A fire burns bright. Your eyeball notices it and almost instantly relays what it “sees” along the optic nerve to the cerebral cortex, nestled cozily right behind your eyes inside its sturdy home—your skull.
Within milliseconds, light transforms to ultra-low voltage electricity—a signal. That signal sparks across the brain’s network—neurons firing, relaying, interpreting. The initial burst of vision triggers more: warmth recalled on a cold night, pain remembered from a careless touch, the scent of smoke curling into memory. Synapses flash and flare as billions of neurons ignite in coordinated response. Messages travel down axons, leap across synaptic gaps, and fan out into regions responsible for sensation, memory, instinct, and thought.
And if this fire is not the first—if the brain has seen flame before, felt its heat, survived its nearness—then the pattern is not new. The sparks travel familiar roads. Pathways laid down long ago, reinforced over time, guide the response. This is the architecture of learning: repetition becomes structure. The brain, through the long work of remembering, has come to recognize the paradox of fire. It knows without being told. Fire is both comfort and danger. Friend and foe. Safety and risk. What we behold again and again becomes part of how we understand the world—and how we move through it.
That’s the backdrop for today’s Gospel. Jesus is walking—deliberately, decisively—toward Jerusalem. Luke tells us, “He set his face” toward the holy city. And as he walks, people appear with longings and hesitations: “I’ll follow you, Lord—but first let me go bury my father.” “I will follow you, Lord—but let me first say goodbye to those at home.” Each one seems reasonable. Each one has a worthy reason to delay.
But Jesus doesn’t allow delay. “Let the dead bury their own dead.” “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.” It’s jarring. It’s sharp. Jesus isn’t dismissing grief or relationships—he’s showing what discipleship actually costs.
When the call comes, it demands a response—not someday, not after everything is settled. Now. This is no casual stroll. This is the road to the cross. And the journey of discipleship is not an afterthought—it’s the shape of a life.
This is the mind of Christ.
In the same way the brain cannot help but be shaped by what it repeats, discipleship cannot help but shape us when we walk in it. Over time, and only over time.
Return now to the brain. Each time a thought returns, each time a habit is practiced, the electrical storm within your mind, in your brain follows the same path—until the lightning burns its way into your brain’s very own terrain, into its folded gyri and grooved sulci. What was once a shallow trail becomes a deep trench. The brain remembers. It reshapes. You are, in a real way, formed by your patterns—literally enfolded and entrenched deep within your mind.
So it is with discipleship. It enfolds us and entrenches us in the mind of Christ, in a way of life marked by his own. Discipleship isn’t just a feeling or a single moment. It’s a path forged by repetition—practices walked daily, choices made again and again, even when we don’t feel like it. Especially when we don’t feel like it. Prayer. Worship. Study. Giving. Service. Each one burns a new way of being into us. Not as boxes to check, but as rhythms that rewire us, slowly, lovingly, into the likeness of Christ.
These aren’t flashy, these habits of the faith. They don’t always feel like breakthroughs or mountaintop moments.
Often, they feel ordinary.
Repetitive.
Routine.
But that’s precisely the point.
The Spirit doesn’t drop fruit into our laps fully grown. The Spirit cultivates. Slowly. Patiently. Like the brain reshaping itself through repeated signals, the Spirit reshapes us through repeated acts of grace-filled intention. Through choosing again and again to live a life conformed to the mind of Christ, not merely inspired by him.
The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. That’s what Paul writes in Galatians. Not rewards for good behavior—but the result of a life given over, day by day, to the presence and power of the Spirit. Fruit doesn’t burst forth in a single moment. It ripens through sunlight, through rain, through time. So does the life of a disciple.
This is the invitation. This is the call. To build a life on practices that endure. To be forged—warmed, shaped, molded—by the Spirit’s fire. So let’s return to the fire. Not the one we saw earlier in our mind’s eye, but the ones that shape us. What fires are carving grooves in your mind? Or rather—what fire?
Answer: the fire of the Holy Spirit. She calls us. Beckons. She goads us from lethargy. She drives us from laziness. She holds us back from judgmentalism. She whispers compassion to our prejudice. She curbs our pride and cultivates our humility. She stirs us from complacency.
This fire doesn’t destroy. It refines. She doesn’t consume. She clears. The Spirit’s flame reshapes our soul like lightning burning its mark into the stone—steady, relentless, transformative.
Discipleship isn’t about heroics. It’s not about grand gestures or flawless faith. But it is about what you do—daily, steadily, when no one’s watching. It’s not about keeping a checklist of who did what and when. It’s not about seeing your name in the bulletin. It’s not about being receiving thanks or recognition, but about giving thanks and recognition. Discipleship is about rising each morning and choosing the cross again—the hard path of sacrifice that leads to death but that ultimately leads us to life and true glory. Discipleship is about choosing love when indifference is easier. Choosing service when silence would be simpler. Choosing the path of Christ when every part of you wants to turn back.
The Holy Spirit doesn’t beg for permission. She isn’t waiting for your consent. She burns. She sears. She moves where she wills—and when she stirs in you, it’s not a suggestion. It’s a summons.
This is the fire that shapes a soul—your soul. Not with ease, but with purpose. Not in a moment, but through a lifetime.
Prayer, study, worship, giving, serving—these aren’t accessories. They’re instruments. They train the heart. They discipline the mind. They bend our will back toward the very one who made it—to God himself.
This is the freedom Christ died to give—not the freedom to do as we please, but the freedom to live as we were made. Not slaves to our impulses, but servants of one another. Not captives of the flesh, but children of God—children of the loving Father, siblings of the living Christ, and brothers and sisters to each other through the livening Spirit.
You want to follow Christ? Then start walking the walk. Pray God conform your mind to the mind of Christ. Not someday. Not when it’s easier. Now. Today. In Fitchburg. In Lunenburg, Gardner, Winchendon, Townsend, Ashby, Leominster, and Princeton. Embrace the pattern of discipleship, the habit of free discipline and lordly servanthood. Pray God sear this mark upon you so by your life all the world see the branding marks of Jesus in all you think, say, and do.
Because the fire’s already burning. And you were made to carry its torch—the cross of Christ, upon which hung the salvation of the world—salvation for me, for you, for everyone.
The Rev'd Daniel W. Spigelmyer, Jr. 