Holy Spirit as Freeing Fire

(Message given at Wayside Friends Church on October 1, 2023)

Let’s look at a couple of verses from the book of Hebrews, chapter 12 verses 28 and 29:

Since we are receiving [an inheritance] that is unshakeable, let us be thankful and please God by worshiping [Them] with holy fear and awe. For our God is a devouring fire.

Heb. 12: 28-29, NLT, adapted

At first reading, this is not a comfortable thought: Our God is a fire. A devouring fire, or a consuming fire as it reads in other translations. And yet, I’m drawn to this metaphor like a moth to a…well, you get the idea.

In the bible, the image of fire is often associated with God, and particularly the Holy Spirit. Moses and the burning bush; God guiding the Israelites through the wilderness as a pillar of fire at night; the Holy Spirit appearing on the day of Pentecost, in what looked like tongues of fire. 

Yet it’s a challenging image, because fire is so often destructive.

If we work at it, we can find positive aspects of fire. Like the Giant Sequoia tree cone, that releases its seed when fire dries it out, bringing new life and growth. Or removing the dross, removing the waste, to purify gold. I’m old enough that I remember singing the 1990’s worship chorus “Refiner’s Fire” often, where we sang that our desire was to be purified by refining fire.

But even these positive metaphors can have problematic aspects. 

Take the image of heating iron ore to bring out the iron.

You put in iron ore—in this video example, the ore is ground into powder. You heat it and heat it and heat it, you pound it and pound it and pound it. The iron ore is full of impurities, impurities that at the end of the process result in something known as slag, as waste. Smelting is a brutal process.

In this metaphor, we associate ourselves with the impure ore. Seeing ourselves as full of impurities, as not having value unless a bunch of stuff is burned and pounded out of me—that’s a difficult thing.

And who is doing the smelting? When this is our metaphor when we think of God as burning fire, it’s natural to put God in that position of the one running this brutal process.

Do I have to submit to this brutal process to “purify” myself? To become acceptable? Hmmm.

Maybe we should we just downplay or ignore this “fire” image from the bible.

Part of why I am drawn to this image of fire and can’t let it go is what I’ve read over the last several years from women Christian mystics like Hildegard of Bingen, Mechthild of Magdeburg, and Catherine of Sienna.

These spiritual giants definitely don’t downplay or ignore the image of God as fire—they embrace it, making fire a central expression of an intimate, life-giving relationship with our Creator.

So how are we to think about this image of fire in ways that acknowledge our need for growth, change, even for purging…but that doesn’t destroy our value as children of God? That doesn’t make God an inflicter of pain?

Tonight and next week, I get the chance to help us wrestle with this together.

Because there is such life in this reality of God’s fiery presence! Tonight is the more uncomfortable part—next week will be the cozy campfire, the life-giving warmth of a crackling fire on a cold winter’s night. 

For tonight, I wrestled with trying to find different wording, a different metaphor than the refining fire or purifying fire language. So tonight, we’ll examine the Holy Spirit as freeing fire, and next week the Holy Spirit as fueling fire.

My hope in shifting from refining fire to freeing fire is to correctly capture what I think God’s desire in this kind of transforming work truly is. I don’t believe God desires to inflict pain upon us, I don’t believe God is looking to burn our bad habits and sins out because we are useless, or because God can’t stand us. 

I believe God wants to free us.

I wasted a bit too much time trying to find some kind of video to bring this “freeing fire” image home.

So instead I need you all to flex your imaginative muscles. Picture in your mind a campy, cartoonish movie with a villain. You know, the kind who establishes some elaborate trap for the hero of the movie, and then gets caught monologuing instead of just taking care of business.

Imagine the hero tied up, a tether or rope that keeps them from being able to escape the clutches of the villain. And then, instead of that movie cliche where a long fuse or a trail of gunpowder leads to a bomb, instead there’s this long, slow, burn of a fuse that leads right to the rope that captures our hero. And the fire burns through and releases the hero, who escapes the clutches of the villain! (You can cheer now.)

And we can move out of cartoonish movie land to things we know in this world.

Sometimes the villain is our own body, our own body creating malformed cells that threaten our very lives, and the visit to the dermatologist with the laser light tool that burns off those cells frees us from our body’s cell making power gone awry. 

The reality is that there are things in this world that hold us captive. Sometimes these things are out of our control; and sometimes, they are of our own making. I despise the reality of sin in our world. 

I recognize sin language isn’t common these days. It isn’t language we often use. 

As strongly as I hold the belief that we are beautifully and wonderfully made, with infinite value as good creations of our good God, I also see that there are things around me, in me, even because of me that harm the beautiful creation that I am; that harms the beautiful creation that you are. 

I want to be free from those things that harm. I need a God who can bring freedom. What do we need freedom from? If the Holy Spirit is a freeing fire, what are some of the things we need freeing from?

When I was in seminary I took a class on Family Systems and Counseling from a man named David Augsburger.

His class was known for the fun little cartoons he put on an overhead projector (some of you will have to ask your parents what those are) to help us understand what we were learning. The cartoons looked a little dated to us even back then, and I took the class in 1991—so putting them on the screen today is maybe not the definition of cutting edge, but here we are.

His class was where I was first introduced to the idea of fusion in relationships. Fusion is the way we get locked in relationally—stuck, frozen, trapped, bound in unhealthy patterns with others. 

Sometimes it’s with a partner, or a parent. Whole family systems can create fusion. And, as I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to see that some of the most unhealthy aspects of systemic injustice are a form of fusion.

Fusion doesn’t only come about because we agree, because we fuse into group think with likeminded people.

I actually remember the day he put this cartoon up on the screen and being totally confused. I thought of fusion as enmeshment, agreement, stuck because we conform to people who are like us. And that is what is depicted on the right.

But some of the most powerful fusion comes as a reaction against. We think we are rejecting the system we grew up in, the system we were taught. But we become so consumed by attacking it that we are fused, frozen, trapped, bound into one way of acting: I will do the opposite of what that system wants me to do. That’s what’s happening on the left side of the chasm.

But this whole picture is showing fusion. Neither side is freedom. Fusion is decision making that is completely defined by the other, either positively or negatively.

Augsburger had another series of cartoons that brought out the power of fused systems, even when we think we are fighting against them.

What we need is true freedom, to move to a new reality that is not defined and locked in (positively or negatively) by the system around us.

There’s a biblical story that shows what it’s like to be caught in a system of fusion and hate, that shows how much we need freedom. It’s the story of Jonah, which we usually only tell to kids, and where we often miss the entire point of the story.

Jonah is an entire book of the Old Testament, four chapters of succinct and powerful storytelling, four acts of a drama. Chapter 1, or Act 1, is the set up. Jonah hears the voice of God asking him to go tell the powerful neighboring country of Assyria that judgment is coming from God if they don’t shape up. And Jonah says nope, and runs away, getting on a boat going in the opposite direction.

He’s supposed to go to Nineveh, the capital city of the Assyrian Empire.

Assyria was powerful, with an infamous army of charioteers who struck fear in all the countries around, including Israel. All of Israel feared them, hated them, and it seems a bit strange that Jonah doesn’t want to be the voice to declare God’s judgment upon them because of this hatred. We’re gonna find out why later—it’s just written really well, leaving us in suspense at first about the reason he doesn’t want to declare judgment on Israel’s enemy.

So he gets on a ship going the other way, there’s a big storm, everybody on board is afraid, they roll the dice and it points to Jonah as the problem. He says uh-oh, my bad, I serve the Almighty God and I disobeyed, throw me overboard and you’ll be fine. The sailors do it, the storm immediately stops, and God sends a big fish to rescue Jonah from drowning (the fish is rescue, not punishment.) End of chapter 1.

In Act 2, we are inside the fish. Jonah says sorry, writes a great praise song, and gets spit out on dry land, good as new. If the book ended here, Jonah could go on a great Evangelical speaking and worship tour with his praise song and testimony and become famous. But, the story doesn’t end here, we’re only halfway home.

In Act 3, Jonah gets a second chance. The command comes again: “Go to Nineveh, give them the message I told you.”

“Oh ok fine.” Jonah goes, but we get signs his heart still isn’t in it. The bible describes Nineveh as this huge city that takes three days to walk all the way through. Jonah takes one day, goes in about a third of the way, and says: “Forty days from now Nineveh will be destroyed.” 

I mean you can’t even call it a half-hearted effort. It’s like a third-of-a-heart effort. 

But wow! Talk about results!

Everybody, from the greatest to the least, believes God’s message. The king gets off the throne, takes off the royal robes, puts on mourning clothes, and orders everyone to fast and repent…because “Who can tell? Perhaps even yet God will change Their mind and hold back Their fierce anger from destroying us.” (Jonah 3:9, NLT, adapted)

And that’s exactly what happens. If the story ends here, Jonah could conceivably do another book tour about what an amazing preacher he is, and how he led the mighty Assyrian Empire to repentance. But the story’s not over, and the big drama is now going to be revealed.

Jonah’s not having it in Act 4. 

“I knew it!” he yells at God. “This is why I ran away, I know what you’re like, I knew you’d do this and be all nicey-nice to those horrible people! I knew that you are a merciful and compassionate God, slow to get angry and filled with unfailing love. You are eager to turn back from destroying people. Just kill me now, Lord!” (Jonah 4:2b-3a, NLT)

Here is a man locked, trapped, and bound in negative fusion.

He so defines himself by hatred of the people oppressing him that he literally yells at God for being merciful and compassionate! He speaks some of the best and truest words about the character of God, but he’s furious about it. He’s completely  locked into even rejecting the good character of who God is, because he doesn’t want God to be that way to the people who have hurt him.

Jonah is no longer defined by being the follower of this merciful and compassionate God. Jonah has defined his entire life, identity, values, and feelings on his hatred of Assyria. He is negatively fused, and he is trapped from the freedom of following God somewhere new, full of mercy and compassion.

I want to go gently here, but I do want to go here.

We can become negatively fused on our faith deconstruction path. We can let wounds—from others, from society, from churches—we can let our wounds and the ones who did the wounding still define us, still trap us, still wrap us up tight as we spend our whole lives fighting against them. 

We can let them still define us, even while we are fighting to do the opposite.

Let me be crystal clear on what I’m not saying. I’m not saying, “Don’t deconstruct our faith,” like that is the wrong thing. I’m saying, “I really don’t want us to continue having our life responses defined by the ones who hurt and oppressed us.”

I think what I’m longing for as I am drawn to this image of the Holy Spirit as fire, is that I want to find a true freedom, a true release from what is binding me.

In the book of Jonah, God finishes with a little object lesson of a plant to give shade and then a worm who takes it away, and Jonah’s anger over it. This shows me a God who wants to release me and you from being fused into the damage and wounding of this world. God ends the book of Jonah by saying, “There’s more than 120,000 people in Nineveh who need freedom” —and this next part is actually in the bible— “not to mention all the animals.” And then God says: “Shouldn’t I feel sorry for such a great city? Should I not be concerned?” (Jonah 4:11)

God wants to release us from our harm and hatred to walk into a new realm where God’s infinite mercy and compassion define us. 

I’m not condoning or excusing oppression. I’m not asking us to just show mercy and compassion on the structures and people who harm us no matter what. No, in the book of Jonah, the oppressors do the right thing! They see the wrong they’ve done and turn their backs on it, while turning to the merciful and compassionate God. This example IS what all oppressors and oppressive structures need to do.

For the Ninevites, their awareness and rejection and freedom from their past wrongs give them a freedom to embrace the God of mercy and compassion.

They get out of the fusion, out of the enemy and oppression cycle, and walk into new freedom with God.

It’s Jonah that can’t find freedom from his old way of thinking. It’s Jonah who is bound and not free to walk into a new freedom with God. There’s one easy application, to see how Christians from a more conservative perspective are bound up and can’t accept the mercy of God. But there’s always the more challenging journey of asking, “Where am I bound? Where am I negatively fused in ways that are keeping me from freedom?”

This is the power and struggle of the Holy Spirit as freeing fire.

I’m starting to see deeper ways I am bound by this world and its injustices and oppression than I saw in my younger days when I was singing “Refiner’s Fire” and only thinking of my own personal failings and sins. I am bound, sometimes, like I thought then, by my own wrong choices. That’s true. 

I am also bound, as are you, by a world of corrupted power that creates oppressive systems. 

And I can also be bound by getting locked into oppositional defiance with those oppressive systems, stuck only seeing the world as a binary between “like them” and “not them.”

We need freedom from our own wrong choices, from the systems that oppress, and from fused relationships that control all the options we see.

For centuries, those studying spiritual formation have identified two movements of the spiritual life. 

There is one movement of being torn away from this world’s values and oppression, a movement so old it has a latin name: contemptus mundi. This tearing away from the things that bind is the work of the Holy Spirit, in what I’m calling freeing fire. 

And there is a second movement of the spiritual life, the movement of God’s infinite heart of mercy and compassion, the movement expressed by God’s ending words to Jonah: “Shouldn’t I be concerned for these people?” We are, as Quaker Thomas Kelly wrote almost a hundred years ago, “quickened to a divine and painful concern for the world—amor mundi.” That’s for next week, the work of the Holy Spirit I’m calling fueling fire.”

Kelly, in one of my favorite quotes, put it this way:

“[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

May the freeing fire of God’s Holy Spirit unlock us from being defined by those who have hurt us.

May the freeing fire of the Holy Spirit break us from being part of the oppressive systems of this world, freeing us from our participation in bringing harm individually and systemically. 

May we positively walk with God in mercy and compassion, instead of negatively fuse against the harm of the church. 

And may Holy Spirit fire release us into a new realm where we experience the fullness of a new way of living, defined by our infinitely merciful and compassionate God.