Unspeakable Journeys

I can’t really describe to you what I felt yesterday at the Franktown picnic. Every year on the 4^th of July the residents of downtown Franktown gather for a picnic and this year we were at the Sniders’ house just down the way here. There were hot dogs and potato salad and somebody slipped some vegetables in there. Great food.

Then there was this moment. I was sitting there talking to Harry Crandall, who was all decked out in red, white and blue. A few minutes before he had offered up this wonderful prayer where he gave thanks to God for this company, this food and this free land. Just hearing him say that made me tear up a bit, despite myself. We were there talking and I noticed over his shoulder that the kids had started playing croquet under the shade of those huge oak trees in front of the Sniders. And behind them I could see an American flag hanging on the telephone pole on the street blowing in the breeze. Beyond that was a cornfield in Philip Bernard’s lot with the stalks tasseling and looking a vibrant green.

I try not to be too sentimental but, you know, it was beyond words what I felt there. America, with all of its ideals, really existed right there for a minute. Norman Rockwell should have been there to paint it.

When you get beyond words you are heading for something that feels like truth. Think of the times when you’ve been left speechless. The birth of a child. In the presence of your first love. Watching a thunderstorm move across the bay. Seeing the peak of a great, tall mountain. At such moments you know that you are in the presence of something profound.

“I know a man,” the apostle Paul says. “I know a man in Christ, who, fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven. Whether it was actually in his body or not, I can’t say. Only God knows.”

This is how Paul introduces the passage from 2 Corinthians today. I’m pretty sure the man he’s talking about is himself. But he’s describing an experience for him that was so unusual and dramatically different from his normal life that he might as well be talking about someone altogether different.

To be caught up to the third heaven is a way of saying that Paul was taken up into the very presence of God. The ancient Hebrews envisioned the earth in such a way that there were three levels above us. Because God had separated the firmaments to create space for the land and for life, above us was sky – the first heavens, and above that the waters of the second heaven, and above that the realm of God’s fullness – a third heaven.

Now I know what you’re thinking: “That’s not how it really is! They taught me differently in astronomy class. There’s atmosphere and stratosphere and deep space beyond.” But Paul was talking with the structures he knew and if you ask me there is something beautiful in the image of a world between waters surrounded by the presence of God. It reminds me of the space that is created within the body of an expectant mother for life to grow. A space between waters surrounded by nurture and strength.

The third heaven, then, is the language Paul has for this place beyond. The other name he has for this is Paradise – a place where the harmony God intends for all creation is made real. A place like the place we humans knew when we were fresh-made from the mud of the garden of Eden. A place like Jesus promised the repentant thief when they were both being crucified. “Today,” Jesus said, “you will be in Paradise with me.” Paradise is the place where see Jesus and know Jesus and feel the presence of God.

“In this place,” Paul says, “this man heard inexpressible words which a person cannot speak.” Something beyond language. It’s not that Paul can’t speak the words because he has been forbidden to speak them or because they are too hard for him to say. Paul can’t speak about this journey to the third heaven because what he has heard and seen breaks every category of thought and language that he has known.

There’s a word for this experience – it’s rapture. Not like the rapture that they talk about in books like Left Behind, but the root of the word is the same. It means to be caught up and when we are caught up in a direct experience of God it is something that blows our minds and alters our reality. You can’t live in a state of rapture. Because of our finiteness and our limitations as humans we will always fall back into the world of language and reason. But once we are granted a glimpse of a God-filled world, it’s hard to forget that we are surrounded by glory.

The early church leader Augustine of Hippo, whom I’m prone to quoting, has an account of an experience of rapture in his most famous book Confessions. As he was headed to the coast near Rome, returning to Africa with his ailing mother, they stopped at the town of Ostia on the Tiber River. His mother was near death and yet she was very happy because her son, Augustine, had finally become a Christian after a long time of debauchery and exploration.

They were wondering what life among the saints was going to be like and they suddenly had an experience that gave them a glimpse of heaven. “We proceeded step by step through all material things, even the heavens, from which sun, moon, and stars brighten the earth.” On and on they go beyond speech and thought to eternity. “And while we speak of this,” Augustine says, “and yearn toward it, we barely touch it in a quick shudder of the heart. Then we sighed our way back down…into the sounds of our own words which proceed in time from their beginnings to their ends.”[i]

Then Augustine begins to reflect on what they had experienced and he wonders if they had touched something “in a quick shudder of the heart” that was so great and so magnificent that nothing in this life could match it. If you had that experience of rapture would you ever want to come back?

Augustine asks: If all the things of this world which speak to us “were to fall silent, silent all shapes of earth, sea, air; silent the celestial poles; silent the soul, moving (oblivious of self) beyond the self; silent, as well all dreams and internal visions, all words and other signs, silent everything that passes away, all those things that say, if one listens, “We did not make ourselves, he made us who never passes away;” if, after saying this, they too were silent, leaving us alert to hear the One who made them; and if He should speak, no longer through them but by himself, for us to hear his word…if this were to continue, all lesser visions falling away before it, so that this alone held the universe in its grip…and eternal life resembled this moment of wisdom that we sigh to be losing—would that not be what is meant by the words, ‘Enter the joy of your God’?—a joy that will be ours, when?—only when ‘all rise (though not all are changed).’”[ii]

What a wonderful thing that would be…to be able to see through the brokenness of this world to hear God’s voice directly! It’s no wonder that Augustine saw that moment as a great gift to him and his mother. It’s no wonder that fourteen years on that same sort of experience was so fresh to Paul that he struggled with remaining in the flesh. He wanted to dwell in that place beyond words.

Instead, Paul got the Corinthians--this quarrelsome, disobedient, conflicted group of Christians who were constantly questioning his credentials as an apostle. This group that were getting on his last nerve. And how could he use this mystical experience in the third heaven to convince them of his connection to God? He couldn’t. He wanted to boast on behalf of that Paul who went to Paradise, but instead he had to be the Paul who put up with the problem children of Corinth.

To top it off, he was also given a wound. “So that I would not get too high and mighty, an angel of Satan gave me a thorn in the flesh,” Paul says. What was it? We don’t know. Bible scholars have speculated for centuries. The early Church leader Tertullian thought it might be a pain in the ear or head. Others have said that maybe it was lust or stammering speech. Maybe an eye problem brought on by his blinding on the Damascus road. Maybe it was the people who opposed and persecuted him. I even found a scientific abstract that suggested it was a “visual migraine aura with the additional symptoms of…photophobia and anorexia.”[iii]

I’ll add to the speculation. I think the thorn in Paul’s flesh was his flesh. Paul talks about the flesh in a negative way in many of his letters and he talks in 2 Corinthians about the struggle he feels in remaining in the flesh. His rapturous experience left him longing to be with God and he began to despise the weaknesses and infirmities he felt in having to remain embodied.

He tells us that he asked God three times to take away this wound but God responded by saying, “My grace is sufficient for you, because my power is brought to its proper end in weakness.” And it seems to me that the whole passage turns on this phrase. God does not want Paul or any of us to despise our weakness, to think that we’d be better off somehow, that we’d be better servants somehow if we got rid of our weaknesses. It is in our weaknesses, in our bodies, in our difficulties and struggles and our stammering attempts to put God’s love into word and deed that the power of Christ can take up a home in us. And when we claim those things about ourselves we begin to realize that the love of Christ is meant to be incarnate, just like Jesus himself. The love of God does not despise the flesh. The love and power of God are shown through the flesh. This is the lesson Paul has learned through his suffering and maybe even through the things he is not able to do.

The theologian John Swinton tells the story of a course he was teaching through the University of Aberdeen in Scotland for people with disabilities. As part of the course, class members were sharing stories of their spiritual experiences. A young woman named Angela, who was deaf, was sharing a dream she had about meeting Jesus in heaven. “Jesus was everything I hoped he would be,” she said. “And his signing was amazing!” There was no expectation that heaven for her would mean losing her disability. In heaven it was the norm. Her ‘weakness’ was shared by Jesus himself.[iv]

So what’s the excuse you’re using? Where do you find yourself saying, “I would serve God better if it weren’t for…I would have more to offer the world if it weren’t for…I would be a good Christian if only this thing wasn’t plaguing me”? The truth is that the Jesus way is not meant to be an otherworldly thing for otherworldly people; it’s mean to be a this worldly thing for this worldly people – people who are messy and messed up and who have bad family histories and bad personal histories and who aren’t perfect and aren’t just right and haven’t got all the loose ends tied up and all the i’s dotted and all the t’s crossed. But people who have had their lives turned upside down by Jesus and who want to offer their imperfect lives in service to their savior.

You think God can’t use imperfect people? Just look at David, the boy turned king who got intoxicated by his power. Just look at Esther the beauty queen who was goaded into action by her relative Mordecai to save the Jewish people. Just look at Peter, the passionate disciple who spoke before he thought and denied Jesus three times before becoming the leader of Jesus’ church. You don’t think God can use weakness? Just look at the cross and see if the savior who came to live among God’s people doesn’t look like every other dying criminal being executed on the hillside that day.

We’ve had people in our own congregation who have spoken powerfully to us through their lives and they did it through what some would call disabilities. Barbara Tankard in her struggles with cancer with her deep joy. Stephen before her. Christian and Cristina who did not let physical limitations like the lack of a limb keep them from being bright lights among us. And who would we be today as a Church without our Arc Angels?

We all have limitations and we imagine what it would be like if we could just be over them…if we could just shed them for some unspeakable journey to the heart of God. But the message from Paul today is that our weaknesses are part of that journey to God and we can discover the life God intends by leaning into them and offering them to God so that Christ can dwell within us richly. Thanks be to God.

2 Corinthians 2:2-10

I know a man in Christ who, fourteen years ago - whether in the body of outside the body I know not, God knows - was raptured to the third heaven. I know that this man - whether in the body or outside the body I know not, God knows - was raptured into Paradise and he heard inexpressible words which a person cannot speak.

On behalf of such a man I will boast, yet not on my behalf except about my weakness. If I wanted to boast I would not be foolish because I speak the truth. But I refrain from this so that no one will think more of me than what is seen in me or heard from me, even considering the exceptional revelations. And, so that I would not rise too high, an angel of Satan gave me a thorn in my very embodiedness so that it would wound me and I would not rise too high.

Because of this, three times I called on the Lord that this should fall away from me. And he said to me, "My grace suffices for you, for my power is brought to its proper end in weakness."

Therefore, I boast gladly in my weakness so that the power of Christ can take up a home in me. So I am content in weakness, in insult, in distress, in persecution, in difficulties, on behalf of Christ. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

---

[i] Augustine, Confesssions, 9.4.24, trans. by Garry Wills, [Penguin Books: New York, 2006], pp. 200-201.

[ii] Ibid., 9.4.25, p. 201.

[iii] “Headache Classification and the Bible: Was St. Paul’s thorn in flesh migraine?”, Wiley InterScience, http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/119248782/abstract?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0.

[iv] John Swinton, introduction to the book by Stanley Hauerwas & Jean Vanier, Living Gently in a Violent World, [Intervarsity Press: Downers Grove, IL, 2008], p. 13.

There Might Be Giants

Every day he came out from the camp of the Philistines. He stood there in the valley between the Philistines and the Israelites and he yelled up at the Israelites, “Hey, you! What’s the matter? Don’t you want to fight me?”

He got their attention. After all, the man was six and a half cubits tall. Do you know how tall that is? Neither do I, but trust me, it’s big -- somewhere between six and half and nine feet tall. He was a Goliath of a man. And his name was…Goliath.

He wore a bronze helmet on his head and scaly armor on his body that weighed five thousand shekels. Do you know how much that weighs? I was really hoping that you did. It’s something over 100 pounds. And that doesn’t even count the bronze greaves around his legs and the bronze javelin he carried slung on his back, the spear that he carried which had a huge shaft and an iron point, and the huge shield that went before him. He was physically powerfully, super strong and he could burn down city walls with his laser vision eyes. Well, maybe not that last one, but he might as well have been able to do that. He terrified the Israelites.

He would stand there in the valley and say, “Come on out and fight me! Don’t you have a man up there who is up to it? Look, all you have to do is kill me and all of this army will be your slaves. But if I kill your champion, you will be our slaves. Seems like a pretty easy thing to do, Israel. I defy you! I unclog my nose in your direction, you silly window dressers!” My translation of the Bible is a little loose in this section.

No one would dare to confront Goliath, though. The scriptures say that all the Israelites were “broken and very afraid.” Even King Saul was afraid. So day after day, at dawn and sunset, Goliath would come out and taunt the Israelites and they would cower behind the rocks.

Now in the Israelite army were three brothers, Eliab, Abinadab and Shammah. They were sons of Jesse of Bethlehem. The oldest of eight sons that Jesse had. They were among those listening day after day as Goliath came out to taunt the army. They had a younger brother, the youngest, whose name was David. He had stayed at home to watch his father’s flocks.

One day, Jesse called David to him and sent him up to the front lines with some food for the older brothers. You know what army food is like. Nothing special. So Jesse was supplementing the supplies with some bread cakes and cheese and little bit of parched grain. He was also fishing for some news about how the war was going, so he told David to bring him back a full report.

Now we know something special about David, because in 1 Samuel chapter sixteen, right before this story, the prophet Samuel anointed David to be Israel’s new king. But the word is not out on the streets yet. Saul, the current king, hasn’t heard the word. David himself is not telling anybody. But we know that God has chosen David for a great task, despite that fact that he’s just a shepherd boy.

That’s how his brothers thought of him. When he showed up at the front lines he arrived just as the Israelites were stoking themselves up for a battle. They had arranged in battle lines and were peeking out from behind the rocks, trying to get a war cry going. Somebody was trying to do the wave. But then Goliath came out again. “Come on down here! Is there a man among you who has the courage to face me down? Send him out. I defy you, Israel! I despise you! Your mother wears combat boots!”

David was listening to all this and he turned to the soldier around him and said, “Did he just say that our mother wears combat boots? Are you going to let him get away with that?”

The people around him said, “He’s been doing this for forty days now. He defies us. He despises us. He insults our mothers and our God. The king will give great wealth to anybody who kills him. Money and he’ll let him marry his daughter and he will free his father’s house.”

This got David’s attention. “What did you say?” He stood up. “What did you say would be done for the man who kills this Philistine and removes this taunt from Israel? Who is this foreskinned Philistine that he should defy the armies of the living God?”

So they told him again. And it only made David bolder. Which only made his brothers angry. Eliab came dome and said, “What are you doing here David? Who’s looking after the sheep? You just came down here to hang out around the battle and get in on the action.”

David responded like any younger brother would. He said, “What have I done now? It was just a question!” But it wasn’t just a question. David got it into his head that if nobody else was going to stand up to this giant, then he would have to. So he kept asking until finally Saul heard about this boy who had showed up at camp.

He called him in and David immediately started telling him what he was going to do. “Don’t let anybody lose heart on account of this Philistine. I’ll go fight him.”

Saul must have laughed at this. He said to David, “You can’t fight him. You’re just a boy and Goliath has been a fighter since he was a boy.”

Then David listed off his qualifications. “Look, I know how to handle stuff. I watch sheep and when a lion or a bear comes out after a sheep I go after it and I beat it with my staff until it lets the sheep go. Once I grabbed a lion by the mane and struck it and killed it. I can do the same with bear and I can do the same with this Philistine who defies the living God! The God who saved me from the paw of the bear will save me from this giant.”

It’s an impressive speech and you almost believe that David can pull it off until you remember that he’s a boy and Goliath is 30 feet tall and dressed in 300 pounds of armor. (Might as well be.) But Saul is willing to give him a chance and he gives him his own personal armor. He puts a bronze helmet on his head and body armor on. He puts a sword over his tunic.

It doesn’t fit. It won’t work. David knows it won’t work. It might have worked fine for Saul, but it’s a new day and David is trying a new approach.

It’s the same dynamic that we have sometimes in the church. We keep doing things the same way because they worked for us in the past. And when a new generation comes along we believe that if they just use the same tools and the same models, it will work for them, too.

What we are beginning to learn as a conference is that we have to open ourselves up to new ways of doing things. Last year we approved a proposal called All Things New that is aimed at changing the culture of our conference in the direction of fruitfulness. We’re going to build 250 new faith communities in 30 years.

Last week at Annual Conference we approved a 15-year, $15 million capital campaign to begin this effort. We struggled over it because that’s a lot of money, but when you think about it it’s really not much at all. $15 million dollars to start 8 new faith communities a year? Somebody pointed out that it’s about $60,000 per start. You can’t staff a church, build a building, establish programming on $60,000 a year. And where are we going to find the leaders for these new starts?

We are imagining churches like we’ve got today, though. The church of the future may look very different. There will still be places like Franktown that build off of their traditions in new ways, but there will be other places that will look differently. House churches. Small groups that meet in coffeehouses and bars. Storefront ministries. There is one church that meets in Waco, Texas under an interstate bridge. You know what it’s called? The Church Under the Bridge. It began as an outreach to homeless folks and now all kinds of people meet there. And these are the places that will produce new leaders. Church is going to be different if we let new people lead us.

Back to David. He gave Saul his armor back and he went down in a dry wadi. He looked around and picked up five small stones. He put them in his shepherd’s bag and then he went out to face down the giant. Big, ol’ Goliath, 50 feet tall with 500 pounds of weapons and armor – little ol’ David, with a staff and a slingshot and a pouch of small stones.

Goliath went out to face his opponent and he had so much stuff that he needed a helper to carry his shield. He looked down at David and he was disgusted. “I asked for a worthy opponent and you send me a boy with a shepherd’s staff? What do you think I am? A dog?” And he let out a string of curses directed at David. “You come on over here and I’ll leave you as a good dinner for the birds and the beasts.”

Now just about anybody else would have been quaking in his or her boots at this point. But not David. He may have been small but somebody big had his back. He knew that he was not facing the giant alone. He was facing the giant with the God who had helped him in the past.

“You come at me with a sword and a spear and a javelin,” David said. “But I come at you in the name of Yahweh Sabaoth, God of the armies of the Israel, whom you defied. So let me tell you what’s going to happen to you. Yahweh will give you into my hand and I will strike you down and separate you from your head. And it won’t be me lying out for the birds and the beasts; it will be you. People will know then that there is a god for Israel. And people will know that it’s not by sword and spear that Yahweh saves, because the battle belongs to the Lord.”

Then it happened…just like David said. Goliath moved up and drew near to attack David. David moved quickly and started running toward him. On the way he reached his hand into that shepherd’s bag and pulled out one of those smooth stones. He put it in his sling and twirled it around and that stone came flying out and hit that giant right square in the forehead. He fell flat on his face in the earth. Ding, dong, the witch was dead. Or the giant…

It’s a great story, isn’t it? The little guy beats the giant. A small stone in a sling beats the best military technology of the day. A boy has more faith and confidence than the king and not only says he believes in God but acts like he does. It makes you believe that a new day could be possible.

This week we’ve been watching the news out of Iran. They had an election there and all the polls seemed to indicate that a reform candidate by the name of Mousavi was going to beat the current president, Ahmadenijad. Thousands of young people were in the streets anticipating a new day when Iran would turn away from repression and towards justice.

Then the election results were announced. The current president was said to have won in a landslide although most people believed that there was massive fraud. The vote count was strictly controlled by the government. Riot police lined the street. Communication with the outside world was reduced to Twitter.

Then the protests began and they were largely peaceful. Thousands, then hundreds of thousands of people went into the streets. The reform supporters wore green and chanted “Allahu Akbar.” “God is great. God is great.” All night long they shouted this from the rooftops, “Allahu Akbar. God is great.” Every night they go to the rooftops and they shout, “Allahu Akbar. God is great.” And they expect a new day.

There was a picture from the middle of the week. It shows one of the reform protestors – a man who looks to be in his 30s or 40s. He is hurling something in the air at the policeman who have come to confront them. He’s got his arm back to fling the object and his feet are off the ground because he is throwing this object with all of his might. What he is throwing is a bouquet of flowers. Flowers. To think that a regime might come down because people throw flowers at the giants.

I have to believe that God is calling us to the same sort of new day. We all face giants of some sort or another in our lives. We know their names and we tremble in their path. Maybe it’s depression that stands like a Goliath in front of you. That’s certainly been a giant in my life from time to time. Maybe it’s an addiction. Maybe it’s an old wound in your soul that has more power than it ought to. Maybe it’s a relationship that is going sour. Maybe it’s a bully.

There may be giants in this world. But no giant you can face is greater than the power of God. In the end Goliaths fall and fail, but God never does. And the people who find wholeness and salvation are those who know this and act on it. Who do not fear what can be done to the body but who put their confidence and trust in the one who comes to make all things new.

We’ve got some giant-slaying to do in this world. But we don’t have to do it alone. God is with us. God is great. Thanks be to God.

1 Samuel 17:1-49 (NRSV)

The Philistine came on and drew near to David, with his shield-bearer in front of him. When the Philistine looked and saw David, he disdained him, for he was only a youth, ruddy and handsome in appearance. The Philistine said to David, "Am I a dog, that you come to me with sticks?" And the Philistine cursed David by his gods. The Philistine said to David, "Come to me, and I will give your flesh to the birds of the air and to the wild animals of the field."

But David said to the Philistine, "You come to me with sword and spear and javelin; but I come to you in the name of the LORD of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied. This very day the LORD will deliver you into my hand, and I will strike you down and cut off your head; and I will give the dead bodies of the Philistine army this very day to the birds of the air and to the wild animals of the earth, so that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel, and that all this assembly may know that the LORD does not save by sword and spear; for the battle is the Lord's and he will give you into our hand."

When the Philistine drew nearer to meet David, David ran quickly toward the battle line to meet the Philistine. David put his hand in his bag, took out a stone, slung it, and struck the Philistine on his forehead; the stone sank into his forehead, and he fell face down on the ground.

The Only Thing Stable is What We Shall Become

This is graduation season and last Wednesday I was at Nandua’s graduation where we saw Lauren Mears and Kerri Tracy become alumnae of the high school. Kerri did a wonderful job of capturing the mood of the night in her salutatorian’s address. We were all very proud.

One thing that happens at graduations, though, is that the keynote speakers generally pull out all sorts of phrases that have become shopworn from overuse: This not an end; it’s a beginning. Tomorrow is the first day of the rest of your life. You are the future of America. Now the baton is being passed to a new generation. Give to the alumni association now. These are the phrases we are accustomed to hearing at graduation exercises.

At least one of those phrases is a lie, though. It’s a saying that gets used, not only by graduation speakers but even by political leaders. “The future is in your hands.” That is not true. What you do with your choices in the years to come is critically important. How you live your life and what you give your energies and your labor to make a big difference in what the world looks like. But ultimately it is not true that the future is in your hands because the future is in God’s hands.

“So we are courageous always.” This is what Paul says in the passage we read from Second Corinthians this morning. “So we are courageous always.” Those were hard-won words for Paul. He didn’t have an easy life. This is guy, after all, who was knocked off his donkey and blinded while he was on a mission to persecute Christians. He had to give up all of his status and all the things he had worked for to become a leader among the religious authorities in order to follow the voice of Jesus which called to him in his blindness. When the scales fell from his eyes and he could once again see he had to put himself at the mercy of the Christians – the very people he was seeking to destroy.

He was snuck out of Damascus in a basket lowered from the city walls. He had confrontations and conflicts with people everywhere he went. He was misunderstood constantly by the people in the churches he had established – people like the Corinthians. He was beaten, jailed, undermined, ridden out of town on a rail…It is an understatement to say that Paul did not have an easy life. So for him to say, “We are always courageous. We are always confident.” This was not said lightly.

Paul knew what was coming, though, and that made all the difference. He knew that if you just take the world at face value it can be a discouraging place. In the world there is pain and injustice. In the world people suffer loneliness and despair. In the world children are neglected and the elderly know the grief of losing loved ones they have known for many years. In the world our friends at school sometimes exclude us or make fun of us. In the world we sometimes hurt our friends. In the world relationships are a mystery to us and they are the source of our greatest joys and our deepest pains. If you take the world as it is you know that it’s a tough place.

That’s not all there is to the world, though. With the right eyes you know that the greatest truth is not that might makes right and nice guys always finish last. With right eyes you can see hints of heaven peaking through the fabric of this world. As Paul puts it in chapter 4, verse 18 of this second letter to the Corinthians: “We look not at what can be seen but at what cannot be seen; for what can be seen is temporary, but what cannot be seen is eternal.”

The world looks different when you look at it with heaven on your mind. You start to see possibilities that were not there before. You start to realize that the suffering and the pain of this world is not the only thing to be said about it. You start to believe that the world is a God-filled place.

Yesterday we were visiting with Laura Dennis who is back home now after undergoing a lot of surgeries and a long time away. We have been praying for her for some time now. As we talked I said, “When I look at how far you’ve come, Laura, it’s miraculous. I don’t know how it happened.”

Laura didn’t hesitate. She said, “I know how.” She knew that it was the prayers of so many people and the God on whom she has relied that made all the difference. Don’t just look at what is but what can be and will be.

So we are courageous always. “We know,” says Paul, “that while we are at home in the body we are on a long journey apart from the Lord, for we walk by faith, not by sight.” It’s not always evident what God is up to. It’s not always clear why things happen the way that they do. But the ways things are right now is not the whole story. The world as it is is unstable. The only thing truly stable is what we shall become in Christ.

I’m always drawn to signs of unwarranted confidence. Like when one of our cats stares down a big dog. Who do they think they are? Once Suzanne and I were driving across southern Oklahoma with some seminary friends - driving back to Dallas. In the grasslands along the Red River there are a lot of towns that look like time has passed them by. They’re ramshackle with lots of buildings falling down. We went into one of those towns and there was a welcome sign on the highway going in. It was bent and pockmarked where somebody had shot up the sign with shotgun pellets. But you could still make out the words and what it said was: “The Best is Yet to Come.” What unwarranted confidence!

That’s exactly what Paul is talking about here, though. There is a higher calling to which we are called because there is a higher destiny to which the world is called. Jesus came to show us that the end of the line for us and for all creation is not decay and destruction; what we wait for is the new heaven and the new earth and what we do while we are waiting is to seek to be well-pleasing to him.

Paul includes in verse 11 this vision which we take to be a warning but is really a promise: “We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each may be dealt with according to what was done through his or her body, whether good or evil.” Now you can read that like a bad warning you give children around Christmas time: “He knows when you are sleeping. He knows when you’re awake. He knows when you’ve been bad or good so you better be good for goodness’ sake!” You can read it like that or you can see it as a promise that the life we live for good in the world is done in expectation that this is not all there is. And we do these things, as John Wesley said, “not for wrath but for conscience’s sake.”

Another way to translate that verse is to say, “When we appear before the judgment seat of Christ who we are will be revealed at last. Our true selves will be known.” We live such strange lives as human beings. We’re never really at home. We don’t know ourselves and we always suspect that there is something incomplete about us.

Paul wants to tell us that we find our identity in Christ. The story of what God did in Jesus is so compelling and so complete that it resolves the mystery of who we are. “The love of Christ holds us fast,” Paul says, “so that we are convinced of this: One has died for all and therefore all have died.” In Jesus’ death, all those things that would lead us to self-destruction and nothingness – sin, in a word – all of that is put to death. “Jesus died on behalf of all so that the living may no longer live for themselves but rather on behalf of him who died and was raised.”

We live, not for ourselves, but for Jesus! What a relief! What a relief not to have to prop ourselves up continually. What a relief to know that our ultimate worth is measured not on our terms, but on God’s terms. What a relief to know that the things that have defined my life for so long don’t have to define them anymore. I’m not just my family history or my physical state or who I’m involved with or what my job. I’m not victim, abuser, abused, addicted, hopeless, God-forsaken, sinner – none of those words capture who I am in God’s eyes. For God I am, like God’s son, Jesus, a child. God’s child. And I live for Jesus.

I haven’t figured this side of myself out yet, but I am prone to watching some fairly dark movies. It’s partly to do with the fact that I know God sees into the darkness and knows the light of what we can become. Sherrybaby is not a movie I can recommend for family viewing but contains a vivid portrait of how hard it is to try to live on your own terms and the illusion that freedom and independence sometimes is.

Maggie Gyllenhaal plays Sherry, a young woman who has just been released from prison after three years. Sherry’s heroin addiction got her into the prison and she comes out determined to put her life back together. She wants to stay clean and rebuild her relationship with her young daughter, Alexis, but the patterns from her past are too deep to overcome.

Sherry goes to a halfway house and immediately begins to have trouble with the other residents and to get involved in a sexual relationship with the house manager. After getting in a fight at the house, which is called the Genesis House, she goes to live with her brother and sister-in-law who have been keeping her daughter, Alexis, while she has been in prison. Sherry’s sister-in-law thinks she is an unfit mother and tells Alexis not to call Sherry ‘Mom’.

The truth is she is an unfit mom. She has been deeply wounded by abuse in her family but she deals with it by being extremely needy and self-destructive. She ends up spiraling back into a life of drugs.

All along the way we see glimpses of what Sherry could be if she could work through her neediness and her obstinate refusal to do the things that would lead her to health. An AA friend gets her cleaned up after she has a particularly bad bender. Then she goes back to try and connect with her daughter one more time.

She gets her brother to agree to let her take Alexis for the day but she is really determined to take her away to Florida. They drive into the next state and stop at a fast food restaurant. While waiting in line for the bathroom, Sherry sees another mother berating her child and she snaps, cursing and pulling the woman by the hair and throwing her out of the bathroom. Alexis is terrified and ends up wetting her pants.

As Sherry is changing her in the parking lot she realizes that she can’t do it. She can’t be the mother she wants to be or needs to be as long she does it alone. They get back into the car and head home.

Facing her brother again in the darkened front yard of his home, Sherry looks at him with tears coming down her face. “Could you help me take care of my daughter? I can’t do it by myself.”

“Of course I can,” her brother says. “What do you think I’ve been doing?”

“I know,” Sherry says. “But I never asked you.”

It’s a small step. We don’t know where it goes from there. But she has made a small move toward recognizing her own limits and to taking some responsibility for her life.

“From now on,” Paul says, we don’t see anyone through the lens of the flesh. Even though we once knew Christ that way, now we don’t know him that way. If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation. The old things have passed away. Look, they have been made new!”

What journey have you been on away from God? Where are the places in your life where you need to say, “I can’t do it by myself”? What is old can pass away. What is new can come. If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation. Thanks be to God.

2 Corinthians 5:6-17

So we are courageous always. We know that while we are at home in the body we are on a long journey apart from the Lord, for we walk by faith, not by sight. But, yes, we are courageous even though we think it better to be apart from the body and at home with the Lord. This is our aspiration - whether at home or on that long journey apart to be well-pleasing to him.

For we all must appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each may be dealt with according to what was done through his or her body, whether good or evil. So, knowing the fear of the Lord, we persuade people, but who we are is revealed to God, and I hope it is also revealed to your conscience. We are not commending ourselves to you again, but rather are giving you the opportunity to boast on our behalf, so that you may be able to answer those who boast in appearance but not in the heart. If we are ecstatic, it is for God, but if we are of sound mind, it is for you.

The love of Christ holds us fast so that we are convinced of this: One has died for all and therefore all have died. And he died on behalf of all so that the living may no longer live for themselves but rather on behalf of him who died and was raised. Therefore from now on, we don't see anyone through the lens of the flesh. Even though we once knew Christ through the flesh, now we don't know him that way. If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation. Old things have passed away. Look, they have been made new!

Where Have All the Prophets Gone?

Some folks say that the reason Isaiah saw the seraphs in the Temple was because old King Uz had died. Origen of Alexandria says that. Way back in the 3^rd century he said, “When King Uzziah was alive, the prophet Isaiah was unable to have visions. Uzziah had sinned and done what was evil in the sight of the Lord by deliberately breaking the divine law. He entered the Holy of Holies [the most sacred place in the temple], and for this his face broke out with leprosy. Hence he was forced to go outside of the city and live among the unclean. One way of reading the text then,” according to Origen, “is that it teaches that we will be able to see God only when we put to death the evil that rules our souls. This is the reason why the Scripture says: In the year the King Uzziah died I saw the Lord.”[1]

This is where the story starts. With the death of a king. And maybe it’s not just an extraneous fact thrown in there. Christians have been reading Isaiah chapter 6 for centuries. It’s one of our most important passages. And for all those centuries, whose name have they heard first? Old King Uz. Uzziah’s death is not unimportant. Old things are passing away. New things are coming. It’s just as true for us today as it was for Isaiah back in the day.

“In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord.” So says Isaiah. How can this be? People don’t just ‘see’ God. Even Moses only got to see God’s backside when he asked to see him. God told Moses, “No one can see me and live.” But he allowed Moses to stand in the cleft of a rock and when God got ready to pass by, God put a hand over Moses so he couldn’t see. Then when the glory of God had passed by God took that hand off Moses and all he could see was God moving on. [Exodus 33]

Sure, Abraham and Sarah met God when they hosted the three strangers in their tent, but they didn’t know what was going on until later. It was God in disguise. And, yes, Jacob wrestled all night long with a man by the river Jabbok and come daybreak realized it was God. He even named the place. Called it Peniel – “For I have seen God face to face and yet my life is preserved” [Gen. 32:30]. But it was God in disguise.

Sure, we touched God in a manger in Bethlehem. We were touched by him as he healed lepers and gave his hand to poor folks and welcomed children. We sat down with God at a table and smelled his scent and heard his voice, received his bread and drank from the same cup. We touched God. We nailed God to a cross and watched his blood flow. Sure, we saw God, we killed God, but we didn’t know what we were doing. Jesus said so himself: “Forgive them, for they don’t know what they’re doing” [Luke 23:34].

But Isaiah saw God. “I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, lofty and raised up; and the hem of his robe filled the temple.” Now understand this. The Temple is where God was supposed to reside. King Solomon had built God a house so that the people would know where God was. God had a home among the people. And the holiest part of the Temple was the place where God resided.

Only Isaiah knew something now. God didn’t reside there. What building could contain God? Yesterday we dedicated the new worship center at Camp Occohannock on the Bay and wouldn’t it have been folly if we had declared that that was where God lived now? It’s a nice spot. Looks right out onto the Chesapeake Bay. If I were God, I might choose a place like that to live. But God can’t be contained like that.

That’s why when Isaiah had this vision it was only the hem of God’s robe that filled the Temple. God was somewhere beyond, above, out there. And there were seraphim – celestial creatures. Two of them. They had six wings. With two they covered their faces, with two they covered their nether parts and with two they flew. And what were they doing but singing out the truth? “Holy, holy, holy” - the threefold statement for the Triune God. “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of Hosts, the whole earth is full of God’s glory.”

The whole earth. Not just this temple. Not just Jerusalem. Not just among the Jews. Not just among the humans. The whole earth is full of God’s glory.

Now the roof is coming off the place. The seraphim have raised the roof and the whole Temple is filled with smoke. For Isaiah the earth has been rocked. Who knows what other people saw around him? Perhaps for them it was a day like any other day. They saw but could not see. But for Isaiah it was as if the lens cap had been removed for just a second so that he could see the world as it truly was – filled with the glory of God.

“I’m a wretch,” said Isaiah. “I don’t deserve to be here. I should not be able to see God because I am a man with unclean lips and I live among a people with unclean lips. And yet…I’m seeing God.”

I’ve had moments where I have felt unworthy to the things I’m bearing witness to. Like when my children were born and I watched that amazing, messy process while I was feeding ice chips to Suzanne. And then holding that new life and not being able to find words…there were just no words. And, O Lord, you want me to be responsible?

Or, on another scale entirely, to come to the edge of a mountain and to look out on the vastness of the earth below and to feel so inconsequential and so vulnerable. Or to be in a small boat in a very large sea.

Why should such things make us feel unworthy? What have we done to deserve a feeling like that? Except that in moments like those we know that we are mortal and limited and not sufficient to the life that is within us and around us.

I read a book recently called Rapt, which was about the way our brains handle all of the input that comes our way each day. The book suggested that we can’t pay attention to everything that comes our way or we would just go crazy. And perhaps what we feel in moments like Isaiah’s vision or in those other moments I’ve described is that we are getting a sense of how much there is in the world and how overwhelming it is. As the early saint Augustine knew moments of rapture can never be captured in words because these moments are by definition beyond words.

What is God’s response to Isaiah’s unclean lips? A seraph is sent with a burning coal that was taken from the altar. The seraph touches Isaiah’s mouth with the coal and tells him, “Now that this has touched your lips, it will take away your transgressions and purify your sins.”

Now Isaiah can not only see, he can hear. And the first thing he hears is the voice of the Lord. He has seen God and heard God! And what he hears is God saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go to this people?”

Probably before he knows what he’s doing, Isaiah says, “Here I am; send me!”

The text for the day ends there. A seemingly happy ending. A man has a vision and responds and he finds his calling in serving the Living God.

But it’s a terrible thing he’s asked to do. God goes on to tell Isaiah that he’s going to speak to a people who will not be able to have an experience like he’s had. They will listen but not understand. They will see but not perceive. They will hear what God has to tell them about how they should turn to God for healing but they will not respond. And they will continue to wander away from God until their cities are laid waste and they are taken away into exile. This is the message Isaiah has to take to the people and you wouldn’t know it if you stopped with verse 8.

This is the stark contrast: That Isaiah sees a God so grand and so awesome that no Temple could contain God. The earth is filled with the glory of God. All flesh should tremble at this sight. Yet they don’t.

Around Isaiah the people continue to go about their business blissfully unaware that God is rocking Isaiah’s world. The Temple is filled with smoke…the house…the house…the house is on fire…but nobody stops. Only Isaiah knows and only he has responded, “Here I am; send me.”

In the movie The Matrix there is a scene in which the main character is faced with a huge decision. Neo has been taken from his life as he has known it by a group of people who see the world for what it really is. Neo and all the people around him think that they are in control of their lives and that they can trust the reality they see. But these people who come to Neo, one of whom is named Trinity, tell him that really he and every other person are held captive by an enslaving force and they are only given dreams of an independent life to delude them.

The decision Neo faces is symbolized by two pills that are offered him by a character named Morpheus. If he takes the blue pill he will forget he has ever been approached by the rebel group and he will go back to living in the world of illusion. If he takes the red pill he will discover the truth about the Matrix he has been living in his whole life without knowing it. But having taken the pill he can never look back. He will have to face reality and perhaps death. He chooses the red pill and the adventure begins.

It is not too much to say that Isaiah faces the same sort of decision and all of us face the same decision when we are confronted with the Living God. We can go back to living a life of illusion, or we can choose to face a new reality that may demand our very lives. We can serve this God or we can serve the gods of unreality in a plastic world. What we can’t do is live a half-life where we pay lip service to God but go on to live as if God doesn’t matter.

That, however, is just how we Christians tend to live our lives. We give God and hour on Sunday but we go out to live lives in which it seems God doesn’t matter very much at all. We forget that the world is an enchanted place. We forget that every molecule of this planet is infused with life and power and God’s glory. We forget that we are meant for something more.

What’s it going to be, my brothers and sisters? What are we going to do? God hasn’t stopped calling forth prophets. And the world needs prophets to help it resist the charms of the carnival where the wheel of fortune spins away. The world needs to know what it is. People need to know who they are. The poor need to know they have not been forgotten. The oppressed need to hear of the coming day of the Lord. The children need to know they have a place at the table. The workers need to know there is justice. And the hard-hearted need to know that there is love.

The world needs prophets who will see and hear. Who will recognize Jesus in their neighbor. Who say to the Living God, “Here I am; send me.” Even me. Just me. All of me.

King Uz is dead. Long live the King. Thanks be to God.

Isaiah 6:1-8 (NRSV)

In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lofty; and the hem of his robe filled the temple. Seraphs were in attendance above him; each had six wings: with two they covered their faces, and with two they covered their feet, and with two they flew. And one called to another and said: "Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory." The pivots on the thresholds shook at the voices of those who called, and the house filled with smoke.

And I said: "Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; yet my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!"

Then one of the seraphs flew to me, holding a live coal that had been taken from the altar with a pair of tongs. The seraph touched my mouth with it and said: "Now that this has touched your lips, your guilt has departed and your sin is blotted out."

Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, "Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?"

And I said, "Here am I; send me!"

---

[1] Origen, trans. By Robert Wilken, found in Isaiah: Interpreted by Early Christian and Medieval Commentators, [Eerdmans: Grand Rapids, MI, 2007], p. 64.

The Spirit of a Fruitful Church

Benita Barnsley was never quite sure why she volunteered year after year to do the Greenwood Opry. She wasn’t the only one either. There were plenty of people in the town of Greenwood, Texas who thought the old institution should go. It had served its time.

Even though this wasn’t Virginia, though, tradition dies hard, even in Texas. So every year about this time Benita and the others would get together to organize the annual performance.

Now I’m assuming you know what an Opry is. This is not Luciano Pavorotti and the Three Tenors and Marilyn Kellan I’m talking about here. It’s not opera but opry as in Grand Ol’ Opry where all the country music stars sing. And in Texas there are lots of these oprys in little towns. Suzanne and I even performed in one when we lived out there. It’s just a time of getting together and showing off the local talent, usually broadcast over the local radio station. Some of these oprys have shows every week or every month.

Greenwood was too small for a regularly-scheduled opry so they staged theirs as a once-a-year event with the proceeds going to the Greenwood City Park Garden Fund. They’ve been doing this since World War Two and the group that organizes is called the Greenwood Opry and Lovely Landscape Institute – a volunteer group better known by its acronym – GOLLI.

GOLLI was made up of people, like Benita, who were very experienced at producing the Opry – which means they had been doing it forever. They had also watched that City Park grow from a bare patch of Texas dirt to a garden full of roses and exotic cacti – so full that any further donations were probably pointless without the addition of somebody like a Hedy Leutner or a Kim Owens, but they didn’t know how to change and so the show went on.

At least, that’s how Benita saw things. She was considered a new member in the group since she had only joined thirty-five years ago, and as such she was ineligible to hold any senior office in GOLLI, though she was expected to sing “Coal Miner’s Daughter” in her best Loretta Lynn voice. They chose this song because it came out about the same time Benita joined the club. That’s the way they chose who sang what – by when you entered the club. So most of the other members were singing classics by Hank Williams and Ernest Tubb.

Yes, it was a ridiculous system. Poor Florida Tarback, who founded the group was still singing “Smoke on the Water,” an old Hank Wilson song about victory over Japan in the war. And you know she’s never really been the same since her throat surgery back in ’84.

So the meeting began with Benita looking out the dusty window of the City Hall meeting room where GOLLI always met to discuss their plans. She was just wondering if she’d make it home in time to watch Jon and Kate and Eight when Lucinda Johnson asked the opening question: “So, what shall we do this year?”

It was one of those questions that you really can’t answer but one way. Like when you ask the groom at the wedding, “Will you take this woman to be your wife?” If he says anything other than, “I will,” the whole thing is going south.

Florida Tarback gave the ritual answer. “Well, I brought the song sheets and I’ll pass them out. I’m sorry about all the yellow tape holding yours together, Benita, but I’m sure you know it well enough by now to get through the sections that are covered up. Dixie Philips has agreed to play the piano for us once again…” And on she went. It was going to be just like every other Opry for the past umpteen years.

Then it happened. Benita didn’t know where the inspiration came from, but all of a sudden she had an idea. It was a miracle that it ever made it out of her mouth. It was just a strange convergence of events. Benita felt inspired at the very moment that Florida dropped her copy of The Yellow Rose of Texas and stopped talking long enough to pick it up. That’s when Benita blurted out, “How about the Clodhoppers?”

I don’t know how to describe to you how unexpected it was. Dixie Philips nearly lost her teeth. Florida hit her head on the table coming up from retrieving the song sheet. Everyone else just stared, gobsmacked, until someone managed to say, “The Clodhoppers?”

“Yeah, you know…the clogging group that meets in the community center.”

It was a spark. A spark like the tongues of flame that ignited over the disciples’ heads at Pentecost so long before. Everybody considered for the first time inviting cloggers to the Greenwood Opry. They all started talking at once and the ideas were flying tick and fast. Somebody remembered that Harold Newcomer told a great Texas tall tale. Someone else volunteered to play the fiddle. Florida Tarback offered to sing a Celine Dion song.

It was amazing. Then someone raised the point that not many of the people they were inviting were actual members of GOLLI. There was nary a pause. It just didn’t matter.

That year the Greenwood Opry was the best it had been since 1947. It was a huge success. Lots of money was raised for the Garden Fund – money they didn’t really even need. But Benita had a plan for that, too. She was going to suggest that the overage go to help the hospice that had just opened in town. Now that would cause the group to have to change its name, but golly, stranger things have happened.

It’s a stretch to say that the coming of the Holy Spirit is like that meeting of the minds in Texas, but that’s how my mind works sometimes. There’s something about Pentecost that reminds us that we can become too comfortable, too insulated, too content with old certainties and that maybe the thing God is calling us to is an element of risk in trusting that the Spirit is moving us out into the world to discover what new things God has in store for us there. Sometimes the change is welcome, sometimes it’s scary, but the Holy Spirit is not content to leave us where we are.

The Pentecost story may seem very familiar to you. As we read in Acts it takes place during the Jewish festival of the Pentecost, or Shavuot – a harvest festival that took place 50 days after the celebration of Passover. For Christians it is now observed 50 days after Easter Sunday. For the Jews it was a high holy day and people of many different places would gather in Jerusalem for this festival. All those folks that we heard about in the reading – the Parthians, the Medes, the Mesopotamians, the Elamites, the crystal lights, the baysiders, the seasiders, the people from Tangier – they’re all there.

The disciples are gathered together in a room where they have been waiting. Jesus has ascended into the heavens and they have been gathering to pray. You might think of them as a huddled mass yearning to be free. Then the Holy Spirit busts into the place and all heaven breaks loose.

As you hear this story you also ought to be thinking about another biblical story. I think it’s intentional that these stories are connected. The other story is the Tower of Babel in Genesis chapter 11. That story takes place at a time at the dawn of human civilization when all the people of the world still spoke the same language.

These early people of earth decide to make themselves a great tower into the sky. The people were trying to make a name for themselves by building this tower to the heavens. They are front and center in this story. The people make the bricks and the mortar and people make the decision to build. But they fail miserably. They do build an impressive tower, but they don’t reach the heavens. We know that because when God comes to see what’s going on, God has to come down to see them. The name they had built for themselves was insignificant in comparison to God.

The Bible tells us the reason that the people built the tower. They built it because they were afraid of being “scattered abroad upon the face of the earth” [Gen. 11:4b]. They were scared of what was going to happen to their community. They wanted to preserve it against the threat of falling apart. Like the planner of the opry, they didn’t want to see a sure thing dissolve into something unknown.

God has no such worries, though. God sees what they are up to and decides to confuse their language by creating new ones. Then God does the very thing they fear the most – God scatters them “abroad…over the face of all the earth” [Gen. 11:8a] with the result being the sea of languages we have today. After all that human action, God’s action in this story is to spread people all over the place.

Now look at that story next to the Pentecost story. There’s a difference and a similarity. The big difference is that it is not human initiative that brings about the action at Pentecost. All the disciples do in the story is to gather together, though they had been preparing themselves through prayer. From that point on, the action happens to them as they are filled with the Holy Spirit and are given the ability to speak in other tongues. The actor in the birth of the Church – the inspiration for the action to follow – is God through the Holy Spirit. That’s the big difference from Babel. God’s the one getting the ball rolling.

The result, though, is the same. The tower-builders were scattered and now so are the disciples. They had developed a strong community in Jerusalem, but now they are scattered to the four winds – to all of the places mentioned in the text – to Mesopotamia, Egypt, Libya, Rome...Tangier. It was in the world at large that they were called to do the work of Christ.

In Babel the human work was undertaken for fear of scattering. In Jerusalem at Pentecost the divine work was undertaken in order to scatter. The disciples could no longer afford to be an insulated community. The work of the Church required them to risk moving out into new avenues of growth and mission. They not only existed in the world but for it.

It’s not easy. We like our comfort zones – places where we feel safe and warm. We grow to love what is familiar and we don’t dare risk change for fear that what we hold dear will fade away. Sometimes we hold on to things even when they are threatening to kill us.

The Spirit will not leave us there, though. I believe that if we are attentive to the restlessness in our souls we will know that there is something holy that still threatens to invade our comfort with energy and fire and new life. When that happens, God help us if we don’t respond. That fire of the Holy Spirit can burn us.

The writer Kim Chernin describes initiation in a way that seems akin to this movement:

“Initiation is not a predictable process. It moves forward fitfully, through moments of clear seeing, dramatic episodes of feeling, subtle intuitions, vague contemplative states. Dreams arrive, bringing guidance we frequently cannot accept. Years pass, during which we know that we are involved in something that cannot easily be named. We wake to a sense of confusion, know that we are in dangerous conflict, cannot define the nature of what troubles us. All change is like this. It circles around, leads us a merry chase, starts us out it seems all over again from where we were in the first place. And then suddenly, when we least expect it, something opens a door, discovers a threshold, shoves us across.”[i]

I actually don’t think the option before is to change or to stay where we are. There will always be Benita Barnsleys in the world who will feel the wind and the fire and who will remind us of the continuing power of the Holy Spirit. There will always be that inner compulsion within us that circles around like the Spirit hovering over the waters of creation and then opens a door and shoves across. It’s when we ignore the song of change that we experience that inner death that we give a thousand names – depression, despair, burnout.

I don’t mean to diminish the value of comfort zones. We all need places of safety and security from which to move. Churches need them, too. But if we insulate ourselves from the world and from change to the point that we fail to participate in it, then we just may suffocate.

The Holy Spirit wants us to breathe. To be open. To cross the threshold. God energizes human activity through the Holy Spirit and sends us out to invite others to join us in creating new communities where Christ lives and love grows. The Holy Spirit is calling to this church and to you personally to take the step of risk to discover God in new ways. How will we respond? How will you respond? How will you live, if you don’t breathe? Thanks be to God.

Acts 2:1-21(NRSV)

When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.

Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. Amazed and astonished, they asked, "Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs-- in our own languages we hear them speaking about God's deeds of power."

All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, "What does this mean?"

But others sneered and said, "They are filled with new wine."

But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them, "Men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to what I say. Indeed, these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o'clock in the morning. No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel: '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. And I will show portents in the heaven above and signs on the earth below, blood, and fire, and smoky mist. The sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood, before the coming of the Lord's great and glorious day. Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.'

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[i] From Reinventing Eve, quoted on the blog “The Painted Prayerbook” by Jan Richardson, http://paintedprayerbook.com/2008/05/05/pentecost-fire-and-breath/.