Many, many years ago, on another August day long before there was air conditioning, Henry Ward Beecher decided it was a good time to preach about hell. Beecher was probably the best-known preacher in America at the time, and he didn’t mind shocking his congregation in order to get their attention. He launched into his subject that Sunday with comparisons to the discomfort they were then feeling, and warned his people that they hadn’t seen anything yet!
I feel I’m somewhere in Dr. Beecher’s territory this morning, because our lectionary reading for today is a hot one. Not only is fire specifically mentioned, but the whole mood of the lesson is one of judgment and of earnest warnings. Many people, including many Christians, think that God is portrayed in the Old Testament as a God of wrath but in the New Testament as a God of love. If that is your understanding, you may be troubled and confused when you realize that our scripture reading of the day comes from the New Testament. It isn’t the sort of passage you expect from the part of the Bible that tells us that God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son.
But for the writer of our lesson, the author of the book of Hebrews, that’s the very point of the matter. It’s precisely because God is love that God is also a God of fire. And more than that, since God so loved the world as to make the supreme act of love in sending his Son into the world, the possibilities of God’s judgment are all the more frightening.
The Letter to
