12 June 2011

“THAT’S the power of love”
Numbers 11:24-30 / Acts 2:1-21
The Day of Pentecost
12 June 2011


I don’t know if you paid attention to the weather last Monday with a particularly liturgical eye … but if you did, you noticed that we had our own little Pentecost moment around here.
It was quite windy for a day in June … the “onshore flow” took over again after some nice, sunny, dry few days … and the moist air off the Pacific rushed back inland to give us our more usual cloudy, cool June mornings.
Trees bent. Leaves blew off them. Birdhouses and feeders came un-hung. Even some tender shoots on rose bushes ended up breaking off and blowing around the yard.
But that is the way of wind, after all. It rushes around and marks a transition from nothing happening, to something’s happening, and you’d better sit up and take notice. Change is coming … change is here … and the wind will bring it in.
Now, whether you pay attention to the weather or not … it’s impossible to have missed the fact that change- life change - is blowing in all around us today.
Our culture is in a place of change.
Our nation and world are in a place of change.
The Church itself is in a place of change.
The holy wind … the Spirit of God … is blowing … rushing in, individually, collectively … change isn’t just coming, a ways off … change is already here.
That much is certain.
So how will the Church respond?
That’s the Pentecost question.
It was the question 2000 years ago, there in Jerusalem, too.
The familiar text from Acts sets the stage … “When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place.”
Pentecost – the festival taken on by the Christian Church – which some claim as “the Church’s birthday” – it was and still is a Jewish celebration. Pentecost comes – as the name indicates, 50 – Pente - days after Passover. This year it started at sundown on June 7, and ended at sunset on June 9.
In the days of Temple Judaism 2000 plus years ago, Pentecost was one of the three times during the year when all adult men of the faith were required to come to Jerusalem. Pentecost – also known as the Feast of Weeks – in Hebrew, Shavuot, the annual giving or “returning thanks” of the first fruits of the grain harvest – Shavuot, more importantly, though, is the commemoration of the Giving of the Torah … the rules and laws which define Judaism and the Jewish people, the Ten Commandments and all the ways of living which surround them, given by God to Moses on Mount Sinai … that event, the defining event for the Jewish people … that was why “they were all together in one place” on that Pentecost so long ago.
But then God’s holy wind started to blow. And things changed in a hurry.
Now, hear this word clearly … God did not send change because there was or is anything wrong with Torah. Lutheran Christians in particular can have a warped understanding of that word Torah – probably because we acquaint it with “law” and “works” and thus, it’s a “bad” thing.
But Torah was and is a gift from God … not a dead letter on a page, but a living, breathing way of life for God’s people, the way they would live into God’s promise to Abraham, that they would be “blessed to be a blessing” to the world.
No, it was what people did to Torah … making it into an unwieldy system of laws, rules, codes and precepts … that’s what Jesus objected to during his earthly ministry. So much of Jesus’ teaching, his preaching, his doing … was in bringing out the Spirit of the law, breathing life into the dead letter of rule and regulation which was stifling faith, which was working against the very gift of life God so wanted for his people.
Whenever faith is remade into religion … morality, rules, codes, laws … a self-justifying system of “to be a faithful person, you must live like this, or else” … rather than the Spirit-led, freeing “because you are a beloved child of God, God calls you into life lived in relationship, in care, in love and in peace” … whenever that happens, watch out …
… the wind of God, the Spirit of truth and life, will blow in to change things.
The disciples gathered there, on that Pentecost so long ago, just come out of hiding after Jesus’ death … they had been told by Jesus to wait around Jerusalem, to wait for what would come next. Doubtless they were hoping that things might calm down, get back to normal for them … the troubling times of recent memory … Jesus’ arrest, crucifixion, and death … and then the disturbing, hopeful yet confusing times of his resurrection appearances just past …
… and yet, God’s holy wind blew in upon them, blew them into the rush of change, the breath of new life God was breathing into his (even then) old, tired world.
Some who stood by and saw what was happening were surprised. Some were confused. Still others pointed and made fun of them, criticized them, “they’re just drunk.”
Peter saw a moment to step in and say a particular word. And so he did.
You see it there before you, “prophesy.”
It was a scary word for people back then, who tended to listen more closely than we do today, to people who spoke words in God’s name, speaking God’s truth, using God’s name. Sometimes they were false prophets, but if you listened closely to them, paid attention, you could tell, because these false prophets spoke a word like “oh, it’s all going to be OK, every day in every way we’re getting better and better, don’t worry, be happy.”
A real prophet would proclaim a harsh word in smooth times … “repent, listen to God’s Word, hear the voice of the Holy One calling you to life in relationship with him, as his beloved children.” A real prophet would preach a soothing word in hard times … “Comfort, comfort my people, says our God, though it looks bleak now, God is with you, to bring real peace, healing, and hope.”
Prophesy. It’s a scary word for us today, too.
Granted, we do have our goofball “prophets,” having just lived through another time of “someone knows when the world is going to end,” and their being proved wrong once again … but the real prophets are the ones who are criticized – at the least, made fun of … people usually want them to stop doing what they’re doing, saying what they’re saying, because they – we - don’t want to hear the truth, the true word about our world today, our nation, our economic system, war and peace, people’s public (and private) behavior.
The prophets’ words make us … us who seek our own comfort first, last and always … the prophets’ words make us uncomfortable. They cut too close … even as they call us to be about something new – in ourselves, and with others.
I love that Old Testament reading from Numbers for that very reason. The Spirit of God shows up again, and 70 elders prophesy … speak God’s Word of truth and love, in all boldness and no meekness. And then two more of them who don’t behave in the “prescribed” manner start prophesying too. And that young man … I imagine him to be someone’s annoying, obnoxious little brother … the watchdog who makes sure that no one gets a bigger piece of pie than him … he comes running to Moses, and tattles. “Um, Um, Eldad and Medad are prophesying in the camp!”
Even Joshua wants them to stop – for this is not safe, proper “coloring within the lines” religion happening here … but hear how Moses answers the protests: “Are you jealous for my sake? Would that all the Lord’s people were prophets, and that the Lord would put his spirit on them!”
The fresh wind, the Spirit of God comes blowing in, rushing around where it wills and where it wants, not necessarily, no, likely not at all coming in a nice, civilized, controlled way that we would choose.
It comes and even those who are “outside the camp” are called to speak about and give witness to the power of God, working in their lives, working for the lives of all.
Centuries later … this scene repeats itself … for that Acts community of believers … when the Spirit of God led them … after the wind blast of Pentecost … into what became anything but calm, peaceful, orderly, nice religion.
Those first followers of Jesus … what the world felt blowing through them … was bold – energetic – joyful – in your face love – THE power of love – the love of God in Jesus Christ, sent from him through the Spirit to believers to share with a changing world.
And just so today … God’s call to the Church – the call to each of us who in sum total are the Church – Church, not “they,” not just the educated and trained professionals, and most certainly NOT those who are using the change-moment we are in to promote their own anti-spirit agenda of division, exclusion, hatred and lies … lies about God, lies about faith, lies about themselves …
… the call of the Church remains the same for us today as it was on that Pentecost so long ago. All around us there is change – the Holy Wind of God is blowing – and so, rather than fighting against the Wind, we are called to claim the moment –
For this is our moment, given to us by God – God is in the midst of this change, God has already gone ahead of us in all this change, God is waiting and watching to see how we will do in it, with and for the sake of the world.
Will we fight it? Will we militantly guard the institution of the Church, jealous of those who try to open the doors to change, so the refreshing Wind of God’s spirit can blow in? Eldad and Medad are prophesying in the camp! Um, they’re doing something over there that … that … I don’t like … I didn’t think of it … I’m not in charge of it … I’m not part of it …it means change and I just plain won’t change.
Beware that attitude, Church of God.
Trees that don’t bend in the wind, they snap off and break, and become kindling, roadblocks, even killers.
Learn to bend, Church of God … learn to bend and sway … move with the Wind of the Spirit … rejoice with the Eldads and Medads who may not color within the lines, but who are truly proclaiming and pointing to God, God who is already and always active and alive in the world … active and alive in all people’s lives, even those who aren’t part of “the organized church,” the “church as we define it.”
These days, so full of change, call for creativity … Church defined by discipleship action, not just membership status. Church consisting of who shows up to be and do, rather than who merely lay claim on the real estate and the buildings. Church made up of those who live the faith … those who serve … those who give … those who walk in the way of Jesus and call others to walk along with them.
There are some who say that the Church is now in the midst of our second Reformation … that the Church of a hundred or even fifty or twenty five years from now will look nothing like what it does today.
That may well be so … I personally don’t plan on being around a hundred years from now to make sure … but neither will I freeze in fear because I don’t know what’s coming.
Because what’s coming … what’s coming … is the Holy Wind of God. The Holy Wind of God, which has always been blowing, inside and outside the camp, blowing through God’s people with a rush … calling to us from tomorrow, causing women to see visions and men to clear their eyes, calling us, pushing us forward, to God’s future, a future with forgiveness and hope … giving us courage to live that future NOW … to risk, to respond, to reach out in the same forgiveness and hope.
We have nothing to fear from this wind … God’s Spirit, God’s Spirit of Gentleness … moving us, changing us, keeping us in Christ Jesus, sending us out, always, always, sending us out, for the sake of the world.
Amen.