Sermons From Grace Cathedral

Isaiah 43:1-7 Psalm 29 Acts 8:14-17 Luke 3:15-17, 21-22   1. What stands in the way of having a deeper faith? On August 5, 1949 a crew of fifteen elite US Forest Service smokejumpers, or airborne firefighters, stepped out of their plane above a remote wildfire in Montana. Within an hour all but three of them were dead or mortally burned. They were caught by flames as they ran uphill through dried grass on a steep slope trying to reach a higher ridge. [1]   The University of Chicago English Literature professor Norman Maclean (1902-1990), who himself had experience as a fire fighter, happened to be in town and took the time to visit the fire even as it still burned. The men who perished were mostly in their early twenties and their stories haunted Maclean until he retired from teaching decades later and began writing about them.   He begins his book Young Men and Fire saying, “The problem of self-identity is not just a problem for the young. It is a problem for all the time. Perhaps the problem. It should haun