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The Rev. Frank
Logue
When Fires Rage Sometimes we are not quite as smart as we think we are. We can out smart ourselves more easily than we like to admit. In 1900, we got smart enough to control wildfires. Beginning with President Teddy Roosevelt’s commendable desire to set aside National parks, forests and preserves, we began to suppress fires. We were smart. Smart enough to control the wildfires. But we were not as smart as we thought. By the 1920s, there were bigger wildfires blazing in the western United States than ever. Why? Because we had held back the fuel load for two decades. When a fire did hit, that wasn’t quickly brought under control, flames would rage though that fuel load—the underbrush and downed trees—creating ever larger fires. Southern California has, for recorded history, experienced dry winds called the Santa Anas. The Santa Ana Winds form when a high pressure system forms over the Great Basin and a low pressure system hangs over the Pacific. The air over the Great Basin then crosses mountain ranges and drops rapidly. Temperature goes up as the humidity of the wind drops, creating the hot, dry Santa Ana which charge through canyons at rates that can match hurricane force. This process was in place long before humans decided to build homes along the California coast.
We know all this, but it may be too late to wizen up. After all, the main reason why we have a zero tolerance for wildfires is that people and property are at stake. We experienced this not too long ago as years of suppressing wildfires resulted in a big blaze to our west that burned its way into the bogs of the Okefenokee. I didn’t enjoy the ash falling like slow flurries or the lung choking haze that descended on us. Prior to the people settling the areas in large numbers, California’s landscape tended to itself with a natural system built into the ecology. Lightning and the fires that followed played a vital role in that system which was self-perpetuating. Once the people and homes are in place, it is hard to pass any policy that will put either at risk. California with its millions of homes built alongside wild lands will be sorting out this natural phenomenon for decades to come. I say all this in partial defense of a large natural disaster as these sorts of problems are often termed acts of God. Yet, I know that God did not decide a half million people needed to spend time in a shelter this past week while seven must died and more than 1,800 people must lose their homes. To the degree that this was an act of God, it was one because of natural processes God hard wired into creation long ago. Our desire to live out of synch with those natural processes created the problem we now face. I think God gets a bum rap in times like this. However, we do like to give God the credit for the good side of nature, the blessings we get from the natural order. This is what is happening in our reading from Jeremiah which said, Can any idols of the nations bring rain? Or can the heavens give showers? Is it not you, O Lord our God? We set our hope on you, for it is you who do all this. The prophet praises God for bringing the rain which feeds the crops that feed the farmers and the rest of us. For the prophet, it is wrong to set our hope on idols, or even to count on the heavens themselves, but we are to count on the God who created the world in this self-regenerating way. The reason Jeremiah brings this up at all is because the people have sinned. Israel has abandoned the one true God for the God’s worshipped by those around them like the fertility God Asherah. There are those who still want to go sacrifice to Asherah and perform the rituals needed so that the crops will succeed. Other put their trust in Baal or in other gods and rituals of the surrounding nations. Jeremiah instead says that the thing to do is to set our hope on the Lord our God. Israel had not abandoned God all at once. They had little by little accommodated themselves to letting practices of others peoples slip into Israel. Some of this happened as persons from other places came to live alongside them. More happened when the people of Israel intermarried with others and added the religion of their spouses to their own. Little by little things added up until they no longer set their hope on the one true God. Many changes happen little my little, without noticing the small accommodations along the way. Jesus tells a parable of two men praying in the Temple: One, a tax collector known to be a sinner; The other a self-righteous man with an inflated sense of his own holiness. The Pharisee used his piety to beat up others. His prayer is, “God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.” But the man’s fasting and tithing only served to make him feel like he had earned God’s love and that others therefore didn’t deserve God. Any prayer starting, “God, I thank you that I am not like so and so” is one you should hope bounces off the ceiling, because you don’t want God hearing that anyway. The Pharisee was so full of himself that there was no room for God. Not surprisingly, Jesus uses him as a bad example. In fact, it is awkward for me that Jesus seems to always use religious leaders as bad examples. Yet, Jesus’ harsh words were never for the outcast, the downtrodden, the sinner. Jesus’ scorching blasts were reserved for the religious elite who thought they were perfect. This man doesn’t see that he might not be a thief, a rogue, an adulterer or a tax collector, but he is a judge. Jesus said, “Judge not lest you be judged.” And this holier-than-thou guy has placed himself in the position of God. His sin is that he is judgmental. In contrast, there is the tax collector. I would like to think that his slide into sin was gradual too. But now he has looked up and his life is not what he wants it to be. He finds himself humbled by some situation that has him now in the Temple seeking God in his life once more. The normal way to pray in those days was to stand upright with your arms out as a priest does in praying during communion. But this man stands far off and doesn’t even look up. He beats his breast and prays, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!” Jesus tells us this second man is the one who went home justified. To go home justified means to go home being seen righteous in God’s eyes. The holier-than-thou guy goes home with his sin of judgment hanging over him. The tax collector goes home with the grace of God beginning to flood into his heart. The difference between the two is that the Pharisee trusted in his own abilities. The tax collector knew he didn’t have the answers to life hard questions and he set his hope on God. For those who faced the flames in California this past week, there will have been those who placed their hope on firefighters, or insurance coverage, or luck, or whatever else it is they trust to bring them through the flames. There will be others who set their hope on God and then whether they kept their possessions or had their house consumed with everything inside, they could not have everything taken from them. For to set your hope in God is to say, “Whether I live or die, I am the Lords.” It is this attitude adjustment the tax collector had to go through. Notice he doesn’t arrive in the Temple with a laundry list of what he wants God to do, how God needs to do it and when God needs to be finished. No, he prays for God’s mercy. He trusts God’s will. But sometimes we get too smart for God. We know what is needed. We have all the answers. “My will be done,” we pray. Yet, we are not that smart. We don’t have all the answers. We can’t control the Santa Ana winds. We can’t even control our own hearts. Both the prophet Jeremiah and Jesus agree. The answer is to not try to be so smart. When fires rage, try trust instead. Acknowledge that you don’t have all the answers and pray that simplest of prayers, “Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner.” This is the answer whether the fires rage outside your home or inside your heart. In either case, admit that you aren’t quit as clever as you would have to be to solve all your own problems. Set your hope on God, and trust in his mercy. Amen.
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In the natural process, a large number
of small fires keeps the underbrush cleared and aids in the decomposition of
the litter on the forest floor. In neighboring Mexico, the same wind effects
produce only small fires as a century of letting small, natural fires burn
has left a radically reduced fuel load not far to the south of San Diego.
Recent burns serve as natural fire breaks in Mexico, halting the spread of
wildfires as they have since the landscape was formed. 
