SPECIAL DAYS: Pentecost Sunday
May 23, 1999
LESSONS: Psalm 104:24-35; Acts 2:1-21; 1 Corinthians 12:3-13; John 7:37-39, NRSV
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INTRODUCTION:
Luke and Obi-Wan are in a Chinese restaurant having a meal.
Skillfully using his chopsticks, Obi-Wan deftly dishes himself a large portion of noodles into his bowl, then tops it off with some chicken and cashew nuts.
All this is done with consummate ease you'd expect from a Jedi Master.
Anyway, poor old Luke is having a nightmare, using his chopsticks in both hands, dropping his food all over the table and eventually himself.
Obi-Wan looks at Luke disapprovingly and says, "Use the forks, Luke."
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MAIN BODY:
FAITH MATTERS: Holy drama, by Eugene H. Peterson(1)
WHEN I WAS an adolescent, one of the visions that filled my head with flash and color and glory was the French Revolution. I actually knew very little about it. Some vague impressions, incidents and names mixed haphazardly in my mind to produce a drama of pure romance, excitement and the triumph of righteousness. I imagined something spiritual and blazing, something extravagant and glorious.
I pictured idealistic, devoted men and women marching through a corrupt, sinful world with the ringing affirmations of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity on their lips, and purging that world with their righteous ideas and actions. Heroism and villainy were in apocalyptic conflict. The guillotine was an instrument of the Last judgment separating the sheep from the goats.
Thus my imagination, untroubled by facts, spun a wonderful fantasy. When I arrived at college and looked through the catalog of courses, I was delighted to find a course in the French Revolution and signed up immediately. I had to wait a year to take the class, but that only heightened my appetite.
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Nothing of what I expected took place. The professor was a slight, elderly women who dressed in dark, shapeless silks and spoke in a soft, timorous monotone. Although she was academically well qualified, as a teacher of the French Revolution she was a disaster. She knew everything about the French but nothing about revolution.
Sitting in that college classroom day after day, I never sensed the drama of revolution. Ill-fated Marat, murderous Charlotte Corday, the black Bastille, the bloody guillotine, venal and opportunistic Danton, giddy Marie-Antoinette, oxlike Louis XVI-all the players and props in that colorful and violent age were presented in the same platitudinous, tired and pious voice. This professor presented each character as if he or she were a neatly labeled specimen, a butterfly on a mounting board on which a decade or so of dust had settled.
Today I realize that I knew practically nothing about the French Revolution when I entered that class. But I was right about one thing: revolutions are events that turn things inside out and upside down. Revolutions are titanic struggles between antagonistic wills. Revolutions express the desire for a better life of freedom, promise a better life of freedom. Sometimes they make good on their promises. More often they don't. But after a revolution nothing is quite the same again.
After taking that class, however, the French Revolution seemed to me only a great bore. Say the words "French Revolution" and I yawned.
A few years later I became a pastor and preached weekly to a congregation. I was astonished to find men and women in my congregation yawning! Matt Ericson went to sleep every Sunday; he always made it through the first hymn but ten minutes later was sound asleep. Red Belton, an angry teenager, sat on the back pew out of sight of his parents and read comic books. Karl Strotheim, a bass in the choir, passed stockmarket tips to Luther Olsen. One woman gave me hope-she brought a stenographic notebook with her every Sunday and wrote down everything I said. At least one person was paying attention. Then I learned that she was getting ready to leave her husband and was using the hour of worship to practice her shorthand so she could get a job.
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These were good people, nice people. They were familiar with the Christian faith, knew the Christian stories and showed up on time for worship each Sunday. But they yawned. How could they do that? How could anyone go to sleep ten minutes after singing "Blessing and Honor and Glory and Power"? How could anyone sustain interest in Batman when Romans was being read? How could anyone be content to practice shorthand when the resurrected Christ was present in word and sacrament?
It seemed that I had a whole congregation of saints and sinners who knew everything about the Christian life except that it is holy, a blazing and glorious, extravagant and spiritual resurrection life. They knew the word "Christian" pretty well, and identified themselves as Christians. But holy?
I knew I had my work cut out for me. I had supposed that my task was to teach and preach the truth of the scriptures so that people would know God and how he works their salvation; I had supposed that my task was to help people make moral decisions so that they could live happily ever after with a clear conscience. I had supposed that my task was to pray with and for them, gathering them in the presence of a holy God who made heaven and earth and sent Jesus to die for their sins.
Now I realized that more than accurate learning was at stake, more than moral behavior was at stake, more than getting them on their knees on Sunday was at stake. Life was at stake--their lives, their souls. People can think correctly and behave rightly and worship politely and still live anemically.
That's when I got seriously interested in the word "holy," what Gerard Manley Hopkins described as "the dearest freshness deep down things." I started looking for signs of the holy, evidence of the holy, the energy that creates the holy--holy lives, holy places, Holy Spirit. What surprised me, and continues to surprise me, is how much of it there is around. It was like the French Revolution. Once I was rid of my fantasy-induced disappointments and adolescent romanticizing and had shaken loose from the perceptions and perspectives that explain everything about life except that it is alive, God-alive, I was on my way.
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Billy Graham, HOW TO BE BORN AGAIN.(2) Reminds us that Trying's Not Enough
There was a man who was searching, perhaps resisting even as he searched, who came to a large revival. Here is his description.
"It was here, I believe for the first time in my life, that I heard the claims of Jesus Christ presented, simply and authoritatively.
"At the end of his talk the speaker invited those who wished to know more to come to the front of the auditorium."
He went and met the evangelist and they talked.
He said, "Just as I was about to go out the door, I was confronted by a man who looked me in the eye and said: `Are you a Christian?'
"Strange question," I thought, putting on my best Sunday school smile and saying, "Oh yes, I think so."
"Are you a Christian?"
"Well, I'm trying to be."
"Ever try to be an elephant?"
The astonished man was led by the other one to a chair where he explained who Jesus Christ was. That he died for his sin. That everyone needed a savior. That Jesus alone could save. That Jesus alone could bring meaning to life. That through his resurrection, Christ brings power to those who believe.
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Jimmy Carter, in his autobiography WHY NOT THE BEST?(3) shared the incident that made him aware of his lack of evangelical fervor.
Each year the congregation of Plains Baptist Church holds a one-week revival service. In preparation for the week, the leaders of the congregation would venture into the community inviting non-churched members to the services. As a deacon, Carter always participated in this exercise. Carter would always visit a few homes, read the Scriptures and have prayer, share some religious beliefs, then he would talk about the weather and crops and depart. Carter wrote: "I was always proud enough of this effort to retain a clear conscience throughout the remainder of the year."
One day Carter was asked to speak at a church in Preston, Georgia. The topic he was assigned was "Christian Witnessing." As Carter sat in his study writing the speech, he decided he would make a great impression upon the audience by sharing with them how many home visits he made for God. He figured in the fourteen years since returning from the Navy he had conducted 140 visits. Carter proudly wrote the number in his script.
As Carter sat there, he began to reflect on the 1966 governor's election. As he campaigned for the state's highest office, he spent sixteen to eighteen hours a day trying to reach as many voters as possible. At the conclusion of the campaign Carter calculated that he met more than 300,000 Georgians.
Sitting in his study the truth became evident. Carter wrote in his autobiography, "The comparison struck me--300,000 visits for myself in three months, and 140 visits for God in fourteen years!"
How proud are you of your evangelistic efforts for Jesus? How many towns have you journeyed to as a missionary on the Lord's behalf? Have you inflated your figures to clear your conscience and soothe your soul? Have you been honest and realistic with yourself when accounting the work you have done? Ask yourself, is Jesus satisfied with your commitment? Ask yourself, "Have I substituted excuses for effort?"
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HOW BADLY DO YOU WANT IT?(4)
The story is told of the young man who approached the philosopher, Socrates, and said, "Socrates, teach me what you know." The great teacher looked at the young man and said, "Do you really want to know all that I know?"
"Oh, yes, teacher, I do," the student replied.
"Walk with me for a time," Socrates said. So they walked for a while in silence. The learned philosopher slipped his arm around the young man's shoulder and guided him off the path and into the shallow waters of a lake. the young man thought that was a strange way for the philosopher to teach him what he knew, but after all, he was Socrates, so the student decided to go along with what was happening.
They continued to walk into the water; it rose to their ankles, then knees and hips, until finally they were standing in water to their shoulders. Suddenly the arm that was around the young man's shoulders tightened around his neck and pulled him underneath the water. This was a very strange way to teach the student what he wanted to know. But this was Socrates, after all, so he submitted. He grabbed a breath before he went under, so he wasn't bothered for the first fifteen or twenty seconds, but after about thirty seconds he wondered when Socrates was going to let him up. He gave him a signal to indicate that he had been under long enough and wanted to get out. Another few seconds, that moment, Socrates pulled him out of the water, dragged him to the shore, and began to revive him.
When he caught his breath, angry and confused, the student looked into the face of one of the greatest philosophers of all time and said, "What was that all about?"
Socrates looked into his eyes and said, "When you want to know what I know as much as you just wanted to live, then you will know."
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CONCLUSION:
Raymond C. Kratzer, in "Hang-up of Unreality," tells the following story.(5)
During an altar call in a revival meeting, as people were standing with bowed heads, a good Christian prayed earnestly for another person near her who needed to go to the altar.
She prayed: "O God, put Your finger on them and cause them to go forward."
The Lord seemed to speak back to her: "You are My finger."
1. Eugene H. Peterson is the author of Leap Over a Wall: Earthy Spirituality for Everyday Christians, CHRISTIAN CENTURY December 2,1998, p. 1152.
2. Trying's Not Enough --Billy Graham, HOW TO BE BORN AGAIN.
3. WHAT ABOUT YOU? - Jimmy Carter, in his autobiography WHY NOT THE BEST?,--Dr. Ronald Love
4. Skip Ross with Carole C. Carlson, SAY YES TO YOUR POTENTIAL (Texas: Word Books, 1983).
5. Raymond C. Kratzer, "Hang-up of Unreality," Preacher's Magazine.
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