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Hillside Street, Bennington, Vermont (802) 442-2559
"resolutely inclusive, spiritually alive, and empowered for ministry in the world." |
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“A Whole New World”--May 31, 2009 Acts 2:1-21, Romans 8:22-27
Posted: June 2nd, 2009 @ 8:56am
Grief is a heavy thing. It sinks into your bones, settles into your tear ducts, saps your energy. Sleep doesn’t come easily, and when it does, it’s often fitful and full of strange dreams. Not only is the rhythm of your days thrown off, so is the texture. So, for a while, simple routines may be just what the doctor ordered.
I know I’ve told you of the farm woman in one of my father-in-law’s parishes, whose husband died just before Easter. The service was held on Maundy Thursday, but by the time Russ was able to find time to visit the widow, it was well into the next week. “How are you doing?” he asked her. And she replied, “The day after the service, I got up and said to myself, ‘Now what are you going to do?’ And I decided I really needed to feed the chickens. So I went out to the barn, poured the feed into the pan, and started shaking it up and down and calling to the chickens, and you know, the sound of that grain and those silly birds clucking and rustling was more comforting than all the Easter hymns.”
“When the day of Pentecost had come,” Luke tells us, “they were all together in one place.” That’s what Jesus’ followers did. They gathered together for prayer and meals, checked in with each other, to try to fill the gaping hole that Jesus’ death had left. Yes, they had experienced him alive and resurrected, but he was with them in a different way than before, when they would simply get up in the morning and go wherever Jesus was going. In John’s gospel, Jesus tells his disciples, “I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Advocate will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you.”
So, yeah, Jesus had said it was to their advantage that “the Advocate,” whoever that was, would come to them, but they weren’t really sure what that would be like and they knew what it had been like with Jesus, and they missed him. “Suddenly,” Luke tells us, “from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.”
Talk about energy! Grief evaporated like the dew disappears with the touch of the summer sun. Not only were they suddenly, vitally alive, but given power and ability to do things they would never have guessed they had in them. Nobody else thought they had it in them, either. “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans?” the crowd of devout Jews outside asked themselves. Galileans were not known as the brightest bulbs in the pack, so to hear them speaking in the various languages of the world was, to say the least, astonishing.
And then the quintessential Galilean, Peter, the fisherman, stood up to address the crowd, and began quoting Scripture, from the prophet Joel. “In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams. Even upon my slaves, both men and women, in those days I will pour out my Spirit; and they shall prophesy.”
“In the last days” this will happen, Peter said, putting Joel’s words into the language of the end times. And, indeed, it was the end time–the end of Jesus’ followers waiting around for Jesus to do something spectacular or astonishing or good and the beginning of their claiming that same power to do amazing things; the end of having their direction coming from outside of themselves, the beginning of their going deep within to discern where they should go and how they should live their lives; the end of despair and sense of disappointment, the beginning of courage and empowerment and new vision; the end of seeing and speaking the world only in a narrow circle and one language, the beginning of expanding horizons and the ability to speak every language of time and space; the end of being governed by death and scarcity, the beginning of living life abundantly and without fear. It was, quite simply, paradigm changing. A whole new world.
Saturday evening at the Annual Meeting, the Rev. Richard Sparrow told of having the privilege of assisting in the baptism by immersion of several young people in a colleague’s Spanish-speaking church. The pastor of the church would push the candidates toward him, and he would catch them as they fell back into the water, and then bring them back up. Rev. Sparrow brought one young man named Ramone up from the water a little too soon, and Ramone called out in Spanish, “Put me all the way under–I’m not new yet.” So back again he went, all the way under, and when he came up, Ramone shouted out, “Gloria a Dios! Glory to God!”
It is the kind of experience that we in the more staid, controlled traditions might secretly be a little envious of. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to be able to point to some event, some date, when we became “new”? When our life changed profoundly in such a way that we would never be the same again? As much as we might be skeptical or uncomfortable with the methods or the theology, aren’t there times when you wish you could be “born again”? See the world in a whole new way? And what about our church–How is our church becoming new? Where is the fire, the new life, bursting forth from us? What winds of change are blowing?
Of course, we might rightly say, “I have been born again–and again, and again.” There is no one event or time that changed me so utterly that I never again fell back into my old ways or thought old thoughts, but the opportunities for newness keep presenting themselves. Pentecost may come at any moment, if we are open to it. But we should not be too glib about inviting the Spirit in. The Spirit blows where it will, Jesus said, and you do not know where it is going. It is highly uncontrollable and unpredictable.
But Annie Dillard asks the critical question–“Are you living just a little and calling that life?” Are you willing to maybe put a toe in the water, but resist going all the way under, as Ramone insisted, to risk becoming new? Are we as a church willing to entertain a little warmth, but keep the fire extinguishers at the ready lest the flames of the Spirit get too hot?
Or, perhaps Parker Palmer’s realization at moments in his life when he has felt less than alive resonates with you. At those moments, he said, I realize that the life I’m living is not “the life that wants to be lived in me.” (Cited by Rev. Richard Sparrow, see above) What is the life that wants to be lived in you? Or, another question to ask yourself–What do I know is true, but am living as if it weren’t? The great African American poet and preacher Howard Thurman says, “Don’t ask yourself what the world need. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and go do that, because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” (Weekly Seeds, for 5/31/09)
The followers of Jesus became alive that Pentecost Day, no longer defined by death. Pentecost is often spoken of as the birthday of the church, but Jim Callahan suggests that Good Friday was really the defining birthday–the day when Jesus suffered and died on the cross and his followers asked, “Now what do we do?” Pentecost is the answer to that question. “Now what do we do?” Become alive. Be filled with the Spirit of the Living God. “Joy is something that sorrow turns into,” Callahan says. Joy is something that sorrow turns into. The energy and spirit and joy of Pentecost is possible only because Jesus’ followers experienced Good Friday. There is a depth to the joy. It isn’t merely escapist, or reality-denying. It takes death seriously, but knows that death does not have the last word.
It could well be said that we live in dark times–there is a sense of unease in the air, a worry about jobs and the economy, concern over family and friends who are struggling with illnesses or unemployment or changing circumstances. Global warming continues relentlessly. Nuclear sabers are rattling. Hunter S. Thompson Jr. commented on the millennium, which was signaled with the same giddiness as Pentecost in most congregations. "Look around you. There is an eerie sense of Panic in the air, a silent Fear and uncertainty that comes with once reliable faiths and truths and solid Institutions that are no longer safe to believe in . . ."(cited by Mark Harris, Christian Century, 5/3/05)
Perhaps this is just the time to pray for a new Pentecost, to open ourselves up to the “pentecostal fire in the dark time of year,” as T.S. Eliot put it. We can’t manufacture it, of course, but we can open the doors and windows of our lives and let the breezes begin to blow and fan the embers into flames. What makes you feel really alive and on fire? Is it new and interesting ideas? Seek those out–in books, in interesting people, on the net, in school. Are you most alive when immersed in music? Then dive in! Listen to the music your soul makes when you’re in that place. Do you feel most alive when your muscles are burning and your heart is pumping? Then listen to the breath which is the Holy Spirit moving through you, as you dance or run or build houses or make a house clean.
Will those breezes that became a mighty rush of wind from heaven begin to blow through the spaces we open up when we examine our own lives to make sure we are really alive, living the life that wants to live in us? Will those breezes that became a mighty wind begin to blow in our church when we listen to what our youth are telling us, or as we invite in new kinds of music or new ways of doing things or new partners in our mission?
“In those days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams.” Pay attention to your dreams. Listen to your life. Let new winds blow through your brain and your body. Don’t be afraid. God is not done with us yet, just as God was not done with those who gathered in that upper room. There is still healing to be done, justice to be enacted, hope to be claimed, love to be shared. So, dare we say it?–Come Holy Spirit, come.
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