Monday, June 5, 2017

Pentecost sermon

“A Spirit of Dreams and Visions”

            Pentecost is an invitation to change.  Change, what kind of change?  In the story of Pentecost that we have recorded in the book of Acts, the people have gathered for a traditional religious celebration.  They were doing things like they always did them, they did not expect anything different to happen.  It didn’t take long to realize something new was happening.  Some embraced the moment while others resisted and criticized what they were experiencing.  The Holy Spirit was upon them, the wind blew and people were able to understand each other even though they were speaking in their native tongues.  Something unexpected was happening. 
            The Holy Spirit is like that.  The Holy Spirit can blow into our lives and bring the unexpected and nudges us to change.  As I was spending time reading various writings about Pentecost I found this statement through provoking.  “To get the most out of the wind, you have to give it something to push against.”  We symbolize the Holy Spirit as wind, fire, and a dove.  So leaving fire out of it for a minute, when we think about birds and flying, birds wings are specially designed to get the most out of the wind.  They are designed to create resistance, by forcing some of the air above the wing and some of the air below the wing, in just enough of a change, that the air below the wing creates something called lift.  The wing of a bird, gives the wind something to push against causing the bird to lift up into the air and soar. 
            We can capture energy from the wind by giving it something to push against, such as in a windmill.  I have a leadership book that begins with this question:  Is your church a row boat church or a sail boat?  Once again, it comes back to how are we seeking to capture the wind?  Are we engineered, are we designed, to use the wind of the Holy Spirit to push us forward?  Or are we exhausting ourselves rowing, trying to do all the work ourselves and seeing very little results? 
            Designing ourselves into a sailboat church, creating ways to fabricate sails, involves change.  It involves listening to where the Spirit may be blowing, spending time in discernment and allowing ourselves to be the people the prophet Joel speaks of:  are we a people that have visions and dream dreams? 
            This past year, the Thursday morning group did a study that began with dreaming dreams.   And out of that dream we had the Thursday night Lenten dinner conversation on change.  This was a wonderful time of fellowship, of taking a look at music within our pop culture, and exploring the stages of change, of how we move from knowing we want to change to actually committing to change.  I have not forgotten that I would like to hold a congregation wide conversation about our dreams about our visions for the future and the steps of change we may have to make in order to create the sail that will allow us to embrace the energy of the Holy Spirit seeking to pour out upon us. 
            So how do we create or design a sail?  We listen for where the Spirit just might be blowing.  Just down the road for us, hopefully by the end of the summer, Habitat will begin building new townhomes.  This is an opportunity for us to reach out to the greater community in hospitality as well as finding ways in which our own gifts of time and talent may be used within this build.  We can align ourselves to what is happening around us.  Perhaps the wind that our sail was catching in the past is no longer blowing, or the wind has changed directions and we need to readjust our sail.  I believe the term is Come About.  I am not a sailor but I did learn from sailing with others, that Come About is an important statement, requiring movement from one side of the boat to the other or you just might get hit with the mast. 
            Pentecost is an invitation to change.  It is in invitation to Come About.  It is an invitation to see visions and dream dreams, but dreams will only be dreams unless we put them into action, unless we move from one side of the boat to another.   I did a simple experiment with one congregation on Pentecost Sunday – I put red streamers up on the two side rows of the church asking the congregation to all sit in the middle.  I did not anticipate the pushback I got, the resistance of asking people to sit in a new place within the church for just one Sunday.  Sometimes even the simplest acts of change can awaken us to how stuck perhaps we really are.  I admit I am a person of routine.  I get stuck in my own patterns of behavior.  I do gravitate to the same place to sit when in certain places.  But I am also learning that being flexible, being adaptive, being less resistant but more receptive to change brings results. 

            I was sharing with someone a few weeks ago, that I do truly believe God is at work within the church today, that the Holy Spirit is blowing her wind through our lives, our worship, and our ministries, and that I am open and willing to seek the ways in which we need to adjust our sails in order to allow the Spirit to push us into a new and viable future.   We are in this boat all together, and so we must all discern where to adjust the sails and move together as the Spirit asks us to Come About.