Experiencing The Spirit: Fire and Water - Matthew 3:11-12


John was supposed to be getting things ready for his cousin’s ministry to start.  He was the “opening act” for God’s main show if you will.  I wonder, though, how many of us would have felt led to line up and wait for Jesus to show, after hearing John.  John was kind of a gruff, tell-it-like-it-is kind of guy. He wasn’t in the synagogue or the temple, he was out at the Jordan River.
Had he been in the temple or synagogue at any point?  It’s possible.  His father was a priest, after all.  Maybe his gruff message got him run out.  For any who know Methodist history, we know that it wouldn’t be unheard of for a preacher to get run out of the church for being confrontational and being relegated to preaching outdoors.
Anyways, John is out at the river preaching, confronting folks with their sinfulness, and calling them to repent—to confess that they are sinners, and to turn their life around.   People were gathering at the river, hearing his words, and coming forward for Baptism.  His in-your-face tact can easily be seen in the verses preceding our reading today when he discovered a group of Pharisees and Sadducees among those who had gathered amongst those listening that day and were coming forward to be baptized.  He didn’t mince words, “You brood of vipers!  Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?”  Now maybe they had come to check out what was going on, and had been caught up in the message, felt convicted, and were coming forward like the others gathered there…or maybe they were there to check out who was pulling all the people away from the synagogue, they had heard about some radical preacher at the river, and had come to check him out, maybe even entrap him, and they were coming to the waters like everyone else in an attempt to blend in.”  John’s words of condemnation suggest the latter, but we don’t know…all we know is that their presence reveal just what a fire and brimstone kind of preacher that John was, for he begins talking about judgement with the axe laying at the root of the tree, ready to cut down and burn any tree not bearing fruit.
Then we hear his words preparing the crowd for Jesus.  “You’ve come to see me, and I’ve used water to baptize you as I call you to repent of your sins.  The One I’m preparing you for, though, is greater than me.  And where I have baptized you with water, He’s going to submerge you in the Holy Spirit and fire.  He’s going to sort you out, gather what’s good, and the rest throw into the unquenchable fire.  How many of you, hearing this description of Jesus, having watched John place those coming before him under the waters of the river, would have lined up for Jesus, ready for the flames?  If I was a betting man, I would wager that most of us would have found our way quietly back into the synagogue for the nice comforting words of the local rabbi.  I mean, it is one thing to surrender ourselves to be immersed in the waters of baptism, though many of us were simply sprinkled with water and outside of recreational or bathing reasons have not been completely under the water, but the idea of voluntarily entering the flames is quite another—in fact many enter the waters of baptism in an effort to avoid flames, right?
We began our Pentecost preparation series of Experiencing The Spirit last week as we considered God’s Holy Spirit as the life-giving wind, the very Breath of God that hovered over the waters of creation, entered humanity giving us life, spoke words of approval over Jesus at His baptism, and entered the room of the gathered disciples on that amazing Day of Pentecost.
Today we come to find ourselves Experiencing the Spirit as Fire and Water—a way of experiencing the Holy Spirit, thanks to John the Baptizer, that is linked inextricably to baptism…and while we may readily accept the water, we shy away from the fire.
We understand the imagery of water in our Baptism.  We tend to naturally think of water as an agent of cleansing—we use water for washing our dirty dishes, washing our laundry, washing our cars, and washing ourselves.  Many of us have, in the last week or two, applied that cleansing water to our vehicles in an effort to remove the yellow coating of springtime…I know that I have at the car  wash on one occasion, and the rest of the time I let God pour down water from this cleansing clouds.  With this imagery, we can understand how the waters of Baptism cleanse us.  Thy represent God washing away our sin, the traces of original sin and our bondage to sin, and the sins of our past.  Through our Baptism, and through times of reaffirmation and remembering our Baptism, God pours Spirit our upon us and we are cleansed.
If that is the case…if with the waters of Baptism we are cleansed, then what’s with the fire imagery.  Why did John the Baptist say that Jesus was bringing something more?  If we are cleansed through the water, why do we need any fire?  Fire doesn’t cleanse, it consumes, it destroys.
Well, yes and no.  We tend to think of fire consuming and destroying in terms of it’s contact with paper and wood.  However a glassmith, blacksmith, goldsmith, and other craftworkers have quite a different view of, and use of fire when it comes to their work.  A goldsmith or a silversmith will place their precious metal within the heat of a fire, not to consumer or destroy those metals, but so that the metals might be purified.  Under the intense heat of the fire, all impurities are burnt away, leaving only the pure precious gold, silver, platinum, or whatever metal they are working with.  Also consider the work of a blacksmith or glassmith if you will.  They submerge their pieces of metal or pieces of glass into the flames of a fire, baptizing their medium with fire.  They then pull them out and begin working with them, the glassmith blowing and turning and the blacksmith taking his hammer and tools—both working their heated materials, shaping them into their envisioned design or intended shape.
It is in the same way that Jesus intends to baptize us with the Holy Spirit and the fire of The Spirit’s presence in our lives.  Just as the Spirit through the waters of Baptism washes us clean from sin, it is the fire of the Holy Spirit that transforms us.  Through the presence of the Spirit, God begins shaping us into who He desires us to be—through the sanctifying presence of the Spirit, God begins to shame us into the very image of Christ.
How does Jesus’ Spirit baptize us with fire?
It may be in the way that the Spirit confronted Jesus after his Baptism.  Following our passage from this morning, we have the scene in which Jesus comes to be Baptized by John.  In Jesus’ Baptism we read of the Holy Spirit descending upon Him, and afterwards immediately driving Jesus into the wilderness where Jesus was tempted.  Being Baptized by fire may be the Spirit doing the same to us, placing us in situations where we are tempted—tempted to place something else ahead of our commitment to God, tempted to worship something or someone other than God, tempted to doubt God’s claim upon our lives.  In the heat of temptation, we are tested and tempered, and when we remain faithful to God, we find ourselves growing stronger, the fruit of our faith growing sweeter.
The Baptism of fire may be through confronting us with the sinfulness in our lives of which we may not even be aware.  That fire was recently applied to my life repeatedly.  Having thought that I had moved well past the tendency to judge people at face value, I was confronted with the fact that I still have a long ways to go.  Recently I was approached by a couple of individuals that regularly seek assistance from our food pantry.  I found myself thinking that somehow I am going to have to tell them that they are going to have to come less frequently.  I was basing this on the fact that I felt they were just taking advantage of our generosity.  That very day I determined that I was going to say something to them…the fire was applied.  The first person opened their wallet and took out what I could see was the last of any cash money they had and said, “I want to make a donation” and placed the money in the children’s offering jar that sits on my desk.  The second informed me that a relative of theirs that has a farm had brought them more sweet potatoes than they could ever use and gave our church between five to ten pounds of the potatoes to distribute to anyone who came to seek food from the pantry.  A baptism of fire reminding me of the story of the widow’s mite and Jesus’ command to give to those who come seeking help.
Sometimes that baptism of fire comes through having to face the consequences of decisions that we have made—confrontations that force us to realize that a change must be made in our lives.  Maybe it is a heart attack after years of neglecting what our diets were doing to our bodies.  Maybe it is finding ourselves in overwhelming debt after striving to keep up with the Jones’.  Maybe it is losing a job after ignoring warning after warning that if we kept coming in late we would be terminated.  Maybe it was finding out that we don’t have a relationship with our spouse and children because every second of our time has been spent trying to climb that corporate ladder or pad our bank accounts.  Maybe it is the withdrawal that we have to go through as we try to overcome years of addictions.
Maybe that baptism of fire come through no fault of our own, but due to circumstances and situations brought on by natural events or the actions of others.  Maybe we find ourselves diagnosed with cancer and forced to go through radiation and chemo and as a survivor give our time to walk with others going through the same trials.  Maybe we find ourselves bullied by those who either want to embarrass us or run us off, and as we refuse to give in and disappear or fight them on their level, we find ourselves strengthened, and reassured of God’s presence in our lives giving us the strength to stand, realizing that we don’t have to live in fear.  Maybe we find ourselves the victims of a fire, flood, or other natural disaster, and finding ourselves afterwards overwhelmed by the loss and by the amazing compassion of those who come to help, we find ourselves transformed from being someone who only thinks of themselves, to someone that looks to care and provide for others first.
Whatever the way we receive a baptism by fire in which God starts reshaping us, as we experience God’s winnowing process clearing the chaff from our lives, we will be able to echo the words that Paul would write years after John proclaimed this message: “Therefore, since we are justified by faith [our sins washed away through the baptism of water], we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God.  And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings [in our baptism in the fire], knowing that our suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirt that has been given to us.”[1]
In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.




[1] Romans 5:1-5

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