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May 27, 2007

Beth Foote - May 27, 2007

Pentecost, May 27, 2007 - Acts 2:1-21

How about those special effects? I think that Steven Spielberg or George Lucas should film the Book of Acts. It reads like an adventure novel. In today’s reading there’s rushing wind, tongues of fire…and then… how about those disciples? How do these “hicks”, these uneducated guys from the backwater of Galilee bypass Berlitz lessons and instantly speak all these different languages? Wind…Fire…the power of language.

If you’ve ever been sailing on San Francisco Bay, you understand the power of wind. Several years ago, I was out on the Bay sailing near the Golden Gate on my friend’s sailboat and we decided to put up the spinnaker. A spinnaker is that huge, usually colorful bubble of a sail that puffs out in front of a sailboat. We unpacked this huge spinnaker out of the seabag and struggled to put it into position. Those sails are big! It luffed and puffed, and made a great racket as the wind played with all that material… and then we came about, turning the boat, and pointing it downwind, so the wind would fill the sail…and suddenly… it felt like the wind picked up that 40 foot sailboat. We flew along under the Golden Gate, past Alcatraz. What a ride! It was a joyful, hang-on, here we go, kind of moment. A Pentecost kind of moment.

Then there are those mysterious tongues of fire. Yet God’s fire is all through the Scriptures. There’s the Burning Bush. A pillar of fire by night led the Israelites across the desert. God descends upon Mt. Sinai in a cloud of fire and indeed, the disciples were gathered in that room to celebrate Pentecost, the Jewish festival that celebrates Moses receiving the 10 Commandments.

And, God’s fiery spirit continued to reach out to us. God’s Spirit spoke through the fiery speech of the prophets, and then the quiet fire of the Holy Spirit came to one particular woman, Mary, and God entered our human world as Jesus, the Christ.

Now, have you ever thought about how we know about Jesus today? There were no newspapers, and, of course, no internet. Communication meant….literally, word of mouth. And it was all up to the disciples.

They witnessed how Jesus’ ministry of love and hope, his death and resurrection lit up a dark corner of the Roman Empire like a fireworks display. Yet it often seems like the disciples would just as soon go back to fishing. It was too overwhelming to do on their own.

So.. how did they do it? God gave them the Gift of the Holy Spirit.
Tongues of fire rested over their heads…but it was only as I prepared for this sermon that I realized that they must have literally had tongues of fire to communicate the gospel so well…

We see it in the amazing “Berlitz moment” we hear about in our reading today…suddenly these ordinary guys from Galilee, of all places, had the ability to communicate the message of Jesus to their multi-cultural ancient world… they were able to communicate in all the languages, all the idioms of their time.

How do we reconcile this with our own experience of the Church? Are we doing that? Do we have tongues of fire? Are we communicating the gospel in the language and idioms that people today understand? Do we have that ability?

Several weeks ago I read in the Chronicle that scientists were researching how we could harness the power of the jet stream. The jet stream typically blows from west to east 6 to 9 miles over the northern hemisphere at speeds up to 310 mph. Professor Ken Caldiera, down the road at Stanford says,

"My calculations show that if we could just tap into 1 percent of the energy in high-altitude winds, it would be enough to power all civilization. So the idea that we're not tapping into it -- or at least investigating it -- seems crazy to me. All the energy we need is flying by, 5 miles over our heads."

What if…the Holy Spirit, like the jet stream, is flowing by, over our heads and it’s just out of reach. How could we access it?

First of all, we have to be humble. We cannot “harness” the Spirit to do what we want. Instead, the Spirit, kindles and energizes us to do God’s work. From my perspective as a strong-willed, 21st Century person… maybe the amazing thing about Pentecost is the disciples’ willingness to be led by the Holy Spirit.

But let’s not forget that the disciples lived with Jesus day by day, throughout his time of ministry. They traveled together. They ate together. They listened and prayed together. They were formed in faith by this experience, ready for the Spirit’s coming. They spent time with the Master. They spent time with the Master.

We need to spend time with the Master, too, if we are to receive the Spirit. We need to prepare for the Spirit, make a home for the Spirit to enter in. We need to pray and listen, take time to read and hear God’s Word. We need spiritual practice and listening hearts. We need to admit our vulnerability, and sit with it…which is sometimes uncomfortable.

It’s so hard for us to let go of our own agendas. We want to be in charge, not changed. Life for us is pretty good…we are comfortable… this is the temptation…to seek our own comfort rather than asking to be led by the Spirit.

If we give in to our temptation, if we do what WE want, not preparing for the Spirit, we’re not going to get very far. Our own power is limited. If we rely on ourselves, we may look shiny from the outside like we have it all together, but our efforts will ultimately, be rather cold… because the Spirit isn’t there. The fuel, the fire and the energy of God isn’t there.

Last night in Alameda was freezing…instead of eating outside with our next door neighbors we had the last indoor fire of the year. And since I was preaching about the tongues of fire this morning, I watched the fire with new interest…

This is obvious, but true: Fire is hot! It’s alive! It radiates warmth. Heat. Energy.
Those tongues of fire over the disciples heads must have been hot! What a great image for being “fired up!” I thought of John Wesley, the 18th Century Anglican priest, how found his heart “strangely warmed” and led a revival that became the Methodist Church.

We need the Spirit’s fire, that HEAT, to be authentically Christian, and fueled for ministry. As a church, we need the Spirit’s warmth to shine out beyond Ravenswood, beyond Pine and Laurel. With the power of the Spirit, we could become a church known by our warmth, by our love, by our faith.

The power of the Holy Spirit is a gift. However, we CAN ask for it through prayer. We ARE in control of whether we pray or not; we ARE in control of saying yes or no to being led by the Spirit to do God’s work. And in my experience, we most often ask the Spirit’s help when we’re in a place of vulnerability.

The Spirit is here, stirring among us. Last Sunday, I sensed it swirling around the room at the Dream Sessions.

Personally, I feel the Spirit challenging me to radiate God’s warmth and communicate Christ’s message to children in the language of today. And I pray for the Spirit’s help and your help in this work.

The motto of St. Dorothy’s Rest (retreat center and camp in Sonoma County) is, “The Winds of God are blowing, so keep your sails unfurled.” I keep thinking of what the researcher at Stanford said, "So the idea that we're not tapping into it -- or at least investigating it -- seems crazy to me. All the energy we need is flying by, 5 miles over our heads."

As we move forward together as a church, let’s come about… into the wind of the Holy Spirit. Believe it or not, it’s much closer than 5 miles over our heads. It’s right here. Let’s unpack our spinnaker and hoist it high. Let’s make a space for the Holy Spirit to fill us with God’s power. Amen.