A HEART STRANGELY WARMED
Matthew 3:11-12

A sermon given by the Rev. Richard H. Taylor
May 30, 2004 / Pentecost Sunday

John says, "I baptize… with water…, but one… is coming… [who] will baptize with… fire." I am not so sure I am into that. Baptized with fire.

I remember once studying the names of American religious denominations. I came across one entitled "The Fire-Baptized Holiness Church." I was not very eager to join.

John the Baptist in this passage uses the idea of fire in two ways. The one who is coming who will baptize with fire seems to be powerful, transformative, giving new life. Since water baptism is meant for repentance, forgiving and clearing away the past, fire baptism - like a refiner's fire cleaning out the imperfections in metal - seems dramatic yet purifying.

But John goes immediately to see fire differently.

"The chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire."

Fire - like every mother who brought up a child in a home with a gas or wood stove knows - fire works two ways. It is able to cook the dinner, make it tasty. It is able to warm a cold winter house. But it can burn a child's hand. And out of control it can burn down the whole house.

So mother said, "Don't play with fire." "Keep you hand off the stove."

Now, while John the Baptist engaged in vivid images, I don't think we should take him literally here. I don't think he meant to say that Jesus would set our hair on fire. I think what he was talking about is more like the famous title of today's sermon, "A Heart Strangely Warmed."

In Pentecost week of 1738, just five years before Beneficent Church was formed, and Anglican minister, John Wesley, attended a Moravian meeting on Aldersgate Street in London. There as Wesley listened to the message of justification through faith, he reported that his heart "was strangely warmed." Something happened to him emotionally, spiritually, internally. After this he felt he was able to trust in Christ.

Wesley was already a minister. He'd already had that seminary type training. He was in a formal denomination with lots of ritual. And yet he found that a transformation, a refining, a cleansing, a release was still possible for him.

Just a few years later the people who founded this Church were called "New Lights." And since most new light has some new energy source, some new fire, the people here expressed emotions very similar to those expressed by Wesley. In fact some of the people here had already met George Whitfield who had known the Wesleys since 1734.

Indeed when the elder Wesley toured Ireland near the end of his life he journeyed with a young Irish preacher by the name of James Wilson. James, or "Paddy," Wilson, later came to Providence and became the second pastor of this Church. His painting hangs in the front hall. He was the Pastor when this building was built.

So this "Heart Strangely Warmed" business in imbedded in our congregational memory.

Yet I wonder how many of us present here today have had a Wesley type experience? Have you felt on fire? Has your heart had an experience of burning?

When I was a young minister, I knew about Wesley, but never had such an experience. I thought it was something for exotic denominations with uneducated people.

But then, I have to admit, I did have an experience like that. I was attending a ministers conference in Springfield, Massachusetts, and the preacher was Yvonne Delk. I don't know how many of you know Yvonne. She was one of the first seminary-trained, ordained African-American women in the country. For many years she was the leader of social action work in our denomination. I somewhat knew Yvonne, and once had even had a noisy argument with her.

Anyway, this day she was preaching about social justice issues and why we needed to get involved and all of that - like you would expect she would. But she also gave it a personal note. She said God can call you to make a difference in life no matter how unworthy you think you are. We all have a personal calling. As I heard her talk I had this experience of a heart strangely warmed, I felt this is what I must do, this is the call I must answer.

Now, by that time I already felt I had had a conversion experience, so this wasn't that. It was something else. But it felt significant and important. I think the directions I went in my ministry after that were impacted by that moment.

Yet when I have told some other UCC people about this "heart strangely warmed" experience, most have said to me, "you were just having indigestion." We simply do not belong to a Church that wants to admit to emotions. We are such a heady Church that we put everything into rationality, everything into logic, the brain. Its like we don't have emotions, or if we do we save them for the Red Sox games.

Have you ever had your heart strangely warmed? Have you ever had a call in your life to be something, to do something, to affirm something? Are you an emotional being or just a cold calculating automaton?

You have been baptized with water, most of you. So has Jack today.

But have you ever been baptized with fire? Is there any warmth in your soul, any passion in your heart, any energy in your direction?

Now true emotion can do you in. Emotion can destroy you and your neighbor. Being open to emotions is playing with fire. That is why scripture uses the image of fire. You can either burn in a controlled way, like a powerful furnace warming up people and purifying gold. Or you can burn like an out of control forest fire destroying all around you. Or you can put out the fire altogether and die. To die is for the body to lose its warmth, for the body to go cold.

So what I want to encourage of you today is to find your fire, find your emotion, identify your call. Find and follow your heart. Jesus baptizes with fire. What gets you excited? What do you believe?

Make a choice. Listen to what T. S. Eliot says about this:

"The dove descending breaks the air
With flame of incandescent terror
Of which the tongues declare
The one discharge from sin and error.
The only hope, or else despair
          Lies in the choice of pyre or pyre -
          To be redeemed from fire by fire.

          "Who then devised this torment? Love.
Love is the unfamiliar Name
Behind the hands that wove
The intolerable shirt of flame
Which human power can not remove.
          We only live, only suspire
          Consumed by either fire or fire." 1

Amen.

1 - Eliot, T. S., Four Quartets - Little Gidding (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, New York, 1943/1971), p. 57.