Fire Sermon |
Fire Sermons were common in the 17th century, that century of conflagration when all Europe burned with destructive civil war. This sermon was endowed by Mrs Susan Chambers, may she rest in peace. She it was who provided the means to pay the preacher twenty two shillings and sixpence. Strangely there has been no mention of this aspect in the Rector’s communications with me about this occasion.
Preachers then were very confident in their ability to discern the divine intentions in such events as fires. The Great Fire of London spawned many pulpit theories. One Puritan divine said it was obvious that the Fire was not a divine punishment on swearing and filthy language otherwise it would have started in the markets where the porters gathered. It was not a judgement on lying and cheating otherwise it would have started in Westminster Hall where the lawyers assembled. No, it was clearly a divine blast against the sin of gluttony because it “began in Pudding Lane and ended at Pie Corner.”
Others however were not so convinced and simply blamed the French. Investigations into fires these days do not usually go into the matter of divine intention and even in the seventeenth century the results of such speculations were evidently inconclusive.
Spiritually of course Fire is a very complex symbol and so it is in Holy Scripture. There was the fire which Moses encountered while caring for his father-in-law’s sheep in the desert. The bush burned with fire but was not consumed. Those who have experienced it say that this is as accurate a description as you can give of the burning intensity of divine love, it burns without consuming.
Fire’s destructive face figures in hell. The devil and all his angels are chained in a lake of fire and the everlasting bonfire burns in the nether regions. The picture is possibly taken from the fire which burned perpetually outside the walls of Jerusalem on the heaps of refuse.
But fire also purges and opens up fresh possibilities. Faith is tried by fire just as fire is used in the process of refining precious metals. St Paul in the lesson we have heard says that “the fire shall try every man’s work of what sort it is”, separating the dross from the pure gold.
St Peter in his second letter also envisions the end-time when “the heavens being on fire shall be dissolved and the elements shall melt with fervent heat”. “The earth also and the works that are therein shall be burnt up. Seeing then that all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be?” “We according to his promise, look for new heavens and a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness.”
Curiously of course in the new understanding we have of the cosmos the eventual fate of our planet is precisely to be burnt up as it is pulled into the dying sun. At the time when this sermon was endowed there was also a lively interest in the end-time and at a period of great social turmoil the streets of London seethed with Levellers and Fifth Monarchy Men anticipating the second coming and the reign of the Saints. Shortly afterwards Cromwell re-admitted the Jews to England not as an act of proto-liberal tolerance but because he believed that God’s ancient people had a definite role in the events which were imminently to bring about the close of the age.
The symbol of fire both destructive and re-creative is not of course exclusively Christian. The lines applied to St Magnus the Martyr in T.S.Eliot’s poem the Waste Land – the walls of Magnus Martyr hold
Inexplicable splendour of Ionian white and gold.
These lines appear in the section of Eliot’s poem entitled The Fire Sermon. I wonder if he, as a City worker, knew of this benefaction. Eliot’s own notes however draw attention to the Fire Sermon preached by the Buddha which has a place in Buddhist teaching corresponding to the Sermon on the Mount.
Now this is all very well Bishop, fascinating stuff, but where does it touch our lives?
I really cannot believe in a God who plans to indict the excessive consumption of city folk by orchestrating a fire to break out in Pudding Lane. Do you? On the other hand, Fire, when it comes by means much better analysed by natural science is of course a test which reveals many things. My father was a volunteer fireman during the war after completing his day job in aircraft production. Fire is a revelation of courage. It is an honour that representatives of the London Fire Brigade are present. They keep us safe and never know when they will be called upon to face the challenge of fire. Hats off to them.
Fire also is a reality check. It uncovers the extent of the progress we have made towards loving and helping our neighbour or it displays the lack of trust among people who live cheek by jowl.
It is deeper than that of course. Why does an all loving God permit such destructive events like the Great Fire to happen, if we really cannot stomach the idea that He dooms the relatively innocent to illustrate a point about the over indulgent. It seems that God is either not loving or falls short of being all powerful.
Here the role of fire in visions of the end-time can help us. Such was the chaos of the obstinately metaphysical 17th century that sensible people recoiled from speculation about the end time. Enthusiasm in religion became suspect. At the end of the 17th century Archbishop Tillotson who had been a City Rector said “Stirring up men’s passions is like the muddying of the waters you see nothing clearly afterwards.” He had a point but the anaesthetising of the Christian community was only too successful. Christians became largely satisfied with the way things were. They gave up looking for a denouement, for what the New Testament calls – The Kingdom.
Ultimately this raised questions about what the Church was for and whether God himself was just a piece of antique cultural baggage. I was in conversation last night with a group of spiritual searchers called Moot, serious and imaginative young people who find the church stale and oppressive. One of them said very reasonably, has the Anglican Church got a vision?
This is the beginnings of the answer which is being given by many Christians in London today. One of the Biblical truths which has been brought to light by the scientific discoveries of the past century is that we live in an unfinished universe. The universe is full of pain and travail as Paul says in his letter to the Romans. It groans in all its parts. It is sufficiently distinct from God both to have the potential of being suffused with love for the Creator but also the potential for disaster, for the fire which destroys but also reveals. We cannot see the future of the human race and the climax of the creation of which we are a part. They are out of our sight with God at the Omega point to which we are travelling.
What we know however as people of faith as we look back over the story so far is that there is disaster but also rescue. There is tragedy but always promise and hope. God as we see him in Jesus Christ, the human face of God, is not a nanny who keeps a tight grip on us lest anything untoward happen. He gives us freedom and has himself accepted the suffering that such freedom entails. God was in Christ full of promise loving the world into loving.
The Christian community is composed of those who have consciously made themselves a part of this story. They are building on the vision of human life that we are given in the life death and resurrection of Jesus. They are called to become his body on earth. They know that happiness and fulfilment does not come by having but by loving. They know that human life flowers not when it looks after number one but when it takes risks for the sake of my neighbour. They know with the ancient writers that we fall alone but we are saved together.
They know that if we fail to respond to the promise and love of God inviting us to his end-time then the result will be catastrophe. This is a time when not only states but extreme individuals have the capacity and the lethal knowledge to bring fire on the earth and wreak havoc as never before. Christians then have a sense of urgency about praying down the end time, forming the community to nurture the human life which God intends in the here and now. Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven. Give us today the bread of the morrow – the dawning of the end time. How could we have missed the urgency in those words of Jesus? How could we have ignored the judgement of fire and lived as if there would be no denouement and that the story was already concluded?
The Church is not a club catering for those who have religious tastes and so called needs. It is a community which lives by promise, in hope, and is called to envision and anticipate the Kingdom in the fervent charity and honesty of its own life and the quality of its service to all human beings. God help us, the reality has sometimes been so far from that and we have been misleading signs to our generation. “Every man’s work shall be made manifest. For the day [what I have called the end-time] shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire and the fire shall try everyman’s work of what sort it is.” ICor.III,13.
