This year we have adopted the theme and framework of the Actor’s Studio to focus our energy and thoughts. After all isn’t life as Shakespeare had it, “All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players: They have their exits and their entrances.” If Confirmation and Pentecost means anything it is that there is a casting call in life and we are chosen for a part to play in something that looks like it may turn out to be of Biblical proportions as large as anything Hollywood has ever put on the screen.
It seems that we are already part of a pretty spectacular performance as one soul put it after a visit to the local planetarium: “As part of the planetarium show, there was a depiction of a supernova. I may not remember this exactly right, but a supernova happens when two stars are orbiting around each other, as stars called binary stars very often do. But, if the two stars are particularly close, and if one of them is a smaller, denser star, and the other a larger red star, then matter from the larger star can begin to be pulled off into the smaller star. At a certain point, when enough of the big red star is gathered in, the level of energy in the small star becomes so intense that it cannot hold itself together. It may fully implode, which means that it becomes a black hole, and all that gathered matter utterly disappears from our universe. Or it may explode, splaying out a brightness, a pulse of energy two billion times as strong as our sun, fragmenting it’s gathered self, splaying all that matter widely through the universe where the torn bits may become nascent stars.” It’s show time and we are already very much a part of this production for the stuff that comes out of those stars settles down at one point and becomes everything that goes into making up planets which goes into everything that makes up you and me. In short all the atoms in us were once in the heart of a star somewhere, or in short we are made of stardust. You are already stars in the heavenly drama. Now this is seriously awesome.
Yet, hear this if you think that celestial show is a hot ticket. Check out the greatest show on earth because it is based on the greatest story ever told. The pastor and preacher William Sloane Coffin puts it this way, “Miracles do not a messiah make. But a messiah can do miracles. If you ask me if Jesus literally raised Lazarus from the dead, literally walked on water and changed water into wine, I will answer, ‘For certain, I do not know. But this I do know: faith must be lived before it is understood, and the more it is lived, the more things become possible.’ I can also report that in home after home I have seen Jesus change beer into furniture, sinners into saints, hate-fired relations into loving ones, cowardice into courage, the fatigue of despair into the buoyancy of hope. In instance after instance, life after life, I have seen Christ be ‘God's power unto salvation,’ and that's miracle enough for me.” Now there is a hot ticket show and we are all invited to get into the act.
We have spent as a confirmation class a great deal of time going over staging, following a script, and taking direction in God’s drama. Now if you want to make the call back for this show there is one more thing that needs to be said. You need Pentecost to become part of the greatest show on earth. If you take the Book of Acts seriously then you know that the basic miracle here, that bewildered and astounded people, was that each one heard in his own language.
People really hearing people is your basic miracle; it is the miracle from which most of the others come. Although something happens that does get in the way, doesn’t it? This leads to what sounds like babble and confused hearing. It starts off well enough with one language but then we get enslaved to something that gets in the way. Genesis says we try to make a name for ourselves by making bricks of some kind and laying them firmly in place in our private stairway and ambitions. We try to build our way to heaven by trying to make a name for ourselves by making points, and promises, and plans, and arguments, and grades. In Hebrew jargon bricks always means slavery. Career gets in the way and husbands and wives stop listening to each other. The journey up the ladder causes one to stop hearing those further down the pay scale. The fear of tumbling down the ladder causes people not to listen to the harm they may have created by their choices: listening to the tick of the clock rather than to each other counting the days rather than making their lives count. You become enslaved to saying the same tired things over and over again, seeking a way to peace rather than recognizing that peace is the way. You become enslaved to defending some position you took in a heated argument, you draw a line instead of a circle and fathers and sons, mothers and daughters stop hearing each other. You become enslaved to looking good rather than be opened to doing “good.” We need Pentecost.
It happened to Galileo when people didn’t want to hear that the Sun was at the center of the universe, not the earth. Too many people had too much invested in too much doctrine and careers, too many bricks in place to listen to this strange idea: all of the bricks built into Ivory towers. They needed Pentecost.
It can become so easy to be enslaved. Generations can be become enslaved to slogans and false images of one another. In my day it was “Never trust any one over thirty!!” Silly really but we sure needed Pentecost to happen.
The world has a way of being enslaved to all kinds of isms that cause us not to hear one another. Sexism and racism are usually blown apart by some kind of Pentecost moment. Some people actually thought it would be the end of the world if women voted or white children went to school with black children and they stopped listening to the hope and to the dreams and the abilities of those around them. They stopped listening for what people could contribute. They needed Pentecost.
Inuit or Eskimo children can tell you about global warming. They can plainly see with their eyes that the polar bears about 40% lighter than they used to be. If we are going to know where this planet is headed I think we are going to need a Pentecost that causes us to listen to third world people. We are so enslaved to the notion that only western science based truths mouthed by Ph.D.s have any validity. After all they are the ones that build our towers brick by brick and often wall us off from truth. We need Pentecost.
It is not inappropriate that Pentecost comes close to Memorial Day. Grief puts us on a level playing field as we are all in it together struggling with the truth that we cannot hold on to the best that we have forever but we can hand on the best that we have known. We have something to say to each other across the generations. When Pentecost happens we become part of the drama.
In a way our Pilgrim ancestors were deeply Pentecostal. In England meeting in fields and forest on horseback and foot they longed for a Pentecostal moment. They longed to meet together for in the meeting minds might not be changed but thinking would be deepened and hearts touched and the will of the spirit made known because they had listened to each other: build it and the Spirit will come and you will find yourself part of the holy drama. Open up and the Holy Spirit shows up.
Indeed alone they could not hear themselves without the feed back of others, for Pentecost comes when we truly hear ourselves and that happens when we get receive the gift of feed back from others. Nothing is sadder than when you can no longer hear yourself. When you can no longer hear the mixed motives with which we all speak for none of us is pure. You need Pentecost Hear this and it is Pentecost. Accept it in yourself and you can accept it in others and it is Pentecost. Open up and the Spirit shows up.
Everything is telling us that somehow in our time we have stopped listening to our own bodies as we are plagued by the curse of bulimia and obesity at the same time. We need Pentecost.
Writing to the Romans Paul reminds them that they did not receive a spirit of slavery. The psychologists tell us that a spirit of slavery is often precisely what we get caught up in. How else explain the odd behavior that in conversation we spend most of the time framing our response rather than listening and hearing the other: slave to our fears, of not looking good, of being changed, of having to rethink our living, of being touched and moved. Shut up instead of opened up.
Have you done Pentecost? Have you sat down with the least of these and heard them? Have you sat down and listened to how you sound in the ears of another? Have you sat down and listened to your own body, have you listened for the spirit in meeting? What enslaved you this week to cause you not to listen? Have you opened up in order to listen up that the spirit may show up?
Do Pentecost and you will become part of the greatest show on earth: something of truly Biblical proportions. There is a casting call for us all. Open up, listen up, you have a part.
8:02:30 PM 
|
