Apu, chief of Springfield's volunteer fire department, rushes to the Simpson house with other firefighters including Krusty the Clown, Chief Wiggum, and Barney. Meanwhile, Ned runs into the burning house to rescue Homer and pulls him out just as the firefighters arrive. After the fire is extinguished, Homer declares that God was delivering vengeance. Reverend Lovejoy counters that God was working through Homer's friends, despite their different faiths. Homer agrees to give church another chance and the next Sunday is there, yet snoring loudly through the service. God consoles Homer on the failure of his religion and is about to tell him the meaning of life when the credits begin. Production This episode originated when Al Jean commented to Mike Reiss, "We had a lot of luck with Homer stealing cable, which was based on the eighth commandment, so maybe we could look to other commandments. So we thought, 'Honor vs the Sabbath' would be a good one. So the 'Homer doesn't go to church' storyline was given to George Meyer." Reiss and Jean thought that as a lapsed Catholic, Meyer would "bring the proper degree of rage" to the episode. Meyer had a lot of fun making the episode, thinking that most people could relate to the bliss of staying home from church. One of the main problems Meyer had writing this episode is that whenever Homer saw God, he had to have fallen asleep so that it appeared to be a dream. Meyer did not want to show that God was literally appearing to Homer. This resulted in him falling asleep so many times during the first draft of the episode that it was almost as if Homer had narcolepsy. This was also the first episode from season four that was read to the production team. Although first reads on previous seasons had not been well received by the production team, "Homer the Heretic" read very well, particularly some of the visuals in the third act, such as the house on fire and Homer being rescued by Flanders. This was the first episode of The Simpsons where the animation was produced by Film Roman and the first where it was overseas at the newly formed Rough Draft Studios (which founded by Gregg Vanzo, who directed the episode "There's No Disgrace Like Home"). Up until this point, Film Roman had mostly worked on Garfield and Friends and Bobby's World