May 30, 2004

Pentecost Sunday

Acts 2: 1-13

Invocation

So what's the big deal about the coming of the Holy Spirit?

Why is it that Pentecost is called the birthday of the church and what does it have to do with us, anyway?

Plenty. Maybe most especially in these days.

After Jesus ascended into heaven, the disciples were gathered together in Jerusalem. They were in the midst of a city intent upon celebration - it was the feast of Pentecost, a time when the harvest was celebrated. Within the city walls there were people from many nations brought together.

Many who came to Jerusalem to celebrate Pentecost were unaware of the story of the teacher Jesus. And they were certainly unaware that there were remnants of Jesus' followers gathered together behind closed doors wondering what it was they were supposed to do next. Their teacher was gone. They were a changed people, unsure about the next steps in their lives. They didn't know what do with the vision Jesus had left them with. It was such a grand thing, this way of life Jesus had taught them. But without their teacher, they weren't sure how to tell his story, much less live into it.

And then the wind swept through the room. The crowd of disciples, individuals previously bound by fear, became a people who spoke and sparked a movement.

They told their story. They spoke in a new way. And people were able to hear them.

The church was given birth through the rushing power of the Holy Spirit, a wind that loosed the tongues and hearts of the disciples. A wind that broke down any sort of wall built by fear or difference or the sense of being small.

The birthday of the church is unwrapped through the dance of power unleashed long ago in Jerusalem and oh today, this very day, is the birthday of the church as well because that power is present with us yet working through and amidst us yet and powerful beyond our understanding yet and will we can we might we let it loosen our tongues and hearts so that we too may tell the story?

Tell the story in Iraq.

In Israel and Palestine.

Tell the story in Minneapolis where neighbors are gathering in all of their differences to say they are united in this conviction: they will be staging places of violence no more.

Tell the story in and through our relationships. Our marriages and our families. Those most intimate and risky relationships where we are known and unwrapped and hurt and held.

Tell the story of the teaching of Jesus - the story of how it is we have the courage to live love.

Amidst and because of our differences.

The event of Pentecost is the gifting of the power of Holy presence with us always. A power that transcends boundaries we manufacture to keep us separated from each other and from our God. Boundaries like nations and gender and privilege and fear.

The wind of Pentecost blew through those relational firewalls with a life changing assurance:

Never are we without the presence and power and uniting passion of the Holy.

Oh, that we could fully embody and live that power. Hear this, from Annie Dillard, in Teaching a Stone to Talk (pg 40):

"On the whole, I do not find Christians, outside of the catacombs, 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, making up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies

hats and 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 offence, or the waking god may draw us out to where we

can never return.

The gift of Pentecost is the gift and responsibility of such power.

Not only the power of our relationship with our God. But so vitally, Pentecost teaches us the importance of communicating the power of God made holy in our relationships with each other.

How oh how do we find ways to speak and live the language of love Jesus taught?

I think that it takes real and rare courage. Sometimes the walls between us - between individuals and between peoples - sometimes those walls seek to keep us convinced that those we do not know or care to know are somehow less than human and thus beyond the power of our human and holy connection.

And so we have Holocaust. And so we live racism. And so we know war.

This weekend we take the time to remember those who have died in the service of our country. It is a time to give thanks for lives given and it is a time to call ourselves to pray and imagine a time when there will be no more fallen soldiers to memorialize.

It is a time to remember the wind and rush and power of Pentecost because that vision - of divisions dissolved because of the presence of something more powerful than fear - that vision is who we are and who we are called to be.

We pray for a time when men and women will no longer be called to give years of their lives and the promise of their future to the service of divisions.

On a more personal level, the story of Pentecost helps us each to imagine our own ability to speak the language of love. Wars writ large will not cease until we learn and live the courage it takes to dissolve divisions in our own homes and communities.

We experienced a taste of that Thursday night through music. The Richfield High School choir joined with our chancel choir to present a concert. The event provided an opportunity for people across generational and racial boundaries to gather to raise a common voice. Think on the power of that! We live together and learn together here in Richfield and on Thursday night we got to join voices together and that is nothing but good news for the building of the community of God.

More and more in order to be sharing the good news of Jesus Christ we as church will be seeking ways to invite folks in to this place, and we will be seeking ways for us to move beyond the walls of this place.

Because the vision of Jesus is not designed to be contained in the grandness of our buildings where we encounter folks near about just like us. The vision of Jesus has Pentecost flame life crackling through it when it is lived through crossing boundaries.

So how do we do it? We remember the power of Pentecost. Each one of us has a flame resting upon us. Each one of us is given the language of love someone needs to hear, told in the way that only we can tell it.

The church was born when people knew themselves to be made holy and bold and powerful beyond their imagining. The church was born when people knew that they had the love vision of Jesus to tell and live.

It is love that calls us to speak. Oh, may we have the courage and boldness to know the language in our own lives and souls.

I end with a poem by Mary Oliver called West Wind #2.

"You are young. So you know everything. You leap into the boat and begin rowing. But listen to me. Without fanfare, without embarrassment, without any doubt, I talk directly to your soul. Listen to me. Lift the oars from the water, let your arms rest, and your heart, and heart's little intelligence, and listen to me.

There is life without love. It is not worth a bent penny, or a scuffed shoe. It is not worth the body of a dead dog nine days unburied. When you hear, a mile away and still out of sight, the churn of the water as it begins to swirl and roil, fretting around the sharp rocks - when you hear that unmistakable pounding - when you feel the mist on your mouth and sense ahead the embattlement, the long falls plunging and steaming - then row, row for your life toward it."

And so Pentecost calls us.

Amen