Pentecost
May 15, 2016
When I was in college I spent a long weekend with a group camping by a lake house that somebody’s parents owned. One night we all lay on their deck on our backs and looked up at the stars. I even saw my first shooting star that night.
I think the new surroundings, and the darkness, and the infinity of the sky opened us up to speaking about things we might not have ordinarily broached in the midst of the library shelves or the dancing bodies at a frat house. We wondered together about God and we wondered about how all that we’d learned from our religious backgrounds fit into what we’d discovered about the world since we’d left home. And one guy admitted that he thought he felt tugs from God, thought God was going to be really important to him at some point, but he had decided not to do anything about it yet because he wasn’t ready to change his life or to start living differently.
At the time, that made no sense to me. I’d been brought up to pray and go to church and love my neighbor. But my religion didn’t really challenge me. I was perfectly able to reconcile my ordinary life and my faith without much spiritual effort. I’m not sure why, but when I read the Pentecost story for today, that evening’s starlit conversation came back to me. I hadn’t appreciated at the time how honest that guy was being or how deep his insight was into God.
Today the disciples are all gathered together in one place. Jesus told them to go to Jerusalem and wait for the Holy Spirit, the Advocate that God would send in Jesus’ name. And so there they are. I wonder what, if anything, they expected. Maybe another visit from the resurrected Jesus? That would be great - even if they didn’t recognize him at first. Or maybe angels like their ancestors had entertained in the stories of old? That would be neat too - to be part of that line of holy visitation. I’m guessing that whatever they expected, it was someone or something that would comfort and encourage them. Someone or something that would make things clear and help them to better understand what they should be doing. Someone or something that would keep them safe.
That’s one way, and I think maybe the most common way, we have of understanding the Holy Spirit. As the Comforter, symbolized as a dove of peace and joy, that glides around us and abides with us to bring us hope and comfort and stillness of mind. This is the Holy Spirit that most of us know and love. And that is certainly one way scripture talks about the Holy Spirit and one way many people experience Her. But today’s story gives us a different glimpse of how the Holy Spirit works.
This Holy Spirit didn’t come gradually or give the disciples time to prepare themselves. She came suddenly, without warning.
This Holy Spirit wasn’t calmly and quietly gliding around them. She filled the entire house with a sound like the rush of a violent wind.
This Holy Spirit didn’t appear as a peaceful symbol in the distance that could be mistaken for something more mundane. She was tongues of fire, up close and personal, touching each one of them.
This Holy Spirit wasn’t something they could quietly keep to themselves, pondering in their hearts what it might mean for their own individual spirituality. She made a scene, affecting everyone around them.
This Holy Spirit didn’t make things clear and easy. She left people bewildered, amazed, astonished, perplexed.
This Holy Spirit wasn’t something gentle and inoffensive. She caused people to sneer and accuse the disciples of drunkenness.
This Holy Spirit wasn’t something that could be cross-stitched on pillows. She involved last days, visions and dreams and prophecy, portents and signs, blood and fire and darkness.
We try to tame the Holy Spirit, either to turn Her into our own inner stuff, or to institutionalize Her and confine Her to the Church.
But this Holy Spirit was an unruly intrusion into the disciples’ lives. That violent wind was the breath of God that hovered over the waters of creation, this time re-creating the disciples. After experiencing this Holy Spirit, they would never again just go back to life as normal. They would be forever changed - disrupted, disoriented, unsettled. Nothing would ever be the same.
No wonder that guy at my campout wasn’t ready to go there. He must have had a better vision than I did of how risky and unpredictable the life of faith could be. Taking this stuff seriously can ruin us for life. It will shape us, change us, make demands on us. The breath of God will re-create us too.
Like Annie Dillard writes: “On the whole, I do not find Christians …sufficiently sensible of conditions. Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake someday and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return.”
That’s part of this Pentecost story too - being drawn out to where we can never return. Like those disciples, we gather here - to rest and reflect, to worship and be inspired, to listen and to wait. But then we go back out — out those doors into the world — to do the disruptive, tumultuous, and life-giving work of our God who will not stop breathing that violent wind of the Holy Spirit until all people enjoy abundant life. We go out, called to turn the world upside down.
Am I ready to be changed, to be set on fire? Are you? Probably not. I’m not sure we can ever be ready. But willing? Maybe. Maybe that we can be.
So Come, Holy Spirit. Come. Come and blow the doors off of this place. Come and blow away the boxes we build around you and around ourselves. Re-create us. Make us open to your wild intrusion into our lives and ready to ride your breath into the world. Amen.
Comments
Post a Comment