Great Fire Anniversary Sermon-Stirring Up Old Coals

The Great Fire of London, depicted by an unknown painter (1675), as it would have appeared from a boat in the vicinity of Tower Wharf on the evening of Tuesday, 4 September 1666.

A sermon given at St Olave Hart Street on Sunday 6th September 2026 during a service of Holy Communion on Great Fire Anniversary Weekend. The service took place the day after our Faith & Fire Discovery Day, exploring the Great Fire through the lens of science and faith. The sermon is based on readings from Romans 13.8–end, Matthew 18.15–20 and the words of an Great Fire Anniversary Sermon preached at St Olave Hart Street on 2nd September 1682 by Reverend William Wray, the text of which can be read at this link. 

City leaders wondering how and when people would return. Families displaced from their homes. Businesses ruined. Enormous demands upon the public purse and fears for the economic future. Arguments about who was responsible. Rumours and misinformation spreading almost as quickly as the flames themselves. Foreigners blamed and attacked.And, amid it all, the anxiety-drenched question of how a city could recover and rebuild.

The aftermath of the Great Fire of London can sometimes sound surprisingly contemporary.

360 years ago, this church building survived the Fire, although the flames came perilously close. But for its people - as Pepys’s diary records - survival came at a cost.  

We discovered a sermon by a visiting cleric, William Wray, preached here sixteen years later, on 2 September 1682, the anniversary of the start of the Great Fire. By then much of London had been rebuilt. Houses had risen again. Trade had returned. Many of the City churches had reopened, while others — including Wren’s St Paul’s Cathedral — were still rising from the ruins.

Preaching here, William Wray wondered whether rebuilding buildings was enough - asking whether the people of London who survived the fire had learnt anything from it at all?

His sermon is long and might sound rather fierce to our ears. Like many preachers of his time, Wray, a chaplain to a Royalist peer, was convinced that the Fire was an act of divine judgement upon the sins of the city, particularly the religious and political divisions which had torn England apart during the preceding decades of civil war.

But Wray does not simply use the Fire to condemn other people. There is an uncomfortable element of self-examination too.

Looking at the divisions which still afflicted London sixteen years after the Fire, he accused some of his contemporaries of “stirring up the Old Coals, and kindling the Fire against another Day”, going on to ask: “Is not the Fire still in our Bones?”

The buildings were being rebuilt. But what about the people? What about the resentments, the divisions, the bitterness they still carried? Was another kind of fire still burning?

Today, perhaps we might also recognise something of what it means to carry old wounds. The ‘fire in our bones’?

An argument from years ago. A friendship which ended badly. Something said in anger which cannot be unsaid. An apology which never came. A family disagreement in which everyone has long since forgotten exactly how it began, but nobody has forgotten how it made them feel.

We carry these things with us.

Most of the time we may hardly be conscious of them. And then someone says something, or we meet a particular person, and suddenly we are right back there in the heat of the moment. The old conversation starts again in our heads. The anger returns. We find ourselves rehearsing what they said, what we should have said, what we will say next time.

The old coals are stirred.

And that is why reconciliation and forgiveness matter so much for our own healing and wholeness, and for the health of our relationships and communities. Not simply because Christians ought to be nice to one another, but because carrying resentment changes us. A hurt which is never acknowledged can become part of the way we see another person; part of the way we see ourselves.

Forgiveness does not mean pretending that the hurt did not happen. Nor does reconciliation mean that every broken relationship can or should simply return to what it was before. But the Christian hope is that what has happened to us need not imprison us.

The fire may be in our bones, but it need not burn there for ever.

Life together – as a family, a church, a local, national or global community – will involve dealing with conflict at some point. Jesus knew this reality as well as we do. And today’s Gospel is remarkably practical about it.

“If another member of the church sins against you,” Jesus says, “go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone.”

Notice what he does not say. He does not say: pretend that nothing has happened. He does not say: allow resentment quietly to grow. And he does not say: go and gossip about the situation to everybody else.

Go to the person concerned. Talk. Listen. Try to find a way forward. And if that fails, Jesus offers further steps: involve one or two others; and if necessary, involve the wider community.

But the purpose of all this is not simply to decide who is right and who is wrong. Jesus says, “if the member listens to you, you have regained that one.”

Restoration is the hope.

A key thread running through this whole chapter of Matthew’s Gospel: seeking the lost, protecting the vulnerable, addressing wrongdoing, practising forgiveness. A gospel that reminds us that love does not mean refusing to confront what is wrong. Sometimes even having a difficult conversation may itself be an act of love.

Such dialogue may not always be possible. There are relationships in which deep harm has been done, and circumstances in which maintaining boundaries is necessary and right. Jesus does not require us to put ourselves or others in danger. But he does ask us to take seriously the work of striving for peace - within ourselves and our communities.

Yesterday at our Faith and Fire Discovery Day, Professor Rein and his colleagues from Imperial College London showed us how fire is affected by the conditions we create around it. 

Perhaps something similar can be true of conflict.

A spark can die away. Or we can feed it.

We can rehearse an old grievance. Form groups of people who agree with us. Allow an injury between two people to become a division between many. We can, in Wray’s wonderful phrase, go on “stirring up the Old Coals.”

Jesus offers another way.

Not avoiding what has happened, but addressing it. Not by winning an argument, but, where possible, restoring a relationship.

Because reconciliation is not about deciding that the past does not matter or ignoring the hurt we carry. It is about refusing to allow the past to determine the future.

Sometimes reconciliation between two people is not possible. There are wounds too deep, relationships which cannot safely be restored, people who have died before words could be spoken.

But even where reconciliation is impossible, healing need not be.

Forgiveness may sometimes be less about releasing another person from our judgement than about discovering that by the grace of God, we can be released from endlessly carrying the injury.

Perhaps that is something of what St Paul says to us today?

There are many things we may imagine we owe to other people. An explanation. A piece of our mind. Paul says there is one debt which Christians can never finally discharge:

“Owe no one anything, except to love one another…..For the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.”

Paul reminds us of that oh-so-simple-sounding truth at the heart of our faith. To love one another. Not love as sentimentality or the avoidance of difficult truths, but love which seeks the good of our neighbour.

Today’s gospel reading recognises that conflict and hurt will happen, even in the church, but shows what love can do next. It shows us a love which seeks restoration, speaks truth and strives for peace.

Our Discovery Day yesterday sought to bring faith and science into our thinking about the Great Fire - all too often solely the preserve of historical study. 

Professor Rein reminded us that science and engineering help us understand resilience — how we withstand damage and recover from it. Faith asks us to attend also to questions of meaning and hope: how people and communities heal and rebuild.

William Wray, in his Great Fire Anniversary sermon preached here in 1682 seems to arrive at the same place. It’s one thing to rebuild a city. It’s another to rebuild trust — for the fire no longer to be ‘in our bones. So “let us put away all Bitterness, and Wrath and Clamour, and Evil-speaking, and all Malice. Let us Study to be Quiet, to be of One Mind, and to Live in Peace,” he concludes. 

Today's Gospel passage ends by reminding us that even in the midst of conflict, when we seek truth, acknowledge the hurts we carry and set out upon the difficult work of reconciliation and peace — when we stop stirring those old coals — Christ is there, where he promised to be.

Supporting us in the journey towards true restoration.

Christ is in the midst of us.

Amen.

Image: The Great Fire of London, depicted by an unknown painter (1675), as it would have appeared from a boat in the vicinity of Tower Wharf on the evening of Tuesday, 4 September 1666.