SunJun122011
Scripture: JOHN 20:19-23
“Spirit”: it’s a word we use in a variety of ways. It’s the energy expressed by the fans of a sports team: they show great “spirit.” It’s a word for alcohol or ghosts. “Spiriting” somebody away can often lead to fun. It’s a person’s mood: “her spirits are pretty low today.” Or it’s the animating force of life, the will. “The Spirit is willing,” we might say, “but the flesh is weak.” All these uses are different. But they have something in common, too. And what’s at their heart is that they’re all about a life force, an energy.
For most of us, the music we listen to and perform can play a big part in that part of life we call “spiritual.” And it isn’t just African-American spirituals—though it is very much they—that can make us soar and give us a new take on life. Music has an amazing capacity to affect our spirits, and to usher in the Spirit.
So today, the day of Pentecost and our Music Appreciation Sunday coincide. The day of Pentecost, of course, is the day when we say the “Holy Spirit” was given to the church. The Spirit of God wasn’t really new on that day—the concept of “spirit” had been around for Jews before Jesus’ time. It’s just that, as Jesus makes his final departure from earth, God makes a point of letting the disciples know that, even with Jesus gone, life will still be lived under the blessing of God. We call that force “Spirit.” It’s what forms us as a church. And it’s what gives us our mission.
If you’ve been around the church for a while, you may know that the most common story we tell about Pentecost is the one we heard a little earlier from the book of Acts. It’s the story of the disciples gathered in one place and suddenly being overwhelmed by the “rush of a violent wind,” by “divided tongues, as of fire,” resting on them (2:2-3), by people of different nations inexplicably being able to understand each other, even as they speak in their own native language. The scene is so strange that it comes close to caricature, like something out of a second-rate sci-fi movie.
That’s not the only biblical story of Pentecost, though. And the other one is noticeably different. It comes from the gospel of John, and it’s a much more subdued and subtle story. The core of this second story is the same—the Spirit is given to the disciples—but the tenor is poles apart. No violent wind or enormous tongues or scorching fire. Just an almost off-handed mention. “Peace be with you,” says Jesus. Then “when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit’” (20:21-22).
What a striking contrast of two scenes conveying the giving of the same holy gift! One dramatic and eye-catching, the other quiet and almost unnoticeable. Neither one, by itself, is right. It’s not that one is more accurate than the other. It’s that both together are right. Both convey the coming of the Spirit, each in its own distinctive way. And both convey what that coming is like at various times of our lives—sometimes unbelievably spectacular, sometimes incredibly subtle. (I’m indebted to Jill Crainshaw for this observation, at www.GoodPreacher.com).
I know that, for some of us here, the Spirit has come so dramatically, so vividly, that it has become the fulcrum of their lives. Maybe one day you were just going through the motions, when suddenly everything was thrown up into the air. You discovered a new line of work, or a hobby, or a partner for your life. You were confronted with an inexplicable reframing of the map of your life. One person remembers sitting on a dock as a teenager and being overcome by the sense that there was an invisible force so much larger than she who loved her with a fierce love, and reminded her that nothing would ever come between her and that love. Another person sees the love of his life at a baseball game and simply knows that the two of them will be together forever. A third person receives a gift just when she can’t imagine how she can go on, and knows it as a word from the Holy One, a sign of promise, a token of love that has become the hinge of her life. Sometimes the coming of the Spirit is like a bulldozer barging so obviously into our lives that we’d be utter fools not to notice. The story from Acts, about violent winds and flames, is the story of just that sort of coming.
Sometimes, though, the coming of the Spirit is so subtle that we might not even notice it if it weren’t for the little breath that played gently across our neck on a warm summer’s day. A tiny child brings you a dandelion. Someone tells you what a gift your now long-deceased father was to her when she was a lost teenager many years ago. You serve a meal at St. Paul’s Loaves and Fishes, and feel a strange satisfaction in the giving and in the receiving. Or, as happened to me on Friday, you see a Muslim woman, covered head to toe in her chador, incongruously riding by on the back of a motorcycle, her face absolutely lit up in a smile of utter delight.
Sometimes the breath of the Spirit comes into the heat of our worst moments and saves us from calamity. Tony Robinson, whose recent book about the church has helped Federated’s leadership rethink who we are, says that he and his son—whose name I don’t know, but whom I’ll call “Sam”—went on a church mission trip a number of years ago to Nicaragua. Leading up to the trip, Sam’s behavior had been getting odder, but Tony and his wife Linda hadn’t thought much about it. While they were on the trip, though, Sam’s behavior escalated, and they could no longer ignore it. So shortly after they had returned home, they discovered that he had bi-polar disease, which, as you can imagine, was a major bump in the road for all of them.
Then one evening, shortly after Sam had been put on a course of medications, Tony was washing the dishes when he felt Sam’s energy approach him at the sink. With an almost palpable fury, Sam shook the bottle of pills in Tony’s face and said, “You can’t make me take these.” Tony says his first instinct was to turn to Sam and grab him by the throat and scream at him, “Yes, I can and you are going to take them.” By some great good fortune, though, he restrained himself, and after a moment’s silence, he finally turned to Sam and said quietly, “No, you’re right. I can’t make you take them. You have to decide that on your own.” And he went back to washing the dishes. It’s now a number of years later, and Sam is well and has become a social worker himself. But for Tony that long-ago moment was an instance of the Spirit’s rich presence. His own restraint and his respect for Sam’s dignity and autonomy were gifts of the Spirit that enabled Sam to move toward healing.
So the Spirit is given to us in countless ways. As we celebrate Pentecost, you might want to look at the events of your life for signs of its presence, like the fog your breath makes on a mirror. Sometimes huge and instantly recognizable, sometimes subtle as a baby’s breath. But gifts, all, to what can often be the dullness and the challenges of our days.
As with all of God’s blessings, though, that’s not the end of the story. God’s gifts are never end points. They’re always starting points. They’re intended to be catalysts. God gives us something, and that something bears its own fruit as we share it with someone else. When Jesus gathers with those early disciples to give them the Spirit, he tells them that just as God has sent him, “so I send you” (Jn. 20:21). The mission of the disciples is fundamental.
Those first disciples were sent to be agents of healing; to tell the good news of what God was doing; to uncover injustice and make it right. And so are we. We’re sent to be patient with our children when everything in us wants to scream at them. We’re sent to be a peaceful presence in the midst of tense church or town meetings. We’re sent to be a listening ear when the neighbor’s mother, or cat, or hope dies.
For years, I stumbled when people asked me what the church was for, or what its purpose was. I just didn’t know how to sum it up. It’s only in the last several years that I’ve come to a sense of clarity about who and what we are. And I’ve finally realized that the church is about changing lives. Your life and mine. And the lives of those who haven’t yet discovered us. We’re not here to preserve a building or hold meetings or maintain an institution. We’re here to be transformed. We’re here to see that hope can refresh even the ugliest chapters of our lives. We’re here to be changed into a people who know no fear. We’re here to be formed anew into people who know that at every moment of our lives we—and all people—are connected to the umbilical cord of God’s love for us.
But that transformation part is only half of it. The other half is that, as we’re changed, we grow into people who love in a new way. We’re blessed to be a blessing, is the way the book of Genesis puts it (12:2). We’re loved in order to become lovers. Bob Abley told me recently that Teresa of Avila long ago called God a “mad lover.” That’s a great phrase for God. But it also yields the next step, which is that we too are to be “mad lovers”—lovers of our families and friends and fellow church people and everyone.
Sometimes it’s incredibly hard work. Sometimes we run into people we absolutely cannot stand. And perhaps it’s then that a little breath blows over us and says, “This, too, is my child. This, too, is someone to love.”
Some of you may have seen a film that was shown at this year’s Cleveland International Film Festival, a film called “My So-Called Enemy.” I have not seen it, but I have seen a trailer for it. And Federated’s Cathy Watterson is seeking to set up another showing in Cleveland in late August, and to bring the film’s director here, as well. The trailer is both deeply painful and utterly compelling. The film is a documentary following six young Palestinian and Israeli girls for seven years after they are brought together for ten days at a camp simply so they can get to know and understand each other. The trailer shows them screaming at each other as old animosities come pouring out: “Their people killed my father,” one says. But the film also shows the power of love to make a new world (http://www.videosurf.com/video/my-so-called-enemy-sample-reel-1214301991).
None of this happens fast or easily. But it’s the mission on which we are all sent, a mission in which we are to be the breath of the Spirit to the world. We do that as we talk to each other, as we seek to see the world from each other’s perspective, as we bring a cup of water to someone who’s thirsty, as we respond to the need we see. And as we sing together. The other night, as I was flipping around TV channels, I happened on the start of the NHL Stanley Cup final being played between the Vancouver Canucks and the Boston Bruins. And I was startled, and shockingly moved, to listen to the Canadian national anthem, “O Canada.” It’s a beautiful tune, of course, but what I was stunned by was that, in the middle of the anthem, the soloist stopped singing and simply let the crowd sing. And they sang their anthem with incredible energy and beauty. In this country, we seldom do that any more. We’ve ceded the singing to the professionals. And there’s an incalculable loss. We need to sing. We need to sing of passion and hope and our vision for the world. We need to sing of grace and peace and love. We need to sing of the oneness that binds us. And we need to let that music be the yeast that raises the bread and gives our lives their succulence and their vigor.
At Federated, the Spirit is very much alive. It animates us in countless ways. Let’s sing it. Let’s celebrate it. And let’s be sent to spread its breath to the farthest corners of the earth, such that love will reign and peace will thrive and all will be well.