June 8, 2025

Drunk with Fire?

In 1785, Friedrich van Schiller wrote a poem titled Ode to Joy. Thirty-nine years later, Ludwig van Beethoven used the poem as the basis for the final movement of his last, and perhaps greatest symphony, the ninth. The music is familiar to almost everyone. The lyrics? Not so much. For one thing, it’s all in German. A number of years ago I set out to translate Schiller’s words into English maintaining the same rhyme scheme and meter, to fit the music. One of the things that made the task daunting is Schiller’s creative use of language. One line in particular I found fascinating. It is “Wir betreten feuertrunken, Himmlische, dein Heiligtum.” It translates, “We trespass, drunk with fire, on heaven your sanctuary.” That word, feuertrunken, is, as far as I can tell, one among many that Schiller invented. Literally, it is “fire-drunk.” Schiller was addressing Joy personified, and in essence apologizing for the way we tend to barge into its holy realms, trampling on its sacred territory, because we get confused; we become intoxicated by that which we think is joyful, but which is not really joy at all. He says that joy is the “daughter of Elysium.” That’s a rather esoteric reference that, for most of us requires some unpacking. Elysium was the mythological paradise of the ancient Greeks, the place where demigods, heroes, and virtuous souls went after death and experienced the joy of beautiful open fields and athletic competitions – sort of like Fenway Park. So joy, according to Schiller, is that offspring, that product of virtue’s reward. He also says that joy holds a great magical power that binds people together and makes us all brothers and sisters, while the patterns and habits of our lives tend to keep tearing us apart from each other. There is, in this amazing poem, profound truth to be mined. Joy is a powerful, even magical, sacred thing – something that rewards us and binds us together; something to be sought, nurtured, and touched with care and respect. And yet, we so frequently miss it, even trample on it like a bunch of hooligans at the ballpark who’ve had too many beers, throwing trash onto the field – drunk with fire.
I can’t reflect on all this without being put in mind of the story of Pentecost. When the early followers of Christ were gathered with a huge crowd of folks from all nations and backgrounds something magical happened to them: a kind of fire that filled them with an amazing spirit and allowed everyone to be connected by a clear understanding of each other’s languages. Bystanders saw all of this and decided they were drunk – drunk with fire, if you will. They leapt to that conclusion because they didn’t have any experience to relate it to. They didn’t have any concept of what real joy was about. They thought joy had to do with the kind of blind recklessness that is characteristic of drunks.
So Peter tried to straighten them out. “Indeed,” he said, “these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o’clock in the morning. No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel: ‘In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams. Even upon my slaves, both men and women, in those days I will pour out my Spirit . . . .” Peter was trying to tell them that this Spirit they were observing was not that which trespasses, drunk with fire, onto heaven, the sanctuary of joy; it is a spirit of clarity and unity; it is clear communication (even across the barriers of language); it is the ability to increase one’s vision, and to craft bold dreams; it is a uniting force that binds together people of many cultures, and even slaves, and men, and women.
One of the chief ways, in our post-modern, American world, that we mistake carelessness for joy is by following too literally the advice of the song: “Don’t Worry; Be Happy.” Sometimes we’re scared away from abiding joy by thinking of it as an escape. But the kind of joy that ignited the atmosphere when the apostles gathered in Jerusalem was not a mindless, happy feeling. There was none of that tendency we’ve seen in days gone by to say that God will take care of everything so we can just relax and let go of any responsibility. Peter made it clear that what they were about was just the opposite of turning a blind eye to the realities of the world, it was about vision, and about having the courage to dream big. Issues like global warming seem overwhelming, and it’s easy to stop trying to make a difference however slight, or to write letters, or organize for change. It’s easy to let it all go and just give up. But Pentecostal joy isn’t about yielding to despair, and it isn’t about “Don’t Worry; Be Happy,” it’s about finding hope in vision, and clarity, and common purpose. Joy is the “daughter of Elysium,” that ancient place of heroes who fought the good fight.
Which leads us directly to another way we get blinded about joy: by making our religious experience into an obsessively personal, inward, spiritual thing. We so psychologize the gospel that we see every lesson of scripture in terms of a sort of self-help program. Before you know it, we’ve put ourselves in a kind of spiritual cocoon and turned Jesus’ message of reaching out and sacrificing one’s self for the sake of others into something that’s all about me. I’m as guilty of that as anyone, and, sadly, a number of my sermons might even lead you down that perilous path. But, trust me, that road is indeed full of peril. Yes, each of us needs to spend some time in reflection, prayer, and self-discovery; the journey of spiritual growth is deeply important, but that journey is far more than an inward thing. Intense and consistent absorption with self soon leads to blindness, a special kind of blindness that no longer sees the reality of other people, their needs, hopes, and hurts, a blindness to the true joy of relationship – that bonding with others that is not predicated on self-interest. And when we become so blinded, that’s when we can begin to stumble around carelessly in the dark of our own tiny worlds and wind up trespassing on the sacred sanctuary of joy, smashing its tender beauties. That’s when we get easily confused and think that joy has to do with momentary self-gratification. That’s when we fail to recognize the mystical power of true joy – that spirit of clarity, and vision, and openness to others that binds us together as brothers and sisters.
C. S. Lewis, in the ironic humor of his Screwtape Letters, has Screwtape advising the novice devil about how to keep his subject focused on himself so that he misses that vision and uniting spirit:
“Keep his mind on the inner life,” advises Screwtape. “He thinks his conversion is something inside him and his attention is therefore chiefly turned at present to the states of his own mind – or rather to that very expurgated version of them which is all you should allow him to see. Encourage this. Keep his mind off the most elementary duties by directing it to the most advanced and spiritual ones. Aggravate that most useful human characteristic, the horror and neglect of the obvious. You must bring him to a condition in which he can practice self-examination for an hour without discovering any of those facts about himself which are perfectly clear to anyone who has ever lived in the same house with him or worked in the same office.
“It is, no doubt, impossible to prevent his praying for his mother, but we have means of rendering the prayers innocuous. Make sure that they are always very ‘spiritual’, that he is always concerned with the state of her soul and never with her rheumatism. Two advantages will follow. In the first place, his attention will be kept on what he regards as her sins, by which, with a little guidance from you, he can be induced to mean any of her actions which are inconvenient or irritating to himself. Thus you can keep rubbing the wounds of the day a little sorer even while he is on his knees; the operation is not at all difficult and you will find it very entertaining.”
My message today is for all of us – including, of course, me. Life is full of joy. It is joy to be had for the taking. But our world and our culture are full of false gods, if you will, the things that can be so easily mistaken for paths to joy. They are put in front of you like a smorgasbord: self-absorption, chemical escape, materialism, apathetic withdrawal into the hyped world of media and entertainment. This morning I implore each of us to reject such blinding diversions, to not trespass, drunk with fire, on heaven, the sanctuary of the true joy we seek. That joy is found in community – not the superficial, social exchanges about the weather with polite, artificial niceties shared by people hiding behind masks that so often passes for community, but a real place of encounter, where clear communication happens and our truest selves are known, a place where sins are forgiven and growth and maturity is allowed to flourish, a place where barriers are broken down and cultures and histories are shared and respected, where people of different classes and genders find common ground. When that kind of community emerges from whatever mystical power it is that allows it to happen, the result is a kind of sacred terrain, a holy ground, that calls for us to nurture, honor, and respect it’s inestimable worth. That’s what we’re trying to be here: a place of joy.
Over two hundred years ago, Friedrich Schiller figured a lot of that out. I think he had to have been inspired, and I think Beethoven recognized that.
Let’s sing it together.