|
Back to Sermon Archives
May 27, 2007
The Rev. John Auer
Scripture: Acts 2:1-21,
Romans 8:14-17, John 14:8-17, 25-27
“Babel in
Babylon: Climbing, Circling, Holy-Ghost Dancing”
I’m sure glad Christmas and Easter never fall on “3-day weekends!” Pentecost is
the Rodney Dangerfield of holy days! The Holy Spirit gets no respect! Probably
because commercial culture cannot figure out how to capture her! But she is
what Jesus’ life and work, death and resurrection, are all about – turning her
loose in the world – as presence, as passion, now as power – to lead us and
guide us, teach and reveal Jesus to us – in new and differing ways all the
time.
Bishop Shamana (who will be with us July 8!)
says the Spirit shows us the missing parts of ourselves! The self that Jesus
promises in today’s gospel “will do more than he did! The hidden self that
knows God intimately and wholly, without reserve.” The Holy Spirit gives birth
to the creative artist within us, says Bishop Shamana – She recovers our gifts
and releases them – “for the glory of God, our own spiritual fulfillment, and
the blessing of the earth.” Bishop Shamana’s book, Seeing in the Dark: A
Vision of Creativity and Spirituality, is available in the Church office –
$10.95 or what we can pay. It is the subject for Book Group in the parlor, June
25, and of our preaching through her arrival.
A sign of the Spirit is the dove that came upon
Jesus in his baptism. I cannot tell you there were doves in the Sanctuary
yesterday. But there were pigeons! Eight of them, trained and pretending to be
doves for the sake of the filming of a wedding for a movie! The trainer took
one look at the height of our ceiling and concluded he dared not set them loose
until the bride and groom were leaving. But they did go before us, these
pigeons passing as doves, blessing our Day of Pentecost! We never know what may
be happening next in this place we love so much – with these people who so
enrich our lives.
The pigeons fared better than local ducks and
geese did this week. Now there are legal restrictions on where they can be fed
and relieve themselves! I’m thinking any nation that can go to the moon can
find constructive use for goose poop! For ducks and geese as well as pigeons
and doves may be given to inspiring our Pentecost as Joyce Hollyday of
Sojourners says they did hers –
It was barely dawn, and I was still sound asleep.
Then came a noise – a holy racket of sorts. Honking and calling
and furious fluttering of wings. I made it to the front porch just
in time to see eight huge Canada geese land in the lake on the little
farm where I live. With great fanfare, they touched down and then
skimmed across the water to a stop, wings still beating the air.
Red fire appeared between the trees on the
eastern horizon, then slowly turned orange and finally stabbing yellow. Birds
and bugs of all sorts joined in an early morning chorus of welcome to the day –
humming, chirping, whistling, singing. I laughed out loud. It was the closest
thing to Pentecost I’m likely to experience.
It descends on us like rushing wings, tongues
of fire, a cacophony of voices. Startling. Dazzling. Unpredictable. Enough
to make the neighbors think someone raided nature’s wine cellar before the sun
even came up.
UM pastor Bill Wylie-Kellerman says Peter and
the others were not just “drunk” on eternal nature but also on recent history.
They had been living in such fear of what happened to Jesus. Local authorities
wanted them, want us, to remain afraid, intimidated, preoccupied with our own
survivals – especially afraid to speak out -- to act out freely against their
unjust and deadly policies of domination and control. The authorities had Jesus
killed as a way to crush this “church movement” he started. Yet this Pentecost
Day, this 50th Jubilee day, these same timid disciples step right
through their walls of fear to take resurrection to the streets! No wonder some
think they had too much to drink! They had to be drunk or crazy to go
witnessing Jesus’ name for all to hear!
What seems to happen to them, to us, this day –
as the risen Christ ascends to leave us an opening playing and praying field –
is, in effect – we become resurrected ourselves! We find gifts and moves for
the open field of the whole world we never thought we had in us! We experience
the concrete and practical freedom to speak and to act in new and differing ways
as the Spirit of Jesus’ radical, grassroots presence with us reveals Jesus and
teaches us to do. This is the life, this is the work, the ministry and the
mission, to which we are called as the church, as the Body of Christ filled with
his Spirit! No political authority anywhere any time can take that freedom from
us!
“Pentecost means speaking without confusion,”
adds Wylie-Kellerman. “These were just plain Galileans.” (We might call them
“lay speakers” in light of the training available to us next month.) “There
wasn’t a seminary degree among them, no studied rhetoricians. . . . But on
Pentecost they speak the truth with eloquent simplicity.” He says it’s the kind
of speaking the world craves again from us as the church today – even as
existentialist Albert Camus looked back on the making of World War II and
bemoaned the church’s public silence and our self-defeating, self-denying,
self-destroying ways of escape and avoidance.
For a long time during those frightful years
I waited for a great voice to speak up in the Church. I, an unbeliever?
Precisely. For I know that the spirit would be lost if it did not utter a cry
of condemnation when faced with force. . . . What the world expects of
Christians is that Christians should speak out, loud and clear, and that they
should voice their condemnation [of war] in such a way that never a doubt, never
the slightest doubt, could arise in the heart of the simplest person. That they
should get away from abstraction and confront the blood-stained face history has
taken on today. The grouping we need is a grouping of people resolved to speak
out clearly and to pay up personally.
Speak out clearly. Pay up personally. That is
Pentecost Day.
That is the birth of the church – born to
confrontation – to conflict, controversy, surveillance, harassment, arrest.
That is precisely why Jesus – who knew what awaited him and therefore his living
body the church – calls the Holy Spirit our “Counselor” and our “Advocate” –
with a capital letters. As in a holy law firm! The Spirit stands up for us in
court and in front of all various thrones of power! The Spirit goes before us
into the streets –with Molly Ivins’ pots and pans and whatever other clamoring
instruments of holy high protest this day. The Spirit gives us gifts for
ministry and for mission – where we are and to the ends of the earth -- in
compassion and in solidarity with all of God’s children everywhere.
This public vision and prophetic voice of the
church seem so crucial to Pentecost Day – and the cultural juxtaposition of
Pentecost with Memorial Day Weekend so ironic -- that I want to quote at length
a testimony by Jim Winkler, General Secretary of the General Board of Church and
Society chaired by Bishop Shamana. He spoke at a press conference called
recently (as we did one here) -- to bring religious leaders of several faiths
together to speak out on the war –
Although war is fundamentally incompatible
with Christian teaching, it has occurred time and again throughout human
history. Always, the state seeks the blessing of religious leaders. Too many
hastily provide it.
This war is particularly troublesome. It has
ushered in a doctrine of preemptive war and was based on false premises . . . .
The cost of the war has been great for our
congregations, synagogues, mosques, and houses of worship. We bury the dead and
minister to the wounded and those whose lives will never again be whole . . . .
The war in Iraq has divided our
congregations. While it is deeply unpopular many clergy fear to speak out –
even now. 109 of the bishops of my own denomination, The United Methodist
Church, have acknowledged,
“As elected and consecrated bishops of the
church, we repent of our complicity in what we believe to be the unjust and
immoral invasion and occupation of Iraq. In the face of the United States
Administration’s rush toward military action based on misleading information,
too many of us were silent.
“We confess our preoccupations with
institutional enhancement and limited agendas while American men and women are
sent to Iraq to kill and be killed, while thousands of Iraqi people needlessly
suffer and die, while poverty increases and preventable diseases go untreated.
“Although we value the sacrifices of the men
and women who serve in the military, we confess our betrayal of the scriptural
and prophetic authority to warn the nations that true security lies not in
weapons of war, but in enabling the poor, the vulnerable, the marginalized to
flourish as beloved daughters and sons of God.” . . .
Our Church will not be silent in the face of
this slaughter. We provide chaplains and log distance phone cards for our
soldiers. We take the wounded and their families at Walter Reed out to dinner,
we buy diapers for their babies and supply charcoal grills so they can enjoy a
barbecue dinner. And some of our churches stand ready to provide sanctuary to
soldiers who will not fight in this war. We support the troops but hate the
war.
I want to say about the fear or reluctance of
clergy to speak out on this war that I have been privileged to feel nothing but
encouragement and support for doing so – no matter how our views may differ
within the congregation. I am grateful to be able to speak and act my mind and
heart as I discover and discern Jesus to teach and be revealed by the Spirit to
me in this place and people. Thank you. Yet as we often say here, the witness
to the Gospel and God’s Word is much too important to leave to the preacher!
This war is not likely to end unless and until the least likely among us are
speaking and even acting out faith-filled opposition.
Wylie-Kellerman says the Spirit gives each of us
to speak with the decisive Greek word parrhesia, used only once in the
Gospels but throughout the book of the Acts of the Disciples. [Note: Not just
the nice thoughts and prayers and hopes and dreams, but the ACTS of the
Apostles!] The word is translated as speaking with “boldness,” speaking
openly. The word is stolen from the political vocabulary of the Greek
city-states! It signifies the right of the full citizen to speak fully and
freely in public assembly! It is the right of each and of all of us.
It means literally “the freedom to say all” – to
speak resurrection and newness of life to the oldest and deadest of powers and
principalities. Paul later says he speaks that way even in chains! We’ve got
the Spirit today, my sisters and brothers – we’ve got “the Holy Ghost-Dance.”
And no on can stop us or shut us up. The reading of all the nations represented
this day in Jerusalem is like “a contents page from a [Roman] Empire Atlas,”
says Wylie-Kellerman. We can imagine all 192 United Nations members – and
counting! – today. “The Holy Spirit is a very political bird,” he concludes,
bringing us back to our pigeon-doves. “And it doesn’t stop for border guards.
The authoritative lines are crossed. Indeed, in Pentecost those lines are blown
right off the spiritual map!”
Yet the context of the Memorial Day Weekend
reminds us pointedly how deeply our culture, including our church, are immersed
in military metaphor and rhetoric of war. Jim Wallis of Sojourners quotes the
Archbishop of Canterbury about the lead-up to this war, “When all you have is a
hammer, everything looks like a nail!” Wallis goes on to cite our failure of
imagination – which is such a gift and work of the Holy Spirit – even to
“imagine-NATION” in a new and differing way! And to respond to a perceived
threat without automatic resort to war. Wallis enjoins us, Our
responsibility, as people of faith, is to help articulate an alternative
imagination for peace in the world.
Our Chicago friend and columnist Bob Koehler (www.commnwonders.com)
points out how military metaphor and war rhetoric may lead us to see everything
– and everybody! -- as enemy – simply, strictly to be defeated – by every last
means. We deny all human affinity for them -- to eliminate them, whatever the
cost. I have learned of my own arthritis, much less of cancer, for instance,
that we cannot only fight it and seek to conquer it. Part of what it means for
the Spirit to fill our bodies and the body of the church is to respect our own
embodiedness. How do we respect the gifts but also the limits of who we are and
what we can do with who we are? How do we believe, trust, risk, even dare God
to love us no matter what? And to use us far beyond the limits of what we can
see and do! We do not always have to be “winners” and “conquerors” – even over
“Satan” and “sin.” Jesus here calls us to receive his gift of a peace the world
cannot give us, “peace that passes all understanding.”
Bob Koehler commends such alternative metaphors
as “the organism, the computer, the jazz ensemble” as being “far more complex
than the ‘us vs. them’ reductionism of the military metaphor.” Such ways of
seeing and speaking, thinking and acting, invite us to embrace a larger, richer
understanding of our reality and places in it. Koehler concludes with a
question from the essay “De-Militarizing Language” published at
www.peacemagazine.org – “Suppose instead of thinking about argument in terms
of war, we were to think of argument as a pleasing, graceful dance. How would
such a metaphor cause us to conceptualize argument in a different way?” Koehler
knows, as Jesus and this day his followers know, that “Those who can’t or won’t
change their thinking will eye these alternatives as further intrusions of
political correctness on their happiness.” “I say imagine dancing with what we
fear instead of trying to kill it.” Imagine dancing!
We have been saying throughout our campaign,
it’s not about equal giving, it’s about equal generosity! So too, the gifts of
the Spirit this morning are not identical gifts but equally distributed and like
tongues of fire resting on each of us! Our gifts are for us to discover, for us
to discern – as gifts of imagination, new ways of seeing and doing – gifts of
perspective – determined by where we stand and who we stand with – and gifts of
action – determined by our compassion and solidarity for and with all peoples.
That very much includes all Iraqis, all residents of that region where the
“Babel in Babylon,” the confusion of tongues in the cradle of civilization,
leaves us speechless and powerless because we have not learned other tongues.
I call our attention to the “Pentecost
Initiative” of our Nevada-Sierra District in the bulletin. How do we begin to
learn “to speak in other languages?” As the Spirit gives us ability? Instead
of imposing “English” or any other “only” language on one another, how to we
encourage all our children to grow up bi- or tri- or however many -culturally
and -lingually? Children whose first language is not English are doing it all
the time – are way ahead of the rest of us! We need not only Spanish-speakers
among us, but Arabic-speakers, Tongan- and Tagalo-, and speakers of every
tongue! How do we expand our Tongan-language ministries? Much less begin
Spanish-language? We are invited to make proposals for funding ministries with
peoples whose first language is not English.
(I take a minute to lift up Garry Crocker of our
8 o’clock service. He’s a teacher of autistic children in Sparks. He’s been
worshiping with us six or eight months and helping out however he can. For six
years he lived on a boat sailing the coast of the Pacific. He fell in love with
Leseth (spelling?) in Colombia. For several years now they’ve been working on
getting the visa that would permit her to come her for marriage. She arrived at
last Thursday night. Garry brought her to see the church and to meet me Friday
as they left for the weekend in Bodega Bay – wonderfully committed to
communicating in each other’s language! Empowered by the language of love.
They’ll be here next Sunday. Is that not part of what makes us “love this place
and the people who enrich our lives?”)
Jennifer Woodruff teaches us to pray “a Dancing
God” born in us this day–
O in the darkness of a night gone out
come find me once again, descend, be born,
be racked by wind and crucified and torn
yet never stop the dance. How could I doubt
Your peace more frightening than any pain,
your dark embrace that burns and purifies,
the searching sharp enchantment of your eyes,
the absolute perfection of your flame?
God of all wind, all dance, all fire, all
grace,
heal what I cannot hold, receive my prayer
and give me strength, surrendering, to bear
the dark and dancing splendor of your face.
Come, Holy Spirit! Amen.
top of page
Archives
|
