“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.
