The Feast of Pentecost
[Holding a gold box from the Godly Play lessons . . . ]
“I wonder what this is? It looks like a present. I wonder
if it is a present? You know a parable is like a present, a gift
that was given to you before you were born. I wonder if it is a
parable. It certainly is gold. There must be something like
a treasure inside, something precious. Parables are like
treasure, something hidden that you can only find by seeking and
seeking. Hmmmm . . . it has a lid on it. It is not easy to
get inside. Parables are like that, you can't go inside a parable
until you are really ready.”
I've just given you a little taste of the opening of a Godly Play
lesson, specifically on the parables of Jesus. The parable
lessons are kept in special gold boxes, and before we open the parable
and try to move inside, we have to wonder aloud and become truly open
and curious about what it is that we are about to learn. I've
been teaching Godly Play for the past 9 months on Tuesday
mornings. One of the great gifts of working with children, and
especially the very young children in the Tuesday morning group, is
watching them grow and change so very quickly. Benjamin, who is
approaching 2 years of age, was just over a year old when we started
our class. He was a great observer, but never said a word.
His mother told me he's a chatterbox at home, but in the class, with
all the other children, he was quiet, with wide open wondering eyes,
and a closed mouth. A lot of information was entering those wide open
eyes, but nothing was coming out of that little mouth.
So about four weeks ago, I was indulging in this wondering about the
box, and the older children were wondering with me. By now, they
are quite comfortable with the questions and they were engaging in all
sorts of flights of fancy. “There's a castle in there,” said one
child. “A king,” said another. “Jesus is in there,” said
another. And this was going on and on and on. It seemed like the
wondering would never end. I looked over at Benjamin and I saw
the words forming inside and coming up his throat, moving towards his
mouth like big bubbles that finally burst out loudly, “OPEN THE BOX!”
he said. And there was a moment of stunned silence. Okay,
let's open it. And we did.
Pentecost is like that. For a long time the disciples had been
wondering. What was coming next? What did Jesus mean by all
those mysterious words he had said to them? “I am going to the
Father but I will send you the Holy Spirit.” Where was he going
now? He had died, he had come back to them in a mysterious
resurrected form. They could not doubt that he had in fact been
with them – his being with them had changed them forever. But
they could no more explain it to others than they could describe the
radiance of the sun to a blind man. Even now, the resurrection
appearances written in the Gospels, and in Acts, leave us wondering in
our blindness.
And then they gather in one place, in a room that is just a bit higher
than the ground. They have not ascended, no, but Christ has
lifted them up, just a little bit, and they are beginning to understand
some things they cannot explain. But what is this Holy
Spirit? What is coming next? What are they to do with
themselves now?
Still afraid, still unsure, still self-protective, they gather behind
closed doors. They form a box around themselves. They form
a tight circle. They remove themselves from the hustle and bustle
of Jerusalem that surrounds them. And then it happens – the Holy
Spirit descends upon them and OPENS THE BOX. Out come words
they've never spoken before – language that is new to them and
understanding that penetrates beyond words, beyond language,
understanding that comes from a deeper place. They are
flabbergasted. Observers think they are drunk. The joy is
so unusual, the lightness of being so palpable, the lack of fear, the
lack of suspicion, the lack of all negativity so very, very rare in our
world, that the only thing a casual observer can think is that they are
drunk.
But they are not drunk – they are brimming over with the sweetness of
Christ's Holy Spirit. They are in love. They are speaking
truth. And they are unconcerned about themselves. This is
the taste of the Holy Spirit – a joy with no opposite, because the
sorrows of this world cannot dim it. Even when someone is dying,
even when they are facing the worst that the world can throw at them,
they can taste the sweetness of the Holy Spirit and experience the
ecstasy of unconditioned love, which is real love. It's a rare
occurrence in this world, but it does happen. I've seen it – and
I am sure that most of you have too. The sad part is that we tend
not to remember this joy. We tend to put it out of our minds
since it makes no sense in the kingdom of this world. When we say, “get
real” we usually mean “get cynical.” But we can acknowledge the
truth that this world is full of suffering, and also experience the joy
of the Holy Spirit which comes to us from a higher level of being, of
consciousness, and represents a much bigger reality than our worries
about death. The truth is, the joy of Eternity is far more real
than the stories we tell ourselves of what is important in this world.
Let's take a moment to consider the sign of the cross. I teach
children weekly to make this sign and say these words, “In the name of
the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.” Now what does this
signify. There are levels of meaning here – not one right
meaning, and not wrong meanings, but levels of meaning, deeper and
deeper meanings. Let's consider one of the meanings of this
sign. In the name of the Father, God coming down from a higher
level of consciousness, a higher realm than this one in which we
live. Surely we can all agree that God is greater (far greater)
than we are – I hope that is not controversial, at least not
intellectually. I know it is controversial to the ego (mine and
yours), which thinks it is always the greatest. But at least
intellectually, we can acknowledge that God is greater, indeed far
greater, than the egoic level on which we ordinarily live. So God
the Father comes down from that place of real love incarnating in the
Son, the Christ, to lift us up. There is an if, here, if
we will allow ourselves to learn from Him – that's the hard part,
because there is a very proud person living in each of us who thinks
she already knows it all and that person cannot learn from anyone, in
fact that person is busy judging everyone. If we
will deal with that very proud one who refuses to learn, and will allow
ourselves to learn from Christ in his many messengers, then Christ will
lift us up to an intermediate level where the Holy Spirit can reach
us. The symbols are so important in the Bible - remember how the
upper room is just a bit higher up, the disciples have been lifted up
to a level where the Spirit can reach them, from their study with
Jesus, their encounters with the risen Christ and their witness of his
ascension.
We do have to be lifted up if help is going to reach us.
I read the other day about a baby that was abandoned in a
latrine. An old man was walking from the market in a village in
Haiti and he heard a cry coming from an outhouse. He stopped and
listened – and then he heard a faint gasping for breath, and another
faint cry. He went inside and heard a baby crying weakly.
He got some others and they fastened a rope round his body, and he
climbed down the hole, with all that human waste and found a tiny, tiny
baby there. He lifted him up, out of the hole, to the sunlight
where help could reach him. He took him to a medical clinic some
distance away, they cared for the baby and then took him to an
orphanage. In the orphanage he was held, cared for, fed, clothed,
and received the help he needed.
This man acted out the journey of Christ's incarnation. He
descended to a dark and terrible place in order to lift a tiny baby to
a place where he could receive help. To feed the baby in the
latrine would not be useful. Any help given him there would only
by lost in all that infection. He had to be lifted up to another
level in order to receive help.
Like that baby, we too need to be lifted up to a place where help can
reach us. The help of Heaven, the Holy Spirit, is available to
us, and God longs for us to receive this help, but we get stuck in dark
places where that help would be canceled out by all our accumulated
resentments, judgments, envies, jealousies, and fears. And the
worst part is that that proud man or woman thinks he or she already
knows better and won't let Christ show him or her another way. So
often we stay, in our inner world, stuck in the waste of repetitive,
negative thoughts and feelings, in a dark, dark hole, where we are in
danger, and don't even know it. If we can at least cry out, with
the surrender of a baby, if we can at least pray, then Christ can reach
us. Christ makes the perilous journey of incarnation, to the
depths of our despair, to lift us up, to carry us to the level where
the Holy Spirit can reach us, can help us, can teach us something of
Heaven.
That is what empowered that little band of disciples to come out into
the light, to brave the city streets, to speak in new languages of a
love beyond all telling, and to live out their lives in the humble
service of that great love.
Amen.
The Rev. Edie Bird
May 27, 2007
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