Romans 7: 15-25
Matt 11 16-19, 25-30
The Fourth of July is probably my favorite of the non-religious holidays. Part of this is because I grew up in the Appalachian mountains of Virginia far, far off the beaten path. Virginia also has some of the strictest fireworks laws in the country. This being the case, imported fireworks of questionable legality played an important part of our Independence Day festivities. I especially remember the summer when I was six years old. My father, who I only got to see a few dozen times a year, made a trip to Tennessee and bought a huge assortment of contraband combustible items. Oh what a bounty it was! He would buy firecrackers and jumping jacks, sparklers and spraying fountains, and bottle rockets and cherry bombs. Of course, I was only allowed to light the smallest and most innocuous of the items. Dad picked out a few things that with which he felt that I couldn’t damage to myself or my surroundings with and offered to let me light them. These items included a couple of little green cardboard tanks. You might have seen such an item on sale at the fireworks store this year as you were shopping. They still make them. Now this little tank, made just like the ones they used in World War Two, had a fuse coming out of its back end. When you lit the little fuse, it would first ignite something like a small rocket engine which would, in a spray of orange sparks, propel the little tank forward on its cardboard wheels. When the engine burned down, it would catch the fuse of a small Roman candle that comprised the turret gun of the little tank. The tank’s gun would then shoot three or four small, scarlet fireballs a distance of 5 or 6 feet. Sounds safe enough doesn’t it?
Anyway my father let me light one of the little tanks as the very first thing we did. My dad somewhat reluctantly escorted me over to the flat surface of the edge of a flower bed made from the filled in base of my grandmother’s old outhouse. I eagerly clutched the little lighting stick that my father handed me and approached the little tank. I could hardly contain my excitement as the fuse touched off. The little tank started off with a sputter and moved forward only a few inches before it fell off the edge of the flower bed. It landed with its gun at a forty-five degree angle and pointed directly at the box of fireworks that my father had forgot to cover up. Poof went the first shot falling short of the box, pop went the second overshooting the box just barely, Fsst went the third volley and this one was right on target. The little ball of fire landed directly on the fuse of one of the spraying fountain fire cones which, of course, ignited immediately. I can still see the look of horror and amazement on my father’s face as he realized what had just happened. He grabbed me and we dived behind my mothers, 1976 Chevy Vega. I couldn’t as much see the fireworks as I could here them. The m-80’s exploded, the bottle rockets, a whole gross of them, whizzed 12 at a time from their wrappers to explode only a few feet away. Jumping jacks and ground flowers scorched the yard. I am sure it would have been quite a show if I could have seen it from underneath my father.
When dad finally let me up off of the ground, there were no fireworks left. Only a smoking cardboard box and big spot of dead grass. Of course, I commenced to doing exactly what it is that six year-olds do. I started to cry. My mother heard all of this commotion and ran from the house to see exactly what was going on. My dad received a stern tongue lashing for trying to kill his only son and then mom took me inside and gave me some chocolate milk to calm me down while poor dad had to unroll the fire hose and clean up all the small explosive devices in the yard.
It’s funny isn’t it how one spark of something can set off a whole big conflagration isn’t it. At the turn of the century, Mrs. O’leary’s cow overturned a lamp in a barn and burned up the whole city of Chicago. Whole grain silos have been blown a mile into the air like rocket ships from one misflicked cigarette ash that ignites grain dust. It often does not require too much energy to start a whole big ruckus. Afterall, it only requires one match to strike off a whole powderkeg. Sparks can be powerful things given the right, or the wrong, application.
In the epistle lesson for today, you can see just how aware the apostle Paul was of the spark that was inside him. Paul knew that there was something in his soul that sparked him to do things that he knew were the wrong things to do. Something kept igniting inside him no matter how hard he tried to do the right thing. He couldn’t get over it by himself and it caused him fits.
Paul is not alone, all people are full of sparks. It’s the little things that we do that make all the difference. For instance, have you ever noticed how a bad day seems to float around? Let’s say you get up late and you need to be in Atlanta in 40 minutes for an important appointment. You hurry and get dressed and jump in your car and head up the road as fast as you can go. You are making good time, but when you get almost to Jonesboro, you get stopped for 10 minutes by all the traffic. This puts you in a bad mood and you drive on and end up being ten minutes late for your appointment. The person there says they can’t see you because you are late and you have to leave. You walk over to the convenience store to get a Coke and you give the guy a 5 and he only gives you back change for a 1. Already in a bad mood, you look at the guy and say "what are you stupid." At this point, your bad day has left you and settled on somebody else. Well the guy at the convenience store is now upset so when he gets off work and goes home he finds his dog on the porch and he kicks it. The dog then bites the neighbor’s cat, the cat attacks a hummingbird, and this is where the story breaks down because I am not really sure what a hummingbird in a bad mood actually does. Anyway, you get my point that whatever feelings spark up inside of you and when you let them loose, you can never tell what they are going to lead to. You have to be very careful what you say and do. Every action has repercussions.
Now you say to me, "surely preacher people must be full of good sparks to?" Well, I will have to answer you by saying yes and no. You see Paul tried to do the right thing all the time. Paul was a Pharisee and he knew the Law, which is the embodiment of the right thing to do, backwards and forwards. He tried really hard to do all the good he could and he found himself coming up short. He says in Romans 7:25 "I myself, in my own mind am a slave/servant of God’s law, but in the sinful nature am a slave to the law of sin." Knowing the right thing to do does not always mean you will do it. There is a dark spark of sin that resides in the souls of humans that makes it impossible for us to live up to the ideal that god wants us to achieve. We can’t, by ourselves, ever hope to overcome sin even when we want to do it and we know what to do. Sin is a lot like addiction to drugs and alcohol. You may want to quit, you may try to quit, and you may even succeed for a while, but I guarantee you are going to need some help.
Fortunately, help is available and it comes in an easy to access easy to use and easily understandable form. There is a cure for sin so potent that not only will it take care of sin, but it will ignite a fire inside of you. It will fill you with sparks of goodness so bright and hot that everybody will notice and you will walk around starting fires all over the place. That cure does not come in a generic form and you must be sure to ask for it by name. Are you ready, it is called Jesus Christ.
You see, even though you might know what it would take to be the most righteous person alive, you can’t do it by yourself. Simply trying to be good will only result in you feeling bad about yourself when you fail. Morals are good things, but moralism will kill you. In the scripture reading from Matthew today, Christ tells us a funny thing. He says that we should take his yoke upon us because his yoke is easy and his burden is light. I told you last week, and you all know from experience that being a Christian is not easy. What then could Christ mean? While being a Christian is not easy, it certainly beats the alternative. When you accept and follow Christ, you don’t have to worry any longer about trying to be perfect. You have somebody else that will do that for you. You become free of worry, bondage, and sin and become able to truly begin to cultivate the goodness that comes only from God and spread it around starting all kinds of little fires. Jesus says in Matt.11:25 "I praise you father because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned and revealed them to little children." While I agree that studying God’s word, science, Mathematics, business, and agriculture are all great things, you really don’t have to know anything else to be a good person except for Jesus Christ. That invitation is open to anyone who will take it.
Christ comes to us fighting fire with fire. The spark of sin is extinguished and the spark of goodness, love, and Godlikeness is kindled. We are free from the worrisome burden of the law and are now able to be ourselves like we need and God wants us to be. The nature of the fire that licks up within us is that it should spread. Wherever it does, it burns away the bonds of sin and purifies the soul like a refiners forge. We can’t and shouldn’t even try to contain it. Today is Independence Day and while we celebrate our country’s freedom from oppressive rule, we should also stop to celebrate our own freedom from the black flame of sin that once ruled within us. To celebrate, we should set off some fireworks by practicing random acts of loving kindness and sharing the joy that we have with a world that badly needs it. You might be surprised, just like my dad was on a forth of July almost 20 years ago, how big an explosion that one little well applied spark can create.
In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. AMEN
