Matthew 10:24-39 "Where the Magic Happens"

You are welcome to use parts of this sermon, but if you do, please attribute them properly! 

         The church-going parents of four young boys often had difficulty curbing their kids’ energy.  Of course, to phrase it that way is to cast a very positive light on the situation. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that there was a lot of shoving and hitting, and generalized sibling fighting in the household.

         However, when one Sunday the pastor preached on Jesus’ teaching about "turning the other cheek," the boys gave him their undivided attention.

         “No matter what others do to us,” the pastor proclaimed, “we should never try to ‘get even.’”

         Later that same afternoon, the youngest boy stormed into the house, angry and in tears. Between sobs, he defiantly shared that, yes, he had kicked one of his brothers, but that same brother had then gone and kicked him in return.

         "I’m sorry that you are hurt," his mother said. "But you should not go around kicking people."

         Still choking back tears, the little boy replied, "But the preacher said he is not supposed to kick me back."

         Oh, that Jesus!  Our rabbi and savior is always putting a twist on everything, making our lives just that much more difficult.  But such is the way if you are really one of his followers.  There is a cost to discipleship.  There is a level of difficulty that is above and beyond the comfortable, making the way of Christianity neither easy nor, when you come right down to it, particularly attractive.

         And Jesus makes that notion abundantly clear to the disciples – and to us – in the Gospel passage we just read.  Being a Christian – being a disciple – being a follower of Jesus is no Sunday School picnic. 

         Jesus spells out for the disciples – and for us – what it will mean to truly follow his way, and he warns that neither they nor we should anticipate any better treatment than he himself got.  Expect brothers betraying brothers, he foresees, daughters rebelling, and families divided.  Get ready to lose your social status, he warns, and become disgraced in the eyes of all the beautiful people who always looked up to you.  Be prepared to take some flack for hanging out with the lowest and the least, the marginalized and the hangers on. 

        Well, that is a sobering pep talk if there ever was one – considering how the Temple elite and the Roman government both treated Jesus!  Take up your cross and follow in my footsteps?  Really?

         As Church of England pastor Joan Crossley wrote, “I think if Jesus were alive today, he would be advised to repackage his message to be more attractive. A PR expert would say, “less heavy on the potential suffering angle, Jesus, more on the eternal reward”.

         And yet - the plan is the plan, the Gospel is the Gospel, and the words we read this morning are the instructions and observations that Jesus laid out for anyone who decided to follow his way, for anyone who made the deep and serious commitment to be a disciple, to be a Christian.  These are the instructions then for any of us who have chosen to be here, in this place, this morning.  And, face it, these observations are not designed to comfort the afflicted.  They are bent on afflicting the comfortable.

         The author of the Gospel of Matthew most likely pulled together these bullet points from different sources.  Most Biblical scholars agree that they were either individual sayings or originated as several smaller collections. In the Gospel, however, they form part of the five large blocks of discourses or teachings that the author has attributed to Jesus.   

         However, within the historical context of the writing of this Gospel of Matthew, these sayings reflect the period of persecution that the new Jesus movement endured following the Roman-Jewish War, the fall of Jerusalem, and destruction of the Temple around 70 CE.  The author included these verses in the Gospel to speak to the earliest Jewish Christians who lived in a time when practicing their newfound faith invited constant disrespect, heckling, and economic sanctions right on up to even more drastic measures, that is, torture and martyrdom.  

         It all began so simply.  Remember?  Jesus was down by the lakeshore in Galilee, extending that intriguing invitation to Peter and Andrew and the others: “Come and follow me.”  Sure, it meant leaving home and all, but what an adventure!  I mean, sitting at Jesus’ feet and singing “Kumbayah” round the campfire at night, watching him perform miracles, wandering the highways and byways with this itinerant rabbi.         

         Sure – there were a few uncomfortable times, like when he tried preaching in his hometown of Nazareth and folks got so angry they nearly threw him off a cliff before railroading them all out of town. But the disciples were like the backup band, playing along from a distance.

         And then, something changed.  In the Gospel of Matthew, that change is articulated right here in Chapter 10, in the verses just before our passage, verses we call “The Great Commission.”  As Presbyterian pastor Robina Winbush writes, “The disciples move from being those who sit with Jesus and learn from Jesus to now being sent forth into the world. Jesus sends them out to cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons, to be about the work of ministry, to be about the business of partnering with the Divine in the liberation work of rescuing and redeeming humankind.

         And Jesus tells them, ‘It's serious work. And as you go out, I need you to understand some things. I need you to undergo a radical reorientation of how you look at life, at how you look at this mission. You're gonna go out, but don't think that life is going to be any different for you than it has been for me.’ There's a temptation (Winbush writes) to sometimes believe that when Jesus calls us to follow him, to live in relationship with the Divine, that it somehow or another creates for us a zone of acceptance, a zone of comfort.”

         However, if we look to this passage, that is not so: brothers against brothers, daughters against mothers.  That is hardly comfortable stuff!  “I did not come to bring peace but a sword.”  I did not come with the easy answer.  I came to turn the world upside down and inside out – and that now is your mission too.

         Whoa!  Wait a minute!  Are you saying no more “Kumbayah”? We did not bargain for this! 

         OK – what exactly then are we to expect as Jesus’ followers? What can we anticipate will be the cost of discipleship? Those are surely important questions for any of us doing the “church thing.”  What are we getting into anyway?  What are we committing to?  Jesus mentions at least two things.

         First, he tells us that we will encounter division. Remember? “I did not come to bring peace on this earth,” he says. I did not come to bring peace in your family. I did not come to bring peace in your family gathered around your fireplace.

There will be no singing kumbayah as together we set out to usher in God’s kingdom.

         The long and the short of it is when you and I proclaim the gospel message of compassionate love and justice “in the light and from the rooftops”  (as one translation reads), people are not always going to like what we say. 

         After all, Jesus’ message is not a positive one in our popular culture.  First, there is all of this rhetoric about going out-of-our-way to help the down-and-out in Raymond, the homeless in Portland, and the food insecure from Cherryfield to most of the third world.

         And then there is the expectation – not suggestion but expectation - that we will give up our own time and money and daily Dunkin Donuts or Starbuck’s lattes.  No wonder the Gospel message is divisive – and the cost of discipleship seems so high.

         Second, Jesus is telling us that not only will we encounter division, but, as we do, we will have a fundamental decision to make over and over again.  And that decision is this:  Are we for him or not?  That is, if we are not overtly for Jesus, if we are unwilling to risk living his message, then we are against him.         

         After all, if we will not give up Dunkin’ Donuts or Starbucks for the Gospel, then how can we expect others to do so?  When we choose not to overtly live the Gospel message, when we choose not to be transformed ourselves, then we fail to utilize the most powerful tool we have to change the world – because transformation (both individual and societal) is what Jesus is all about. 

         Yes, the cost of discipleship is high because it challenges us to move outside our comfort zones and to stand firm in our faith and in our commitment to the way of Jesus.

         However, that should not really surprise us because, at its very roots, Christianity was a countercultural movement, begun by a small and vulnerable minority.  It is hard to believe that today, of course – especially in our country.  We are all pretty comfortable in our faith here and in our church going. Our congregations are not composed, for the most part, of militants, counter-culturalists, and revolutionaries.

         However, Jesus still calls us out of our comfort zones.  He still calls us to risk in his name.  And so we are challenged to inform ourselves about what is going on in our world.  We are challenged to speak out.  We are challenged to take a stand.  

We are challenged to reflect on the meaning of our faith and to ask ourselves the difficult questions, difficult because they have the potential to catapult us right out of our comfort zones. 

         Questions like:  What issues touch your faith? What are you willing to take a stand on? Global climate change?  The transport of tar sands oil?  Health care? The expansion of Medicaid? Homelessness?  Hunger?  Teenaged girls abducted in Nigeria? Syrian refugees fleeing their war-torn homeland?  Solidarity with gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender persons?  The safety of our children through effective gun control?

         Questions like:  How are you acting on those faith-based issues and changing the world? What role are you actively playing in ushering in the Kingdom?  As United Church of Canada pastor, David Ewart wrote, “We all know how to lose our life so that it is lost. The trick is to figure out how to lose one's life so that it will be found.” 

         In the end, you know, as followers of Jesus, we cannot claim to be too old.  We cannot claim to be too tired.  We cannot claim that we have already paid our dues. We can not claim that we just want worship to comfort us.  “Take up your cross and follow in my footsteps.”

         There is an old marketing (and political) aphorism:  Will it sell in Peoria?  Because, the thought process goes, if it will sell in Peoria, it will sell in Chicago, New York, Portland, even Raymond, Maine. 

         Well, Jesus was no marketer or politician.  As Lutheran pastor, Edward Markquart reflects, “Jesus was oblivious to these kinds of mechanisms.  Jesus never asked, “Will this sell in Jerusalem?”  “Disciples, do you think that the people in Jericho will buy into this kind of idea?” 

         And today’s Scripture lesson is another one of the many examples of the offensiveness of Jesus of Nazareth, of the radical offensiveness, of the bluntness.  Jesus is willing to tell it like it is.  He is going to tell you up front about the cost of discipleship…. Jesus is blunt.  He is so blunt he is not afraid of offending anyone.” 

         In this passage we read today, the author tells us about real discipleship and what it will entail – and, if we are honest with ourselves, it is not the kind of discipleship we like to hear about, and it is not the kind of discipleship we like to think applies to us.         

         But it is the kind of discipleship we need to hear about – and it does apply to us here in the church.  As the church, we are called like no other group is called to move out beyond these four walls into the world – just like the first disciples.  We as the church are called like no other group to be committed folks who stand up and speak out and take action because of our faith.  In short, Jesus challenges us.  Jesus sets out to afflict the comfortable – and that would be us. 

         And yet, in the midst of his radical offensiveness and bluntness is a whispered hope.  “Do not be afraid,” Jesus tells us.  Three times in this passage he tells us:  “Do not be afraid.”

         As Methodist pastor Susan Bresser assures us, “In the face of persecution, or let’s say in the face of criticism, or in the face of risk-taking for our faith, Jesus says we have nothing to fear. …Don’t be afraid to be challenged, because your faith is your foundation.”

         And so we set forth into the season of Pentecost, into what the church calls “ordinary time,” a time of quiet growth and spiritual self-discovery, a time to reflect upon our willingness to accept the cost of discipleship in our own lives.          

         We set forth with the unending challenge of the Gospel and with the recognition that this crazy idea of afflicting the comfortable surely will not sell in Peoria.  But we also set forth with the whispered hope that our faith in the power of God’s love will be enough, so that we will risk, we will grapple with the tough issues, we will stand up, we will speak out, and we will take action.  

         There is a cost to discipleship.  That is for sure.  Venturing out of our comfort zone is never easy, but oh, when we do, that is where the magic happens.

by Rev. Nancy Foran, Raymond Village Community Church, U.C.C.

         

Genesis 1:1 - 2:4a "In the Beginning"

         There is a story told about Augustine of Hippo, a fourth century church father, bishop, theologian, and saint.  In the tale, we come across this early Christian at the seashore, having taken a break from writing about the Trinity.

         While walking on the beach, Augustine came across a child with a little pail, who was intently scooping up a bucket full of water out of the ocean, then walking up the beach and dumping it out into the sand, then going back to scoop out another pail of water to pour into the sand, over and over again.

         Augustine asked the child what he was doing, and the little boy explained that he was “emptying the sea out into the sand.”  When the Bishop tried to gently point out the absurd impossibility of this task, the child replied, “Ah, but I will drain the sea before you understand the Trinity.”

         Here in church, we are now one-week post-Pentecost.  Traditionally this particular Sunday is labeled Trinity Sunday – you know, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost – or Creator, Christ, and Holy Spirit.

         Trinity Sunday is the only Sunday in the entire church year where we are challenged to reflect on a doctrine developed in the early church rather than on a Biblically based event.  In a way, Trinity Sunday stands alone in the liturgical calendar – not being part of the Pentecost celebration, but also not being part of what we call ordinary time, that is, the weeks following Pentecost.

         Last week, we were introduced to that elusive and hard-to-get-a-handle-on third aspect of the Trinity, namely the Holy Spirit.  Remember?  She showed her most wild and unpredictable self by overwhelming the apostles in Jerusalem with wind and fire.

         This week, in contrast, we will side with St. Augustine.  That is, we will take a step back to get some perspective on this puzzling and frankly mysterious aspect of the threesome and attempt to better understand its role in the doctrine of the Trinity. 

         And I must say that the child emptying buckets of water into the sand is both correct and wise, at least when it comes to me.  I feel wholly inadequate to the task before me.  That little boy would surely drain the sea before I understood the complexities of the Trinity.         

         As I said earlier, the Trinity is a doctrine that is not found in the Bible but rather is the product of long study and contemplation by early church theologians like Augustine.  These church fathers were intent on figuring out once and for all the interrelationship between God the Creator, Jesus the Christ, and that pesky and elusive Holy Spirit that kept cropping up throughout Scripture. 

         However, be assured that this sermon is not going to be a long, involved, and heady dissertation on the three-in-one doctrine.  Rather, we are going to take a closer look at this Spirit piece that tantalized us so last week with its power and capriciousness.  What is it?  What is its purpose?  How did it all begin?

         How did it all begin?  That is always a good place to start.  Begin at the beginning.  Go back to first principles.  That is the advice of both sages and psychoanalysts.  And so…

         In the beginning….In the beginning, God…..In the beginning, God created……In the beginning, the earth was formless and empty, and darkness covered the deep waters.  Earth was a soup of nothingness, a bottomless emptiness, an inky blackness.

         And God’s Spirit – the Holy Spirit - brooded like a bird above the watery abyss.  God’s Spirit – the Holy Spirit - hovered over the surface of the waters.

         And God spoke for the very first time, if eternity, if infinity can have a first time.  And God said, “Let there be light.” 

         And the Spirit brooded and hovered, until just over the waters a faint pinkness emerged, then orange, then yellow, and then there was more, much more than inky blackness.  And God the Creator saw that this astounding moment of creation when order first began to seep into the inky blackness of chaos was good, very good – and the hovering, brooding Spirit agreed.  

         And so the earth as we know it began, according to the author of the Book of Genesis.  However, let’s get this straight.  This story of creation found at the very beginning of our Bible is not a scientific treatise.  It is not an account of history, as we understand history.  

         In fact, if you were to continue reading in chapter 2 of Genesis, you would find a second creation story with Adam being formed from a clod of soil and Eve from one of his extra ribs.  You would find an apple, a serpent, and the Garden of Eden.  Our mass market culture, particularly with its current conservative bent, lumps the two stories together, but they really are separate tales, written at separate times and even by separate authors.

         The best way to think about both of these creation stories is as myths – but myths not in the sense of wildly improbably narratives to be dismissed as false, but rather in the very richest sense of the word.  Any Biblical scholar worth his or her salt would say that these stories explaining how the world began are not literally, factually true.  They would say that the earth was not created 6000 years ago, nor was it created in six days.  There were no dinosaurs in the Garden of Eden.  In fact, they would say there was no such literal place as the Garden of Eden. 

         Rather – at some point about 13.7 billion years ago (give or take a few millenia) all that we now know burst into being in a scene of unfathomable power.  Reformed pastor Scott Hoezee puts it this way:  “The universe continues to expand, hurtling ever-deeper into the far reaches of space. For a long time it was an open question as to whether that expansion outward would continue to push the cosmos outward or whether the universe would reach an outer limit and then, rubber band-like, snap back in on itself.

         But a few years back the Hubble Space Telescope happened to snap a picture that indicates that such a re-collapse of the cosmos may never happen. Instead the tremendous power of that original explosion will continue to drive matter outward. Eventually, however, the universe's energy will become too diffuse to sustain life. Suns will flatten and wink out, space will grow colder and colder until finally the ultimate result of that first Big Bang will be a cosmos spread too thin. If so, then the seeds of the universe's end were sown already at its explosive beginning.”  How amazing is the intermingling of science and religion!

         In the beginning, the Spirit hovered, and God created.  In the beginning, God…. The author of our story did not give a whit about getting the literal facts of creation straight, nor did the earliest listeners and readers care either.  This story is not science.  It is not history.  Rather it is poetry, with its own deliberate and predictable rhythm. 

         As blogger Daniel Clendinen wrote, it “doesn't enlighten us about history, cosmology, or science as we understand those disciplines today. (The stories) never intended to do that, and even if that was their intent, their science and history would have been outmoded shortly after the author wrote. Just like our own science of fifty years ago seems outmoded today — and how rudimentary today's science will look in 3,000 years.

           The Hebrew creation poetry elucidates truths that transcend and even undergird science and history. We call these transcendent truths "myths.”  (In short, they harbor a deeper truth. As) GK Chesterton rightly observed, myths “are more than true: not because (for example) they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.”  You see, there are many layers of truth.

         Our creation story then is a beautiful statement of faith, one written in a very difficult age – and age when the Israelites were most likely still captive and in exile in Babylon.  Jerusalem had been sacked, their homeland overrun. 

         In those times, everyone believed that the conquering nation was the one with the most powerful god.  Therefore, because they had been defeated once again, questions abounded for the Israelites:  Is our God strong enough to protect us?  Has our God abandoned us?  Should we be worshipping another god?

         Our creation story was written to answer those deep and disturbing questions.  It was written as an alternative to all the other creation stories floating around in the pagan world, creation stories of the great empires and powerful nations. 

         Each one of those stories unapologetically included many gods. The Egyptians had the tales of their sun God, Re, and all his minions.  The Babylonians had their epic, the Enuma Elish, where war-faring gods first created and then tried over and over to destroy humanity, where men and women were constantly caught in the conflicts and disputes of a variety of deities. 

         In a way, then, our author had an ax to grind, an argument to make the popular idea of many gods running the universe.  You see, in our myth, our creation story, there is one God, a God who is powerful beyond measure, a God whose spirit hovers over the inky blackness, and suddenly there is light, a God who creates mountains and streams, who creates every imaginable plant and animal, who creates humanity in the very image of the divine,

and who sees everything – all of it - as good, very good – an original blessing - and the Spirit agreed.

         In the beginning, God created…and the Spirit hovered over the waters of the deep.  “If we in the postmodern world struggle to see truth in those art forms, it is not because Scripture is lying. It is because our post-Enlightenment imaginations are impoverished. To call the creation story true is not to quibble with science; it is to probe deeper than any scientific endeavor can take us. It is to acknowledge who we truly are and where we really come from. It is to affirm, by faith, the reality of a good God, a good world, and a beloved humanity.”  (Debra Thomas)

         In the beginning, God.  In the beginning, God created.  In the beginning, God created, and the Spirit hovered…..

         And the Spirit still hovers.  And God still creates and transforms.  That is what we uphold in the United Church of Christ, our denomination.  God is still speaking; the Spirit is still creating and renewing. 

        There is so much we do not understand about God, about Jesus, about the Spirit.  On this day that we set aside to ponder the Trinity, we cannot help but admit to the smallness of our minds and the shallowness of our understanding.  The child on the beach will indeed empty the ocean onto the sand before we fully understand the Trinity.  There is so much about God that is unknowable.  There is so much that will always be a mystery. 

         But what we do trust is that God is not finished with us yet.  God is still creating, and the Spirit is still hovering. 

         Where there is sorrow, somehow God will transform that emptiness into, if not joy, then pain that is bearable – and the Spirit will hover over the inky blackness of our lives. 

         Where there is despair and nothing but darkness at the end of the tunnel, there in the midst of the abyss, the seeds of hope will be born – and the Spirit will hover over the inky blackness of our lives. 

         Where there are questions with no answers, prayers with no answers that satisfy, there in the midst of souls that seem dead, a shaft of light – a tinge of pink - will emerge – and the Spirit will hover over the inky blackness of our lives – guarding, protecting, warming, embracing, enfolding – until God speaks, “Let there be light.  Let there be pain that is bearable.  Let there be hope.  Let there be life.”

         And that is good – so very good.  And we are blessed – so very blessed.  And the Spirit hovers – still the Spirit hovers. 

by Rev. Nancy Foran, Raymond Village Community Church U.C.C., Raymond, Maine

Acts 2:1-21 "#CatchingFire"

  You are welcome to use parts of this sermon, but if you do, please attribute them properly!  

         Did you know that, in the Christian Church, although we acknowledge holidays like Mother’s Day and Thanksgiving and although we shape our worship around the symbols and meanings of liturgical seasons such as Advent and Lent, we only celebrate three great festivals - or feast days - each year?  Only three:  The first one is, perhaps surprisingly, not Christmas, but rather Epiphany.  The second one is Easter.  And the third one is Pentecost, which we are celebrating today. 

         All in all, I would say that we are pretty comfortable with Epiphany because, after all, who can turn up their nose at a newborn baby, especially one showered with gifts from foreign lands?  Easter is also pretty easy to swallow because, as confusing as it may be theologically, it is still on the cusp of spring which, particularly here in Maine, we look forward to even in the depths of winter.

         But Pentecost?  Now that is a tough one.  We may all dress in red and take home a few geraniums, but as far as embracing this festival whose name alone conjures up revival tents and speaking in tongues, for us in staid northern New England, face it, Pentecost is a reach. 

But, I would say, it is an important reach for every congregation to make.  And it all began in one of those proverbial upper rooms in Jerusalem - a larger one this time since it is said that 120 folks squeezed into it. 

         It had been a hectic and mind-blowing few weeks for the apostles.  After all, they had gone from entering Jerusalem with Jesus and enjoying a well-deserved hero’s welcome to watching in horror as their rabbi whipped up a frenzy in the temple.  They had gone from Jesus’ arrest and monkey trial to his torturous and agonizing death.  They had gone from abandoning their leader to hearing the women’s crazy story about the empty tomb.  And finally they had gone from coming face to face with Jesus again to his final words before he sky rocketed to heaven:  “Wait,” he had told them. All in all, it was pretty confusing.

         "Wait? Surely you don't want us to lose our momentum, Jesus."

         "You heard me," said Jesus. "Go back to Jerusalem and wait."

         And so they did.  Not being exactly sure what it was that they were waiting for, they watched the market square below them as pilgrims from all over the Jewish world gathered in the Holy City for Pentecost, one of the three major pilgrimage festivals in the Hebrew calendar. 

Occurring 50 days after Passover (hence the root word – penta – meaning five), Pentecost celebrated the first fruits of the harvest, the portion traditionally given to God/Yahweh in thanksgiving for the fertility of the soil and in hopes of a good final harvest, one that would produce enough food to get them through the winter.

         It was just then, as the apostles marked time by watching the excited crowd assembling and listening to the Psalms they joyfully sang, that the unimaginable happened.  First there was the sound of a mighty wind that came out of nowhere, reminiscent of a freight train roaring by just outside their window.  It filled the room, the author of Acts tells us, and presumably he meant the wind itself as well as the sound. 

         Dust and even small pebbles blew in, all of the debris picked up and tossed about in little tornado-like swirls.  The dishes on the table rattled and shook.  Andrew dropped the pitcher he had been holding.  It broke into a hundred shards of brown and beige pottery even as the water inside it splashed and danced as it ran across the floor.  

         And then came the fire.  Out of the wind and the roar, the fire swept in.  Yellow and red and orange, the flames hovered over the head of each one of them.  They oohed and ahead and pointed at one another, trying desperately to describe what they were seeing. 

         But the words that came out of their mouths?  It was not Aramaic, their native tongue. No – instead they were speaking in all the languages of all the Jews from all over the Jewish world gathered in the market place below.

         That was too much! Unable to keep all that was happening to themselves, the apostles poured out into the streets.  Bonjour!  Buenos dias! Guten morgen!  Ohayō gozaimasu!  They went up to people they had never met, greeted them, and initiated conversations about who they were, who Jesus was, and what they were all about. 

         The more discerning ones in the crowd were amazed.  They pulled out their smartphones, took some video, did a facebook blast, and sent it out as a tweet:  #Crazy Holy Spirit.   The more cynical ones wrote it off to a bad night:  #Cheap Wine.

         That was when Peter got up, Peter who, for most of the time he was with Jesus, could barely string ten words together without putting his foot in his mouth, Peter got up and preached the sermon of a life time. 

         “This is what we have been waiting for,” he declared.  “We are not drunk.  Not because it is only 9 o’clock in the morning, mind you, but because what you are seeing is the Holy Spirit in action.  This is God come to be with us, just as Jesus said, in fact, just as the prophet Joel said: “Pour out, I will pour out my spirit. Earth shall be more than it seems.  Both sons and daughters shall prophesize, young and old will dream dreams.” (John Bell)

         What a day!  By the time Peter had finished, 3000 people were baptized, all of them proclaiming to be followers of Jesus and his way of justice, reconciliation, compassionate love, and peace.  Bam!  God had jumpstarted the church!

         It was quite remarkable really.  The disciples had been such a group of timid souls – filled with questions and fear of the unknown and what lay ahead, quite content to stay in their upper room, to hold on to their memories of a better time –

when they sang the same old songs around their campfires, when they were not challenged to think quite so much about the things they would rather forget, when they could convince themselves that they were too old or too tired to venture into, at best, a hazy future.

         And then came Pentecost.  The Holy Spirit swirled about them, shattering water pitchers along with their dreams of comfort and complacency, creating chaos where there had been order. Bam!  All-of-a-sudden, these frightened and faint-hearted individuals were, as Lutheran pastor James Erlandson wrote, “able to speak of the hope and new life that they had received from Jesus…They were now willing to give up everything that they had only moments before been clinging to... Now their future was in Jerusalem, and to share the good news of Jesus from there to Samaria, and to the ends of the earth – even to Rome, the heart and capital city of the empire which controlled so much of the known world. Most of them would die for their boldness and their witness, but they were no longer afraid of death, or even (perhaps more importantly, afraid) of failing….You can blame it (all) on the Holy Spirit.”        

         Erlandson goes on to ponder whether we in the 21^st century church are not like those first apostles at Pentecost – with many of the same fears for the future and questions about just where we are going.  He writes that ‘our numbers have dwindled since those glory days over 50 years ago, when this sanctuary was packed on Sundays, and there were (tens if not hundreds of) children enrolled in Sunday School (at least that’s what I have heard (he says) from the “old timers”, true or not).

         So where did everybody go? (We wonder): Will we survive? Will our children have faith? Who will pay the bills, and keep the Church going in this place? What will the future bring – do we even have a future?” Or are we just avoiding death?

         There is an email that periodically makes the rounds of cyberspace.  It is entitled “The Safest Place.” 

How to stay safe in the world today:

1. Avoid riding in automobiles because they are responsible for 20% of all fatal accidents.

2. Do not stay home because 17% of all accidents occur in the home.

3. Avoid walking on streets or sidewalks because 14% of all accidents occur to pedestrians.

4. Avoid traveling by air, rail, or water because 16% of all accidents involve these forms of transportation.

5. Of the remaining 33%, 32% of all deaths occur in hospitals.  So above all else, avoid hospitals.

         But…You will be pleased to learn that only .001% of all deaths occur in worship services at church, and these are usually related to previous physical disorders.  Therefore, logic tells us that the safest place for us to be at any given moment is in church!

         Nice thought! However, I would say – especially on this day of Pentecost when we come together to be wowed by both the power and the unpredictability of the Holy Spirit – I would say that this aura of safety in the church is not the best way to be a Christian in our post-modern world, and it is certainly not the best way to be the church.

         Episcopal priest Rick Morley put it this way:  “At Pentecost the Church wasn’t given a mandate to stay-put, set up shop, and get comfy. At Pentecost the Church was given maps and itineraries, and they were sent on their way.  Our call as God’s people is to be wanderers. We aren’t meant to get too settled. Too rooted. Too rigid.  At the very least our spiritual lives are meant to be a pilgrimage, where the dangerous place is the place that gets too comfortable.  We are to be on the move, and our churches are meant to be on the move.”

         Pentecost is not an affirmation of Sunday mornings with no surprises.  Pentecost is not about singing the same hymns we grew up with and having the same musical accompaniment we grew accustomed to decades ago.  Pentecost is not about doing things the same way we have always done them or going back to the way we used to do them in the hope that, if we do, the church will be just like it was 50 years ago.  Actually, that is one definition of insanity.

         A cynic put it this way: "If it were up to most Christians, churches would have lightning rods on their steeples instead of crosses in memory of that time when lightning struck the early church and as protection against it ever happening again!"

         The lesson of Pentecost is that a congregation who has embraced the Holy Spirit is not a congregation who embraces comfort and security.  In C.S. Lewis’ series of books, The Chronicles of Narnia, you may remember that God appears in the form of a great and mysterious lion named Aslan.

One of the children who had stumbled into Narnia and encountered the lion wondered, "Is Aslan safe?"

         "Safe?" a resident of Narnia replied. "No, my dear, Aslan is not safe. But he is good."

         Likewise, the Holy Spirit is not safe, but she is good.  Not safe because we will surely experience the Holy Spirit as disruptive at first, even unwelcome, stirring things up in and around us. No – not safe - but that is how new possibilities are born and nurtured – and that is good.

         One preacher put it this way: "We are often trapped by life…Afraid to leave and afraid to stay, (and so) we move into survival mode. Pentecost marks the descent of the Holy Spirit of God -- a spirit different from our own. It is the hurricane-like wind that, if we have the courage to conspire with it, will rearrange us into people who can be more than we are and do more than we do -- not just for ourselves, but for others.”

        We are at a crossroads in our church – not unlike virtually all churches.  Are we going to live – or are we content with just avoiding death?  Now is the time to really come together to discern where the Spirit is trying to lead us, to step out into the waters of faith, and see where it takes us, to trust that with God all things are possible because God is up to making all things new.  God has poured out the Spirit – not just on those apostles in the upper room in Jerusalem oh so long ago.  God has poured out the Spirit on us as well.  We too can feel the wind.  We too have been given a flame.  

         I believe that God wants this Spirit of Pentecost to inhabit churches – all churches, our church.  I believe that God wants this Spirit of Pentecost to swirl around us, emboldening us, unsettling us, thrusting out into an unknown future.  I believe that God wants this Spirit of Pentecost to transform us and renew us to become the church of the 21^st century.  I believe that God wants this Spirit of Pentecost to blow on the embers of our hearts and cause us to burst into flame.

         It will not be safe.  That is for sure.  But trust that it will be good.  So pick up your smartphone.  E-mail, facebook, tweet - #Catching Fire.  

by Rev. Nancy Foran, Raymond Village Community Church U.C.C.