Wind and Fire
Acts 2:1-21; Psalm 104:25-35, 37b; 1 Corinthians 12:3b-13; John 20:19-23
Every reading in our lessons
for today is important, but Psalm 104 seems particularly appropriate. This is a terrible time for the people of Myanmar as they struggle to hold on to life while burying
their loved ones, their livelihoods, and the very lives they had planned for
themselves just a week ago. The
destructive power of wind, water, fire, and the movement of the earth changes far
more than the physical landscape. And
while we perceive these phenomena on a physical level and are touched by their
destructive power, the power of God to change and form our lives, to send forth
the Holy Spirit to renew the face of the earth,
I cannot know what it feels
like to be a citizen of Myanmar today but I can relate through my own
experience. Monday, May 11, 1953. We lived on a
small farm about 10 miles southwest of Waco,
Texas. It was almost
4 in the afternoon when we reached home on the school bus. I was 11 and in the sixth grade, my little
brother Ken was a few weeks shy of turning seven. My older brother Don was a freshman at Texas
A&M but was home for Mother's Day weekend.
As we got off the bus on the muggy afternoon, a menacing black cloud
loomed just to the south. Mom was
outside and yelling for us to get into the house – the bus driver was nervously
urging us to get off the bus as he looked at the approaching storm.
Dad was in the kitchen and
very strangely, my mom urged us to eat quickly before the storm struck but we
had barely got into the kitchen when the wallpaper began to ‘breathe’ and the
house started to shake. She and Dad
started to move us to the front end of the house and while my father and older
brother tried to see outside mom was trying to get my little brother and I to
go under the bed. I remember it as
clearly as if it we yesterday – his words: “It's raining under there!” Water was being driven up through the floor!
An F5 tornado had passed
through the back part of our yard, destroying outbuildings and damaging our
house but sparing our lives. Our nearest
neighbors to the south were killed and counted among the 114 people who died in
Waco that day.
The 55th
anniversary of that event, coinciding as it does this year with Pentecost and
Mother's Day, shuffle thoughts of rushing mighty winds – of the simultaneously
destructive and creative powers of the forces that shape our lives and direct
our paths. While the lowest room may be
the place to seek shelter and safety in a tornado, we find the disciples
gathered in the Upper Room where they are fully exposed to God's Spirit – ruach
– mighty wind. The effects of that wind
are every bit as challenging and imposing as an F5 tornado – our gentility in
Bible reading not withstanding.
Pentecost is the end of
Easter – not end as in that's all folks but end as in the fulfillment, the
goal. This major feast, inherited from Judaism,
overflows with significance for the past, the present, and the future. It was called the Feast of Weeks (
Shavuot),
and in the Old Testament was originally an agricultural festival celebrating
and giving thanks for the “first fruits” of the early spring harvest (Lev. 23,
Ex. 23, 34).
By the early New Testament
period, it had gradually lost its association with agriculture and become
associated with the celebration of God's creation of his people and their
religious history. After Jerusalem was destroyed in 70 CE, the festival came to be
focused on God's gift of Torah on Mount Sinai
and continues to be celebrated that way in modern Judaism.
Rabbinic Judaism commemorated
the giving of the Law on Mount Sinai through shavuot because, according
to Exodus 19:1 this event took place on the fiftieth day after the departure
from Egypt. We Christians identify the
day of Pentecost with the birth of the Church, characterized by the fulfillment
of Jesus’ promise to send a Comforter, by the giving of the Holy Spirit.
Pentecost is parallel to Shavuot,
as Easter is to Passover. On Passover,
the Jews were delivered from slavery in Egypt; On Easter, all people were delivered from slavery to
sin. As the Jews celebrate the 50
days from Passover to Shavuot in anticipation of the gift of Torah, so
Christians anticipate the gift of the Holy Spirit during the 50 days of
Easter. And as the Jews gather on the eve of
this feast day to read Torah through the night and open the day at sunrise with
prayers of thanksgiving for God's gift, so some Christians watch through the
night and observe this day with the highest celebration outside the Feast of
the Resurrection. The Roman Catholic
Church encourages its members to enter into a nine-day Novena of prayer and
readings beginning with the Ascension as preparation to receive anew the Holy
Spirit.
On Shavuot the
children of Israel received the Law; on Pentecost, the Church received
the fullness of the Holy Spirit. This
Upper Room is Christianity's Sinai, the terrifying fire, smoke, and thundering
that obscured Sinai as Moses went up to receive Torah were surely no less
intense than the energy which encompassed those disciples as the Holy Spirit
was poured into them, writing the law of God's love on their hearts and moving
them to a new understanding of their relationship with Christ in the Kingdom.
The men and women who were gathered in that Upper Room came out
different -- the same people but with their inner being released and
having new direction and promise in their lives.
Christians understand
Pentecost as a powerful feast of the salvation, because it speaks to the past,
present, and future of God's relationship with all creation – about the giving
of the Law on Mount Sinai, about the founding of the Church, and about the
Final Judgment. The harvest it anticipates can
be a metaphor of the Final Judgment, as shown by Jesus in Matthew 9:37-38:
Then
he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few;
therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.”
On a personal level, for many reasons, I have a deeper vision of the
significance of this day than ever before. Perhaps it is just the
place where I am in my
life, perhaps it is the confluence of these events on this day, perhaps
it is
the Holy Spirit at work in my life.
I actually read more this
week about that 1953 tornado than I have in 55 years. The details of my memory of that day are
quite sharp but it is only from my present perspective that can appreciate the
impact of that event on the lives of my family, on those who were touched by it. The power of the mighty, rushing wind, of
flames that burn, is the power to redirect lives and shape them for new things.
A poem attributed to William
Blake seems to capture the essence of our need to be touched by the fire of the
Holy Spirit:
Unless
the eye catch fire, God Will not be seen.
Unless
the ear catch fire,
God will not be heard.
Unless
the tongue catch fire,
God will not be named.
Unless
the heart catch fire,
God will not be loved.
Unless
the mind catch fire,
God will not be known.
Come
God of wind and fire,
Blow through our hearts and minds with power and with
love.
The breath of God might feel
as gentle as a summer breeze at sunset rolling across a grassy field or it
might be as terrifying as a cyclone, capable of destroying whatever lies in its
path; it might feel as comforting as a cool cloth on a fevered brow, or as
disturbing as flames radiating unbearable heat; it might come as a quiet
thought in the darkness of a restless night, or in words so clear that they
reach across our normal language ability.
If we live only within the
context of the physical, sensing world, we easily miss the signs of God at work
in our lives. Indeed, much frustration,
sorrow, and grief result from our own failure to see the Spirit at work in our
lives, to see her shaping us for our place in the Kingdom of God,
molding us into those persons we were created to become.
John Henry Newman, in a
sermon for Pentecost entitled Christian Nobleness from his Anglican Period (from A
Newman Reader) wrote the following bidding, still as appropriate as 160
years ago.
May we, one and all, set forward with this season,
when the Spirit descended, that so we may grow in grace, and in the knowledge
of our Lord and Saviour! Let those who have had seasons of seriousness,
lengthen them into a life; and let those who have made good resolves in Lent,
remember them in Eastertide; and let those who have hitherto lived religiously,
learn devotion; and let those who have lived in good conscience, learn to live
by faith; and let those who have made a good profession, aim at consistency;
and let those who take pleasure in religious worship, aim at inward sanctity;
and let those who have knowledge, learn to love; and let those who meditate,
forget not mortification. Let not this sacred season leave us as it found us;
let it leave us, not as children, but as heirs and as citizens of the kingdom
of heaven.
Send forth your Spirit, O Lord, and renew the face of the earth.
Amen.
The Rev. John Burton
Pentecost
May 11, 2008
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