On my Doctor of Ministry program there are two priests from Ottawa.  And it’s great to have some people from Canada and to learn a bit from them about their country.  When we were together last year I heard them engaged in a deep and somber conversation.  As I approached them I could see they were talking in very hushed and reverential tones and one of them mentioned the words The Great One.  Now I put two and two together and thought: two priests being reverential, talking about the Great One… they must be talking about Jesus.  So I joined them and listened to their conversation hoping to join in.  But it became clear after a while that if this was Jesus they were talking about there was an entire segment of his life that I knew nothing about.  There was mention of Edmonton, assists records, Stanley Cups, the great betrayal of signing for Los Angeles, by which time I was totally confused.  And then one of them mentioned the real name of The Great One.  Wayne Gretzky was a name I had actually heard before, but I didn’t want to embarrass myself by trying to say anything intelligent so I remained silent and allowed my friends to pay homage.  I now realise that ice hockey is something of a religion in Canada.  Where two or three are gathered together they will practice a power play.  Indeed, my friends tell me that if Canada fails to win the gold medal in Vancouver then the nation will wear black for six months and there will be calls for the Prime Minister to resign. 

Ice and passion, ice and fire, if you like.  It’s a strange mix.  They seem to be incompatible.  Put ice and fire together and either the fire will melt the ice or the ice will extinguish the fire.  It seems they can’t live in the same space.  But in today’s Bible readings there is this seemingly impossible fire and ice together.  The ice is the cold, barren, lifelessness that can often seem to be the norm in our world.  In the ice practically nothing can thrive.  Very few plants and animals can even live in the ice.  It’s inhospitable.  Cold kills.  See those house plants you put outside in the yard on a warm spring day but left them there overnight and there was a frost. 

I’m talking of course about the spiritual iciness we live with.  Ours is a society in which it’s hard to keep our faith alive.  Our hearts are occasionally warm with love for God and passion for seeing his will being done.  We leave church feeling a gentle fire inside.  We have met with God and he has kindled a precious flame deep down.  But just hours after we leave the icy winds of life can snuff out that flame.  Our hearts can lose their warmth.  The ice nips at the flame of faith and slowly suffocates it.  This is the normal daily chill of a society which runs on aggression, profit, and self-interest.  We live in this world.  And over time it can chill the fieriest of hearts with its interminable winter. 

The three main characters in today’s Bible readings knew all about the ice of this world.  In the Old Testament lesson from Exodus 34 Moses goes up the mountain to receive the Law from God, epitomized in the Ten Commandments.  This is the second time he’s done this. The first time he went up there the people turned their backs on God and made and worshipped a golden calf.  At the very moment God was giving Moses the Ten Commandments.  In the first five books of the Old Testament Moses is regularly having to deal with the petulance and the ingratitude of the people of Israel as well as their downright disobedience to God.  The fire in their hearts for the God who had brought them out of slavery in Egypt was pretty short lived.  Moses knew the coldness of a stubborn people.  Then, in the epistle reading, Paul tries to encourage an early congregation.  The location of this church is Corinth, a city renowned for its immorality and its arrogance.  Paul knew all about the coldness of a self-centered people.  And then in the Gospel reading Jesus ascends another mountain (what we now call the Mount of Transfiguration), along with Peter, James and John, and walks into a cloud.  Clouds are cold places.  They separate people from the sun.  Jesus and the three disciples were cut off from the warmth.  The mountain was cold.  Jesus knew the coldness of separation from God and the iciness of living with a weak human body and a frail human mind.

So there’s a lot of ice in the three readings.  There’s also plenty of ice for us trying to live faithful lives in West Michigan day by day.  It comes in the form of discouragement, temptation, suffering, loss, and conflict.  And it can chill our hearts.  It can extinguish the fire of God’s love and freeze the passion out of us.  It’s hard to stay warm when you live in the freezer.  Yet, this is where we are called to live.  The place of discouragement, temptation, suffering, loss, and conflict.  There is nowhere else on this earth where we can escape the freezer.  This is the place where God has called us, every man and woman.  Do you think we need a fire?  Yes we do.  And that fire was available to the three people in the Bible readings.  They faced the freezer, but also found the fire.  Moses.  Up the mountain to receive the Law.  He experienced the fire.  The fire of God’s presence.  When he came down from his encounter with God he had to cover his face because it was shining so brightly that it would have blinded the people who looked at him.  In the ice he had found the fire.  And Paul, encouraging those early Christians.  He compares them to Moses and says that they too have gleaming faces.  He says they don’t need to wear veils, but their faces nonetheless reflect the glory of the God they worship even though they lived in a challenging place.  In the ice they had found the fire.  And Jesus, up the Mount of Transfiguration meets with God.  His clothes become dazzling white.  In the ice he found the fire.

So the question for us is how do we find the fire?  Spiritually we live in the freezer.  It’s cold out there, and we need the fire.  So where do we find it.  Well, like the three Bible lessons, we find the fire when we draw aside and meet with God. 

One of my favourite Christian authors, John Ortberg, wrote, “We live in a lethal environment.  American society is filled with ideas and values and pressures and temptations about success and security and comfort and happiness that we will not even notice unless we withdraw on occasion.”  It’s that daily withdrawing that rekindles the fire.  And we have lots of resources.  The daily Bible readings will help, as will the questions I set each week for thought.  Some of you take Day by Day.  We have Prayer Books.  If you find it helpful to have some prayers written down that you can read and pray each day then you can do that.  You might even take one of them home with you.  And if a warden asks you what you’re doing just tell them that I said you could.  We can use all sorts of tools to help us to spend time with God and to gaze on him.  We need to slow down.

We need that time to commune with God.  Here are some ideas.  Try going for a few hours without talking and without voluntarily hearing anything except natural sounds.  Occasionally drive without the radio on.  Don’t automatically turn the TV on when you come in or get up.  Create a space in your home and dedicate it for solitude and prayer.  Maybe designate a specific chair your ‘prayer chair’.  Plan all this, because it won’t just happen.

Back to the Olympics.  The ice and the fire.  Because there is another fire blazing powerfully over the City of Vancouver.   The Olympic flame was lit on October 5 2009 at the ancient site of Olympia in Greece.  It took 106 days to make its journey to the stadium in Vancouver.  It travelled via air and land a total of 45,000 kilometers, passing through the hands of scores of runners and hundreds of communities before reaching its destination last Friday.  And the amazing thing about this flame is that it was ignited, back in Greece last autumn, by the rays of the sun.  There was no match that began the life of this flame.  No pilot light or spark.  It was started by the rays of the sun.  (Which is why it happened in Greece and not West Michigan.) 

And therein lies a secret for us.  You see, when we are feeling spiritually cold we can try to find warmth in all sorts of places.  All manner of activities, or objects, or thought patterns, or substances can call to us that they will make us warm.  They tell us that they can ignite the spiritual flame we need.  They can give us the comfort we seek, or the excitement, or the happiness or the love.  And those voices can be very convincing and attractive.  But these are artificial sparks.  They can’t start the authentic fire that will warm us.  A box of matches can’t light the Olympic flame, only the rays of the sun can do that.  And only the presence of God can ignite our spirits in a way that satisfies and lasts. 

When our faith is at its coldest, when the ice of the freezer is getting just too much for us to bear, go to the flame.  Not an artificial flame but the flame of God’s rays.  We will not undergo a Transfiguration like Jesus did, and we probably won’t have to cover our faces to protect people from the glare like Moses did, but we can rekindle our fire when we go to God, the source of it.

Now, here’s something else about that Olympic flame.  There are actually two of them.  Because it would be a disaster if the torch bearer was running along and a big gust of wind blew it out.  Uh, oh, there go the Olympic Games.  So there’s a safeguard built into the torch.  You’ve got the highly visible yellow flame which (as you remember from 5^th grade science) burns fairly cool and is more prone to go out in wind and rain, but there is also a smaller hotter blue flame like a pilot light hidden inside the torch.  And that flame is protected from wind and rain and will relight the cooler visible portion if it goes out.  And the point I want to make with this illustration is that the flame of God’s love must go deep into our hearts.  We can be all joyful and burning on the outside, and that is good.  But what really matters is the depth of our fire.  We need to have our hearts warmed for God; otherwise the flame on the outside can easily go out.  So our encouragement this morning is to go back to the flame of God regularly, daily please, and let him thaw you with his love and ignite your passion for him once again.  And let it go deep.  Not just a quick ‘Morning Lord’ but a quality time stilling your mind and allowing God to touch you deep down with his warmth.