(Message given at Wayside Friends Church on October 8, 2023)
Oh our Redeemer and Resurrection,
Oh eternal Trinity!
Oh Fire ever burning,
Fire that never goes out,
never dims,
never can be diminished—
even if the whole world takes fire from you!
Catherine of Siena (1347-1380)
Last week, we began wrestling with the idea of God, of the Holy Spirit, as fire.
Last week was freeing fire, the way God’s work in us can break the ways we are trapped, bound, and fused to the harm and sin in ourselves, and in the systems around us.
This week, as Catherine of Siena so passionately articulates, it’s the Holy Spirit as fueling fire—an energy, a power source, a sustenance that will give us strength and energy to move and live and be as God created us to be in this world.
Women—whether medieval mystics like Catherine, or flesh and blood ones I have experienced in my lifetime—women have often given me a glimpse of a living, breathing relationship with God that is filled with fiery passion and power.
The truth is, I have had times in my life where that experience seems far from my own. I’ve had many times in life where I have longed for more power and passion in my faith journey to help me through day to day struggles.
My partner Elaine and I met at George Fox as students, and we both served as RA’s, resident assistants, in two of our years on campus. During our senior year there was an RA retreat out at Tilikum that serves as a significant memory for me. Elaine and I talked about this Friday night, and she doesn’t remember the event I’m going to share. So I’m hoping that I convey this accurately!
As I remember it, we stayed up late talking with the Dean of Students, downstairs at the tables outside the kitchen at Tilikum’s Retreat Center.
Deb Lacey was the dean when we were there, and she was a prophetic and passionate person at the time, not afraid to speak her mind as God prompted her. I was…not like that then. It was a season of life where I lived into my hyper-responsible first born side, where I was very logical and rational and careful, didn’t rock the boat, and, if I’m perfectly honest, pretty buttoned down and not a lot of fun.
As I remember it, we were up until around 1 in the morning, listening to her amazing stories of radical obedience to God, of passionate encounters with others that came from obedience to Spirit leading. I remember saying: “I’m just not like that. I kinda want that, but I just can’t see ever being that way.”
She smiled and looked at me. “You’re young,” she said. “I think you might find God works in beautiful ways over time.”
It was a seed planted.
However tightly wound and buttoned down I saw myself then, the seed was planted that I might not always stay that way; that God might work in me over time to bring about something that looked more fiery, more passionate, more free, more energizing to myself and to others.
In less than a year, I found myself in seminary. Everyone knows theological study is the place to escape logical, belief-focused, intellectual Christianity. Ha!
But even during three years of stretching the brain and belief and intellectual side of my faith, there were these glimpses of yearning for more. During those years I went on a spiritual retreat that Richard Foster and Dallas Willard led. We experienced 24 hours of silence during that retreat, and I found myself in a library, thumbing through this book about the year 1968, the year I was born.
I ended up journaling in this incredibly passionate and self-indulgent way about how maybe my generation, born out of the fire and ashes of the civil rights movement that seemed to crash and burn in 1968, maybe my generation would emerge from the ashes, phoenix-like, to change the world!
A little bit of a giant ego, but also a little bit of fire and passion. And it was far more energizing than the parsing of Greek verb tenses I was doing in seminary.
I wanted a living faith—a living, breathing, vibrant faith that made an impact on this world and the people around me!
This seed planted by a 1 am conversation in college kept growing. When I wrote a book about my experience of discovering Hildegard, the 12th century mystic, I traced how my growing desire for a living experience of God was decades long. It took a long time, searching for an experience of God that would fuel me, guide me, inspire me, empower me to live and love as God does in this world.
I now firmly believe Christianity isn’t a belief system or a code of ethics or fundamentally about our brains. At the heart, I believe our experience of God can be a fueling fire that empowers us to join what God is doing—God’s work to bring unity, justice, belonging, and love to this world, this world where we so often experience the opposite.
Listen to Hildegard describe a life-changing experience of God.
“This is what happened in the 1,141st year of the incarnation of Jesus, Son of God, when I was forty-two years and seven months old. Something exploded like lightning from heaven in my mind, blinding me. It consumed my thoughts, warming my heart without burning it, as the sun’s rays warm whatever they touch. All of a sudden, I understood what the Psalter meant, what the Gospelists wrote, and the meaning of all the other Old and New Testament books, even though my grammar was no good, since I lacked all formal instruction.”
(Hildegard of Bingen, 1098-1179)
Let me give some context for this life-changing experience. At this point, Hildegard had lived in an abbey for more than three decades, dedicating each day to worship and prayer. For years, she had been the person in charge, the Abbess, sought after for her wisdom and spiritual insight. She had joined other nuns for prayer five times a day, every day. She knew the Bible inside and out.
Yet something radically different now occurred, and she’s wrestling like all the mystics to give it language.
“Lightning.” “Blinding.” “Warming.” “Burning.” “Sun.” She doesn’t use the word “fire,” but “fire” fits seamlessly, doesn’t it? Something new, something deeper is happening that is fueling her, and it changes the course of her life. It’s why we still know about her today.
Here’s another quote from her where she does use the word fire, and where she is pushing back against the patriarchy of the time which claimed she, as a woman, shouldn’t be speaking up.
“I’ve not got the sinew of a lion, because I’ve never been classically taught. I’m also nothing like an early Church Father, because I’ve never officially been a student. I’m merely a too-sensitive, frail rib with mystical lungs, who saw a living, blazing fire that couldn’t be put out.”
(Hildegard of Bingen, 1098-1179)
Look, she says. You may have the great education, the Ivy League degree on the wall. You may have the learning, the position, the gender that makes other people think they should listen to you.
But I’m the one telling the world about the living, blazing fire that couldn’t be put out.
I think immersing herself in worship, in the Abbey, in spiritual formation, in the bible prepared the soil of her life in amazing ways.
But along with Hildegard, I want to shout to the world that the central thing is this Seed of God that wants to birth life in us and in this world.
Each week we hear our mission read at the beginning of the service.
We remind ourselves we are a Christ-centered Quaker community. I think “Spirit-fueled” could slide right in there too.
We need this fire of God to fuel us, because the oppression and injustice in this world is so great, that compassion fatigue is going to crush us without fuel. I’ve had plenty of times in the last decade where it felt like doing the right thing wasn’t enough, that nothing could really change the systems that oppress, and it just made me want to go hide out by myself alone.
At Wayside, we want to be together, together seeking experiences of God that fuel us for the long haul. It won’t look the same for each of us. It won’t always be the dramatic, date-able experience that Hildegard had. But we exist as Wayside Friends because we are centering on Christ and seeking to live and thrive on the fueling of the Holy Spirit.
As Susan Ankeny said last week in open worship, I believe the fire of God is the love of God.
And that love of God is unstoppable—energizing us, gently expanding in us so that we can’t stay alone. The love of God constantly points us to those around us who need to be reminded of their value, who need to be freed from bondage, who need to be bathed in the healing love of their Creator.
God’s love is contagious! Uncontainable! God’s love builds community, and it is for the whole world, not just for me. God’s love is a fire that is eternal, unstoppable, incomprehensible—and bathing in God’s unlimited love is the fueling fire we need.
Let’s listen to some of Paul’s words to the Ephesians:
I pray that from God’s glorious, unlimited resources They will empower you with inner strength through Their Spirit. Then Christ will make his home in your hearts as you trust in him. Your roots will grow down into God’s love and keep you strong. And may you have the power to understand, as all God’s people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love is. May you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully. Then you will be made complete with all the fullness of life and power that comes from God.
Ephesians 3:16-19, NLT, adapted
This, I truly believe and truly experience, is the heart and power and center of Christian faith.
It is a mystery. I don’t know why we don’t all experience it easily, why we don’t always experience it instantly, why we don’t all experience it the same way.
But three decades after that seed was planted, the seed of an idea that my experience of God could be different—I say with joy that it is different.
I have intentionally watered that seed and prepared the soil of my life. I have sunk my roots into God’s love. And slowly (not on a straight upward line, but in fits and starts and slips and falls), slowly I have changed. My story is that I see the work of God, the love of God, the experience of God transforming me far more than my own striving.
Experiencing Christ’s love transforms how we see ourselves.
And, experiencing Christ’s love takes us outside of ourselves. My most profound spiritual experiences, the closest things I’ve come to that have been like prophetic words or interventions, they have not been for me. They have been for the benefit and the good of others.
Experiencing Christ’s love more and more, gives us God’s love for others…more and more.
This is the message of these dear saints who have gone before us.
Mechthild of Magdeburg from the 13th century tells us that the union of love is God’s supreme task:
O blessed Love,
This has always been your task, and still is:
To bind together God and the human soul.
That shall be your task forever.
Mechthild of Magdeburg (ca. 1207-1282)
Catherine of Siena from the 14th century saw that life with God is not just about me and God. God’s love will blaze in me for the whole world:
Then I,
purified by the fire of divine love,
engulfed in the knowledge of myself and of God,
I grew hungry
for the salvation of the whole world,
for the reformation of the Holy Church.
Catherine of Siena (1347-1380, my paraphrase)
And Thomas Kelly, in the quote I’ve long loved and shared last week, brings them both together:
[God] plucks the world out of our hearts, loosening the chains of attachment. And [God] hurls the world into our hearts, where we and [They] together carry it in infinitely tender love.
Thomas Kelly, “A Testament of Devotion”
I join with the prayer of Paul in Ephesians.
May Christ make his home in each of us, as we sink our roots into God’s love. May we experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully. And may we be energized by this Divine Fire of Love, completely, fully, unstoppably—so that we, too, love like God loves.