We often hear the adage “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” but in today’s Gospel, Jesus effectively tells us that what we THINK is fixed, he will break. How often do we have to break old things in order to let the Spirit in? How often in our quest to make the church into our rock of stability do we undermine the Spirit by shutting out every new thing?

For example Anglican worship relies upon deep symbols that work on us on many levels. Sitting, standing, kneeling, praying, singing, speaking, eating, drinking, hugging, reading, keeping silence, dancing, crying, laughing. Our worship engages the senses. It engages the whole person. There are people who believe that what is essential about our worship is the particular set of words used.

About twelve years ago I had a woman who was adamant about the language in the service, how it should be formal language in addressing God, how “King James English” (actually she meant Elizabethan English) is the official language of our church and on and on she continued. She was in her nineties so I tried to say something pastoral to her (remember I was a new priest) like, “I guess the 1928 prayer book holds a special place in your heart.” She looked at me with fire in her eyes. I know she wanted to say “No stupid” but instead she just shook her head and said “No I mean the 1895 prayer book.”

Jesus had that same fire in his eyes. Scholars have debated this enigmatic passage for centuries but there is one thing perfectly clear about it. When Jesus refers to the stress he is under until it is finished, he uses the same words which are the last words he utters from the cross – “it is finished.” This is not the cuddly Jesus we teach in Sunday school. No, this Jesus is on fire with a mission.

Unlike those whose passions are ruled by lesser things like particular versions of the prayer book, the latest theological hot buttons and political fads; the fire in Jesus’ eyes runs deep. It is about something primary; inescapable; fundamental to the universe. It must be shared, grasped, understood and spread before he is finished. How can he make the point so that everyone for all time will know how serious he is about it?

One of my favorite non-Episcopalian pastor-teachers is Bill Easum who wrote a delightful book titled “Sacred Cows Make Gourmet Burgers.” Bill once asked the question why so many pastors claim to be burned out when they have never been on fire. In one question it sums up where our church has been the past 100 years. Clergy and lay leadership have been so consumed by lesser things that they are tired and claim to be burned out when they have never been on fire.

Jesus came to set you on fire. And that is my job too.

Local singer-song writer Garth Brooks and Jenny Yates wrote a song titled “Standing Outside the Fire.” Like so many songs about love it applies equally well to the religious-divine impulse as it does to more human aspects of love.

The song begins with a contrast between people who have no scars from life, who control and never risk – those our society admires as strong and independent; and those fools who “dance within the flame, who chance the sorrow and the shame, that always comes with getting burned.”

The refrain turns to the irony in this, “You’ve got to be tough when consumed by desire, ‘Cause it’s not enough to stand outside the fire.” The next two verses make the same kind of contrast but here the fools that get burned are explained as those who are “unable to resist the slightest chance that love might exist.”

Jesus was immersed; he was literally baptized in the fire. He got burned. He took on our sorrow and our shame. He was just like one of us and yet he gave up his humanity freely to a slow agonizing death so that WE might know that love does indeed exist.

It is a love that exceeds mother and daughter, father and son, friend and friend. It is a love that transcends life and death itself. It is a love that beckons to us from an empty tomb whispering to us we are free, we are whole, we are children, we are born again… If we will just stand inside the fire.

My beloved congregation (You DO know that you are beloved to me.) the world’s problems out there are immense and they are not getting better. Population is out of control. Violence and especially violence in the name of religion makes tears fall from heaven. Pollution has become just another word for “we are making money don’t bother us.” Disease spreads on the back of globalization. Poverty and income inequality surround this church only a few hundred yards in any direction.

Yet there are a few who are brave and tough and who cannot resist the chance that love does exist. Some call them fools. I call them, “my parishioners.” Jesus invites you to stand inside the fire. Because if there is any antidote to the problems of the world and the troubles of our hearts, it is not some politician in Washington. It is not a bottle of pills and a shrink’s couch. It is the fire. Stand in it. Love Does Exist.