"I'm not gonna light your tongue on fire -- TODAY." -LizL.
I've been thinking about Pentecost a lot recently.
Later last week, I came across an entry on the "When love comes to town" blog -- "Pentecost, peace and grace..."
I don't like the color-and-image-heavy formatting, so I am definitely not replicating it all here for you, but here's an excerpt:
In looking at the Archives, I saw a post titled "What if God was one of us..." and wondered if it was like this post (responding to an Onion piece), but actually...
Excerpt:
***
I wasn't that taken with most of the Pentecost stuff from actual Pentecost Sunday this year, but one of the things I liked best was from LizL's Children's Time. She said she had been trying to program her husband's radio alarm clock but it wasn't working, and she asked the kids what they might try if they were having that problem. One kid said, "I would check if it's turned on or plugged in." And indeed that was exactly the problem. She said, "It's very important to plug in electrical appliances before you try to program them."
It actually reminds me somewhat of the Pentecost blogpost I quoted above.
During Coffee Hour, LizL. and I joked that she should have a red sparkly stole. When I was telling Carolyn this before CWM, I said it made me want to obtain/create a red sparkly shirt with flames on it to wear for Pentecost next year, and she said, "If you wear that, I'll wear my red sparkly bra...under something see-through." I said, "It's a deal!"
***
At the 3pm organ recital at FCS UCC, I sat in a pew by myself like I do. Laura Ruth summoned me to sit with them. So while she was off doing stuff I read the pieces of paper she had left, which was her reading copy of her day's sermon, "See My People Through." From the end of the sermon:
Later last week, I came across an entry on the "When love comes to town" blog -- "Pentecost, peace and grace..."
I don't like the color-and-image-heavy formatting, so I am definitely not replicating it all here for you, but here's an excerpt:
How does John’s gospel for today put it?***
“I still have many things to tell you,” Jesus said, “but you can't handle them now. But when the Friend comes, the Spirit of the Truth, he will take you by the hand and guide you into all the truth there is. He won't draw attention to himself, but will make sense out of what is going on… indeed, out of all that I have done and said. He will honor me; he will take from me and deliver it to you. Everything the Father has is mine. That is why I've said, 'He takes from me and delivers to you.
And then he concludes with these words: Fix this firmly in your minds: You're going to be in deep mourning while the godless world throws a party. You'll be sad – very sad – but your pain will turn into joy.
Did you hear that? God will be sending Christ’s friend to us – the Holy Spirit – the Spirit of Truth – and the Spirit will come to us and comfort us so that our pain might be turned into joy. And that is what an adult Pentecost is all about, it seems to me: learning how to live and nourish the Spirit within and among us so that we might experience Christ’s joy.
Pentecost, writes Jim Callahan, is not the birthday of the church; that probably happened on Good Friday when Jesus was hanging on the Cross and pleading with God that we might be forgiven for sins we couldn’t even name or imagine. No Pentecost is God’s reply to Good Friday – a day of great joy, power, fire and spirit – that isn’t reserved just for Jesus alone but is poured out upon all of the faithful disciples. How does the book of Acts put it?
When the Feast of Pentecost came, the faithful were all together in one place. Without warning there was a sound like a strong wind, gale force—no one could tell where it came from. It filled the whole building. Then, like a wildfire, the Holy Spirit spread through their ranks and they started speaking in a number of different languages as the Spirit prompted them. There were many others staying in Jerusalem just then, devout pilgrims from all over the world. And when they heard the sound, they came on the run… because one after another heard their own mother tongues being spoken. They couldn't for the life of them figure out what was going on, and kept saying, "Aren't these all Galileans? How come we're hearing them talk in our various mother tongues? Are they drunk?”
Strangers became kin folk on Pentecost. Frightened disciples became fearless evangelists on Pentecost. Women and men became equals on Pentecost. And everyone who experienced this revival could only talk about it like a banquet – or a beer fest – because the sadness was gone and joy filled the air. “In the midst of a numbingly sober and sour world, these women and men looked like a bunch of happy drunks,” Callahan writes, “because at last they knew that they were God’s beloved.”
Every last one of them experienced from the inside out that they were beloved by God just as Jesus had promised. What’s more they knew deep within that the heart of God was love – “not just in poetic theory, but in palpable fact.” They experienced, too, that in belonging to God they were not alone – they belonged to one another – in community. And the joy this gave them not only filled their hearts, “but gave them the inspiration to go out into the streets to heal and redeem.”( Read more... )
In looking at the Archives, I saw a post titled "What if God was one of us..." and wondered if it was like this post (responding to an Onion piece), but actually...
Excerpt:
Well, my friends, in case you haven’t guessed, today we’re going to be talking about Jesus: specifically I want to consider what the Cross of Jesus Christ has to tell us about God’s love and our humanity in these early hours of the 21st century. Theologian Douglas John Hall writes that: The cross of Jesus Christ represents simultaneously a high estimate of the human creature, a grave realism concerning human alienation, and the compassionate determination of God to bring humankind to the realization of our potential for authenticity.I don't really see that the Cross per se tells us these things, but I do affirm these things.
Did you get all that? In the tongue of popular culture, we’re going to think about three essential insights in the Cross:
+ God’s deep love for us as beings created in the Lord’s image
+ The profound pain we cause through our alienation
+ And the relentless compassion of God’s grace
Are you with me? Love, pain and grace – or as Hall writes – our experience of being created, fallen and lifted: a new/old encounter with the Cross of Jesus Christ for our generation. So let’s see where this conversation might take us, ok?
***
I wasn't that taken with most of the Pentecost stuff from actual Pentecost Sunday this year, but one of the things I liked best was from LizL's Children's Time. She said she had been trying to program her husband's radio alarm clock but it wasn't working, and she asked the kids what they might try if they were having that problem. One kid said, "I would check if it's turned on or plugged in." And indeed that was exactly the problem. She said, "It's very important to plug in electrical appliances before you try to program them."
It actually reminds me somewhat of the Pentecost blogpost I quoted above.
During Coffee Hour, LizL. and I joked that she should have a red sparkly stole. When I was telling Carolyn this before CWM, I said it made me want to obtain/create a red sparkly shirt with flames on it to wear for Pentecost next year, and she said, "If you wear that, I'll wear my red sparkly bra...under something see-through." I said, "It's a deal!"
***
At the 3pm organ recital at FCS UCC, I sat in a pew by myself like I do. Laura Ruth summoned me to sit with them. So while she was off doing stuff I read the pieces of paper she had left, which was her reading copy of her day's sermon, "See My People Through." From the end of the sermon:
When we are done, when we can’t go on any longer, when we are all dried up, when we’re toast, when we have put down the bags, spent our last dime, when we have woken up in someone’s bed and we don’t remember whose, when we have alienated our last friend and relative, when we have drunk everything in the house including the mouthwash, when we have stolen from those we love and been caught, when we are too ashamed to live anymore, when we have sold our birth rite, when we can’t remember our essential sweet goodness, when we have sold out our friends and family, when we have been conquered, when someone not interested in our welfare is occupying our heart, our homeland and our minds, God will blow life back into us.
Even though we are a heap of desiccated bones, if we watch and notice, God will bring us back to life. God will help us to reassemble ourselves, to grow into the people God made us to be, humans whose essence is the same essence of God.
And more than that, and it is the story of that day of Pentecost, if we remember to ask for the presence of God, she will come and not only save us, but give us the gifts we need to heal and to become like Jesus, bring justice, she will set us free to be fully human, fully free.