Rev. Betsy Aldrich Garland
May 31, 2009
Acts 2:1-21

Tending the Fire

It is the Jewish harvest festival of Pentecost. Like good Jews, the disciples and more than 100 other believers have gathered together in a safe house in Jerusalem. Mary, the mother of Jesus, and other women are there, as well as Jesus’ brothers. Not only are they together for Pentecost, but they also are waiting – for whatever it was that Jesus had promised. What had he said? The Advocate would come.

People from all walks of life – but heavy on Galilean fishermen and carpenters – women in the inner circle who had traveled with Jesus, like Mary of Magdala – visiting, praying, waiting for whatever it is that Jesus is sending. Picture the scene. People coming and going. Food being prepared and shared. Jews from every nation, here in Jerusalem, the crossroads of the world. Poor Peter trying to keep order.

They must have been loud, too, because bystanders thought they were drunk. Singing, perhaps, psalms of exultation, cries for help and thanksgiving for healing. And yes, prayer: sometimes murmuring, sometimes shouting, rising and falling above the noise in the street. Each one, praising God, in her or his own language. They were out of order, of course, all these different people together, men and women interacting socially in public. What would the neighbors think!

And then an amazing thing happened! A rush of wind, the roar of sound, the appearance of tongues of fire resting on the gathered community, symbols of God’s presence. In Hebrew, ruah elohim, the creative wind of the Lord, has come, to bring life out of chaos, as at creation in the Genesis story. The Holy Spirit has come! Think back to Spielberg’s 1981 “Raiders of the Lost Ark” to picture the roaring of the wind and the blinding light.

Peter raises his voice to speak to the crowd, to remind them of Joel’s prophecy:

God’s Spirit has been poured out before, of course – accompanying the Israelites as they flee Egypt in the Exodus, as a cloud by day and a fire by night; accompanying them as they are led into exile in Babylon, the glory of the Lord streaming through the temple, and then, 50 years later, leading the way as they return to the land with a clear Jewish identity.

The Holy Spirit has been in their midst all along, but now it comes anew. This is what they have been waiting for. This is the promised Advocate. God’s breath – ruah – has been poured into the messianic community, giving it legitimacy and power. The Christian church has been born – the world will never be the same.

Something happened that day that empowered these people, just plain folks, not so different from you and me, that they went out and turned the world upside down – in spite of persecution, in spite of imprisonment, in spite of torture, in spite of oppression and death. It all started at Pentecost – a time for knowing God’s presence and having the courage to name it.

And here we are, two millennia later. How are we doing, tending the fire?

In recent poll conducted by U.S. News/PBS’s Religion & Ethics Newsweekly the question was asked, “How often would you say you have experienced God’s presence or a spiritual force that felt very close to you?” Of respondents who identified themselves as Christians, 10 percent said they never experienced God’s presence, while two percent didn’t know or refused to answer. Seventeen percent answered that they have felt very close to God “once or twice.” Twenty-three answered “several times” and 49 percent answered “many times.” WOW!

So, half of us in this country who call ourselves Christian have felt the presence of God. That’s good! But how would anyone know, if there’s no fire?

How many Christians are there in the U.S.? I googled it – 280 million. Half would be 140 million. That’s a lot of people to be working on Jesus’ commandments “to love God and our neighbor as ourself.” One might wonder why we still have wars and inner city violence and child starvation and human trafficking. Have we lost the fire? Or the connection between compassion and changing the world?

There is a story about a little girl who, on their way home from church, turned to her mother and said, “Mom, the preacher’s sermon this morning confused me.” The mother said, “Oh! Why is that?” The girl replied, “Well, he said that God is bigger than we are. Is this true?” “Yes, that’s true,” the mother replied. “He also said that God lives within us. Is that true, too?” Again, the mother replied, “Yes.” “Well,” said the little girl, “If God is bigger than us and God lives in us, wouldn’t God show through?”

I suspect that God doesn’t show through in many of us because we’ve lost the fire. We’ve lost touch with the divine in ourselves – or never even discovered it! Remember the famous line from nineteenth century philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson who said, “What lies behind us and lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.”

Our society tends to reinforce individualism, materialism, and lust – pulling ourselves up by our own bootstraps, accumulating way more than we need, coveting what is not ours.

Sam Keen was a leader of the “Men’s Movement” that made headlines in the 1990s. In his best-selling book Fire in the Belly, he catalogs some of the stresses and strains that beset men today:

“Perhaps the most common variety of stress can best be described as ‘rustout’ rather than burnout. It is a product, not of an excess of fire, but of a deficiency of passion. We . . . can survive so long as we ‘make a living,’ but we do not thrive without a sense of significance that we can gain only by creating something we feel is of lasting value – a child, a better mousetrap, a computer, a space shuttle, a book, a farm.

. . . In ancient China the feet of upper-class women were broken, bent backward and bound to make them more ‘beautiful.’ Have the best and brightest men of our time had their souls broken and bent to make them ‘successful’ [in the eyes of the culture]?”2

African-American celebrated singer Marion Anderson says it this way, “In my life, if you have a purpose in which you can believe, there is no end to the amount of things you can accomplish.”

Where is God’s fire burning in you? What is your passion? What is your purpose in life? In the Gifts Discovery course that I led during Lent, we spent an evening on finding our passions – that activity or interest that gives us joy, peace and energy while bringing out our very best. It takes some soul searching to find our passion, reflecting on such questions as,

1. What topics would keep me up talking late into the night?
2. What can I do all day long, for days at a time, without getting bored or tired?
3. What would my friends say I am really interested in?
4. If I had unlimited time, money and skills what would I do?
5. SWhat three things do I want to do before I die?

Just like the disciples who received the Holy Spirit, however, the fire is not about us alone – but about using the fire to witness to God’s reconciling love. And here’s the crunch! Not all fires are of God. Fire can be used for good or ill, for love or hate. The anti-gay and anti-Jewish picketers from the Westboro Baptist church of Topeka, Kansas, who were at the East Providence Hight School and several Jewish synagogues on Friday are a reminder that evil is also a fire – but not of God.

How do we know the difference? Frederick Buechner reminds us that, “The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.”2

It’s no easy task to stand against the world! To take the road less traveled. Few people are willing to risk it . . . but we’re all called to do it – to claim the power of the Holy Spirit in our lives!

And we are the “God is still speaking” church where we gather and listen and pray and sing to realize God’s presence and to nurture the Holy in each of us.

Dream with me, for a moment, of a church community where we wait with expectation and anticipation for God’s breath – ruah – to light on us.

Hold a vision with me, of walking into this sanctuary and feeling God’s love and presence in the eyes of each other.

Prophecy with me, of a congregation where we give each other religious insights that they may be handholds in our quest to criticize injustice, rise above self-interest, and take risks.

Come, Day of Pentecost! Come, Holy Spirit, come into our midst today!

Amen.

1. Homeletics, May / June 2009, p. 41.
2. Sam Keen, Fire in the Belly: On Being a Man. Bantam, 1992. Quoted in Homeletics, May / June 2009, p. 41.
Quoted from Wishful Thinking.