It feels a bit cruel to me that, on a week when part of our country is being burned to the ground, the lectionary would give us a passage from the gospel of Luke that talks about Jesus coming with a baptism of the Holy Spirit and fire. It is cruel because we are seeing daily images of the power and destructiveness of fire. It is cruel because there will surely be pastors at churches today who will look at the suffering of so many Californians and will equate those fires to God’s judgment on the sins of the people. It is cruel because this passage from Luke makes it far too easy for those pastors to make such claims. And it is cruel because those of us who believe that pain and destruction and violence are antithetical to who God is still have to wrestle with John the Baptist’s word about the baptism Jesus brings as being “of the Holy Spirit and of fire.” So, it is with a great deal of trepidation that I approach this text this morning and ask the question, “What does it mean that the baptism Jesus brings is a baptism of the Holy Spirit and of fire?”

I remember when I was kid taking a trip with my family to Silver Dollar City in Missouri. If you’ve never been, I would describe it as a mix of theme park and frontier village. Among the craftsmen I remember from my visit was a glass blower who would demonstrate for a crowd his glass blowing prowess and talk about the different techniques he was using. If you’ve never seen glass blowing before, it is quite an amazing process. The glass blower had molten hot glass on the end of a giant metal straw. Then he would blow through the straw while turning it and the glass would expand like a balloon. The glassblower would then alternate between reheating the glass and blowing into the metal straw until it was the basic shape he wanted it to be. Then he might use some other tools to modify the shape until he had exactly what he wanted. Finally, he would use fire-safe gloves to remove the finished piece from the metal straw and would put it somewhere to cool.

The heat at which that glass needed to be for the glassblower to work with it properly was astounding. And the beauty that came from that process was simply spectacular. A similar thing could be said about blacksmithing. Working with metal requires heating it to outrageous temperatures so that the metal becomes pliable and then shaping it into what you desire it to be. A part of that process involves a refining of the metal when the impurities of the metal are broken down and released, which then strengthens that metal for what its new purpose will be. Refining removes those things within the metal that weaken it so that it will be stronger. When John the Baptist tells the people that the one who is coming “will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire,” I suspect that he is thinking about that sort of refining fire that removes the impurities within us in order to make us stronger.

I can’t help but read the words of John the Baptist here without thinking of the story of Pentecost. At Pentecost, the Holy Spirit comes upon the disciples and enables them to tell people the good news of Jesus in the native language of every person in attendance that day. What John’s words remind me of from this story is how the Holy Spirit came to the disciples in a rushing wind and tongues of fire. And here, John the Baptist talks about Jesus baptising with the Holy Spirit AND fire. Then he talks about the process of separating the wheat from the chaff, which involves wind blowing the chaff away while the wheat, which is heavier, stays put. At Pentecost, the Holy Spirit comes with a rush of mighty wind and with tongues of fire. I think the two stories are connected.

I return then to my question, “What does it mean that the baptism Jesus brings is a baptism of the Holy Spirit and of fire?” Perhaps you’ve heard or even used the phrase “baptism by fire.” When you’ve heard that phrase, what did it mean? Often this phrase is used when someone is doing something new and immediately faces a lot of unusual challenges or everything goes wrong at the same time. Being baptized by fire is used to mean that we are having to learn from adversity and trial. Is that what it means that Jesus baptizes with the Holy Spirit and fire? If so, does that mean that we should expect the Christian life to be one of trial after trial after trial?

As I alluded to earlier, some people believe that this fire that Jesus baptized with is the fire of hell. This is perhaps the interpretation that many of us grew up with. In this interpretation, Jesus comes to save the righteous and destroy the sinners. Jesus comes in judgment, and those who have been disobedient to God will pay the price and burn in the fire. In this interpretation, fire is something scary that destroys. Fire’s only redeeming value is the destruction of evil. One the most famous of what many call the “fire and brimstone preachers,” Jonathan Edwards once said, “Almost every natural man that hears of hell, flatters himself that he shall escape it.” If baptism with fire means that only those without sin will be saved from destruction, then none of us will survive. If that is our interpretation, then the Christian life is all about avoiding evil or trying to do enough good to make up for the evil we do.

 A third interpretation would be the image of a refiner’s fire. In a refiner’s fire, metal is melted down until the bad parts, the dross, float to the top. The dross is then removed and the remaining metal is then pure. For me, this interpretation sits as a middle ground between the two previous interpretations. Like the first, this interpretation requires that we endure trials. But in a refiner’s fire, we endure trials not for salvation but for purification. We are not trying to avoid sin so much as we are asking God to remove that sin from us and enduring the melting down of our souls in order for the dross to float to the top and be skimmed off. In this interpretation, the goal of the Christian is to become pure. But perfect purity is impossible. Even the purest gold is not 100% gold. 24 karat gold is the purest gold, yet even still it is only 99.7 to 99.9% gold. In the same way, we will never be 100% sinless.

That leads me to the fourth way we might view a baptism by the Holy Spirit and fire. For this interpretation, we return to the connection between John’s words and the story of Pentecost. At Pentecost, the Holy Spirit came as tongues of fire, but that fire didn’t burn the disciples. It didn’t melt them. Instead, the fire shaped them, transformed them, molded them into something new. In the arts of glassblowing and blacksmithing, you heat up your medium in the fire just enough to be able to shape it into something new, something of your own design. That is how I like to imagine a baptism with fire. Water cleanses us and clears off the dirt on the outside. But the Holy Spirit shapes us, makes us into a new creation. We may have some of our impurities burned away in the process. We may face many trials all throughout our lives. We will still have to try to make choices that are right and just and loving and in line with God’s will. But the ultimate goal in the process is to be formed more and more into the image of God.

Some of you may have seen the movie “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” In this movie, three escaped convicts (Everett, Pete, and Delmar) are running from the law and at one point find themselves hiding out in the woods. Within the woods they encounter a group of white-robed people heading toward the river for baptism. They watch as the ceremony begins and each person is baptized in the name of Jesus. Delmar finds himself overcome by the beauty and mystery of what is happening and runs out into the water to be baptized himself. Delmar returns to the others proclaiming that his sins have all been washed away, even the sin of stealing a pig for which he’d been convicted. Everett says to him, “But you said you were innocent of that.” “I lied,” he replies, “but that’s been washed away too!” Later on, the three convicts steal a pie from a windowsill where it was cooling. Delmar feels guilty and returns to place a $1 bill where the pie had been. Delmar hadn’t been made holy in baptism. He still sinned, but he had been molded into a closer likeness of God.

Jesus came to John to be baptized, though he needed no cleansing of sin. We come to God for cleansing that water cannot provide. So Christ meets us with a baptism of the Holy Spirit and fire. Christ, through the Holy Spirit, shapes us into something better than we are. In the baptism of Jesus, we are able to lay claim once again to our own baptism and ask the Holy Spirit to remain at work within us, shaping us into people who look a bit like Christ. People who act in love and justice. People who put compassion ahead of personal gain. People who put justice for all ahead of glory for self. People who put love ahead of hate. People who put life ahead of violence. People who put freedom ahead of control. May we be shaped and molded by the fire of the Holy Spirit, the fire of God’s great and intense love for us. And may we speak and act in kindness, love, and compassion to one another and to ourselves. Amen.