Great Balls of Fire

Take a trip down Memory Lane to your high school days.  The homecoming game your team won and the sock hop at the gym afterwards.  Hormones raging and some old-fashioned teacher attempting to police the two-inch distance between slow-dancing couples on the dance floor.  I can still picture my girl friend of that time and to this day her perfume lingers in my mind.

And after a few slow dances, the DJ would do a change-up and on would come Elvis with “Jail House Rock” and Jerry Lee Lewis’s “Great Balls of Fire.”  By then the gym was rockin’.  Sweat pouring down our foreheads and hearts racing.

At the next change-up to “Love me Tender, Love me True,”  we were all too hot and sweaty to dance so close together that the prude on the prowl need worry.

That’s what Pentecost is all about – Great Balls of Fire, fire in the imagination, fire in the gumption.

The most opportune moment for the Holy Spirit to get hold of us is through our imagination.  To fire us up with an idea, to fire us up with hope, with a moment of sheer grace.

When the Spirit hits, it’s Jerry Lee Lewis’s song come to life.

“You shake my nerves and you rattle my brain
Too much love drives a man insane
You broke my will but what a thrill
Goodness gracious, great balls of fire.”

Well, in the words of the ’08 Obama campaign, folks touched by the Spirit are “Fired up. Ready to go.”

 A saying attributed to Augustine concerning Hope – Hope has two beautiful daughters, anger and courage.  Anger at the way things are and courage to change them

Here’s the story of one man fired up with anger at the high cost of higher education and upset by the countless minds going to waste because of their want of opportunity.

And ready to go with audacious courage.

Shai Reshef in his retirement as an entrepreneur thought there might be a fix to this dilemma.  He had an incipient idea for a university on line, University of the People — UoP.  It would be free to any student anywhere in the world that had access to the internet. 

Since students in many countries, in grammar school through high school, learn English, courses would be taught in English; but since he was also wanting to include women in the Middle East who are often deprived of schooling, the courses would also be taught in Arabic.

Classes demand 20 hours a week and are kept small at 20 to 30 students.  A student has 10 years to complete a degree.

A young Afghan woman, Maliha, now living in America, tells of the great sorrow in her nation as the Taliban took over.

Twenty-three-old Maliha was studying civil engineering at the University of Kabul, Afghanistan, when everything changed.

“The first thing they did was that they said that women are not allowed to go to schools and universities.”[1]

But she and many other Afghan women found a way – the internet.  Surreptitiously, some 4000 Afghan women have continued their education right under the noses of the Taliban.

These women have certainly imbibed the spirit of Langston Hughes, “I have discovered in life that there are ways of getting almost anywhere you want to go, if you really want to go.”  These women did.

Maliha remembers, “On those dark days that I was at home and couldn’t do anything for my future, University of the People was like a light in my darkest days.”[2]

Women in a university in Afghanistan!? – Good God Almighty.  Great Balls of Fire!

Unlike many online courses which are scams – Trump University comes to mind – UoP offers fully accredited BA and Masters degrees.  And they’re free.  There are some fees, usually not more than $5,000 over the course of the degree.  More than half the students receive a scholarship.

The founder and now president of the UoP, Shai Reshef, does it through grants from foundations and wealthy donors.  He also relies on a staff of 47,000 volunteer faculty.  These are mostly world-renowned professors, who in their retirement have decided to “pay it forward” by teaching without charge.  As Reshef remarked, “I’m a volunteer.”

Degrees are only offered in a limited number of majors:  associate and bachelor’s in business administration, computer science and health science, master’s in business administration, information technology and education.  These are majors leading directly into jobs, and 80 percent of graduates end up working in the field of their major.  Come, Holy Spirit, come!

With a valid degree earned online, Maliha eventually escaped Afghanistan and is presently living in the United States pursuing a master’s degree.

All this glory began with the spark of fire in one man’s mind.  Yes, the Glory of God is a Woman fully alive.  “Great balls of fire.”

The Fire of Compassion has struck also an Israeli former prime minister – Ehud Olmert.  He has written an op ed in Haaretz (The Land), the foremost progressive newspaper in Israel – calling the government’s operations in Gaza war crimes.

Prime Minister Olmert, obviously angered at Isreal’s role there had great courage to call his nation to account.  He certainly was fired up and ready to go when he wrote this.

In his interview with Steve Inskeep on NPR, this is what he had to say about the death and starvation inflicted on Gazans.

“All of us are absolutely certain that there is not any achievable purpose that is worth continuing and expanding this operation. Now, while these operations are not going to save the hostages, are not going to achieve any important national interest, and hundreds of people are killed on a daily basis, who are not involved. This is a crime.”[3]

Further…

“…the fact that senior Israeli ministers in the cabinet called expressly and explicitly to deny any humanitarian needs from the people in Gaza, a couple of million people living in Gaza, and they say they should all starve and be demolished. This is a call for war crime by the many senior ministers in the cabinet, without one comment by the prime minister that he’s not – that he does not support this.”[4]

Great Balls of Fire – an Israeli prime minister said this?

Of course, he is appalled by what he sees on this TV, as are we.  The other day Israel was boasting that fifty-some aid trucks went through checkpoints, yet over 600 daily are needed daily to prevent famine and disease. 

Not quite fired up?  Not by a long shot.

Such enforced starvation is genocide.  Tell me how this is any different from Hitler’s forced starvation of the Warsaw Ghetto.

Olmert is tragically late to this catastrophe, but at least he got there.  And it’s important that he’s a former prime minister willing to go public with his anger at his own nation.

Visions of suffering and deprivation are part of the Spirit’s toolbox to stir folks to amend their ways, maybe even make restitution.

Hopefully, Olmert’s courage will fire up the rest of us yearning for a ceasefire and sufficient provision of aid.  Fire us up and make us ready to go!

By the way, Gaza ceasefire demonstrations are held weekly in Claremont on the corner of Arrow Hwy. and Indian Hill Blvd. if you should happen to get fired up about this inhumanity, these war crimes.  You might suggest that our government cease to send Netanyahu money and arms to support this atrocity.  If that happened, the war would be over shortly, for we are the ones funding this genocide.  Write your representatives.

As we at St. Francis survey the needs about us, may the Holy Spirit come with Great Balls of Fire to fire us up and make us ready to go!  The Garden and Food Bank await – just sayin’.  Amen.

---

[1]Fred de Sam Lazaro, University of the People offers students a new and affordable college experience, PBS News Hour, May 28, 2025.

[2] Ibid.

^{[3] Steve Inskeep, “Former Israeli PM Ehud Olmert says his country is committing war crimes in Gaza,” Morning Edition, NPR, May 28, 2025.}

[4] Ibid.

June 8, 2025
Day of Pentecost

Acts 2:1-21; Psalm 104:25-35, 37;

Romans 8:14-17; John 14:8-17, 25-27

“Great Balls of Fire”