Part 8
in the church of Jesus Christ only. Peace with God makes the will to peace on earth a reality. Without this will and without the working of Christ's peace, it is impossible to stand up against all the powers of the world. Only peace of heart in the unity of the church sets people free from obviously prevailing unpeace. Where inner peace is granted, it creates outer peace.
Through the working together of all powers, the harmony of united hearts calls forth peace's maximum achievements, possible only in the church of Jesus Christ. "Without peace of heart, nothing great will be achieved." Only when the heart finds peace in the center of this gathering and uniting can it gain the impetus to go out far
I N N E R L A N D : A G U I D E I N T O T H E H E A R T O F T H E G O S P E L 2 3 7 and wide from this one united whole. Without peace of heart, all our efforts are bound to work against each other; every good influence will be counteracted by its opposite. For this reason, no one should approach the question of nonviolence until he has truly decided to take up God's peace: the peace of the church, found in the gospel of Jesus Christ and given in the power of his Holy Spirit.
Peace means the greatest power possible, a gathering centered in God. Pestalozzi has described this basic requisite for all education with these words: Faith in God is the source of peace in life, peace in life is the source of inner order, inner order is the source of an undistracted use of our powers, order in the employment of our powers becomes in turn the source of the growth and develop ment of our powers toward wisdom.
Powers grow in the harmony of working together. Peace has a divine wisdom that gives shape to a fruitful life, ordered in brotherly community. As long as we are still separate, we cannot experience this harmony. Separation from God is the cause of unpeace; it brings disaster. The hopeless opposition it puts up consumes life: to oppose an inner calling means death. Sin, as separation, is our ruin.
In fact its very nature is opposition to God, without whom we cannot live.
Peace of heart is founded on unity with God. There is no peace when we are far from him. The soul must become quiet, wanting to receive the hidden influence of God in silence. Only then can the strength of inner peace grow, ready for deeds. Only when all our attention is concentrated on God can warmth-giving energy come over us. Without it, we sink into cold and darkness. Tersteegen
I N N E R L A N D : A G U I D E I N T O T H E H E A R T O F T H E G O S P E L 2 3 8 emphasized that an active life must be subordinated to inner quiet so that the soul never gives out more than it takes in.* Those who lead an active and fruitful life need time in which all they are and do becomes silent – then God can speak and act in the depths of the soul. It is in the very center of our spirit that the words of peace must have an effect. Outside in the clamor of our work, we can all too often fail to hear them.
The words of the great peace bringer, Jesus, that the heavily laden soul shall find rest with him, with the further counsel to pray in secret, have led many to take on the character of "those who are quiet in the land" (Ps. 35:20). Some groups call themselves "the silent ones" or "those who have achieved peace and quiet in this life." Yet there often creeps in a much too human tendency to ignore the basic will of Jesus: that inner gathering should become the source of strength for action. To sink spinelessly into a dumb stillness means being lost to the life to which Jesus has called us.
Even Augustine was not always free of the old danger of ascetic detachment and withdrawal from life.** The way to joy as he saw it was that the soul and all its powers of imagination become so silent that the soul itself is swept away and engulfed in its own oblivion.
Self-examination before God never dulls or stupefies: it brings about the liveliest concentration of all energies. It is a regenerating bath, clarifying judgment and strengthening character. God is personal and holy will. There is nothing of a gloomy, all-engulfing abyss about him. The God who redeems us is not the dark morass of our subconscious or the depths of our own soul, which is nothing but the fathomless mirror of our own self and all our experiences, *Gerhard Tersteegen, –.
I N N E R L A N D : A G U I D E I N T O T H E H E A R T O F T H E G O S P E L 2 3 9 good and bad. It is God, the wholly other power of the divine, who wants to illuminate this night so that like the prodigal son we awake and long for the nearness of God – the exposure of hidden darkness and the breaking in of light.
We must emerge from the tranquillity of indifference, passing through dumb despair to the holy calm of inner peace. Hildebert of Tours has expressed it in the following words: There is a threefold silence. The first comes from ignorance of misery, the second from despair of salvation, and the third from the feeling of life-energy rewon.
Before the law came into the world, we did not recognize our sickness; therefore we were silent and did not ask for help.
When the law was given, it exposed the festering wounds; the silence was broken immediately; the sick sought help in the works of the law. But all their seeking in this direction was in vain; tired and faint, groaning and sighing, they fell silent again.
Now at long last the almighty word of the Father has bro ken the silence once more. Because the Father has spoken peace and promised grace, the sick come to him from all directions and urgently beg him, the physician of the soul, to save them.
Once perfect health is restored, however, they will have nothing more to ask for. Then the third, the holy silence begins, which shall know no end.*
Nevertheless the third silence of worship (as the active peace of the kingdom of God) is productive quiet, coming from creative lifeenergy. It leads to undreamed-of power and influence, obstructed in every way before. Whoever has gone through the depths of misery knows the cause of the sickness that takes away all strength and paralyzes activity. As David describes it: "There is no peace in *Hildebert of Tours, –.
I N N E R L A N D : A G U I D E I N T O T H E H E A R T O F T H E G O S P E L 2 4 0 my bones because of my sin!" But he is permitted to find healing.
God has paved the way even for the most burdened.
Over this world of sharp inner contrasts and conflicting storms, the colorful rainbow of his peace is spanned. His mystery is that he reveals his heart as the will for love. Through this he transforms the clouds of judgment into unveiled light. Without the storms of judgment, the sun's rainbow cannot be formed. Only one can bring it, who is himself without darkness, but who has nevertheless taken the clouds of judgment upon his own life of light so that in it we may see the rainbow of peace.
Jesus is our peace. He has brought us complete reconciliation and union with God. His death is the gospel of peace, for he brings death to the sins through which we were excluded from unity. The gift of grace has set peace over and against division. Whoever receives Christ as his conciliator has peace with God. Through his cross, what had hindered us and removed us from God's influence has been swept away. Through the indwelling Christ, the heart submits to the rulership of God. It has won through to unity in the will of God. Whoever is one with God has peace. God is peace. The son of his atonement is therefore called the lord of peace; and as the king of joy, he is also called the king of peace.
When his gospel of peace reaches the heart, God in his over whelming light exposes everything that has hindered harmony and made it impossible. Inner gathering is possible only when all sources of division have been rendered powerless. The essence of all inner divi sion, the hindrance to peace, is separation and resistance. Sin is enmity and disbelief. Serving peace has one goal: to establish the obedience of faith so that everything trying to hinder and destroy unity with God is abolished.
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How inner peace overcomes division is shown clearly in first-hand accounts. August Hermann Francke* was a man whose inner peace brought forth a creative power of love effective up to the present day. At one time, in great fear, disbelief, and despair, he had called on the God he did not know. His prayer was answered so suddenly that peace flooded his heart. It was like a river inundating the land before anyone has time to realize that the dike has broken.
In the twinkling of an eye, all my doubts were gone; I was as sured in my heart of the grace of God in Christ Jesus; I could call God not only "God" but also "my father." At once all the sad ness and unrest of my heart was taken away; I was suddenly overwhelmed by such a flood of joy that I praised God with a full heart for showing me such great grace. When I got up, I was in a completely different frame of mind from when I knelt down. For I had bent my knees in great distress and doubt, but I got up in great certainty and unspeakable joy.*
Research into religious experience has confirmed that peace is in evitably preceded by turmoil and doubt. The first thing that drives the conscience toward peace is the agony of a bad conscience, a consciousness of sin that grips the soul. At the same time, the des perate longing for purity and perfection, for harmony and commu nity with God, drives the heart on to peace, like a storm before the calm.
A burdened conscience may not always be ascribed to obvious offenses that give generally accepted morals a slap in the face.
Rather it is the depressing conviction of an allpervading dishar mony and bondage to guilt that has its origin in separation from God. The whole of life today is "sinfulness;" it lacks entirely the joy of peace, the strength of justice, and the uniting works of God.
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Starbuck made a collection from numerous accounts of such experiences.* He says that essentially the inner turmoil preceding the state of peace is a despairing consciousness of sin combined with the striving toward a new and better life. A crushing sense of doubt and alienation from God leads to pessimism and sadness, to deep-seated fear and helplessness. The more we give way to intellectual doubt, the more effort we make to resist the conscious ness of guilt and the greater grows the agony. Fear, doubt, and a sense of sin and depression are the throes of the coming birth.
This new birth is the narrow gate to the kingdom of peace. Inner peace is seized hold of as liberation, freedom from the gloom of sin, and redemption from the curse. In this birth, we come into the new world and see the kingdom of God. The more keenly we feel the contrast between our weakness and helplessness on the one hand and the power and glory on the other as the contrast between us and God, the more powerfully does what is new show itself.
God's cause takes the place of us and our misery. The peace of the coming kingdom brings with it forgiveness for division and sin, and harmony with God's power of love. All energies formerly squan dered by the will are from now on directed toward God and his kingdom in a new and unknown clarity. In war we felt more the blessings of peace: so peace of heart depends on the intensity of its contrast to sin, disharmony, feebleness, and disruptedness. Life can arise only in this tension between our torn and feeble state and the energy of God's peace.
It was for this reason Paul was told: "Let my grace be enough for you, for my strength is powerful in the weak," and Luther said: †Edwin Diller Starbuck, –.
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God is a God of those who are poor, wretched, troubled, oppressed, despairing, and indeed brought low in everything. In such, God can carry out his right and proper work, which is to raise the lowly, feed the hungry, give light to the blind, comfort the poor and miserable, justify the sinners, quicken the dead, and save the damned and despairing.
It is God's nature to show his superior power just where darkness and weakness have destroyed the last hope. "Where sin became mighty, grace became mightier by far." It is God's will that our own strength is broken. Our strength, in its morbid self-love and within its own narrow confines, is bound to exhaust itself utterly. The end of all our own is the beginning of the other: the birth of faith begins. Faith presses on to God's love, to the future of his kingdom.
From faith, love arises as love to God and Christ put into practice: joy in God's creation and in other people, joyful and confident ex pectation of God's kingdom, unity with the church of Jesus Christ, and the life of God's new creation. Utterly new and unexpected, this life comes over the believers as Jesus' words being surprisingly fulfilled: to give up oneself means to win life. A new life, God's true life, replaces the former selfish and ungenuine life. Those who love their life lose it; those who hate their life receive true life.
The new life is an undivided whole – perfection that exists in God alone. The previous life let two irreconcilably opposed egos exist side by side: the "I" as it is and the "I" as it is meant to be.
Through peace of heart, an undivided will dedicated to the new life, allows the holy "shall be" to triumph over the unholy "is."
"God will be born in us only when all the bound and captive powers of our soul become entirely free, when all our plans and ideas are silenced, and when our conscience ceases to punish us." All plans
I N N E R L A N D : A G U I D E I N T O T H E H E A R T O F T H E G O S P E L 2 4 4 and ideas disappear into the inner imperative of the holy "thou shalt," and the soul experiences unity and freedom. The peace of Christmas depends on this freedom of obedience. The ground of obedience bears peace. Mary believed. She obeyed. The Spirit came. Christ was born.
Mary listened to God's word and treasured it in her heart. The word given to the prophets had said, "If you had listened to my commandments, your peace would have been like a river." The flood of the spirit penetrates to the depths. The riverbed is saturated deep into hidden ground. Though the level of the water may rise or fall, in the deepest depths there is abundance. The peace of God penetrates into the depths. Without these depths, all religious exercises and Christian forms are nothing but a delusion: mists but no river. Action begins in the inmost heart and then penetrates far into all areas of life. The water Jesus gives is from a well of depth.
The inmost depths are decisive; Jesus exposes the heart. He directs his glance to what is going on there. He lays his finger on it, for he sees things as they really are. "He knew well what was in us." He made this clear: what rules in our heart gains control over our life. "A good person brings forth good from the goodness stored in the heart; a bad one brings forth evil from the evil stored in his or her heart." "What fills the heart, the mouth speaks of." As the heart, so is the deed: peace of heart brings about a life of peace.
The spirit of Jesus affects the inmost depths first and foremost: "Let the peace of God reign in your hearts." "The peace of God will keep your hearts and your minds. It surpasses all understanding. It keeps and preserves you in Christ Jesus."
The word of peace penetrates to the depths. The living word brings about living peace: "What I have said, I have told you so that I N N E R L A N D : A G U I D E I N T O T H E H E A R T O F T H E G O S P E L 2 4 5 in me you may have peace!" Through being kept in the heart, the word becomes deed, which is the bedrock of the unity of peace.
Peace exists in Jesus because through his life and deeds community with God is given. The life of Jesus leads us to the wellsprings of inner strength and shows us the way this strength is overwhelmingly at work right to the end of the world, to the final goal of all time.
Jesus hid himself from the multitudes on the secluded heath, on the lonely mountain, and in the quiet boat. He loved the peace of solitude for his communion with God. He loved to gather his strength in God's quiet. He spent whole nights talking with God.
Contemplative quiet, however, was never Jesus' goal but the source of living works and strength for his heavy task. Out of this quiet he went to the people, he gathered thousands to him, and he advanced to the big city. His mission goes out into all the world. His love heals bodies and saves souls. His was a life of active love that needed the power of gathered concentration in order to reach the widest circles. In quiet before God, he gained the strength for each advance right up to the last battle – his bitter death.
The peace of Jesus is altogether different from a mood of impassive withdrawal. Without God we may try to force a false peace of soul, a placid repose. The cool tranquillity of a selfishly withdrawn life is far removed from the peace of God. God works a different peace: one that comes from having a confident spirit and, out of a full life, working for our ultimate calling – the all-embracing kingdom! A God-conscious life becomes a source of rich activity.
When the heart is filled from its deepest depths, there is a well-grounded certainty that the crucified one is the one and only source of a peace that is both inmost and all-embracing. The I N N E R L A N D : A G U I D E I N T O T H E H E A R T O F T H E G O S P E L 2 4 6 crucified one rooted out sin, which allowed no peace to grow, and he does the work of peace in creating perfect unity.
Like fresh water flowing hour after hour in a river, the peace of God lives in the continuously renewed experience of Christ at work within us. Christ wants to remain in us so that even in the greatest need and distress we do the same works of peace as he did. Times of severe storm and violent unrest, like cloudbursts and torrents of rain that widen and deepen a riverbed, will serve to deepen and strengthen peace. Need and misery shall lead us to that final state of determination which the scriptures call repentance. Divine sadness and fruitful remorse bring forth peace, the good fruit of repentance. No sudden storm can change the character of peace.
Storms merely test and confirm it. There may be waves on the surface of the water as if the current were flowing backward. But the direction of the current does not change: the main body of water goes forward unperturbed.
Peace strengthens. Courage that comes from peace is without fear. God's plan of peace for us does not anticipate suffering with out the courage of joy. Peace, as community with Christ, is a fruit of the same spirit as joy and patience. The spiritual fruit of peace is a love that builds up in brotherliness. Its power is the kingdom of justice. "What is sown by peace becomes the fruit of justice." The kingdom of God, according to the church both in this age and in the ultimate future, is "justice and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit."
The kingdom of God in our hearts is the foundation of God's rulership over the whole earth, over all worlds. The peace of the church of Jesus Christ is commissioned as a forerunner of the peace of the future and of all eternity. Francis of Assisi used to begin each address and conversation with the greeting, "Peace be with you,"
I N N E R L A N D : A G U I D E I N T O T H E H E A R T O F T H E G O S P E L 2 4 7 as did the Anabaptists of Reformation times. So today too we must confront the unpeace of the whole world with the words of true brotherhood. "We must proclaim peace. We must cherish it in our own hearts. Through the life we share together with others, we must see to it that everyone is led to concord and unity – to the creative and openhearted justice of peace."
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Light and Fire
In every epoch of history there have been terrible calamities and bitter injustices. Faced with the daily suffering of masses of people, the spirit of humankind has proved throughout to be cold, indifferent, and insensitive, no matter what appalling depths the misery reaches. In times of crisis we need a new and shaking jolt to see the darkness and coldness lowering over us. There is no salva tion without judgment upon injustice and unrighteousness. Such universal and persistent need as today's drives us to look for the cause. The source of help can flow freely only when the debris is cleared away.
Times of darkness call for faith in light from above. Before this light, all darkness will retreat, just as morning triumphs over every night. The ugliness and horror of darkness and its cold, murderous spirits must penetrate our consciousness. In utter helplessness, we must be on watch for the hour of redemption, for no human being can bring liberation or relief. Help must come from the other world if all life is not to sink into death's cold night. Under this crushing burden of the nightmare of darkness, we need a glimpse of the fire descending from above – the light that frees.
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The light of faith must outshine darkness and all-pervading cold.
Light triumphs over darkness, which is death. Death attacks life. When love grows cold, injustice escalates beyond measure. Darkness hates light, and, forced to retreat, it puts up the most violent resistance.
The brightness of awakening life is terrifyingly painful to all those who have become strangers to strong light. Accustomed to the darkness all around them, they find the blazing glory of light unbearable torture.
It burns in their eyes like fire. The victorious light becomes judgment.
The radiant flame of life, which demands love, judges the darkness of unpeace and puts to flight the coldness of injustice.
A few days after Pascal's death, a sheet of paper was found in the lining of his suit. The great philosopher had kept it with him constantly for eight years, as a reminder of his deepest experience.
On this parchment, the shaking description of an overwhelming enlightenment begins with the solitary word: fire.
Jesus brought flames of judgment and salvation. He wanted to kindle a fire, and his greatest longing was for it to burn: "How I wish it were already kindled!" (Luke 12:49) He brought glowing fire to the earth. But the fire he hands over to darkened humankind is not a sacrilegious theft, stolen by a second Prometheus from a jealous deity as in Greek mythology. Jesus is the fiery rays of a divine heart that pours out its fire constantly over all people. God is the giver here, God himself. The torch of wrath became a dispenser of life.
The flames of judgment became one with the fire of life, alive in the liberating and gathering light of love. Jesus knows what this blazing fire meant to the fearful heart from the beginning of history, what trembling and terror it brought upon erring humankind.
He knows that there is no fire without consuming judgment over withered and hardened life that is on its way to death.
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Flames of lightning from heaven and volcanic bursts from the earth, forest giants burning like pillars of fire and fiery missiles erupting from mountaintops, lightning that strikes with rolling thunder, and the lava of earthquakes setting fire to everything in its path – they all fill the creatures of the earth with shuddering awe and make them shake with fear at the all-powerful might of their deadly, blazing heat.
Before fire can show radiant warmth and protecting, uniting power, the flames of its wrath must be revealed as consuming judgment. The flames of God's heart have to be dreaded before they disclose their ultimate purpose. The prophet could not help trembling with fear lest he lose his sight in God's heavenly fire by looking with impure eyes at the God of the shining hosts. God him self says, "My face you cannot see. No one can see me and live"(Exod. 33:20). We have fallen too deep into demonic darkness to be able to bear the fiery light of the holy one, deadly to all the powers of envy, all that serves death. Fire consumes. The light judges.
It brings death to what is dead. Dry wood feeds the fire. Death by fire is not caused by rays from the blazing fire but by the nature of death and darkness – opposition to light and enmity to life.
When your eyes are blinded by the sun,
Then blame your eyes,
Blame not the sun.
Our night-cold nature makes us unable to live in consuming fire. By challenging this cold night, fire breaks in: God's fiery flames are the answer, also to the call of faith. God descended upon the mountain of Moses in fire. His word is never anything else than fire; his voice flashes flames. Lightning flashes from his heart of burning fire. The I N N E R L A N D : A G U I D E I N T O T H E H E A R T O F T H E G O S P E L 2 5 1
Lord on his throne of flaming fire radiates fire from within. He is clothed entirely in flames. His servants and messengers are rays of flame – fire goes out from God. He speaks from the midst of it and his mouth pours forth fire. He sends it down from heaven: devouring fire goes before him. He comes in consuming fire: it is his very nature. He rains down lightning and brimstone. His fury flashes out as fire when his wrath begins. His spirit kindles judgment when he calls for fire. Whoever waits upon God awaits judgment and fire, in which the light of God's salvation shines out.
Jesus shines out in our darkness like the sun after the black tropical night. Jesus is the light of the world; whoever loves him hungers for his fire. Whoever knows him thirsts for his light, which outshines all suns. Angelus Silesius declared, "You may have the light of the sun; Jesus is the sun that illuminates my soul."*
It is impossible for us to visualize how far the sun is from the earth it illuminates. Ninety-three million miles are beyond earthly comprehension. What an effect this distant kingdom of fiery life has! How blinding this light is so far from the earth! Against this distant ball of light, our dazzlingly white magnesium flame appears as black as ink. How can we grasp it that the light of Rigel is five thousand times brighter than our sun, or that the rays of Capella send out in one day as much light as the sun in a year? What effect the proximity of such sun giants must have is more than we can imagine in human dimensions. In the face of their living energy our little sun dwindles to a candle. The whole universe, as we see it in the heavens, is an endless ocean of light made up of many millions of these mighty fixed star-suns. Night is to be found only in the shadow made by the dark planets. If we were able to leave our *Angelus Silesius (pseudonym for Johannes Scheffler), –.
I N N E R L A N D : A G U I D E I N T O T H E H E A R T O F T H E G O S P E L 2 5 2 planet completely behind, we would be exposed to the inconceiv able power of a divine sea of light.
In Jesus, a fiery light infinitely stronger than all suns put together draws near to the earth. The footsteps of Jesus come near in burning fire. His eyes are blazing flames. His countenance is radiant with the supreme power of all suns. Seven lampstands of golden fire surround him. Seven sun-stars are in his hand. His light casts us to the ground; Paul fell at his feet as though dead. God, however, gave him the resurrecting power of radiant life: he entrusted to the apostle the glorious mystery of the church, the mystery of the kingdom. He is the rising morning star. It shall become clear to us through the nature of the sun-fire what effect the sevenfold starlight of his church has, what power breaks in with the morning light of the coming day of the sun. The spirit of unity is the light of God descending from heaven, closely kin in its inmost nature to the glory of all suns.
Therefore, if the mission of Jesus is to be understood, the nature of the sun and of fire has to be understood. Our sun is a central fire world from which our planet gets its life. The sun's force of attrac tion gathers and holds together all the worlds that surround it. Its heat keeps us from dying of cold. Its warmth awakens life in plants and animals. Without its light, all life would perish in darkness. The tiny fraction of light-energy our planet receives from the far dis tant sun is enough to engender and maintain the boundless life we know on the earth. Every manifestation of earth's power, each breath of wind, the water-vapor cycle, the movements of deep-sea fish, every beat of our heart is the work of the sun. What bracing power it gives body and soul! Without it we fall prey to death.
We could call every organism of the earth a sunbeam come to life. Light and warmth sustain all life. It is the energy of light that I N N E R L A N D : A G U I D E I N T O T H E H E A R T O F T H E G O S P E L 2 5 3 makes it possible for plants rooted in the earth to make food from air and earth and to maintain life. Only through light can green plant cells carry out this life-maintaining process. And no living creature, no matter how accustomed to darkness, can live without light or without the organisms belonging to the world of light. The sun is the king and heart of the deep as well as of the heights. The sun is the fire that gives life to all that lives.
It is not by chance that God's being and nature in Christ's radiant glory is compared to the sun, to light, and to fire. What Paul states as a fact – that God's invisible being has been perceptible in his works since the creation of the world – can be seen first and foremost in the light of the sun and in the blaze of fire. Here in the works of creation this eternal power and divine greatness are recognizable with particular force and clarity. From time immemorial, sun and fire have appeared to man as uniquely significant images of divine powers.
Again and again, God the creator, the spirit of the shining, blazing sun, and the controller of storms and lightning has been worshiped as an all-inclusive oneness. In Egypt the god of the great eternal light was the supreme deity, the creator of all things and the true god of heaven. The light-giving god is the one who reveals and exposes everything. The life-creating god of light is fire. It both awakens to life and consumes all that is dead and cold. In India they say of him: "Rays of light proclaim the fire-flashing sun as it rises in splendor to give light to the universe. May the much-to-be desired light of the divine sun awaken our spirit!" The eye of the sun appeared in olden times as supremely beneficent, as the perceptive, goodcreating power.
An ancient Brahmin prayer says: "Protected by divine power as we gaze at the heavens above the regions of darkness, may we
I N N E R L A N D : A G U I D E I N T O T H E H E A R T O F T H E G O S P E L 2 5 4 draw near to the deity, to the most radiant light." In his letter to the Romans, the apostle Paul quite clearly appreciated this pagan recognition of the nature of God; yet at the same time, with the prophets of the Old Testament, he emphasized the other side, that in those days this shining book of nature was never read outside the ultimate revelation of light in Christ without dangerous errors – that is, idolatrous misconstructions – being made. Sun and fire were continually being changed from clear and obvious symbols of God's nature to supposedly independent deities of sun and fire – "lords over all the planet gods" or the dispensers of life itself. The nature of the radiant God of heaven ought to be recognized through his shining creations as infinitely transcending all created things; yet erring humankind all too often exalts the light created by God and makes an idol of it as the highest deity. In this way, unhappy man brings stifling darkness toward the radiant, created light. When we consider the religious significance of sun and fire, therefore, we must keep pagan idolatry in mind just as much as the dawning intimation of God.
From the earliest times, everything burning and blazing, every thing shining and radiant has been seen as divine. Indeed, in many cultures, the name for God originated from the word that stood for radiant light. In the old Nordic tongue God is called "Bright
Heaven." Like the sun, the mighty spirit of the divine light of heaven appears to all as the fire of the universe, dispensing life and sustaining life with its power. Through the shining universe, a faint perception of divine unity dawned on fallen human beings. As a result, they became conscious of the light and unity that alone was to awaken and create the highest form of life. They implored light and fire to come from heaven. As the Native Americans chanted, I N N E R L A N D : A G U I D E I N T O T H E H E A R T O F T H E G O S P E L 2 5 5 "Great Spirit, come down! Fire and earth, smoke with me!"
From the very beginning, the human mind has associated that which is creative and life-bringing, good and noble, with warmth and light, radiance and brightness. Down through the ages, people have always been conscious that the warmth of light and love's life and vitality belong together. Light and beauty are one. But light does not shine everywhere. The sun goes down. Night follows day.
Throughout the ages we have always known that the radiant, blazing brightness of the good and powerful spirit of light has an opposite – the evil, sinister spirit of cold and darkness. Everything that keeps back the awakening life of spring is death-like winter. Everything that opposes warmth is deadening cold. Everything that opposes unifying love causes disintegration and death. Death threatens life. Between light and darkness there is enmity and warfare to the end.
We are placed in a tremendous tension between life and death: we are called to burning, life-giving light, but can we overcome or conquer the freezing cold and deadly darkness? Will we survive in the struggle against this very dangerous power, which constantly besets us from within and without? The good spirit of light was revealed from the very beginning as divine, as the leader and champion of life. The evil spirit of darkness was from the very beginning the enemy, the sinister demon of night and death.
Between the two stood the people God had created, struggling as it were between heaven and hell. This struggle filled their life. Full of alarm, they feared descending night as the cold threat of death and hell. Rejoicing, they greeted the dawn of shining day as the approach of glowing warmth, coming from the heavens and from life.
Light meant life and power. People saw the glorious morning sun rise to course triumphant across the heavens. In the sun, in light, I N N E R L A N D : A G U I D E I N T O T H E H E A R T O F T H E G O S P E L 2 5 6 and in fire, they saw nothing soft or insipid, nothing weak or servile.
To them, the victorious power of light was armed with the radiant arrows of the sun and the flashing weapon of lightning. To them, the strong sun-hero of radiant morning and of bright springtime was welded to a fiery unity with the thunder-god of storms and threatening lightning. The light-god of the sun's power was for them masculine and manly, like the thunder-god of storms and lightning. Spring, when the sun is ascending, was for them a youthful, courageous war-hero, who as a triumphant conqueror overcomes the aging giant of mighty winter and leads in a new time over the earth and all its inhabitants – the sunny time, the longed-for time, the expected time! This time alone can awaken strong, prolific, and abiding life.
For humankind, light was to triumph over darkness at the end of time. The day was to dawn when the last springtime of all worlds and ages would melt and abolish forever the whole present age of wintertime – this cold, dark, dead, and numbing ice age of the world of today. In early Christian times, Hermas, a prophet of the church of Rome, wrote his book, The Shepherd, in which this age-old enlightenment is given new meaning in the early Christian sense. In the third parable he says, "The present world-age is wintertime. The coming world-age is summertime." What facts lie behind this prophetic language? It is important to get a picture of what sun and fire are and have meant in nature from time imme morial if we want to understand all the prophetic word has to say about the sun-energy of God, about the light of Christ, about the fire of the spirit, about the dawn of radiant day in the coming kingdom, and about the living church with its fire of unity and its power to shine out.
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Nothing can make the powerful significance of glowing fire clearer to us than the very beginning when, cast out and still far from God, people met fire for the first time. It came as a terror to them. And yet the same fire was soon kindled as a campfire and as a sacrificial altar fire. Adam was once master over fire, and light shone in him. But what happened after this light was lost? How did the first man, cast out into the darkness, experience fire? In a flash, lightning would descend from heaven with a crack of thunder, and a forest giant would be set ablaze. Everything would take flight.
Soon, however, people would gather round the felled and still burning tree, encamp there to feed the fire as their own, and so find protection for the community they craved.
Or it could be that the depths of the mountain would rumble.
The foundations of the earth would quake and crack. Enormous pillars of fire would shoot up out of the smoking mountain. Volleys of stones and showers of ashes would be hurled high into the air and immediately spread far and wide over the land. Slowly a river of glowing, blood-red substance would pour its way into the valley.
Trees or bushes would be caught by its fiery breath, and everything would go up in flames. Gradually the surface of the red-hot lava would grow pale. It would lie there like a gigantic snake, covering the valley bed in a mound of heat. People would venture to draw their camp nearer the slowly hardening lava. The nearer they came, the warmer they would be, even in the middle of the cold tropical night. Should a piece of dry wood touch this dangerous glowing stream, the branch would burst into bright flames. Then fire would be kindled, just as when the tree was struck by lightning. And as people put more and more wood on the fire, the warmer and brighter the flames.
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So people learned to combine their terrible fear of fire with a reverent thankfulness, for here they encountered an element that united the wrath of a destructive power with the loving gift of life.
In reverence they wanted to preserve it, so they fed and tended it.
They learned how to acquire and handle it. Soon they began to carry it, glowing and glimmering, to kindle a blazing fire where they wanted it, using tiny sticks. They carefully kept alive the glowing embers borrowed from the destructive lightning or volcano, carrying them to where it was cold and dark. They learned to take care of the fire.
So they revered the spark of fire as something sacred, a truly holy possession the deity had given to the human race alone. No animal had an active part in this possession or took it along. No gathering of animals tended the fire as people did. Only the frail community of people was never without fire; only they were fire bearers. The spark was never allowed to go out in their hands. "Fire guardian" was their name. Their fire must never be forgotten. They passed it on from hand to hand. As fire givers and fire borrowers, true to their origin and goal, they proved to be communal beings. Fire united them in mutual help. Even the total stranger was included in this fellowship from the very beginning.
Tending the fire was basic for community. The radiation of light and warmth generated a power to gather. The campfire meant that community was formed and preserved. The most valuable heritage of the people of old was the community fire passed on from generation to generation. Everywhere, the flame remains the focal point of all cravings for community. The flame creates community as a way of life.
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The first light of God's image was lost when humankind fell. A sign of the new humankind was that they fostered the flames originating from those terrors of the heavens and of the abyss.
Then, after the loss of God's first peace, it dawned on them that judgment by fire meant a gift of fire, that the wrath of the highest powers bears within it new, loving grace. Service to the fire became service to God; worshiping the lost God, people wanted to keep the warm glow of fire alive through the sacrifice of wood.
They did not want its light to go out at any time. Their aim was to gather the community and to keep it gathered. Food also, like life, should be preserved from decay and death. Thus the community of the tribe, of the nation, and of humankind was meant to come into being from campfire, hearth fire, and altar fire. The light of paradise had disappeared, unclouded community with God was lost. Could the new communal fire light the way back to God?
Through fire, people very slowly gained more mastery over the forces of nature – the mastery they had been called to in the lost garden. They seemed to become more and more free, especially in choosing and changing habitations. They felt increasingly independent of the outward circumstances of country and climate. In the community of the fire, they strove to press forward to the freedom and mastery they had forfeited along with God's community of light. A glowing light once more gathered them round a blazing central point. It showed them a communal way through the threatening night to freedom. It seemed to them that the brightness of the flame would set them free from the cold's deadly breath and from all the forces of nature that tried to tear them to pieces and destroy them once they had lost the peace of God.
Set free from the fear of night and enslavement to nature, if only to a small extent, people could venture slowly to take up their lost
I N N E R L A N D : A G U I D E I N T O T H E H E A R T O F T H E G O S P E L 2 6 0 mastery over things and circumstances. So they learned to share their food in community; they learned how to keep it edible for the whole band. So they made a step forward from the campfire in the open, on the bare ground, to the protected community hearth made of two layers of stone set opposite each other, between which the holy fire was to burn uninterruptedly for all. Here it was to be kept alive for the tribe for always, an awe-inspiring mystery of the hoped-for community.
Fear and terror had once led to a common flight from the pre dictable fiery wrath of the deity; later, a common reverence bound people to the flame. For they had experienced what the dangerous fire gave the tribe: protection from freezing to death and from the evil powers of night, conservation of life-energies and preservation of food by seasoning with fire. But the gathering power of fire was seen more and more as its most powerful element. The gift of life and community, so much desired, was greater than the destruction caused by lightning and fire-belching mountains that had once driven people apart. What had once meant the terror of death and separation became a power for life, a power that gathered.
This is how people tried to survive the awful horror of the ice age. This is how they passed through those deadly ages that drove much mightier animal species into distant parts or completely exterminated them. Only like this could they (whose limbs were unarmed) hold their own against the countless murderous creatures of night, and withstand the spirits of darkness, feared most of all.
The fire gave protection; for this reason it was protected. As the protective gathering point of the community, it became the focal point of the human dwelling. Houses were created for the sake of the fire. People first started to build houses in an effort to protect
I N N E R L A N D : A G U I D E I N T O T H E H E A R T O F T H E G O S P E L 2 6 1 the flame. The sacred hearth fire is not without reason the very essence of home life. In choosing a campsite, the only consideration was to protect the flame, to find a shield for the hearth, not to find or erect a sheltered hiding place. Once protected from the wind, the blazing flames frightened away all dangers that threatened, whereas no hiding place (however carefully chosen) could hold off stealthy and evil powers.
To shelter the fireplace from storms and floods, walls were set up under the cover of trees, or sometimes the fireplace was built in a protecting cave. But in each case the shelter afforded by the embryonic house was mainly for keeping the flame alive. Not the house but the fire was the protection from freezing to death in the ice-cold night and from being frightened to death by nocturnal enemies. Not the people but the fire was what they tried to protect with walls and roof. To protect it was a holy cause, the holiest obligation. The dwelling house evolved as a sacred shelter for the hearth.
The raised hearth was the token of a holy place, symbolizing the great cause that held them together. It became a holy symbol of sublime significance, an altar and a memorial. The word "altar" was used for God's holy, blazing hearth of smoking sacrifice in the temple, and the same word was used for the cooking fireplace in every secular house – this was holy too. For primitive people, the hearth of their daily dwelling was just as inviolable as the altar fire in a temple. The reason is clear. Light and warmth, as gifts of the deity, were always the power that gathered the community. Since the very first community, the hearth needed reverent care as the crystallization point of the common life.
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The raised fireplace was a symbol of greatest significance not only for the living community but also for the dead. In the earliest times of communal life, communities constantly moved from place to place, and in the passage of time, the old leaders of the tribe passed away one by one. Along the path taken by the tribe, holy symbols arose as abiding memorials and permanently sacred places.
Wherever the holy community fires had burned, wherever a gathering ground had been a place of sacrifice and religious union, earth and stones would be piled up to make a mound, which kept on getting higher and wider. The first memorials were marks of old fireplaces consecrated to the eternal. They were rightly regarded as holy graves by those who traveled by. In primitive times, a leader's tomb was erected beside his beloved hearth – the place where he had lived and worked in the midst of his people. The altar of a temple and the hearth of a simple house were given the same veneration – the tomb and the hearth also became one at this same fire. The tomb became a place that was consecrated forever: the former fireplace, beside which the dead had been active in life, was preserved as a holy place by enclosing the hearth and the grave within a circle of stones. Thus arose the "hill of worship" where God and heathen gods were worshiped, as it says in the Bible.
With the living, it was the same as with the dead. The area around the fire was enclosed more and more until a closed square was created, housing the living in the same way as the stone circle housed the dead. The vital center for the living as for the dead was and always will be the hearth – the essence of the home and of family life. The words for fence (Zaun in German), town (tun in Old
English), enclosure (tun in Old Norse), and fortress (dun in Old
Irish), with their common Nordic root, all point to the fire and the buildings around it. Around the fire, the permanent center, arose
I N N E R L A N D : A G U I D E I N T O T H E H E A R T O F T H E G O S P E L 2 6 3 the individual house, providing a roof for the hearth. And around this hearth, the settlement grew up, its fences and walls protecting the roofed dwellings: the fire is the secret at the heart of all communal dwellings.
The hearth fire, then, was regarded as the power uniting the communal household settled around it, just as earlier (as a camp fire) it had gathered the nomadic tribe. And despite a tendency in all people to limit their will to community to their own few kin, the fire would stimulate friendship between tribes. The fire, as the basis of hospitality, would pave the way for peace and unity between strangers; and by freely borrowing and lending fire, even enemy tribes became friendly. Carried from hearth to hearth and from one people to another, fire would be given or received as a token of peace and unity.
The service paid to the dead indicates the friendly relationships between the living. The community of food, field, and fire among these primitive people becomes clear in their service to the dead.
The dead were provided with food and fire in their graves, just as in life they had practiced community of food and fire with the living. Primitive people helped each other; in fact, the fields and pastures consecrated by fire were managed collectively by the whole tribe or village. The dead, too, like other members of the tribe, had to be provided with earthly goods of the community.
They were not to be left cold and hungry to a dark grave. Therefore they were given a share of the communal food or the harvest from a piece of land that was dedicated to them.
Nothing that belonged by rights to the dead was to be kept back for the living. From ancient times, therefore, when anyone died, the fire shared to the last in living community was extinguished; it
I N N E R L A N D : A G U I D E I N T O T H E H E A R T O F T H E G O S P E L 2 6 4 was to be surrendered completely as a consecrated gift. After the fire had been put out on the deserted hearth, a new fire had to be kindled. Still today, the Roman Catholic church extinguishes all the old fires on Easter Saturday to commemorate Jesus' death and lights the new flames on Easter morning so that every household can light its fires, tapers, or Easter candles from it. When they gave fire, primitive people testified to their faith that life continued for the dead. Today too as the candles are relighted, the cry rings out: "Christ is risen!"
Because of their faith in life after death, primitive people gave to the dead what they held to be the best and the highest also for the living. As the dead were given food and fire for a new and different life, the living were given food and fire for every new undertaking on earth. Fire-virgins were indispensable as an escort for every move or new beginning. Like Germanic youths, the "sacred spring" consecrated to the deity, Roman youths selected for the founding of a new settlement were sent out from the parent stock on the first of March. As the consecrated "spring" of the race, they had to take the community fire with them when they were ready to leave, while all home fires were extinguished. The holy tending of the fire and the kindling of the new spark were entrusted to the firevirgins, who were not to be hindered in this priestly service by love or childbearing. Later, chastity was still rigorously demanded for the vestal virgins too and for the consecrated virgins who watched the holy temple fire.
The continued protection and maintenance of the tribe settled on home ground also depended on service to the holy fire.
Continuance of the race and continuance of the fire were regarded as one and the same thing. When the tribe died out, the fire went
I N N E R L A N D : A G U I D E I N T O T H E H E A R T O F T H E G O S P E L 2 6 5 out; as soon as the fire ceased to burn, the independence of the people was lost. And should a traveling band lose its flame, they would fetch a new spark from the old home hearth, not to be indebted to strangers: Gretti the Strong swam through the stormy waves of the fjord and brought the home fire back in his uplifted hand. As Homer says in the Odyssey, "The seed of fire is fostered, that it need not be kindled afar."
Through fire, the homeland was dedicated to the tribe and its deity. Just as the flame of the land was held in holy community, so from time immemorial the land, as "common land," was common property with no individual possession – marked-out land held communally by the "commonalty." For the Norwegians, "to sanctify with fire" meant their taking over territory through their communal flame. Where their fires burned was their homeland. The home fire, like the land they had taken over, belonged to the whole community of the tribe.
Like possessing the land in common, sharing the tribe's fire was a religious matter. To be denied fire meant banishment from the homeland. Fire could be refused only to someone exiled for religious reasons, a punitive measure sanctioned by divine power – as a ban. Left to be judged by the gods, they could no longer share the necessities of life with their people; the fire needed was de nied, the homeland forbidden. Therefore, to be exiled, this hardest fate that could befall anyone, was called "being deprived of the community of water and fire." As Herodotus reports about Aristodemus of Sparta, no one spoke to those who were denied fire. Similarly, according to Cornelian law, loss of Roman citizen ship was pronounced by denying water and fire. Among Germanic peoples also, no one was allowed to give outlaws fire or water; they were cut off from the whole communal life of the people.
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Granting or refusing fire like this had a leveling effect. With regard to women, the flame had an elevating effect too, raising them to a status of equality or even to priestly dignity. All people are equal before the fire. Women everywhere had the greatest importance in giving or withholding this holy service, as with the vestal virgins or the fire-bearing virgins of the Vikings and other
Germanic races, who were consecrated to the service of sacred springtime. It was nearly always the woman who had to tend the hearth fire, guard and foster it, carry it with her, and feed it with ever-ready material.
Perhaps woman was also the first to bring fire to birth by rubbing sticks, for it was in the process of work that the way to rekindle the lost flame was discovered. In the process of making tools or cutting wood to feed the fire, a new spark would fall into the pile of wood dust and blaze up into a precious flame, the result of heat and friction and the collection of fine particles of wood.
Work with fire-making materials was a holy function – a priestly service. Fire was generated by rapidly twirling two sticks (called the fire-father and fire-mother), so that, as the Edda says, "it could be allowed to grow and immediately send messages far and wide."*
This kindling of fire practiced by men or women was from the very beginning a sacred service. Among the American Indians, the priest was called the "fire maker" just as the priestesses of Rome were called the "fire-virgins."
The swastika (symbolizing both a wheel of fire and the turning wheel of the sun) points to this kindling of flame, which from remotest times was held to be holy. The swastika is an ancient sym bol of fire sticks laid at right angles. The hooks at the ends of the sticks suggest quick motion like a whirling wheel, showing the *The Edda – a collection of old Icelandic poems.
I N N E R L A N D : A G U I D E I N T O T H E H E A R T O F T H E G O S P E L 2 6 7 quick rotation that causes ignition. The spark is the result of the motion. Thus in the Far East the swastika, as the fire-cross denoting kindling in primitive times, became the symbol for cause and effect. Rotary friction was recognized as the cause and fire as the effect.
The fact that we find this fire-cross of two hooked sticks as early as the new stone age proves that it had universal significance. As a symbol of life and community, the kindling of fire by the twirling of sticks is the common property of all peoples. As a symbol of firekindling and of the sun-wheel, the swastika belongs to primeval people. All descendants, without distinction of race or blood, have a right to it. So it is not surprising that all the Aryan tribes as well as the Phoenicians of Canaan preserved this sign of the life-giving power of sunlight and fire-kindling. Fire, the kindling of fire, and the community of fire belong also to the Jewish inhabitants of Canaan.
Among all peoples, the holy service of guarding and kindling the consuming fire led to sacrifice by fire on the holy altar. So the people of Israel worshiped Jahweh-Jehovah every morning and evening through the ascending smoke of the incense offering and the rising flames of the burnt offering. Offerings on the incense altar become in the new covenant the fiery offering of intercession: Jesus Christ, the High Priest, interceding for his people. At the same time (through the pleading of Jesus and the Holy Spirit), they are the fiery prayers rising from his saints, and as such are also de scribed as daily offerings (Rev. 5:8).
The burnt offering on the fire altar was not only the most frequent but also the most common and comprehensive sacrifice, the complete sacrifice. Abraham for instance, the patriarch of Israel, showed an unlimited readiness to sacrifice when he was prepared
I N N E R L A N D : A G U I D E I N T O T H E H E A R T O F T H E G O S P E L 2 6 8 to give the only son of the promise as a sacrifice by fire. And even before the patriarchs, Noah, saved from the annihilating flood, sent up to heaven and to God's rainbow of peace a burnt offering of a whole animal, a symbol of complete dedication. For this reason, Paul spoke of the death of Jesus as the fire offering of the new covenant, of his cross-gallows as the altar of burnt offering (Heb.
13:10–12). But John saw and heard those who had witnessed to Christ with their blood – saw them under the altar, like the spirits of the ancients under the hearth that was their grave and their memorial (Rev. 6:9–11). In this baptism of blood, Jesus' question was answered: "Can you be baptized with the same fire that comes over me?" The blood baptism of the crucified one and the church's martyrdom by death afterwards point to the complete sacrifice, as if on the hearth of a burnt offering.
Among the people of Israel also, the flame of a sacrifice pointing to the ultimate like this could be kindled only at the holy altar fire.
No "alien" fire was allowed on the altar. As among the most ancient peoples, the fire blazing on Israel's table of burnt offering was never to die out. As eternal fire, it was sanctified to God. The stone hearth or stone table (which even at this time was occasionally built up with earth and turf) was later at the time of the prophets called "God's mountain" or "God's hearth" (Ezek. 43:12–15). As the table for the fire, it was the altar of God.
In accordance with age-old custom, this altar, the place of sacrifice and fire, was built of undressed stone even as late as the second temple of Israel. Moses (like the earliest man) made a fire altar of earth and surrounded it with twelve piles of stone as the Israelites' court of sanctuary; Joshua (like later primitive men) made one of undressed stone and surrounded it with the stones of the law. In I N N E R L A N D : A G U I D E I N T O T H E H E A R T O F T H E G O S P E L 2 6 9 the new covenant, commitment unto death must be offered, as it were, on just such an ancient burnt-offering altar as Abel's, without the artificial embellishment of human skill and its sham riches, in the primal simplicity of humanity at its poorest and simplest. When the apostle of Jesus proclaims him who was baptized by fire and executed on a crude cross, his words have effect only if they have no rhetorical skill or lofty wisdom (1 Cor. 1:17). Sacrifice by fire demands utmost simplicity – the original genuineness.
To sum up, it was by that simple fire-altar in the temple court that the prophet Isaiah recognized the full significance of the fire of God: "God has a hearth in Jerusalem." "Jahweh has a fire in Zion." "Jehovah will kindle a light-giving fire over all the dwellings on his mountain so that in burning it may shine through the dark night." "The light of Israel will be fire." "His spirit will judge and will kindle a fire."
Like lightning from heaven, the fire of the Lord comes down to strike where it will. When Elijah, the only remaining prophet of Jehovah, confronted hundreds of false prophets who represented the sun-god Baal and the moon-and-Venus goddess Astarte, he ordered two altars to be prepared, one for the idols and the other for Jahweh, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel. He built his of twelve stones because it stood like Moses' for the hearth of the twelve tribes, Jehovah's people. He poured water over it; for on both altars, wood and a beast of sacrifice were to be laid, but no fire of human making. The priests of Baal and Astarte were to call on their gods, and Elijah was to call on his God to send lightning and kindle fire: "The god who answers with fire, he is God!" Here the battle between the fire-gods and the fire coming from God was settled. The frantic calling of the priests of sun and moon got no I N N E R L A N D : A G U I D E I N T O T H E H E A R T O F T H E G O S P E L 2 7 0