Hearts on Fire
Hearts on Fire
It was 42 years ago this week, on Easter Sunday, April 22, 1984, that Laura and I walked into Saint Christopher's Episcopal Church in our college town of Spartanburg, South Carolina. It was in The Episcopal Church that I could truly taste and see that The Lord is good. In the Sacraments, “outward and visible signs of inward and spiritual grace, given by Christ as sure and certain means by which we receive that grace,” that I could taste and see the amazing grace of God that has brought me safe thus far. As Cleopas and his companion did nearly 2,000 years ago, I came to recognize the risen Jesus in the breaking of the bread.
But my life as a Christian began at the First Baptist Church of Vero Beach, Florida. And at the center of that life was the Word of God who spoke through the Holy Bible, with sermons of at least 20 minutes. When I was bored I would read my Good News Bible, with its simple illustrations. It was there that the first spark was ignited, the same spark that Cleopas and his companion felt. "Weren’t our hearts on fire when he spoke to us along the road and when he explained the scriptures for us?” Nearly 2,000 years ago, the risen Jesus made himself known to his disciples in the same way that he makes himself known to his disciples today. Jesus the Word makes himself known to us in the story of God's conversation with God's people in Holy Scripture. Then Jesus the risen makes himself known to us by feeding us with himself in the Sacrament of his body and blood, the foretaste of that risen life which we shall share with him.
As an Anglo-Catholic Episcopal parish, our appreciation of that second way of presence is clear. But it is the Word of God, spoken through Holy Scripture, which sets us up to perceive that other presence in the Sacrament. We hear and respond to the Word of God before we recall Christ, crucified and raised, in the Sacrament. We are a Biblically based people every bit as much as we are a Sacramentally based people. We proclaim the Good News of God’s love in Christ Jesus by a way of worship and prayer that has been handed down to us from the ancient and timeless church. We are also a Biblical people, proclaiming the Gospel, the Good News of God's infinite patience as it is found in that Holy Conversation.
I may have been raised Southern Baptist. But it was a different denomination in my youth. It was a place that took the Bible seriously but not always literally. My pastor wasn't afraid to ask difficult questions, and to challenge old ways of thinking that were more cultural than scriptural. So even after 41 years of being part of The Episcopal Church, I'll occasionally be reminded, when I seem to know right where to go for that story of Jesus and Mary Magdalene and the other women who supported him, that I am an ex-Baptist. But it was in The Episcopal Church that I learned how to hear the Word who was with God and was God but was not written down, but became flesh. Thus the Word of God speaks through the human words of the Bible, subject to the same limitations as all other human words. In my ordination vows, I vowed that the Bible contains all things necessary to salvation, which doesn’t mean that all things in the Bible are necessary to salvation. I also vowed to proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ. And if that doesn't set our hearts on fire, then I don't know what else will.
Oh if it was as easy as striking a match. Instead it's more like trying to make a spark by striking two rocks together again, and again, and again, and again. How do we strike that spark? Do we really want to strike that spark? What was it that lit the spark for Cleopas and his companion? ‘You foolish people! Your dull minds keep you from believing all that the prophets talked about. Wasn’t it necessary for the Christ to suffer these things and then enter into his glory?’ Then he interpreted for them the things written about himself in all the scriptures, starting with Moses and going through all the Prophets."
Jesus went back over the story of God's conversation with his chosen people, the good the bad and the ugly. He reminded them of details they had forgotten. He got them to stop fixating on a single tree in the forest, and to see the forest and the patterns of the trees. He helped them understand which parts of the story which should not be forgotten but reflected the time in which they were written and thus were no longer binding. He replayed for them those first scenes that had foreshadowed what was to come. Jesus retold their story to them in a way that gave them a fresh appreciation for what had been handed down to them, and helped them to see what new direction the never ending story was taking.
For many, the Holy Bible is a How-To guide for staying out of Hell: Salvation For Dummies. But some react by dismissing the Bible entirely, or they treat the Bible like a buffet line. If some parts don't look very appetizing, they give them no further thought. But the Holy Bible is the greatest authority in my life, because in its story of God's conversation with the human race, my life story finds its meaning and purpose. In the Passover story, God's spirit passing over the houses of the Israelites while claiming the firstborn Egyptians, I find a foreshadowing of God the Son passing through death himself on the way to the resurrection and eternal life which we all shall share. In God's promise to Abraham, "In you shall all the families of Earth be blessed," I find that my destiny is bound with all my siblings in the human race.
As I find my own story within that greater story, my heart is set on fire when I realize that in this story of one peoples' relationship with God, we all are one people, one race, one body. That's what sets my heart on fire: the reconciliation and peace that God brings to all people starting with this one nation. Of course, what also gets this fire going is more bodies generating more heat. Jesus spoke on that road to two people. It was a conversation. It takes two or three to have a conversation with God in prayer and the study of Holy Scripture. As an ordained minister, I am called to proclaim the Good News from this pulpit that God has given me temporary custody of. But it is as much a part of that calling to facilitate a conversation with God through prayer and Holy Scripture. Whatever way we can figure out together to create the environment where the sparks will fly, I will do it.
I have no power to start the fire. I can only do my best to tell you the Good News as best I've heard it in my life; and ask you, as Cleopas and his companion asked each other: Aren't our hearts on fire?
April 19th, 2026
The Third Sunday of Easter
The Rev. David Kendrick