When a Church Burns

In January 2024, a church a few miles from me burned.  The anniversary of this fire moves me to think about flames consuming a congregation’s worship space.  Flame is baked into Christian worship, as it were.  There are candles small and large.  There is the burning of incense.  In some Christian traditions, Easter Vigil celebrations begin each year with the blessing of a fire.

Fire is warmth, light, and protection.  It is also incineration, asphyxiation, and death.  Such ambivalence also characterizes the water in which Christians are baptized.  Water is life, refreshment, and sustenance.  It also drowns and freezes.  According to the Bible, God preserved Noah and his family through a time of flood.  Jesus preserved his closest followers from a tempest on a lake.

According to the Bible, the Lord went in front of the Israelites in a pillar of fire to speed their flight from the pursuing Egyptians by night.  Jesus, it is said, came to baptize with the Holy Spirit and with fire (and “to bring fire to the earth” in Luke 12:40!).  Scripture also tells of Nebuzaradan of Babylon, who “burned the house of the Lord, the king’s house, and all the houses of Jerusalem; every great house he burned down” (2 Kings 25:9), ushering in a time of exile and desolation.  In that time of exile, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego defied the command of Nebuchadnezzar to worship the gods of Babylon.  The outraged king ordered the three men to be placed in a “furnace of blazing fire” (Dan 3:20).  In the midst of the flames from which God preserved them, the three men raised a prayer inviting the waters, the sun and moon, the stars, rain and dew, the winds, fire and heat, winter and summer, nights and days, light and darkness, and many other elements of creation to join in praise of God.  The exile began when God’s temple in Jerusalem became a furnace.  In the midst of exile, Nebuchadnezzar’s furnace became a temple.

In their natural state, the symbols employed in liturgy can be life-giving or death-dealing.  We generally encounter them under tame conditions in liturgy.  Let us remember that the business of liturgy is the business of life and death in the Paschal Mystery.  Let our symbols help us to keep this idea in mind.