Water, Fire, and Spirit

Whatever we come to know, there is always more. Sometimes we acquire it, sometimes we can only point to it. We don’t have the tools to master everything. As one theologian, whose name I do not know—a nanny to a friend of mine—used to say, “Child, you ain’t Jesus” The amazing thing is, we are related to Jesus by his loving will. So, you are coming more and more to be like Jesus, especially if you are actively seeking that.

With the season of Advent, we again will bump into John the Baptist. We will start the coming week in worship with the testimony of Matthew about John’s activity in the wilderness of Judea. Matthew connects John to Isaiah’s prophecy: “The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.’” We hear from the Baptizer, saying, in effect, “I am all about this baptism, but there is more. There is one more powerful coming; whereas I baptize with water, he baptizes with fire and the Holy Spirit. What I have for you could still leave you as chaff; he will transform you to wheat for the final harvest.” I loosely paraphrase. See it here from Matthew, who reports John to have said:

“Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. I baptize you with water for repentance, but one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and will gather his wheat into the granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”

See how John testifies that he gives plenty, but there is more. With God, there is always more. Should we be satisfied with our current relationship with God as we see it now? No, not when there is more. Start with the repentance that John introduces, it is an excellent way of beginning. Repentance waters cleanse and help us to turn toward the Ultimate, the truly Real. We move on ahead to the realm of fire and Spirit. In so doing, we progress toward unity with God.

Evelyn Underhill, an early twentieth-century scholar of the Christian tradition and the wider religious tradition wrote and spoke brilliantly about the path of Christian mysticism. She wrote a book called Practical Mysticism: a Little Book for Normal People. She sounds the message that we can always move on to more, because God wills union with us, and hopes that we can spend our time and effort willing do the same. She says:

“Yet it is to you, practical man, reading these pages as you rush through the tube to the practical work of rearranging unimportant fragments of your universe, that this message so needed by your time—or rather, by your want of time—is addressed. To you, unconscious analyst, so busy reading the advertisements upon the carriage wall, that you hardly observe the stages of your unceasing flight: so anxiously acquisitive of the crumbs that you never lift your eyes to the loaf.”

Surely, we must not stay with crumbs, when the loaf is offered. Moving back to John’s language, start with water but move to Spirit and fire. For this are we made. I will boldly conjecture that you have a mystical edge in your faith. Dare you absorb yourself on that edge? There is always more, after all.

I am teaching a mini-series on Christian Mysticism on Wednesdays. The presentations start at 7:00 P.M. in the Hogan Board Room. Come early, at 6:00 P.M. if you wish, for the Eucharist, then go to 6:30 Dinner, flowing straight into the learning time. November 30 is a general introduction and a treatment of Saint Paul as Mystic. Then on December 7, we will look at the fourth-century Neo-Platonists and the Desert Solitaries of Egypt, Palestine, and Syria foundational elements of Mysticism. Finally, we will look at a few of the Christian Mystics of the late Middle Ages: Julian of Norwich, Teresa of Avila, and John of the Cross. Come on, my mystical friend; let’s investigate it together.