On July 2, 1994, lightning struck Storm King Mountain in western Colorado and started a fire that, under normal circumstances, would have been easily brought under control with little loss of property and no loss of life.  But, two days later, at four in the afternoon, what had been only smoldering literally blew up.  Some forty firefighters found themselves running uphill for their lives before an onrushing wall of flame one-hundred fifty feet high and traveling faster than a man could run.  As the inferno began to outrun and overtake the firefighters, the difference between life and death would turn out to be measured in the few yards between the ridge of safety at the top of the mountain in front of them and the superheated nine hundred degree gases chasing them from behind.  Before the fire was finally brought under control ten days later, thousands of acres had been scorched, some $4.5 million dollars had been consumed either in the fire or in controlling it and, worst of all, fourteen firefighters were dead making the Storm King Mountain fire the worst wild firefighting disaster to strike the United States in forty years. 

Investigators putting the pieces together later determined that the blowup didn’t just happen because lightning struck.  Lightning strikes hit mountains in the higher elevations thousands of times a year without causing major loss of property or any loss of life.   What turned this one strike into a catastrophe was the fact that all the ingredients were together in the same place at the same time.  Thick brush growing in the gully where the fire exploded was dry from lack of rain.  The summer air was unusually arid with the humidity on the day of the blowup measuring a paltry eight percent.  A passing cold front brought wind gusts up to forty-five miles an hour.  Thick brush, dry air and high winds were all the perfect fuels.  The only thing needed was a spark to turn the gully on the western face of Storm King Mountain into a gargantuan blowtorch.  On July 4, 1994, that is exactly what happened and people paid with their lives when the fire blew up.  (John N. Maclean, Fire on the Mountain, William Morrow and Company, 1999)

Who pays when you blow up?  What price do you pay to live with someone who constantly blows up?  More significantly, what can we do to avoid those moments when, in our friendships, our families, our marriages and even in our churches, all the perfect fuels come together, something sparks and our relationships are scorched beyond recognition?  In any and every relationship the perfect fuels for a catastrophe can be present at any time only awaiting the spark that will turn into in a raging inferno of anger and hostility that consumes them. 

Occasionally, a betrayed spouse will say, “it struck like lightning out of the blue.”  But, in retrospect, with rarest exception, it’s obvious that all the fuels and the atmosphere essential for a marital meltdown had been building for years.  The spark may have been from out of the blue.  But, without the proper fuels, the spark could have never flamed to life.  When someone gets fired in their job, after the firing cools off, it’s almost always the case that the fire didn’t just explode.  Again, the fuels and atmosphere essential to the explosion had been building for a long time, maybe for years.  And, when everything is just exactly right, something sparks and pinks slips fly.  (Most often on Fridays, it turns out.)

Aside from the practical fact that it can be miserable to live with or be the kind of person who constantly blows up, the scripture makes it quite clear that honoring Christ as Lord in our relationships means taking the necessary precautions essential to avoiding the big blowups.  And, while it is not always possible to predict the behavior of others and never possible to control it, it is abundantly clear listening to the teachings of Jesus, even the prayer he taught us to pray (Matthew 5:9-13), that there is no way to live in proper relationship with God without living in proper relationship with each other.  If we call ourselves by the name of Christ we are duty-bound to live in ways that seek reconciliation and justice in all of our relationships.  That is even more abundantly clear when you listen to the words of Jesus as He concluded what we know of as “the Lord’s prayer.”  Jesus said, “if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.  But, if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.”  (Matthew 5:14-15, NASV)  Those are powerful words for any of us struggling to be disciples of Jesus.  But, they are Jesus’ words, nonetheless.  And, what they tell us is that to be a Christian means more than just accepting God’s grace for ourselves.  Being a Christian means extending that same grace toward all those with whom God has given us to live. 

Now, some of that work must be done, can only be done, on the backside of blowups.  But, there is much we can do to avoid the blowups in the first place.  We all know what it feels like to have been blowtorched by someone else.  All of us know what it feels like, after there is nothing left of a relationship but smoldering embers, to look down and realize we are the ones holding the blowtorch.  How can we avoid those heartbreaking blowups?

Obviously, reading the New Testament, this issue of honoring Christ in one’s relationships was central to the earliest teachings we have.  The fact that the Holy Spirit has preserved these words for us through 2,000 years proves that working at relationships will be a task we all face until we die or Jesus comes.  Which all goes to say that having been scorched by or having been responsible for scorching someone else in a blowup only proves how human we are.  Our Christian maturity is measured more in terms of our willingness to work on the front end toward avoiding those blowups in the first place.  And the words of the apostle Paul become our guide.  Now, if you will allow, I am going to couch his words in the terminology of fire prevention.  Those are my words.  The meaning of them comes from scripture.

First, to avoid the big blowup, keep clearing away the underbrush.  In the Storm King Mountain fire, the underbrush that fueled the inferno had been growing for years.  What initially caused and continued to fuel the fire were not pine trees taller than the sky but underbrush not much taller than a man stood yet growing so thick that it was impassable without a chainsaw to clear a path.  What is the underbrush growing in your heart today that may be the fuel for some other day’s fire? 

The passage we have read this morning is a virtual tool kit for clearing away explosive spiritual underbrush in our souls.  “So then, putting away falsehood, let all of us speak the truth . . . Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and do not make room for the devil.”  What we have here demands more than the time one sermon allows.  Let me reduce it quickly to one simple thought.  Overall, this is clear instruction to tell the truth in ways that don’t allow unwholesome anger a chance to grow or anger to grow into unwholesome ways of expression. 

Anger is a natural response to disappointment or fear or loss or abuse.  To be human is to, from time to time, be angry.  How we handle that anger is a matter of behavior that is usually learned over the years.  How we choose to handle our anger as we grow in Christ is a matter of reshaping our spiritual character according to God’s word.  As a rule, Christians are not good at handling anger, in large part, because they aren’t good at telling the truth.  Does that surprise you to hear me say that?

When you cross the Canadian river in the panhandle of Texas you travel across a fairly long bridge transversing a riverbed that is not much more than wet sand with a little trickle running down the middle.  I jokingly remarked to an old-timer once that it was hardly proper to call a trickle a river.  He then proceeded to tell me that, except when it rained hard, fully eighty percent of the river ran underground.  The river was there; you just couldn’t see it.  For too many Christians, anger is the same.  Too often, for fear that others or God won’t be approving when we sound unapproving, we force our anger underground so that others only see a trickle.  But, the river is still there.  And, as with all rivers, eventually it will surface.

We have permission from God’s word to be angry.  What we do not have is permission to use that anger any way we choose.  Tell the truth, the scripture says.  But, tell the truth in a timely manner.  The command to “not let the sun go down on your anger” means, at a minimum, that it is dangerous to delay dealing with negative and potentially explosive feelings.  Indeed, explosive feelings forced underground, as the scripture says, give Satan “an opportunity” to do his work in ways he wouldn’t have had otherwise.  Let me take it a step further. 

We often think of Satan as doing his greatest work through Satan worshippers or pornography or alcohol or drugs or sexual promiscuity or any given number of social ills.  As devastating as those things can be, however, Satan’s greatest inroad into the average family or marriage or church is not through raging torrents of the more obvious expressions of sin but through silent yet deadly rivers of anger forced underground by people who, for whatever reason, choose not to tell the truth when the time is right.  In fact, looking through the pieces of a life or family or church that has been charred black by a blowup, it’s often the case that the underbrush that fueled the explosion was anger that may have been simmering for years. 

Again, tell the truth.  Tell the truth about what you see or feel or believe.  But, tell it sobered by the fact that “we are members of one another.”  We are duty bound to be truth tellers.  In our marriages.  In our families.  In our churches.  But, we are also duty bound to exercise our truth telling in ways that recognizes the value of the community in which we tell it.  We have the right to be angry and we have the moral obligation to tell the truth.  But, we never have the right to exercise our anger or tell the truth in ways that fail to recognize the value of the person to whom or about whom we are speaking.  Telling the truth in a spirit of confessional humility about our place in the larger community is the only way to clear away the underbrush of “bitterness and wrath and anger and . . . malice” that never just goes away because time passes.  Underbrush that, left uncleared, will eventually be the fuel of a blowup that will, almost certainly, rage to far greater proportions than the spark that ignites it leaving nothing but the charred remains of Christ-like relationships and dreams that now may never be. 

First, clear away the underbrush.  Second, to avoid the big blowup, saturate the atmosphere with words that heal rather than wound, words that encourage rather than discourage.  The scripture says, “Let no evil talk come out of your mouths, but only what is useful for building up . . . so that your words may give grace to those who hear.”

When I was a little boy a movie came out entitled That Darn Cat.  People actually paid money to go see it.  In fact, my father took us to see it.  But, not without a cautious lecture in which he told us that his taking us to see the movie was not to be misconstrued as his permission to use the word “darn” around the house.  If what my father was after was always hearing his son say the right thing every time then I fear that I may have disappointed him too darn much since I was a little boy.  Now that I am a father I realize that what he was after was not just purity of word but purity of spirit.  What he was after was children who knew how to speak graciously, even when angry.  Is our heavenly Father after less?

Words that discourage tend to inflame.  Words of malice and wrath can be gasoline on souls already sparking with fear and pain and sadness.  Words of love and hope and grace saturate the atmosphere with the humidity of love that can subdue fires in the driest undergrowth before they rage out of control.  It’s amazing when you think about it.  God has given us, with our tongues, the capacity to “give grace to those who hear.”

Speaking of cats, we finally got our new kitten this week.  But, we are having a terrible time coming up with a name.  In the meantime, we keep calling this little ten-ounce ball of white, brown and black fur every baby name in the book.  It’s almost sickening, really.  She doesn’t do anything but eat and make messes but you’d think she’s human or something the tender care we give this little animal and the names we keep calling it.  This cat may not know its name, yet.  But, there is no way it can’t feel loved.  Even by the way we speak to it this cat must know, in only the way cats can know, that it is already a valuable part of our family and that we will always treat it kindly and with the tenderest of care.

Oh, that God would give us the grace to treat each other the same way!