Acts 2:1-21
To celebrate Pentecost we walked through the journey we've taken this year- from September through May through the Old Testament on a path that began outside and took us past symbols of all the stories and into the chancel, where we took a "family photo," gathered around the table for communion, and then settled in for a recap of our journey.
 |
| The world - created for a peace prayer service |
Normally, Pentecost is a great celebration of the Holy
Spirit. Which it is. Or it is a birthday party for the
church - where it all began. Or it is a recognition that the gospel
is for all people and without bounds.
It is all of these things. But for us today, it is a chance to lift up
the story – the whole story of God – because of Pentecost we, this little group
of people – are part of it. Today is a day to stand in Pentecost and look back
at the parts of the story we’ve told this year.
So let us begin at the beginning.
In the beginning…we met God. The delighted artist, who created, of all things, LIFE, and
then made in God’s own image those to share it with, to nurture life along with God. And all things were
in harmony, interconnected and free.
And it was so very good. And
we declared that God brings life out of
nothing, that we belong to this God,
and that God celebrates life and rests, and invites us to do the same.
 |
| The tree, where we nailed things that separate us from God and each other |
And then we watched as in the middle of that creation God put a tree – God’s own vulnerability, the chance to be rejected, chosen against
by God’s own image-bearers. And the people did so; and the relationship was
broken. But God meets us where we
are and we can never drive God away, and
so the story continued.
After some generations of people it seemed the world was
full of evil and relationship between God and humanity, and between human
beings, was seemingly broken beyond repair. So God planned to wipe out creation
and start over- but first plucked out Noah and his family and some animals – a
sample, if you will.
But by the time the roaring waters receded, the remorseful God
repented, and hung the bow in the sky to symbolize that God would never again destroy
the world that God loved.
The people may be unable to choose God, but God would never again
choose against them. God promises never to gives up on us, no matter what.
And the Story continued.
And we sat here and listened to Sarah tell her story, and
watched her grief as she struggled with this deal God had made with Abraham
that both excluded her and depended entirely on her. And we shared her joy in
the end when God kept the promise and she bore a son, and we bore witness to
the God who keeps promises.
As that son grew to be a boy the relationship between
Abraham and God changed; the promise had been given and the dynamic closeness
had waned. Then God asked for the unthinkable: that Abraham sacrifice the promise,
sacrifice his own son. And instead of contending with God as he had in the
past, Abraham proceeded to obey mindlessly, defeatedly, leading Isaac to the
mountaintop, knife in his bag.
But God had no intention of letting him go through with it,
and at the last minute God stopped him.
And we wondered together if God had wished that Abraham had fought him
on it earlier, and either way Abraham was reminded once again that God is
relentlessly for us, and unlike the gods of the day to whom the people gave
blind obedience, the true God desires a real relationship with real people. So we learned that God wants us to talk
back, we are expected to engage, participate, wrestle.
And the Story
continued.
When Abraham and Sarah’s son Isaac was grown, he had two
sons. Esau and Jacob. And Jacob
tricked his father and stole Esau’s, who sold his status and inheritance for a
bowl of stew. And it oddly appeared
that God preferred the less worthy brother, and the mother helped him get away with
it because she clearly did as well.
And Jacob fled. Then years later, when he’d grown and
learned and suffered karma and also prospered, the night before he was about to
face once again this brother he had deceived, he found himself wrestling, quite
literally, with God, and with all the struggles of his life, all night long,
and he is injured, and he wins.
Broken down and made whole, he exchanged his swagger for a
limp, and as he met his brother again we learned that sometimes newness looks
like limping.
And the story
continued.
Then we heard the story of Joseph, Jacob’s youngest son, and
watched it come to life in black and white and color on canvas as we listened
to his dreams, to him being dropped into a pit and sold into slavery by his
brothers, and sent off to Egypt, and rising in the ranks, and being thrown in
prison, and interpreting dreams, and redeeming himself, and becoming the savior
of all of Egypt and many peoples beyond, and finally, being reunited with his
brothers and father and making peace.
 |
| Story of Joseph, created during worship by artist Susan Hensel |
And instead of seeing God speaking or acting in drama,
voice, flood, or overt instructions, God moved behind the scenes, between the
people and within the situations, and we know this because all throughout the
story we heard the constant refrain, “And God was with Joseph.”
And we saw that God works both within and despite us, and we
can actually see God’s work in our lives in both ordinary and extraordinary ways.
And the story paused there so we could enter into Advent,
but we saw the story continue in the waiting for a savior, in the stories of
the prophets’ cry of honesty and John the Baptist’s wild pronouncements and
Joseph’s living in a reality he did not have any choice in, and Mary’s dance
and words of hope when she stood before us.
And we watched God move in their lives in very different and
eerily similar ways to ourselves, and saw again that this God who made it all
and craves connection, and calls us to be part of all this with God is at it
again, this time irreversibly, by coming, entering into it, and God is changed as much as the world is.
Then we picked up where we left Joseph and the generations
that came from his brothers, Jacob’s sons and their offspring, the twelve
tribes of Israel, who had prospered in Egypt for generations until the new Pharaoh
was threatened and didn’t remember the story of Joseph, and enslaved the Hebrew
people.
They suffered there in slavery for more than a generation
until God called Moses from a burning bush and revealed God’s name, Yahweh, I am, and then led the people to freedom. Only they didn’t go right
to freedom, remember?
They stopped for 40 years in the wilderness, the liminal space, the space in between slavery and freedom, where what you were is taken
out of you, and you learn what it is to be free, to be God’s people instead of
Pharaoh’s people.
And we learned that God redefines relationship, life and
direction in these in-between places, and that sometimes we have to let go of
the old before we can step into the new.
And while they were there, God gave them guidance and
direction for how to be free, how to live in a way different than the way of
Pharaoh, and we imagined this way together with the kids at St. Joe’s, asking, if we could create a world that was as
good as we can imagine, what would it be like?
And they said brilliant things like, all people would feel safe, and nobody would go hungry, and all
sorts of other profound and simple things that we discovered were right in the
way God had given them to live when God gave them the ten commandments, and
that God still delivers us, every single day, if we let God, from slavery to
freedom. And the story continued.
Then we met Ruth, and once again, God receded into the
background and let the simple, ordinary and extraordinary people’s lives tell
the story.
And it was a story of Hesed
– that word for which there is no English equivalent but which permeates and
indeed drives the whole story of God, Hesed,
which brought the world into being and pulses underneath every interaction God
has, Hesed, which we saw meant
something like “Belongingness” – And in the Hesed
of God this foreigner with nothing to offer became a great grandmother of
David.
And we saw that an I-will-go-there-with-you God, calls us to
be an I-will-go-there-with-you people.
And the story continued...
...with David, the boy who became king after Saul, after the
people demanded God give them a king and God complied. And we spent an evening reading David’s journals, his laid-open, bare-naked heart when he’s sick or
scared, or proud and excited, when he’s hopeful and despairing, he holds it all
open to God and these words from his heart and harp became prayers that people
have used for thousands of years, giving us words when we have none or when we
all want to share in a prayer together.
And we imagined together the delight of God who longs to
connect with us when God hears us share our innermost struggles and joys with
God in the words of one long ago who did the same.
And the story continued.
Then we met Solomon, not nearly as nice a guy as his dad
David, but who was clearly a politician and statesman, a man who got things done. And under Solomon the people of Israel
became a real nation like the others, and wealth and prosperity and security
was theirs, (along with things like taxation and forced labor).
And Solomon builds a temple with the plans his father had
left behind and it becomes a glorious thing, and even though God can meet them
anywhere and always has, God sees that the people need a place to come, where
they know they can meet God and God can promise to meet them, and so the temple
becomes that place.
And we recognized that our temple is this shared feast,
these people, this gathered community of people, wherever and however it
happens. Wherever we are on our journey of faith, when we come together God
promises to meet us.
 |
| Lord's Prayer in many languages |
And then the story paused once again, but really continued,
just differently, so we could spend Lent with the Lord’s Prayer, immersing
ourselves in it through many paraphrases and the beautiful unpacking of five different voices and perspectives, and discovered, among other things, that we
have some pretty great preachers among us, but also that prayer is all sorts of things and that God listens
when we pray.
Then on Palm Sunday we witnessed the people’s, (and
confronted our own), expectations that God come the way we think God should,
and do the things we think God should, and God comes the way God wants to come
and sometimes that looks like suffering and dying for us, and there’s nothing
we can do about that but sit back in awe and wonder and gratitude at such a
thing.
Then on Good Friday, when we heard the words of God at
creation alongside the words of godforsakenness at the cross, and we left in
darkness and sorrow.
But on the third day we returned here to resurrection.
And we celebrated.
That God who brought life out of nothing brings life even out of death,
and desires so desperately to share life with us that sharing death with us
became the way life prevails. And so God is redeeming, creating, and entering
in every second of every day.
We heard stories of resurrection from living prophets, three
among us who shared how they had experienced God bringing life out of death in
their own lives and the world around them, and then we returned to the
unfolding story and hunkered down with the prophets.
And now for the past six weeks we’ve hurtled through hundreds
of years of heartbreaking loss. The people kept forgetting their story and
turning away from God and returning to slavery in all sorts of forms, the
nation was split up and eventually decimated, and the temple was destroyed and
their identity was forgotten or traded away.
And God was angry and hurt and frustrated, and gracious and tender
and patient, and impatient and sorrowing and overflowing in love, and it went
on and on. And the prophets did their criticizing and energizing thing: criticizing the dominant culture and
pointing out and grieving that things are not as they should be, and energizing
the people to a future found in God, in the world as God intends it to be.
We watched
Hosea embody God’s grief and commitment, and Isaiah tell the truth of God’s
future like it is an absolute fact,
and Huldah help Josiah help the people remember who they are and who God
is.
And we had a potter sit in our midst as we heard the words of Jeremiah who talked about God sometimes tearing us down and creating us
anew,
 |
| King Nebechenezzer & his golden statue |
and we saw how comedy exposes the empire for what it is, and
how God’s freedom to be who God will be was upheld in their words, “Even if God
does not save us, we still will not bow.”
And then, finally, we arrived at Malachi, and heard within
it words from a Christmas hymn and realized that when love breaks in, when God arrives on the scene in the flesh, everything after and before that moment is
changed, and every part of this
unfolding story, while it stood alone, also led to the moment when God would
come in and redeem the past and the future, and never again be separated from the
people God loves in the world God adores.
Which brings us to this moment. Pentecost. The celebration of the church. The Body of Christ. The Holy Spirit
within and between us. The whole world involved.
 |
| photo taken at the beginning of the service |
This is your story.
And we’ve only told a tiny part of it! There is so much more! – within this book and in the world around us, there is so much more, that, as John says, “all the books in all the world could not contain it.”
So go into the world.
Be people of the story. Do what the prophetic community does: remember. grieve. hope. talk about it
with each other.
This is God’s world. God isn’t letting go. God is doing something all around
you. Go and be part of it. Because this story continues!
Amen.
Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment