"Set Our Hearts on Fire"

Sermon by The Rev. Cindy Carter

May 19, 2024

Come, Holy Spirit, come. Take my lips and speak with them. Take our minds and think with them. Take our hearts and set them on fire with love for you. In Christ’s name, we ask it. Amen.

In December 1737, a dispirited Anglican priest returned to England after a brief, controversial, some would even say failed, ministry in the American colony of Georgia.   He was depressed and beaten, as he returned home. Not sure if he could continue his ministry.

A few months later, on May 24^th, 1738, the still despondent priest went to Aldersgate Street in London and reluctantly attended a meeting of Moravians, a group of German Christians with whom he had become acquainted on his passage to the colonies.  That evening John Wesley, the depressed Anglican priest had what he later called “his Aldersgate experience.” 

His description of what happened that night is summed up in his now famous phrase –

I felt my heart strangely warmed. 

I felt my heart strangely warmed.

Now, I don’t know exactly what happened to John Wesley that evening on Aldersgate Street. One author referred to it as a “Holy Spirit moment.” 

I don’t know exactly what happened that evening, but I do know that Wesley’s life wasn’t the same after it. It made all the difference in his life and in the lives of millions of others influenced by the group to which Wesley’s experience gave rise – the Methodists. 

I don’t know exactly what happened to John Wesley that evening on Aldersgate Street, but I wonder if it was something like what the disciples gathered there together in Jerusalem felt at their “Holy Spirit moment,” on the day of Pentecost when the Holy Spirit came to them. 

The “divided tongues, as of fire” was perhaps the only way those gathered there could describe the strange warming of their own hearts. 

Fire – it seems to be what I, what many people, associate most with the way the Holy Spirit works. We don’t know exactly how the Holy Spirit comes to us, how the Holy Spirit works, but fire seems to describe whatever the Holy Spirit does as well as any human words can describe it. 

Come, Holy Spirit, come. Take my lips and speak with them. Take our minds and think with them. Take our hearts and set them on fire with love for you. In Christ’s name, we ask it. Amen.

Take our hearts and set them on fire with love for you.

I said it a few minutes ago. I say it just about every time before I preach.

Take our hearts and set them on fire with love for you.

Do we really know what we are asking for here?

Fire. Yes, it does warm us. But I’m afraid it’s not always a toasty, cozy sort of warming.

Fire is unruly and difficult to control. It can disorient us and confuse us. It is pure energy that changes whatever it touches. 

Take our hearts and set them on fire with love for you. Perhaps we need to be careful what we are asking for.

(Pause)

We began our readings after Easter with fearful disciples huddled together behind closed, locked doors.

But, on Pentecost, those who experienced the Holy Spirit’s fire, the Holy Spirit’s strange warming of their hearts, were energized and unafraid. They unlocked the doors and threw them wide open. They went out into the streets, telling everyone who would listen about this one named Jesus.

The barriers of nationality and culture and even language were unable to stop them.

Those who had experienced the fire of the Holy Spirit were willing to do some pretty crazy stuff, probably even to make such fools of themselves that other folks thought they had been drinking too way too much, way too early in the day.

I don’t know exactly what happened to those gathered disciples that day in Jerusalem, but I do know that it made all the difference in their lives and in the lives of millions and millions and millions of others influenced by what they did. Our lives – my life, your life - were changed by what they did. 

For that I am thankful beyond measure.

So today, let us pray, “Come, Holy Spirit, come.”   

With all your energy and unruliness.  Disrupt the status quo of our lives. Take away our fear. Change us and make us willing to doing some pretty crazy stuff.     

Bishop Michael Curry has said that the world needs some crazy Christians. 

People who are just as crazy as Jesus was. 

Crazy enough to love people who are different from us. Crazy enough to love even our enemies and to bless those who curse us. Crazy enough to pray for people who use us for their own deceitful purposes. Crazy enough to speak the truth. Crazy enough to forgive people when they do us wrong, even when they are willing to kill us. 

In Bishop Curry’s words, “Crazy enough to love like Jesus, to give like Jesus, to forgive like Jesus, to do justice, love mercy, walk humbly with God -- like Jesus. Crazy enough to dare to change the world from the nightmare it often is into something close to the dream that God dreams for it.”

Bishop Curry says that we Christians are called to craziness – and personally I believe that call to craziness is the work of the Holy Spirit. 

 So-

Come, Holy Spirit, come. Make us crazy like John Wesley. Make us crazy like those disciples on the Day of Pentecost in Jerusalem. Make us crazy like Jesus. 

Make us crazy, energized, and fearless enough to change the world. 

AMEN.