The Day of Pentecost

Sunday, May 31st, 2020

“God:  Re-Imagined!”

Acts of the Apostles 2:1-21

“’In the last days it will be, God declares,
that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh,
and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
and your young men shall see visions,
and your old men shall dream dreams.
Even upon my slaves, both men and women,
in those days I will pour out my Spirit;

and they shall prophesy.’”  Acts 2:17-18

“In my dream an angel shrugged and said, ‘If we fail this time, it will be a failure of imagination.’ And then she placed the world gently in the palm of my hand.”  

                                                        Brian Andreas

It is Pentecost Sunday – the Sunday of the Spirit, typically known as the birthday of the church.  We wear red.  Balloons fall on us to remind us of the Spirit’s coming.  We hear again the story of a mighty wind awakening the timid and fearful followers of Christ.  Suddenly everyone can understand one another and linguistic divisions are both honored and erased since the entire world gathered in Jerusalem are hearing in their own tongue the mighty deeds of God. 

Pentecost Sunday is the story of God’s great reversal.  Recall the Tower of Babel Story:  with great pride humans erect a tower to reach God.  God recognizes the hubris and pride of humankind and confuses the languages so that the tower remains unfinished.  St. Luke takes that story and reverses the outcome.  Pentecost is the reversal of that ancient story of human hubris.  In Christ God is re-imaged as a free Spirit calling together all nations once scattered through their own pride.

God: Re-imagined!

“…and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
and your young men shall see visions,
and your old men shall dream dreams.”

“In my dream an angel shrugged and said, ‘If we fail this time, it will be a failure of imagination.’

The church today is suffering from a failure of imagination.  We sit passively in our pews.  We hear Scripture readings and sermons, but all too often the stories of our faith have become ‘yawning old news’ rather than ‘spirit-filled good news.’

The message of Pentecost is a call to re-imagine God.  The wild and free Holy Spirit is descending upon us to imagine the new ways in which God is calling us to be church, to do ministry, to be Christians.

Our biggest problem is that we want a God who will solve our problems.  The problem solving God shapes the way we pray, the way we read the Bible.  Next time you are in a hotel room, pick up the Gideon Bible and in the back you will find a list of passages:  “If in trouble…read this; if depressed…read that passage…”

There is nothing wrong with bringing our petitions before God.  However, that is a somewhat limited image of God.  Imagine that in addition to presenting a laundry list to God, we sat in silence opening ourselves up to the Spirit of God!

Imagine if we opened ourselves up and were prepared to respond to God on God’s terms: open to listening to what God wants us to do – not tied to me and mine, or here and now.

When we rehearse again the Story of Pentecost we see the coming of the Holy Spirit as a good thing.  And in retrospect, of course, it was.  But to those fearful and timid first followers it was a hard thing to swallow.

The easier response of the disciples would have been to retreat from Jesus’ promises, head back to their old way of life, and chalk up their 3 year experience with the itinerant rabbi to the wildness of youth.

Instead the Spirit invades their space and turns their lives upside down.  And you know what before long Peter and the disciples are saying things that they should not be saying.  They are leaving the confines of Jerusalem.  They are dreaming dreams and having visions.  They are encountering people they never dreamt of encountering.  Why?  Because the Holy Spirit is re-imaging God for them.

The Holy Spirit did not solve the problems of the church according to the stories in the Book of Acts.  Instead the Holy Spirit created new problems: 

Saul, a persecutor of the early movement known as the Way – becomes an avid convert.  Who can trust that? 

A Eunuch from Ethiopia asks Philip to interpret a portion of Isaiah, converts, is baptized and the seed of the Gospel is planted in North Africa.

Peter has visions and dreams on a roof top in Joppa in which unclean animals come down in a sheet and a voice tells him to throw out the kosher laws and take and eat.  Then he is summoned to the house of Cornelius, a Gentile, to baptize the whole family.  And the Holy Spirit comes upon these Gentile outsiders!

The Holy Spirit did not solve the problems of the early church.  Instead the Holy Spirit created new problems.  What to do with Saul?  What to do with all these converted Gentiles? 

That was extremely challenging to the early church – totally out of the box!

Are we the same?  Is our image of God that is here only to solve our problems? 

Maybe, just maybe, the problems we face in the church today, and they are indeed challenging problems, maybe these problems are Spirit sent. 

Maybe these problems are meant to draw us out of our preoccupation with ourselves and into action for those in need around us.

Is the Spirit tearing down the walls of the church so that we might see might see new visions and dream new dreams?

Peter is quoting the Prophet, Joel, in the First Reading for today when he talks about how ‘your old men will see visions and your young men will dream dreams…yes… and even the Spirit will be poured out on slave men and slave women’…that is amazing and out of the box – slave men and slave women were not high on the social ladder!

The Prophet Joel and St. Peter anticipated a new future for all people.  They are describing a generation of people immediately and vulnerably in touch with the will of God and full of fresh imaginings.

On this Pentecost Day the Spirit equips us to live into our problems not just to survive, but to flourish.  But before new life - comes struggle and challenge.

“In my dream an angel shrugged and said,

‘If we fail this time, it will be a failure of imagination.’

And then she placed the world gently in the palm of my hand.”  

                                                        Brian Andreas

Amen