Fires + Repentance

When I hear John’s call to repentance, when I taste the threat of rotten fruit, when I see visions of fire, my heart is uneasy. The language of repentance has come into such close contact with language that harms, that tells us we need to be one way to be saved. Language and structures that tell us we aren’t good enough, that we will never be enough, and that in order to repent and come close to God we must erase core aspects of our identity – our class, our race, our gender. I first see a fire that wants to consume us, to burn us to ash. I’ve experienced that fire as worthlessness, as despair, destroying from within as oppressive structures seek to destroy from outside.

But beloved ones, that is the fire of the world – a fire that leaves nothing in its wake but destruction, isolation, and fear. It is a fire that burns without grace. When I imagine the fire of God, it’s closer to the fire of a phoenix, where the ashes aren’t the end of the story and a new creation is born. It’s closer to the fire we use to cook our meals, to stay warm, to light our paths. It’s closer to the fire of the Karuk peoples, whose tribal land is what we now call northwestern California and southern Oregon. Part of their land management practices include intentional fires – strategically burning sections of land to reduce fuel build-up, renewing the ecosystem and reducing the risk of the large-scale catastrophic fires that the region is experiencing today. These intentional fires are necessary, and good.

The maintenance fires get rid of excess leaves, organic matter, and fallen branches, clearing the forest floor for new trees and plants to sprout. Without these fires, new growth is stopped before it can even break into the sunlight. The practice of controlled burns feels connected to the fire John the Baptist is speaking of in the text – burning the discarded chaff of the harvest, gathering the wheat into the barn. Getting rid of the material that is no longer necessary, and that impedes new growth. But no matter how necessary these fires are, they are still fire – they can burn, and they are risky. The work of repentance, and transformation, is similar.

The fire of God changes our hearts and lives, refining us so that we may grow good fruit. Yet in the midst it might feel like the fire of God is actually the fire of the world. Because it is hard to repent of the ways we have fallen short of our values. It’s hard to acknowledge the systems of harm that bind us. It is hard, sometimes, to believe that we have glimpsed the Kin-dom of God. Transformation is risky, because it asks us to let go of the patterns we have created. To hold our communities and ourselves accountable. It asks us to name uncomfortable truths about power and privilege, and to communicate openly and with love. Transformation includes allowing space for our grief and mourning as we form our lives in response to abundance, and grace. It asks us to believe in the Kin-dom of God.

I remember growing up, we always had a winter bonfire. I’m from a rural part of Vermont, and it was common to have bonfires for celebration, and out of necessity. For the whole year, we would gather material for the fire – grass clippings, fallen tree branches, the previous year’s Christmas tree, scrap wood – anything that wouldn’t be useful for the woodstove and was too big to just leave. As winter and snow set in, we would cover the pile with a tarp, and then on the evening of the burn, would clear off the snow and the tarp, and set the fire. I had a complicated relationship to these bonfires – I loved getting to stay up later than normal, I loved being gathered with my community and being warm in the snow, but I was also scared of the unpredictable nature of the fire. I was scared that the fire would spark, and spread, even as my dad reassured me that there were safety measures in place.

Sometimes I hold a similar, deep-seated fear in relation to transformation and repentance – I want assurance of control, when actually, doing the work vulnerability and authentically requires me to trust that God’s fire won’t consume me, even as it burns.

I read this text as a challenge, and a joyful agitation from God, who loves every fiber of our beings, just as we are, and as we are becoming. I read it in relationship to our anti-racism covenant, and in relationship to the Isaiah text. The section of Isaiah we read is fascinating to me because it is so utopic and feels so far-off. There are clues in the text that speak to prior transformation, which has allowed the Kin-dom to grow from stumps and roots. In order for a lamb to live with a wolf and feel genuinely secure, the wolf needed to prove its safety. The wolf needed to transform the way it was living and prove that it would not harm the lamb – not just in words, but also in actions. For a weaned child to put their hand over the den of an adder, the adder needed to prove that it would not harm the child – that it had changed its heart and was committed to being a space of welcome, not poison and violence. For me, repentance and transformation are deeply bound together, and they allow us to seek out refining fires that renew, and don’t burn us up with nothing left. It is not a utopic comparison, but as a white person, I think about my relationship and kinship to the wolf and the adder in this story – have I committed to a transformation that will allow genuine safety and welcome for those harmed by racism and white supremacy? And have I done so in response to God’s grace, in response to the fire of transformation?

This work of repentance asks us to make mistakes. John the Baptist isn’t calling for perfection in the midst of the Kin-dom, he is calling for good fruit – nourishing fruit, sweet, ripe, blemished, and wind-scarred. A challenge I have in this work is getting caught in cycles of despair and depression, where I am unable to imagine a time when the fires of the world will be put out, where I will feel whole, where Creation is not threatened, where the wolf and the lamb live together. In the midst of that despair, that waiting – I wouldn’t call it hope necessarily – but some sort of anticipation keeps me going. It’s the anticipation of unloading a fired kiln, seeing what unexpected imperfections are etched into the pottery, hoping nothing broke. It’s the anticipation that the world can be different – we can live into the promise of the Holy One. And I wonder if this is how the first Advent felt – full of anticipation and uncertainty and dreams. Because we know that the Christ-child is coming – John the Baptist’s community didn’t know that for sure. But still, they declare “the Kingdom of heaven has come near!”

Repentance and accountability are not easy. Letting go of old patterns, of coping skills that no longer work, of dominant narratives that harm – letting go of these things can feel like a loss, and like fire. But this work is rooted in growth, and in God. For me, this season of anticipating the Christ-child is asking me to trust that the fire of transformation will not burn me up, will not burn us up, because through it all God is holding us. The promise of the Kin-dom is one of abundance and transformation and accountability and joy.

In this season of fires and longings, where are we nurturing good fruit? Where are we burning away the excess build-up that keeps us separated from God and neighbor? Sometimes this work starts with the smallest, holiest moments– like extending grace to ourselves when we make a mistake, and trying something else the next time. Deciding that it’s not too late to repair a relationship, reaching out when we’re struggling. Committing to learn more about the tribal lands we are on, the land of the Miami, Sioux, Potawatomi, and Peoria tribes, and paying reparations. Reflecting and sharing with each other what we’ve been nourished by, what we’ve been hurt by, sharing our deepest dreams and fears. These small transformations point us towards the Kin-dom that is already here and on the way.

In the same way God delights in plants taking root and sprouting from ashes and stumps, God delights in our repentant, transformative growth, and God holds us through the fire as Mary will soon hold a screaming, wonder-filled Christ-child. Amen.