Or perhaps you've seen the warning at the bottom of ads in which a person with his helmet glued to a beam is raised by a crane and suspended several stories in the air. "Do not try this at home," they advise. I realize that most of us do not have a crane in the backyard but the disclaimers are there to keep us from entering into dangerous situations. It is important to understand that you should NOT do everything you see or hear. Consider yourself warned.

I am going to talk about starting fires.

I have built a lot of fires over the past fifty years. The first one I can remember was the box of kitchen matches I set alight when I about four. Did you know that if you light one match and put it back in the box while it is still burning that the whole box will hiss and flare up and your mother will wave her arms and scream? I do.

Now my mother's reaction may have something to do with the fact that she set her parents' curtains on fire when she was a little girl. That's another story, but suffice it to say that my interest in fire may be genetic.

The box of matches was just the beginning. As I got older my fire-making repertoire expanded to include everything from plastic army men to steel wool. I was a virtuoso of flame. I could even make water burn- I learned to make underwater flares that generated their own oxygen.

When I was nineteen, I left home and moved to Alaska. As winter approached I learned that fire was not entertainment but a life-giving necessity. I abandoned plastic and powders from chemical supply houses and learned to use the natural materials at hand. I gathered dried lichen and twigs for tinder. I became skilled at making wood shavings with a few strokes of a sharp knife. I no longer needed matches because I learned how to make sparks from flint. With a few simple elements I could turn snow into drinking water, heat a cabin and keep myself alive when it was seventy below zero outside.

Eventually I learned to build fires with metaphor, encouragement and inspiration. When you start a fire in this way you can motivate people, build companies, cast a shimmering vision and warm whole communities to new ideas. These kinds of fires were even more fascinating than the blazes I set in my childhood.

But the most amazing form of fire I have ever encountered is the one that starts when the Holy Spirit arrives. This is the light that casts out darkness; this is the warmth that brings new life. This is the spark that generates its own oxygen-it is wind, breath and spirit, all at the same time- and it sets all ready tinder alight. But the tinder has to have been gathered in order for the fire to start.

The disciples were all together in one place. They were ready. Jesus had prepared them during the three years they followed him. They had been baked by the sun, dried out by the wind, and brought to a flash point by the things they had witnessed.

They watched Jesus heal the sick, give sight to the blind, gather the aimless and set them back on a path toward God. They saw what it looked like to be faithful to God to the end. And they saw the consequences-all of them. Yes, there was death, but there was also resurrection. It was the Risen Christ who told them, again, that the Spirit would be coming. After all they had already seen, why not believe that this, too, was possible? The disciples were like dry tinder gathered in one place waiting for the fire, then Pentecost happened.

We too are gathered, ready and waiting. And we are going to see water burn this morning. When we baptize people, we call down the spark of the Spirit to the tinder we have gathered in the font and in the pews.

Look at that font - in it will I pour the water over which the Spirit moved at the beginning of creation. There is no fire we can build; no explosion we can cause that has more power than was expressed in creation. Whether you believe in the Big Bang, or the Big Guy, or some combination of both- there is inestimable power in the water in that font.

When I put my hand in to bless the water, I will be thinking of the Hebrew people who tested the water of the Red Sea with their feet, in hope, as the most powerful army in the world charged toward them intending to kill them all. At the last instant the sea parted and men, women and children moved forth to freedom. Then the sea swallowed the avenging army and left behind only peace. It is not the strength of our arm that delivers peace within any of us. It is the Spirit of God. Freedom and peace is in that meeting place where the spark of the Spirit meets the power in the water.

Listen to the water when it pours-if you're close enough some might splash on you- and remember that Jesus knelt in the Jordan at baptism. The water poured down his forehead and splashed off His shoulders and the Spirit came down like a dove. This Spirit over the water at baptism is the same Spirit that appeared like wind and tongues of fire on the Day of Pentecost. This Spirit is the same Spirit that can make water burn in Monkton and fill you and me with divine light.

The Spirit moves where it will. But tinder has to be gathered. That was the work of Christ when he walked through Galilee. Now it is the work of Christians everywhere- all those who have been baptized in His name and sent into the world. That would be you and me. We will be making a series of outrageous promises in the Baptismal Rite.

Let us not imagine we are simply witnesses to some tame performance. We are participants who are zooming toward God as fast as we can go as Satan drives straight at us. We are hanging by our helmets over the abyss of those things that corrupt and destroy the creatures of God. Anne Dillard, one of Debra's and my favorite authors knows the danger, the thrill and the opportunities that come to light in the power of the Spirit. She writes-

I come down to the water to cool my eyes. But everywhere I look I see fire; that which isn't flint is tinder, and the whole world sparks and flames. Amen.