Keeping the Hours

The Twitter account for the Episcopal Church recently offered the following:

“Watch over those who work while others sleeps, and grant that we may never forget that our common life depends on each other’s toil.”

As one who lives on the other side of the International Dateline from most of my family, friends, and colleagues, I found this prayer very comforting and inclusive.  Usually, I get tad lonely when Renovare, Weavings, or other spiritual formation accounts send out prayers of the daily office because it reminds me of how many Twitter accounts cater to the “other hemisphere.”  As if the silence my social networking sites offer in my afternoon and evening isn’t isolating enough, I have prayers of the day coming through at the wrong hours for me.

I’m not whining, nor am I asking for special favors of scheduled tweets to help me mark the divine hours…I do very well with my prayer books, thank you.

What I am offering is a reflection on a broader vision of what it means to pray for those who work while others sleep and remembering that our common life depends on each other’s toil.

I have prayed similar prayers on board ship at evening prayer “watch with those who work or watch or weep this night.”  It is an important reminder to ship’s company that while some of us “rack out,” others are steering the course, keeping the ship from running aground or colliding with another vessel or being attacked.  So much is going on while we sleep.

This prayer makes so much sense for military folks, or when we remember that while we slumber in our homes there are members of the police department patrolling our cities, or standing ready to respond from the stations.  There are nurses checking up on sleeping patients in hospitals, EMTs responding to emergencies.  Clerks at 24 hour convenience stores and gas stations.  While we sleep (if we have a 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. job) there is so much going on that keeps our communities going.  There are laborers in factories making our stuff. 

Our common life, people keep it going at all hours.

And while you sleep in the “other hemisphere” there are soldiers and Sailors and Marines and airmen in my hemisphere who keep that watch in a different way.  (Along with all of the folks in manufacturing plants in small corners of the world toiling over the tiny little gizmos that make our tech toys that help us stay connected.) Likewise, while all of us in “this hemisphere” sleep, you take care of us.

And now I am reminded of a lyric by U2: “We get to carry each other.”  While some of us sleep, others pray the morning office, and some of us are praying compline while others are praying the dawn office…and while some of us pray to the Triune God, others are contemplating the teachings of Buddha, and others are just trying to live in a way that proves “kindness is magic” (thank you Derek).

Regardless of which time zone or hemisphere, regardless of spirituality, we depend on one another for a decent common life.  So thank you @iamepiscopalian for honoring me with your prayer, for prompting me reflect on how we get to carry each other.  May we live in such a way that we are the answer to our prayers.

Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

For the past 11 years I've been serving in ministry settings that have revolved around congregational ministry of some sort.  The past three years I have served in a Navy Chapel in Japan.  In a little over a week, I'll move to a new ministry setting that has nothing to do with preparing to lead worship on a weekly basis, nor will it mean preparing weekly sermons.

Weekly sermons have been the primary content of this blog.  If not weekly sermons per se, then it has been meditations revolving around those texts, or thoughts relating to congregational development or local church ministry.  Sometimes denominational politics.

But as I have been thinking about the new setting I'm moving into, I have also been reflecting on my blog, and what to do with it.

I haven't been as regular in posting as I would like to.  Maybe part of that is the need to have "sermon quality" content.  Maybe it's the need to have a specific content, centering around church or theology.

I really don't know where this blog is headed.  But changes are coming. 

I think those of you who read with "regularity" can expect, more human, more raw, reflection on the Gospels.  By more real, I guess I mean more deeply personal reflection, because they won't be "sanctuary safe" reflections.

You may also find more "mundane" blog posts too because I do have a lot of interests other than just preaching and worship and church life.

I don't know what coming, honestly I don't.  But I hope those of you who choose to read will continue to choose to read, as I figure out what to write.

Pacem.

You Got Your Splankna All Over My Life!

Image courtesy of http://www.cruzblanca.org/hermanoleon/

Texts: 1 Kings 17:8-24 and Luke 7:11-17

If you've ever seen the movie Groundhog Day you may know where this introduction is headed.  In hearing the texts from 1 Kings 17 and Luke 7 back-to-back, or very near to one another I sometimes wonder, haven’t I heard this story before?  Doesn’t this tale remind me of something I’ve heard elsewhere, or read in a different place or a different time?  Is hearing this story something we would call Déjà vu?  Is that "I Got You, Babe" playing in the background?

Luke certainly wants to take us back to the tale of Elijah and the widow at Zarephath as he tells us about the interaction between Jesus and the widow at Nain.  He wants us to remember the last time there was a powerful prophet who demonstrated the power of God in the midst of the people; but there are more contrasts between the two texts we heard today than there are comparisons.  

Jesus is coming into town with his disciples and a crowd of followers, hangers on, fan boys and fan girls.  They have just seen an amazing display of Jesus’ power as he healed the servant of a centurion with a word and are curious to see what he will do next.   As they enter the town of Nain, a funeral procession is moving through in the opposite direction.  A young man has died, and his mother, a widow, is left with nothing.

When we say that the widow is left with nothing, it is important to understand culturally that she has no husband, so she would have been married by her husband’s brother or another male relative.  If no other male relatives were available, the widow would be relegated to society’s margins and become vulnerable to alienation and exclusion from the community and simple daily provision of familial care.  She would be someone’s problem, but not ours; and if we happen to have some alms to give, we’ll toss some her way—because that’s what charity is, right: the crumbs from our table, the scraps of what we have after we’ve taken care of our own?  

Added to the issue of being a charity case, the death of an only son would leave a widow without an heir and therefore unable to retain whatever means remained for her.  Without an heir, all her personal property reverted to her husband’s family.

The widow has, quite literally, lost everything with her son’s death.  She has no husband, no son, no legal identity, nothing.  The crowd that surrounds her, and cries out in grief with her in this particular moment, will soon fade; they will go back to their families and she will be alone with no one to share her grief, no one to take care of her.

But, Luke says, “The Lord saw her.”  In her mourning, in her grief, in her pain, in her loneliness, the Lord saw her.  And he had compassion for her.

How many people saw the widow as the procession moved through Nain that day?  Probably a lot of people saw her that day, because you can’t miss a funeral procession as it moves through town with the mourners wailing at the top of their lungs, crying louder than the widow so that her grief would be hers alone.  Many people saw the widow of Nain that day, and knew what it meant for her to lose her only son, and they probably felt bad for her.  But feeling bad, having sympathy, is not the same thing as having compassion.

Compassion is sympathy that accompanies mercy.  Compassion is what moves us to act on behalf of those for whom we feel sympathy. The phrase "had compassion for" comes from the Greek word "Splankna" which I have spoken and talked about before; Splanka means basically his gut was so twisted by what he witnessed he couldn't not act.

This moment between Jesus and the widow leads me to ask a couple of questions.  First, do we believe this of our own mourning, grief, and pain? That the Lord sees us and has compassion for us?  And second, when we see the pain of others, how do we respond?  Are we like the crowd, who sees the pain of others and does the SMH thing but does nothing about it, or are we willing to be like Jesus who feels compassion and steps in to co-suffer with those who are hurting?  And more than co-suffer, but transform suffering to joy, to make hope where none can possibly be imagined.

Jesus says to her, “Do not weep.” Not in a belittling way, or with condescension, or to say that she has no reason to grieve at all, but in a way that says he is acting on her behalf.  Then he approaches the funeral bier, he touches the cart on which the body rests, and he speaks, “Young man, I say to you, rise!”

These words are not a prayer.  This moment is not a fervent argument like Elijah has with the Lord.  It is a command, and the voice of Jesus reaches from life into death, and with a word, “rise,” the young man sits up, and begins to speak, “and Jesus gave him to his mother.”

Dr. Bonnie Thurston, former New Testament professor of Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, writes of this: “The widow of Nain is both an individual woman for whom Jesus had compassion and a silent representative of all who have been deprived of personal worth, all who have been defined in terms of social relationships (to men.)”  She then asks if restoring her son, while compassionate, keeps the widow in a place where she is defined by her son.  I can’t help but wonder if this action does not solidify her identity as one for whom God has seen and acted.

The widow is seen by Jesus.  She does not approach him.  She does not cry out to him for mercy as so many others have done.  She does not send others to ask for his intercession, she is seen by the Lord, and is the recipient of compassion.

And perhaps this is precisely where the rubber hits the road for us this week.  The people respond to Jesus’ action by glorifying God and saying, “A great prophet has risen among us!” and “God has looked favorably upon his people!”  Another translation says, “God has visited us…God has come near to us, to save and rescue us! This is the time we have been waiting for!” 

So what I would ask you to do is to quiet yourself for a moment, and think of the thing you most dread that may be coming this week, this month, this year…something you know about…or something that is unknown but which strikes fear into you…feel the sorrow, the frustration, the bitterness, the anger, the disappointment, the grief…and then watch Jesus join you in the middle of it.

Hear him say to you, “Do not weep; do not fear; put away your anger.”  And then see him speak life into that moment, feel him speak peace into that moment.  And know, trust, believe, that God has visited you.  God has come near, to save and rescue, and that this moment of Emmanuel, this moment of God with us, is the time we have been waiting for.

An Altared State of Living

Text this week--1 Kings 18:20-39

When I made the transition from the local church to military chaplaincy, one question was on the mind of a lot of people: “Do you play well with others?”  They weren’t asking about my social skills, but my ability to work in a setting that requires facilitating for the religious practices of other people; they wanted to know—they being my Religious Organization/Church and the Navy—whether I could function in a pluralistic setting.

So I became fairly adept at telling the story of my circle of friends back in the states.  It sounds like I’m setting up a joke as I tell it.  “A Christian Pastor, a belly dancer, an atheist, a Muslim, and a Wiccan walk into a coffee shop…they embrace one another, shake hands, share a meal, and—shockingly-nothing blows up.”  I love my friends. I can't wait to have coffee with them this summer.

So, then, as I met the text this week from 1 Kings, I found myself doing a lot of reflecting, a lot of prayer, a lot of searching.  What do we do with this kind of text in a world where religions are literally at war with one another?  What do we do with a text full of religious mockery when we live in a time of religious extremism?  How do we faithfully, and respectfully, treat it?

We start by remembering that this is not about Elijah versus the Prophets of Baal.  And as difficult as it may be to grasp, this text is not about religious war.  This text is about God’s calling his people back into faithful relationship.  Rarely are prophets sent to convert the nations (those stories do arise, perhaps the most memorable being Jonah and the people of Nineveh...but I sometimes wonder if that story is about the conversion of the people of that city or the conversion of the prophet...); more often than not, prophets are called to convert the people already identified as the people of God.  This text is one of those cases.

For three years there has been a drought.  For three years the crops have withered and died, and with the crops the trust of the people has also withered and died.  They have prayed and they have made offerings, and yet there is still no rain.  They have prayed and made their offerings but still the crops wither and die.

But there is the Canaanite god, who goes by the name of Baal.  This god is the god of agriculture, the giver of rain and the grower of crops.  So the people of God, set their chips somewhere on the line of red and black, hedging their bets between YHWH and Baal.

Isn’t that what we do when things get thin, though?  We may not relinquish our identity of faith, but we certainly try to juggle multiple identities in order to hedge our bets.

For example.  After the terror attacks on September 11th, I led a prayer vigil at my home church.  We opened the building for prayer and led a service of hymns, with scripture passages for mediation, and we prayed.  One of the texts for the evening service was from 1 Peter 3, “Don’t repay evil for evil or insult for insult.”  We also used Romans 12:20-21: “If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him a drink. By doing this, you will pile burning coals of fire upon his head. Don’t be defeated by evil, but defeat evil with good.”  After the service was over, a member of the church came up and said, “Those texts were just un-American. We can’t do that or we’ll become doormats for the world. As Americans we just can’t live that way.”

We just can’t live that way, so I’ll set my chips somewhere on the line between this and that.

So Elijah sees this hedging of bets, he feels the ache of God in his heart for a faithful people, and he takes on the prophets of Baal in dramatic display, much like Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop-Shopping outside of Target or Starbucks.  The showdown is full of flair and it must have been something to see, one of those places where we would like to be a fly on the wall or have a hidden camera recording the whole thing so we could put it on YouTube.

But before Elijah challenges the prophets: he challenges the people: “How long will you go limping with two different opinions? If the Lord is God, follow him; but if Baal, then follow him.”  What an amazing question.  How long will you let your indecisiveness ruin your lives?  We cannot sustain that kind of living.  We cannot be fully committed to two different belief systems; how does the saying go “jack of all trades, but master of none?” So whatever it is that we choose, we need to live it fully.

It is a reckoning back to Joshua exhorting the people of Israel: “choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served in the region beyond the river or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living; but as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.”

The choice is always there.  God will never force us to love him, because a coerced love is not real love.  But if you have vowed to love, then stick to it.

I have always counseled individuals and couples regarding vows.  I take vows very seriously, whether they are vows of marriage, ordination vows, or vows of church membership.  If you promised, in the presence of God, by the Spirit of God, to give yourself to something, then do it.  And do it fully.  No one is forcing you to take these vows--no one is saying you can’t wrestle with them.  I wrestle with my ordination vows on a frequent basis--my promises to be faithful to Christ and my promises to be faithful to the Church and my promises to be faithful to the Bishops and the Book of Discipline do not always intersect with ease.  But I have made those promises.  I have made my choice.

The same holds for the youth I have confirmed and the adults I have baptized.  No one forces you to participate in these rites.  These are not rites of passage but covenant relationships we enter into, hopefully with full knowledge of what they require of us. 

To self-identify as a child of God is a choice.  But it is a choice that brings responsibility with it.  (Anyone else hear a little echo of Peter Parker’s Uncle Ben?)

The drama that unfolds between God of Elijah and the prophets of Baal, is not about warring religions; it is about calling the people of God back to a faithful relationship.  And while the Church could always stand to have a few more committed hearts, the world does not need any more extremists--of any religion.

In a three year drought, there is no logic to wasting water. 12 jugs of water in total are dumped on the altar as Elijah prepares for his prayer.  And while each of the 12 stones and each of the 12 jugs of water has a certain symbolism, I’m not concerned with that at this point in time.  If you dumped 12 large jugs of water--a scarce commodity in a time of drought--onto the wood for a bonfire, you don’t expect anything to catch.  You don’t foresee a spark, or a black smoldering mess of smoke, you don’t expect anything to happen.  AND you are looking at the prophet who has ordered this to happen like he is the biggest fool on the face of the earth; how and why waste all that water?  And yet, in the midst of foolishness, God still lights a fire for his children.  God lights a fire so that we might believe.  

In the least likely of places, in the least likely of circumstances, in a situation where you least expect to find a spark, God pours out the fires of heaven.

This gives me hope.  This gives me encouragement when so many people are talking about decline.  Where we least expect it, fires are being lit like the warning beacons of Gondor.  In small country churches, altars are catching on fire.  In small urban churches full of addicts and prostitutes, altars are catching on fire. In house churches around the world, full of people who have given up on the institution, but not on the Church, altars are catching on fire.  Where we least expect to see God at work--that’s where it’s happening. 

The drought did not end after Elijah’s high drama, not for a while at least. And, sadly, the people of God still have not stopped hedging our bets.  But the good news is that God is still God, and we always have altars that are looking for flames to be ignited from.

I will always remember what the president of my seminary said one day in Chapel.  Dr. Zeiders said the altar is the place where we are called to alter our lives.  The altar, whether set with candles, flowers and a Bible, or with the Holy Meal, is a place ripe for transformation, the place where, with the people of Israel, we can say, “The Lord indeed is God; the Lord indeed is God.”  As it was true for Elijah and the people of Israel, may it be so for us today.

Amen.

Wrestling Through the Night

(A reflection on Romans 5:1-5)

A couple of weeks ago at morning PT, I said something that got a few folks laughing.  I used a phrase that will send my daughter, Kathryn, into a fit of anger when her brother speaks it, a phrase we’ve all said or have heard spoken to us.  

We were doing base line runs on the soccer field at Nimitz Park with some form of calisthenics exercise at either base line.  A couple of younger Sailors were groaning about how horrible this workout was, how much it hurt, so Chaps put on his best sweaty smile and said, “Hey, you know what this is good for?  Builds Character!” And at that particular phrase, they started even louder: “You hear what Chaps says, this builds character!  Chaps is CRAZY!”

I don’t necessarily like that particular saying, I didn’t like being on the receiving end of it as a teenager, and I know my teens don’t care to hear it.  None of us do, and yet, here’s Paul talking to us today: “Suffering, Endurance, Character…Builds Character!”  And for many of us, we shut down at that word "character" because we don't want to hear that our physical or emotional pain is for our spiritual gain.

But Paul doesn't stop at character, even if we get hung up on that word.  Endurance builds character, but not just Character…Hope.  And with our hope, eventually, comes peace.  The thing is this can all turn pie in the sky really fast.  Or, if we aren’t careful, it can come across as a bumper sticker theology, or cloyingly cliché, ipecac theology.  You know ipecac right? The stuff that induces vomiting? Ipecac theology is the stuff that people say that makes us vomit in our mouths just a little bit.

So then, what does hope and peace look like for us as we suffer?  One commentary says, “Real peace is not something we automatically wake up with in the morning.  Real peace with God is a verb. It is more often a sweat-blood-and-tears process that requires of us an active cultivation of our relationship with God. It means having constant contact with God.”  For some constant contact looks like prayer, searching the Scriptures, or worship.

When I try to visualize constant contact with God, especially in the midst of suffering, I can only think of Jacob wrestling with God and saying, “I will not let you go until you bless me.”  And we struggle through the long and dark night until eventually light breaks and blessing comes.  And with the blessing comes a new, God-given, Grace-based identity, and afterward our walk is changed forever.

What then do we do with the idea that our justification (salvation) puts us right with God and yet we continue to suffer?  What do we do with those who would say to us that our suffering is a result of our individual or societal sin?  For Paul’s audience, this was certainly the case.  If you were suffering or enduring a trial, it was directly related to your disobedience to God, much like Job’s friends offered by way of counsel, much like the disciples asked Jesus about the man who was born blind (“who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”)

Is our forgiveness—our justification—a ticket to a life free from suffering?  Some would say yes, but life tells us otherwise.  And depending on where we fall in that area of thinking, we may feel disappointment when faced with suffering.  We may feel shame.

Paul says, in verse 5, “and hope does not disappoint us…” other translations say, “hope does not put us to shame.”  So when we find ourselves in places and moments of suffering we are not put to shame as we wrestle with God, as we strive to stay in constant contact with God, to keep our hope alive.  

And why is it that certain types of suffering are considered shameful? Why are displays of grief, expressions of loneliness, things that make us feel embarrassed? Why do we mask the realities of family addiction, or the pain of divorce?  Why do we feel shame in these moments?

Perhaps it is because we live in a culture that sees asking for help as a sign of weakness?  I am not just speaking of the military culture, it happens in the private sector, too.  Children are shamed for asking for additional help or direction in school, shamed by classmates, sometimes shamed by teachers.  

I recently heard about a family readiness program that happened during the month of the military child. The children were asked to write down positive ways their family handles stress.  One child wrote: “Suck it up.”

Why are we a “suck it up” culture? Because suffering and shame go hand in hand.  When we try to get to the source of someone’s suffering, we seek explanations, and usually ask in subtle or not so subtle ways, “what did you do to cause this?”

Sometimes, many times, we don’t do anything; it just happens.  And what we need, as people, are not answers to the question “Why?” but folks who will wrestle down hope with us.  Folks who will say, “I hate that you have to feel this pain. I am so sorry.”

How do we get to from suffering to hope?  With friends who sit with us, who weep with us, who wait with us…leaning on the promises that—even if by sheer will and determination—we will make it to tomorrow, we will make it through, one day at a time, until eventually we see the breaking of the dawn and the end of our dark night.

Meditation, Soul Saving, and the Life We Have to Live

I found myself recently frustrated that the general perception of Christianity is that we are only interested in sin management or the mass conversion of others, as if we are some kind of spiritual pyramid scheme and our eternal rewards as individuals increase with each person we get to “buy into” our product of Jesus Christ and Going to Heaven. (Maybe it is more accurate to say that the product du jour is escaping eternity in hell…)

I recently read an article about how a Baptist turned Buddhist Army Chaplain is creating a meditation and resilience center in Afghanistan (link to article) which made me proud that the military is seeing spirituality and prayer as something that makes us stronger and offers healing benefits, and more than just a lucky rabbit's foot tacked onto the occasional ceremony.

What bothered me (bothers me) is the lack of attention that we give to meditation and contemplation as Christian Chaplains (and Christians in general).  Many of the articles shared about military chaplaincy and Christianity are written in a negative light and tell of the harmful effects of proselytization.   Christians are painted as angry purveyors of an angry God.

There it is again: Christianity is only about mass conversion and sin management.  

And yet there is John Wesley’s admonition to his preachers: “You have nothing to do but save souls; therefore spend and be spent in that work.” This commission weighs so heavily on my heart, because anything Wesley said to his preachers applies to my Methodist self and there is something absolutely necessary about this work!

But when I think of saving souls…I think of the spouse who has been cheated on and lacks a sense of self-worth.  I think of the service member who has been sexually assaulted and now has issues of trust and a devalued sense of self-esteem.  I think of the troops who have survived combat and carry the spiritual and emotional damage that goes along with that.  I think of all those who are forced to live a closeted existence because to be completely honest about who they are (and who they have been created to be) means exile from family and friends, means exclusion from the Church and the One who made them…I think of the many different faces that sit in Chapel—and have sat in congregations I have served in the past—who are the people behind each of these generic statements…

In the spiritual exchange of penal-substitutionary atonement, their soul is safe the moment they accept “that Jesus died for their sins”; nothing to worry about any more.  But from a spiritual direction, and spiritual wholeness perspective many of them, while saved from “eternal damnation” have souls that live a tortured existence…they have souls that still need saving and need people who will spend and be spent in this work.

When I served in the local church, there was a man who would not cross the threshold of the church building because of the things he endured during World War II.  How many people in our world are in similar places, staying away from God and the wholeness that Grace offers because they are living with the horrors they have caused or that they have had perpetuated upon them.

Can the Church (and those of us who serve) come back to a place where we embrace meditation and contemplation as an avenue of healing and wholeness, a place where we experience at-one-ment with God through the Great Physician Jesus Christ or are we relegated to simply being sellers of cheap fire insurance?

I for one stand with the Saints of Spiritual Direction: Henri Nouwen, Richard Foster, Barbara Brown Taylor, Richard Rohr, Brennan Manning, and so many others.  All of whom are fully committed to the need for the revelation of God in Jesus Christ, all of whom are head over heels in love with the Giver of Grace, while still being generous and charitable to our sisters and brothers of other faiths.  I stand with them because they speak, write, teach and live in a holistic practice of this faith I know and love.

Holding Down our Tabernacles

Image courtesy of http://www.cruzblanca.org/hermanoleon/

I have always loved comic books so when a comic book character or story makes a transition to television, I am a happy person.  For the seasons it was on television, Smallville ranked pretty high on the list of “must watch TV.”  In one episode a group of superheroes from the 31^st century comes back to our time to visit with Clark Kent and they are surprised to find out—in Smallville’s timeline anyway—that Superman hasn’t made it to “Superman” status yet.  One character asks, “Hey, Kal, where’s your cape?” Clark asks back, “Cape?”  A few minutes later two of the 31^st century heroes are talking, “Are you sure that’s the right guy?” The other says, “It’s him.” The first says back, “I don’t know.  No glasses, no tights, no flights.  So far he’s nothing like the Man of Steel.”

If glasses, tights and flights make the Man of Steel, what then, is the Community of Faith without the presence and gifts of the Holy Spirit?

The Feast of Pentecost answers that question for us.  One pastor writes about the Before-and-After Pictures of the Disciples: “Before Pentecost, they were dense, timid bumblers who fled at the least sign of trouble. Afterwards, they were fearless leaders. They healed the sick and cast our demons. They went to jail gladly, where they sang hymns until the walls fell down.”

Pentecost is like graduation day or the day we get kicked out of the nest and are given our wings.  But the diploma is grace-given, not earned through hard work.  The wings and the flight are Divine gifts, not natural talents.  The transformation that happens through the gift of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost is anything but natural.

Pentecost comes from the Greek, meaning “50^th”.  Before the day was claimed as the Church’s birthday, it marked the Feast of Weeks for the Children of Israel, celebrating the Spring Harvest.  The feast happened 50 days after the offering of the sheaf of first-fruits at the time of Passover and Unleavened Bread.  In later Judaism, the festival marked the giving of the Law and Covenant made at Sinai.  

So now, 50 days after the Resurrection of Jesus, the first-fruit from the grave, we have a different sort of harvest that occurs.  There is a new manifestation of God’s timeless Law, a new sign of God’s covenant…the indwelling of God’s Spirit.

Go with me for a moment to the conclusion of the book of Exodus.  The final chapter of Exodus describes the Tabernacle’s completion: “So Moses finished the work. Then the cloud covered the tent of meeting, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle…the cloud of the Lord was on the tabernacle by day, and fire was in the cloud by night, before the eyes of all the house of Israel at each stage of their journey.”  Once the tabernacle is finished, the glory of the Lord, the visible sign of God’s presence, descends in fire and cloud upon the dwelling place of God.

From Genesis, where God walked in the garden with the first humans, to Exodus, where God crashes from heaven to earth to dwell in the tabernacle, to Jesus where fully God and fully human get wrapped together in one flesh, to the Day of Pentecost where once again, God’s Spirit crashes to earth with wind and fire to take up residence in the Temples of the New Covenant, it is safe to say that God is not satisfied with a life of remote transcendence, but desires intimate imminence with Creation. 

Pentecost reminds us that the gift of saving grace is – at its core – personal and communal, for one and for many.  Our manifestations of the Spirit are for others to see Christ at work in us, for them.  To think that the presence of the Spirit is for us alone, for my personal gain and nothing else, is to stifle the Spirit of God.  And if we do that, if we make God our servant, put God at our beck and call, may God have mercy on us.

Pentecost, the day in the history of the Church when the disciples were locked in a room, waiting for the promise of God, and what they find is that God’s promise looks like a reversal of Babel’s curse.

Babel showed what humanity could do when working together for our own gain (as well as God’s ability to thwart our selfish endeavors); Pentecost shows us God’s partnership with humanity to use the power of the resurrection for God’s purposes and for God’s kingdom.  (As Peter’s first sermon concluded, 3,000 new members are added to the Church!)

Speaking of Babel, I recall watching a movie when I was a child about the stories of the Bible, maybe it was by Cecil B DeMille or someone like that.  The portion of the Tower of Babel has always stuck with me—not because it was so accurate to the text, but the way the story was told.  I remember as the tower was completed a man stood on top and launched a flaming arrow into the heavens, almost as if he was saying, “From this height, I can kill God!” And at that point the languages became mixed up, our unity for self-promotion was shattered, with a flaming arrow to the heavens.

But on Pentecost, Babel’s fiery arrow comes back down, not as a returned curse but as God’s blessing.  The Spirit’s descent may appear violent and chaotic, as Luke describes the event with ‘violent wind…divided tongues, as of fire…’ and an eruption of different languages from around the world, but this is the same God who entered the first tabernacle with fiery cloud and who descended upon Sinai with crashing thunder.  God’s movement makes noise.

I went camping in Palm Desert in California one year during Spring Break, our tent was in a valley and one night we were sitting out listening to music and talking and this wind begins to work through the valley we had set up in.  It started out as a gentle wind, evening breeze, nice and refreshing after a hot day in the desert, but it kept building, blowing harder.  We started laughing because at some point “Riders on the Storm” by the Doors had come on, but it became so violent that I had to hook my arm through the door of the tent to keep it from blowing away, and I wasn’t entirely sure that I wasn’t going to go for a ride with the tent.

I sometimes wonder if we don’t hold down our tabernacles, hook our arms to things, to prevent us from being blown away by the rushing wind of the Spirit, fearful of the places God would take us if we just let go.