their launch strategies. Companies and organizations that survive and thrive understand that sooner or later their products and services and processes will diminish in their effectiveness, will become obsolete, will no longer meet the markets for which they were originally designed. The same is true for churches. Sooner or later the various ways we do worship and ministry and missions will no longer meet the needs for which they were originally designed. If you don’t plan to abandon and replace what you are doing and how you are doing it, sooner or later, it will abandon you.
It’s so obvious that we shouldn’t even have to say it, but we do. There is a time to abandon the womb and be born. No matter how warm and comfortable it may be in there, it can’t go on forever, can it? There is a time to abandon the only life we know for a life that is still to come. There is a time to abandon high school and your parents and to move on to college—and don’t come back! (Just kidding. Come back anytime; stay as long as you need to. I guess.) There is a time to abandon the house you have been living in and move into assisted living where you get the care that you can no longer provide for yourself. There is a time to abandon “the earthly tent we live in,” as the apostle Paul puts it, to move on to “a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens” (1 Corinthians 5:1). Our abandonment strategy is every bit as important as our launch strategy.
Start a “Stop-Doing List” today. Every individual and every congregation should have one. Plan for abandonment and replacement. The refiner’s fire of the Stop-Doing List is a reminder of the purifying presence of God among us and around us and in us that burns away the untimely, the unworthy, the useless and wasteful and unnecessary and impure stuff that holds us back as individuals and as a congregation from loving and serving God and from loving and serving our neighbor as we ought.
Whatever it is in your life, whatever it is in our congregational life together, that needs to be burned away like chaff, like the husk, like the waste material of the wheat, pray this day that the Holy Spirit and fire will refine and purify you. So receive the Holy Spirit, and receive the fire that comes with it. Embrace the constant, continuing, empowering, and purifying presence of God in your life and in our life together.
Let us pray.
Copyrighted © 2012 by Jeffrey S. Rogers. It may be copied or disseminated for non-commercial use, provided this notice is included. The author can be contacted at jeffrogers110@bellsouth.net.
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