The day before we lit the first candle on our Advent wreath, our five-year-old grandson Neeley, visiting us after Thanksgiving, woke up early. He knew I would be lighting a fire in the woodstove and wanted to watch.

Of course he also wanted to participate. “May I light the match?”, he asked.

 “Have you ever lit a match”, I asked. “No”, he said. “Let’s do it together then”, I said. 

I held my hand firmly on the match, his fingers wrapped over mine. Our matches are the flimsy ones made of cardboard, but after several tries, we struck a flame and ignited the fire in the stove. Soon it lit up the still-dark room, sending out currents of warmth. 

Until the advent of electricity, the only light in the darkness for human beings came from fire. Fire brought light. Without fire, no light, other than whatever light came from moon and stars on a clear night. (Of course, now we know that this light comes from fire too.) Without fire, no light. No source of warmth on frigid nights. No heat for cooking.  Everyone knew that light (and heat) came from fire.

Ancient people feared and revered fire. Not only was it one of the primal four elements of the universe – earth, air, fire, and water – but unlike the other three, fire appears from nothing, ex nihilo. The first spark, whether from striking a match or rubbing flint on flint, was a new creation, as if God were saying again, “Let there be light”, then bending over to strike the flint. The divine “Let there be light” was not the flipping on of a switch, but a spark, a first flame. God ignited Creation. And there was light. Historians of the cosmos would agree: the universe began as a spark, an explosion of fire that is light. Most of the physical universe is burning. Star light is star fire. We are star dust, or rather, star fire.

Light still comes from fire, but now it comes from burning things we dig and drill, extract and frack. Most of the time, therefore, we do not see the fire. The light from the laptop on which I am writing these words and on which you are reading them comes from fire. The light that allows us to make our nights into days at home and on the road comes from fire. All the lights. Fire still burns to cook our food, to heat and cool our dwellings, to power our vehicles. Fire powers our internet search engines, our online communication, and the explosion of AI and crypto-currency.

There is no light without fire, but in our electrified lives, where fire is mostly invisible to us, we forget. We function in a haze of disconnection. It is putting our planet in peril.

People who have felt the flames and smoke of uncontrolled burning, or even those of us who keep track of global average temperatures wonder: what future is coming? In what advent are we living? If we do not want to burn up the future, we must stop burning up the past with fuel made from fossils.  But considering the powers in the high places of government, finance, and business who would rather burn up the world than give up their power to do so, we wonder how this can possibly happen.

The signs are not good. Average global temperatures keep rising. Catastrophic weather events keep proliferating. Cruelty, complicity, and corruption are fueling the conflagration. Our situation can give us empathy for King Ahaz when he refused to ask God for a sign (Isaiah 7:12).  None of the signs he was seeing pointed to anything but disaster and defeat. Why would he want another one?  Why would we, any more than King Ahaz, ask for a sign (Isaiah 7:2)? How could any sign be good? 

And yet we pray

Restore us, O Lord God of hosts;

let your face shine upon us,

and we shall be saved.

                                                                           Psalm 80 (3, 7, 19)

In the face of the advent toward which we appear to be hurtling, the Advent we celebrate as church holds a different sign. Church is one place where light is still not separated from fire, where we light fires and that fire gives light. Beginning with Advent, the liturgy of Christian worship holds together the connection that our wired world forgets: all light comes from fire. The Church in all its beautiful, living anachronism keeps fire and light together. In worship, candles bear real flames, ignited by real people, often children. From the candles we light on the Advent wreath, one more each Sunday, to Christmas Eve, when we share that light from one hand to another, onto Epiphany, when we light up the night with the burning of the greens; from Ash Wednesday when we cross each forehead with last year’s burned palms, to the Vigil of Easter, when we light the new Paschal candle in an open fire, then spread the fire from one to another; from the fire burning in the hearts of disciples on the road to Emmaus, to the tongues of fire at Pentecost, we light fire, and the fire lights us. Every time the Church gathers for worship, we practice that first act of creation again, making of it a new creation. “Let there be light”. In other words, “Let us light a fire”. 

“The light shines, burns, in the darkness”.  (John 1:5a)

Neeley, with his fingers wrapped around mine on the match, lighting a fire in our woodstove, was participating in that first act of creation, a new creation. Just as I guided his fingers, so do the fires we light in worship guide us. Ignite us. With the child who asks us to help light the match, their hand over ours, with the child whose arm stretches up to light the fourth candle on the Advent wreath, could it be that we are being created to become fire for Creation’s regeneration?

Could it be?  Or am I (like Joseph) just dreaming?