Let it BURN!

Acts 2:1-21

In the summer of 1988 a series of wildfires flared up in and around Yellowstone National Park. 

The National Park Service had recently researched the value of naturally occurring wildfires on vegetation and wildlife. 

For decades, many researchers had argued that wildfires served a definite purpose in the natural ecological cycle. 

They proposed that wildfires could help to clear out underbrush, dead plant matter that had accrued on the forest floor, eliminate vegetative competition for the same rich soil, reduce overgrowth, and increase grassland space for herd animals. 

Aldo Leopold made this claim in 1924 but not until 1972, -after timber companies, private citizens, and the Park service itself recognized the potential benefits- did the Park service pass a new policy. 

That year, the park service deemed fires that were prescribed as natural would be allowed to burn under controlled conditions. 

Between 1972 and 1987 235 wildfires broke out, but out of those 235 wildfires, only 15 had exceeded 100 acres.

The new policy went largely unnoticed until the summer of 88.

But that year, after an extensive drought and over 1,000 years since a major forest fire, Yellowstone erupted in flames. 

250 fires broke out that summer, with 7 major fires that were responsible for 95% of the famous Yellowstone wildfire. 

After remaining largely unnoticed throughout its history as a government agency, both the National Park Service and the National Forest Service became magnets for media attention. 

Sensational media reporting deemed these government agencies as irresponsible and incompetent. 

Some even claimed the Park Service was maliciously destroying a national treasure. 

By the time the fires ceased burning, 793,000 acres -36 percent of the park- had been impacted by the fires. 

Today, the Park service claims that even if they had tried to put out the fire, they were exhausting every resource they had to protect human life and property. 

The story of Pentecost is another story of a completely uncontrolled burn. 

The sound of a violent rushing wind fills the room, and it is the sound that attracts people throughout Jerusalem. 

And the people it attracts don’t meet any specific criteria. 

It is a vast array of people, different languages, different ethnicities. 

I read this text on the Pentecost Sunday I was confirmed, and ever since I have felt for whoever was tasked with reading off this geography lesson.

But the broad range of geographic locations these people call home and the diverse languages that are present, serves a purpose in our reading. 

As the people were scattered and divided at the tower of Babel, now the God who has scattered does a new thing in a new way. 

By the Spirit, God gathers together. 

Regardless of their language or ethnicity, they find that they are driven to hear the same thing.

Drawn to this room by a sound like the rush of a violent wind, confronted by the sound of people they hear speaking their own language. 

It is at this point that I could throw in the catchy gimmick about the language we all speak being the language of love, but that is a language that seems less prevalent or desirable today.

It’s also quite dishonest to the text, because what is heard does not spawn love, faith, answers, or certainty, just confusion and astonishment. 

This moment is often described as the “Birthday of the Church” but this is not the anniversary of the founding of the Church or the anniversary of a birth.

This is the dedication, the initiation of the Church that Christ has been building throughout his ministry. 

It isn’t the birth, it is the removal of the training wheels. 

The church that began with a man is now entrusted to his followers. 

They are given the power to move forward in this mission if they can train their ears on what they hear,  if they can listen. 

This past year has been difficult. 

The internship committee, Pastor Nickols, and a few others have been aware of the ups and downs of this past year. 

Over the past four years, my family and I had attempted to discern a very specific call. 

We believed that we were being called to return to the military. 

Throughout the process, I continuously dotted my i’s and crossed my t’s. 

I checked and rechecked paperwork. 

But paperwork was lost, emails mysteriously missed their intended inboxes, and finally in October the Navy changed their policy regarding the chaplain corps. 

The weekend of the Oktoberfest, I received an email advising me that my path would not only be an indirect one, but it may not lead to the ministry I envisioned at all. 

To be honest, this path was a rocky one from day one.

Surprise pregnancies, surprise classes, surprise transfers, surprise internships. 

These four years have been filled with uncertainty and the path forward was anything but clear. 

And had I known as I started down this path, I would never have dared to take the first step. 

So I guess being drawn to the mystery of it all is a good thing, but the problem is when we attempt to contain it. 

Throughout this process, I have been told time and again to trust in the Spirit. 

One afternoon I called a chaplain to resign my commission from the Chaplain Candidate Program. 

He was also one of the first to implore that I trust in the Spirit.

The chaplain who answered the phone asked me why I planned to resign my commission.

He was dumbfounded when I told him it was because I wanted to trust in the Spirit. 

You see, the Spirit always leads the church forward, oftentimes to places it doesn’t want to go.

Places WE don’t want to go. 

Never in my life did I plan to be a parish pastor. I knew my call.  I knew my place. I controlled that call, and I controlled what I was hearing. 

But this year I was given the gift of hearing a call from you all. 

This year I was entrusted with your children, your questions, your anxieties, your fears, your pains. 

This year I was given blank checks to be a pastor in a context that few interns will ever experience. 

And because of that, I have had the chance to hear the call of a congregation and a pastor, to do the same work I have done here. 

And so, here I stand, confused, uncertain. 

I will begin my call at St. Michael, Virginia Beach in June. I will be ordained at the Synod assembly and shortly thereafter installed. 

I don’t know where I will live and my family will not join me until the end of June, but I am so excited. 

Because I don’t know where this goes, just like I didn’t know where this internship would go. 

When I sat in a room with a youth group of two great people as we three sat staring blankly at one another, not knowing where it would go. 

But we listened to one another and those around us, even when we didn’t want to, even when it took us where we didn’t want to go. 

And during this past year another heard the sound and came to see what it was, and then another, and another, until the youth ministry grew to eight youth, one pastor, and one almost pastor. 

It wasn’t the youth group anyone wanted or anyone planned. 

You can bet I took credit for it when it came time for approval with the candidacy committee, but I didn’t do it. 

We did it because we listened, even when it meant the death of something. 

Peter, the eleven, and the rest of the gang are not where they want to be in the account we read today. 

Peter didn’t want to lead a church and even if he did, I am pretty certain he didn’t know that his own path would land him in the same place it landed Jesus. 

When we talk about the Spirit, we usually picture some magical ghostly figure like Casper the friendly Spirit, but it is described as a fire because it destroys. 

The Spirit destroys our dreams, our plans, our decisions about what is best for our lives, our church, our gifts. 

God, the Spirit does this because these are not our lives, this is not our church, and these aren’t our gifts

These are God’s lives. This is God’s Church. And these gifts belong to God. 

But that doesn’t give us a lot to look forward to when our plans are burned in these flames. 

But the flames give us the confidence that if we continue to listen, if we continue to look for the path forward, that even when we fail we can keep getting up to fail again, knowing that the way forward will eventually come about. 

Following those fires in Yellowstone, recovery began almost immediately. 

Very little replanting occurred when the Park service witnessed the fast pace of vegetative regeneration, the restoration of the old habitats, and the birth of new ones. 

They found that seed dispersal had been the most successful in the places where the fire had been the most severe. 

Aspen -which had been less prevalent before the fire- grew more abundant.

Aspen is the preferred food source for elk.

Elk are the preferred food source for bears and wolves. 

And contrary to the media reports, the fires killed very little wildlife, some of which were actually killed by the fire retardants used to contain the fire, rather than the fire itself. 

And the following year, Yellowstone attracted the highest number of visitors in a decade who came to see the wildflowers and wildlife that was in abundance as never before. 

It isn’t the way we want it to be, but this isn’t just biblical or theological. Fire serves a purpose in our lives. 

Because it is by the loss of the things we cling to the tightest, that new life takes shape. 

Today is my last Sunday and it is the loss of one thing and the beginning of a new thing, and yes, I am excited.

But I am not just excited for me, I am excited for you. 

Because today there is new room being made for new life, new growth, if we can just let go of the things we are grasping so tightly and listen. 

Are you listening?

Amen