Discovering Fire

Discovering Fire A power cut on a winter’s night! That is unusual in the part of the world I write from. Seeking the cause, a relative of mine looked out her window to see their barn of hay and straw engulfed in flames. The wind kept the fire just enough in check to spare their house but the barn was an inferno and everything in it was destroyed. Humans did not invent fire but they harnessed it to their use and it transformed their lives. Cooking and heating, smelting and forging – it served us and sometimes destroyed us. Fire found its way into metaphor, particularly as an expression of love. Teilhard de Chardin wrote that one day men and women will truly transform the world through love and then ‘for the second time we will have discovered fire.’ Job, like the Book of Qoheleth, has depressing passages about the hopelessness of life. It is no more than ‘pressed service’ or ‘hired drudgery.’ I am like a ‘slave sighing for the shade’ or a ‘man with no thought but for his wages.’ ‘Swifter than a weaver’s shuttle my days have passed, and vanished, leaving no hope behind.’ Bitter words. And then a fire, not a destructive fire but a fire giving new hope breaks out. It must have been like that when Jesus appeared in the synagogue in Capernaum. The people suddenly sat up astonished; ‘Here is a teaching that is new,’ they said, ‘and with authority behind it.’ They discovered a new energy in themselves. Drudgery was left behind and they felt something was about to ‘disturb the universe’ and they were part of it There are thrilling moments like that. The Second Vatican Council was one of them; the Independence of Zimbabwe, or any country, was another and I suppose for the Greeks the new government they have chosen was also one. But it is not just in these mega-events. The transforming fire of energy, of love, is there at hand for us to harness each moment. Mark’s first chapter, which some of us are hearing each Sunday this month, has been likened to the first chapter of Genesis. Both describe ‘creation.’ In Genesis it is the creation of the world; in Mark it is the creation of love. The people of Galilee who flocked to hear Jesus were drawn to him. He was extraordinary. He radiated an interest in them that they had never experienced in anyone else before. They sensed that he wanted to help them to rise out of their drudgery and the blandness of their lives. He wanted to open up the possibilities and horizons in their life which they hardly knew were there. He wanted to free them from the ‘pressed service’ of their lives and enable them to stretch for what they were capable of. So it is with us. In our complex world we are invited to discover that fire which, we are told, rested on the early disciples at Pentecost. There are many examples of that fire, that love, in our world today and we are all called to fan its flames. 8 February 2015 Sunday 5 B Job 7:1-7 I Corinthians 9:16-23 Mark 1:29-39