Acts 2:1-21
Pentecost: June 8, 2014
It happens more that I would like
to admit…I’ll be doing dishes, or some such thing, while Lydia is in another
room. I will realize that I haven’t
heard a noise for a while – never a good sign – so I will call out to her,
“Lydia, what are you up to?” I honestly
don’t think this question, yelled from another room, has ever elicited any
other response than “nothing.” Upon
further investigation, that may or may not be true.
This question – what are you up to
– is at the heart of this Pentecost passage.
We can certainly understand the
question – the question, the Judeans asked that day. They had heard the violent wind. They were astonished by the disciples
speaking in their own languages. This
was not an ordinary day. They were, the
author tells us, perplexed and amazed.
And so, the bible tells us, they ask the question we all would ask: What does this mean?
But this is not a question that is
just asking for an explanation of the current events – though I’m sure they
wanted to know that as well. They
understood that this was bigger than just that moment…they were asking one of
those “big” life questions – maybe even the ultimate question. I think they were asking, “Is God real? Is there meaning to this whole being human
thing?”
I think this because someone helped
me with some Greek this week and I learned that “What does this mean?” the
question they asked that day, is not exactly how the Greek reads. A more literal translation is “What does this
intend to be?” They are asking a
question of intention, purpose, goal. Is
there any intentionality in this world? To
me, that’s the same question as whether there is a God. If there is no intentionality built into our
creation – nothing calling us to more, to better, to new – then what exactly is
God?
Does our universe have a movement
or direction or generative intention apart from our own individual thoughts?
We actually hear this question all
the time, I think…usually not phrased this way, but we do hear it. In our case we are not hearing violent winds,
seeing tongues of fire, hearing people speaking in tongues, but when you look
at our world scene today, it could probably rival the chaos, mystery, and frenzy
of that day. When we look at our world
we see celebrations, suffering, a cacophony of languages coming together,
peace, war, dictatorships, people dying for lack of health care, people being
saved by caring healers. The good, the
bad, the ugly, and the unbearable…and it’s all coming at us all the time…and
it’s not always easy to make sense of it.
And while I think people can, and
do, ask, “What does this all mean?” I think the question that lies underneath
is “What in the world is God up to in the midst of all this? Are we headed anywhere – is the creation
headed anywhere good? Is there purpose
in the world?
I think we hear this question asked
many ways. We hear it in resignation and
apathy. If the world is headed for
destruction, people suggest, then why try?
I’m responsible for myself and my life, not for the lives of
others. What’s the use of voting,
participating in the community when things seem to never change? And on and on.
I think we also hear this question
asked when people talk about gritting their teeth, bearing the pain of this
world, and waiting for the good stuff in heaven. The “sweet by-and-by” theology. We’re just visiting here for a while – and
God is not here…God is in heaven. So
when I die, then I get to see God.
I think we hear this when people
work morning, noon, and night but can’t articulate why they do what they do or
what their purpose is. We hear it when
folks devalue themselves or others. When
people don’t think about how their gifts might contribute to the flourishing of
others. It’s not selfishness,
exactly. It’s that we don’t trust that
there are connections between us and creation, us and each other, us and the
larger purpose that transcends us, and our time and place. Who I am is accidental – I can capitalize on
it, but it has no inherent purpose relative to all of creation.
All of that is asking the question
of whether or not there is meaning in this world – a purpose, or direction, or
movement toward good. Whether or not
there is a purpose within each of us – something we are meant to be…created to
be.
This question – what does the
spirit intend – is everywhere, and it would be great if we – as people of faith
– could give an answer.
So, let’s start by seeing how Peter
answered. One thing Peter makes clear is
that there is, indeed, intention in all this movement of the spirit. The spirit is full of energy that wants to be
something…that compels creation toward something. And that “something” is not only good, it is
the fulfillment of everything:
Wholeness. Many times we hear
this called “salvation,” but word carries more baggage than a 747. I think what it means is
wholeness/fullness/completion/healing for all that is broken. It’s wholeness for creation, for each of us,
for the universes, for everything God has created and continues to create.
Wholeness is not intended just for
some, not for just humans, not just for Christians – we are all intended for
wholeness. We are all intended to
fulfill that which God created us and the world to be. The creation is to become that which God
intends. No matter how broken, how
awful, the world is, the message of Pentecost is that everything is intended to be whole. That intention is built into the fabric of
creation. That intention is God. God is real because there is purpose and
something we are moving toward, and God…the spirit…is what moves us.
God doesn’t sit somewhere and make
good things happen – or bad things for that matter. God is the good in the world – the possibility
of good in the world. And that good,
that possibility, is everywhere,
yearning to be realized in the midst of the suffering and darkness. God, as intention – as purpose – as hope, is
present everywhere.
That’s the hope we can proclaim – hope in the face of an
entirely rational question: Where is
God…what is this God up to in this broken, odd, seemingly random world? The hope is not that God will magically fix
things. The hope is that in every place,
every person, every atom, quark, and grain, the divine is present pulling and
pulling and pulling everything toward what it is intended to be. And this is true apart from us and our
actions – or inactions, our understanding, our consciousness. We are needed to help realize this hope – to
help move everyone and all of creation toward what it is intended to be. But the promise, the hope, the potential, the
purpose is already there.
I was thinking about child soldiers
in countries like Sierra Leon and Sudan.
We can look at that situation and say, without difficulty, that is
hopeless. It is certainly a violation of
everything we know to be good. Where is
God when a child is kidnapped and forced to kill…sometimes family members? Where is God when a child’s life is ended
abruptly and turned into the most disfigured version of what human life is
meant to be?
Proclaiming hope in this situation
is almost impossible – in fact it is almost cruel or insensitive. We sound like Polly Annas: “Don’t worry, God will take care of you.” But what we can do is claim that because God
is present in the child, in the adults, in the wars and villages, we know there
is more to see – more to envision – more to work towards because things are not
how they are meant to be. Each of those
children is created to be something totally different, and there is power and
energy yearning to be realized.
Hope means we can paint pictures of
what is meant to be, and those pictures offer us and others the imperative,
give us the motivation and the purpose, to participate in the movement of the
spirit…the movement of God…toward wholeness.
Hope is saying that God is not absent in those places of great
suffering…we are. God is there as goodness
– the goodness that permeates everything in our creation and yearns to be fully
alive, and if we can see that, we can work to bring that goodness to
fruition. If we don’t believe, it’s hard
to give ourselves, our time, our resources, and our energy to change what is
happening.
Hope means instead of resignation,
instead of saying things will never change, or that child’s life will never be
okay again, we say, “Peace is possible in this region – and it looks like
people seeing one another as fully human.
It means everyone is treated as a child of God – the destroyed and the
ones destroying. People are cared for in
a way that nourishes them and leads them to peaceful lives, not lives of
kidnapping and war.”
We as people of faith, paint
pictures…or as the prophet Joel says, we “dream dreams, and see visions,” and the
we “prophesy.” We tell people what we
know about God’s intentions in languages and words they can understand – and we
offer people a picture of not only what can be, but what should be – what is meant
to be. We don’t let people resign
themselves to the way things are. We
don’t let ourselves resign ourselves to the way things are. We believe that there is good – potential
good – in every place, and our task is to name it, and then participate in
realizing it along with the work and movement of the spirit of God.
And we need to proclaim this…this
hope…this intention because it can be compelling. It doesn’t, in and of itself, of course, make
things happen or make the visions come true.
But it has the power to unleash both ours and others’ imaginations in
such a way that we can do nothing but work to make it happen. It’s something like when Kennedy declared
that we would be on the moon in a decade.
Just saying it didn’t make it true, but he captured the imaginations of
people and it unleashed power, energy, abilities…and in this case it
happened. A self-fulfilling prophesy of
sorts.
Now I don’t know if going to the
moon was part of the intention of creation, but we do know that wholeness is –
healing, soothing, caring, reconciling.
We should be so bold in our pronouncements of what is possible – what
God intends. We should capture people’s
imaginations in such a way as to unleash power, energy, resources, abilities
that will work in concert with the spirit to bring about the dreams we dream
and the visions we see.
What does the spirit intend? Is it up to something? Is there a purpose or movement toward
something other than this seeming chaos and randomness? Our faith says “yes!” Our faith says yes, and we have to shout that
from the rooftops. We have to ask, what’s
our word of hope for someone serving a life sentence without parole? What’s our dream for our environment as we
watch polar icecaps melt? What’s our
picture of what God intends for our church in a country where religion is on
the decline? What’s our vision of a
world without hunger? What do we know
about the inner worth and purpose of every human being? What can we imagine for a world in which war
is seen as a solution? What does
wholeness – salvation – look like, and are we willing to lay it out there? Can we risk looking foolish. Can we risk committing ourselves to the cause
of wholeness?
The spirit has intention; it is
full of potential and purpose. And that
spirit is poured out on us, and on the world, filling creation with potential
and purpose. It is tugging us toward
fulfilling God’s intention. It is giving
us purpose and direction. As people of
faith we can trust this; we can proclaim this in dreams and visions, and we can
continually shape our lives to be in concert with this spirit moving toward
wholeness. Amen.
