Our God is a consuming fire.

Two weeks ago there was an newspaper article about the vampire novels author Anne Rice  leaving Christianity because of the bigoted nature of some American evangelicals. She was quoted as saying she just couldn't 'belong to this quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious group... I'm an outsider. My conscience will allow nothing else.' Her faith in Jesus Christ remains central to her life: but, she says, 'following Christ does not mean following his followers.'

We may have some sympathy with her. There are times when we should despair at the way in which the Church fails to love God and our neighbour. But this is only a small part of what the Church is – it also does heroic things. Do you disown your entire family when one of them is unkind, bigoted or does something bad...? None of us is perfect.

This is true also of church: we're like a family in the sense that we don't choose our fellow Christians. There are of course local churches which are comfortable gatherings of the like-minded. I went to lead a service in one earlier this year: there were nine people in the church building, scattered around, with no refreshments afterwards: but they described themselves as a 'family' – and so they were. And they weren't looking outwards to others to come and join them either. There are mega-churches too where, if you don't fit in, then you're not encouraged to stay. But even these churches are part of Christ's wider body, where we worship alongside all kinds of people who we might not otherwise choose to be part of.

Anne Rice in the article I mentioned speaks of an abstract 'Christianity' which she's going to leave – though I don't know how she can leave it, since no one 'joins' Christianity. When you become a disciple of Jesus, get inspired by him and follow him, then you're a member of the Church - whether you like it or not. And when we speak about the Church, we're not talking about 'it' anyway; the Church isn't an abstract concept. The Church is real people, the people alongside us, people we're called to love and care for, however misguided they or we may be.

Here in the Cathedral we try to be an inclusive open church, welcoming all in the name of Christ, and sharing in fellowship with all who want to be Christ's disciples. I say 'we try', because of course there are times when we fail or get it wrong: that's because we're only human, & because churches are places that welcome and support hypocrites – that is, people who don't live up to the values they aspire to. Which is pretty much all of us. The key thing of course is that you're here because you know you're a hypocrite: the people who cause all the trouble are those who, whether they go to church or not, are unaware of their own hypocrisy.

Which brings us to our reading from the letter to the Hebrews. The whole letter was written as far as we can tell to a group of Jews who'd become Christians, but who were losing heart. It appears that they were drifting away from contact with non-Jewish Christians, and tempted to slip back into the Jewish community, where they would be relatively safe from persecution. In other words, they too were thinking of giving up on the Church.

Hold on, says the writer, and you'll inherit God's kingdom. Remember why you became Christians in the first place: because the gospel of Jesus Christ assures you of God's love and forgiveness in a  way which the Jewish faith could not do. If you look at the reading today, you see it takes the Jewish audience back to the great revelation of God at Mount Sinai, in an erupting volcano and storm, a terrifying experience. And the writer says

'This is the God who comes to us in Jesus! Not to terrify us, but to bring us home to heaven. But beware of turning back from following Jesus – because everything in the world will be shaken and upset; for our God is still a consuming fire.'

The reality is that we tend to domesticate our discipleship. We want it to be comfortable: we don't want conflict, we don't want fellowship with people who make us embarrassed or angry, we don't want to be persecuted or despised because we're Christians and that associates us with difficult people.

Our gospel reading reminds us that it's always been like that. Jesus heals on the Sabbath, and the religious leaders complain that he's not doing it right. Jesus has to point out to them their hypocrisy, as he does to us. God is a consuming fire – and God will burn away our hypocrisy, our unloving attitudes, our lack of concern for others – if we will allow God to do so.

Ultimately the consuming fire of the volcano of Sinai is a picture of the burning love of God – that warms us and gives us life, but which we also experience as burning us when God confronts us and forces us to stop living our Christian life in domestic safety: forces us to love and be alongside people in the body of Christ who we'd  rather not know at all.

We'd like to take a step forward this autumn here at the Cathedral for those who would like to explore their faith together, and find support for being a Christian in everyday life. On the table at the back is a sheet to take if you're interested in being part of a fellowship group....

Our desire is to follow Christ , to be changed day by day as we give our hypocrisy and lack of love to God. And today, we come to express that desire in worship: as the writer to the Hebrews says, 'let us give thanks and offer to God an acceptable worship with reverence and awe: for indeed our God is a consuming fire.'