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7/27/2019 Sermon "Fired by the Spirit" - Marissa Rohrbach
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Several years ago when I was in El Salvador, we visited a cooperative
called Shicali.
Shicali was started by a group of young people with a variety of
different disabilities.
Some are physically handicapped. Others are blind. Still others
experience different kinds of obstacles to life and work.
Together, they make ceramics.
Really beautiful ceramics.
As we went on a tour of their facilities, they explained to us how they
craft. What they make. And why.
How they work together.
They showed us the clay. And the kiln. And talked about the fire.
Its the fire thats the magic it brings life to the clay.
It is the fire that brings out color and beauty.
Makes it actually useful. Functional. So that it serves a purpose.
And for the folks at Shicali this has become their way of life as they
work together to make a living.
They are a community in many ways, that lives around the fire
benefitting from its gifts. Finding unity there.
Is not my word like fire, says the LORD, and like a hammer that breaks a
rock in pieces?
And then Jesus says today I came to bring fire to the earth.
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Fire. And division.
Today we find ourselves in Lukes so-called Hard Sayings of Jesus the
ones that we dont always want to hear or that we arentquite sure we
understand.
Jesus sets this idea of division in the context of the family division
among those to whom we might think we are meant to be closest.
Nowfor some of us this idea might be shocking or painful. That we
might be divided on different sides angry with or set against those in
our families.
For some of usperhaps this sounds all too familiar. Not shocking at all.
In either casewhat Jesus is trying to get at is the idea that those
things which once were of prime importance are no longer as
important.
Those things which may once have defined us now take on a different
meaning.
For Jesus contemporaries, the family unit and on a larger scale thetribal unit were intended to be unbreakable bonds.
And this was for good reason.
These relationships offered security they were the very foundation of
survival. Especially for those on the bottom of the power food chain.
These were ties bonds that kept society together. That kept people
safe. And defined who you were and how you fit into the world.
So when Jesus says he brings division when he questions and troubles
this paradigm he also threatens chaos and danger.
It meant there had to be a re-ordering of life and loyalty in order to find
a new safe way of living.
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Jesus knew that many would find his message his teachings too
difficult to follow.
Even those in a tight-knit family might find that the truth of the Gospel
separates them.
That it would be too hard for many to buy in to a vision of life where
everyone is equal where everyone is beloved. Where we are all
connected and thus need to serve each other.
Not everyone wants to receive the good news not everyone wants to
follow.
For early Christians, this text would have hit home in a unique way.
When some Jews began following Jesus, their families had funerals for
them.
They disowned them.
They struggled against them.
Early Christians in this situation had to decide who they were- and what
their priorities were.
They had to make very hard choices.
And yet - out of this division out of their struggle out of their chaos
they were reborn.
Baptized.
With the fire of the Holy Spirit.
Born into a new family a new body.
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Part of the Body of Christ.
No longer defined by where they were born. Or who they were related
to.
Defined as having died and risen again with Jesus Christ.
No longer intended to be dependent on the ways of the world.
Rather, they were intended to be a community.
A community that loved and cared for each other.
They were called to be a community that offered the same kind of
security and comfort and love that the original family unit did.
And so are we.
We are called to this same process of re-evaluating our loyalties our
priorities our sense of self.
We are called to be fired transformed by the fire of the word of God.
To be a community that lives around the fire and finds unity in the
process of faithful living.
Sometimes, this process of being fired of being perfected causes
divisions like those Jesus is referring to.
Sometimes when we do the right thing or even the wrong thing
when we do what we think God is calling us to do,
When we live in the world in the ways were supposed to we find that
those around us dont understand.
Sometimes it costs us heartache, blood, sweat, tears.
Sometimes it costs us relationships.
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To allow ourselves to be transformed always seems to have some sort
of cost some kind of sacrifice.
And yet, the good news about division is thatwe know it isnt
permanent.
We know that God works for the good.
We know that the arc of universe is long but that it bends toward
justice1.
We know that creation is being perfected this minute this second -
by the fire of the Holy Spirit.
Over time- Gods Word Gods plan has the same affect on creation as
the fire on the claywe are being transformed more and more into the
image of God2.
The clay goes in with a mold a shape a sense of what it will be.
Just like we are born into this world.
Originally shaped and marked by our families by our surroundings
by the places and communities in which we grow up for better or for
worse.
But it is Gods love in the midst of that chaos that transforms us
and has the final say.
Gods love that was revealed in the Incarnate Word the fire of Jesus
Christ.
1 Theodore Parker in the 1850s; the idea of the moral universe then paraphrased and used again by
Martin Luther King, Jr.2 For me, this foundational idea of our diversification representing the perfection of creation by the
Holy Spirit, rendering the image of God ever more visible comes from the writings of Susan Ross.
See Extravagant Affections: A Feminist Sacramental Theology, The Continuum International
Publishing Group, NY, 1998.
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It is Gods love that, when we submit, changes us bit by bit in all our
diversity to better reflect and shine forth the image of God in each one
of us.
Jesus Christ brought us a new baptism by the Holy Spirit and fire.
It is Jesus call to us to live faithful lives to serve each other even at
the cost of division in the midst of chaos
It is our efforts to do this work all of these things combined with the
fire of the Holy Spirit that transforms us by holy fire into something
beautiful something colorful.
Something useful.
Something redeemed when we come out of the kiln.
Something someone(s) a community in the process of being
perfected by God.
God works in chaos and division.
God works in us when we faithfully submit to the process of being fired
by the Word.
When we live lives defined by the fact that we are Gods beloved and
that we are connected.
When we live our lives in such a way that we show that the Word of God
the fire of being Gods own the fire of living in the Word has made
us one Body, one family, one beautiful, useful unit.
We are meant to be a community that lives round the fire round theWord of God and by Gods grace is slowly perfected by it and calls
others to join us out of their chaos and division and into the light of
the truth.
Except unlike Shicali we arent here to make a living.
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Were here to change the world in the name of Jesus Christ.
To share the fire.
How are you being fired by the Word?
And how are you sharing it?
We are called to share the fire and to change the world.
Amen.