"Breathing Space"

Acts 2:1-21

Sunday, May 27, 2007

The Rev. Ann R. Palmerton

Day of Pentecost

So many aspects of life are beyond our control.  We know we can’t control hurricanes.  We can’t control our health or the well being of those we love.  We can’t even control the orange barrels on Columbus freeways.  The list goes on.  But oddly, we tend not to put the Holy Spirit on this list.

A few years ago the Dean of the Chapel at Duke University, William Willimon, exposed the way churches and pastors attempt to deprive the Spirit of room to operate in worship.  He wrote tongue in cheek:

“The risks and pitfalls of working with the Holy Spirit are so great that it is better in our preaching to work alone!  It is better not to pray the “Prayer for Illumination,” …for this petition … is an invitation to trouble.  The Holy Spirit, in my dealings with him, or her, tends to be pushy, assertive...  It is the nature of the Holy Spirit to want to take over wherever he, or she, intrudes.  The Holy Spirit seems to abhor a vacuum, and frankly, many churches on Sunday morning are vacuous.  That is why we need to keep all of the empty spaces in worship filled – keep talking, keep people going through the motions, keep their noses in the bulletins – in order that there be a minimum of open space, gaps, or “dead air,” as people in television put it.  Such gaps and spaces are but invitations for the Holy Spirit to push into our liturgy.  And if that happens it is difficult to predict where we might be by noon.  Control is one of the chief functions of clergy.  And the Holy Spirit likes nothing better than to take a perfectly decent and decorous Service of Worship and transform it into some sort of heart-happy out of control hootenanny.  If congregations cannot trust their pastors to protect them from the Holy Spirit, whom can they trust?” (William Willimon, “Overcoming Pentecost in our Preaching: Proclamation Without Spirit,” Journal for Preachers 24 (Pentecost 2001).

This morning this pastor offers no protection.  Instead I extend an invitation; an invitation to breathe.  We all need breathing space.  We need it in our daily lives and we even need it in worship; space for the Holy Spirit to breathe upon us.  One Sunday a year, on Pentecost, we consciously invite the Holy Spirit into the center of our worship.  Today, in song and sermon, during prayer and Holy Communion may the Spirit revive our minds and hearts.

When the disciples gathered in that small house on the first Christian Pentecost, they pulled away from the outside world for some breathing space.  They found strength in one another.  They remembered Jesus and all they had learned from him.  They tried to imagine life without the presence of their risen Lord.

Suddenly, a wind blew; unexpected, unannounced, upending objects and also human understandings.  Who is in?  Who is out?  Who is clean?  Who is unclean?  Because of this wind, people from nations who didn’t share a common language began hearing the good news of Jesus Christ from one another.  The defining factors of their lives, the power of geography and political alliances, all fell away before this wind.

In Hebrew scripture “wind” and “spirit” are linguistic twins.  Genesis proclaims that God precedes everything: “When the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, a wind from God swept over the face of the waters” (Genesis 1:2) A wind.  The Holy Spirit.

This wild Spirit wind of God created breathing space on Pentecost.  Slaves spoke up to their masters and women preached and prophesied.  Breathing space enabled old men who thought their dreaming days were over to dream again.  Breathing space enabled young men who thought their lives were too locked in to dream, to start dreaming.  People of all ages saw new visions for how they might live their lives differently for God.

Our Mission Study Self Assessment Team is asking each and every one of us about God’s dream for this church.  What do we see as God’s vision for this congregation?

If old men and young men can dream dreams, so can middle aged pastors!  I have a dream that Broad Street Presbyterian Church will flourish here, on this corner of Broad and Garfield, as a place where tradition is appreciated, where both authenticity and excellence are expected, where people seeking God are met with honesty, generosity, hospitality and challenge.  I have a dream that the young people of this congregation will speak up and share their dreams.  I have a dream that not only will this church move ahead with proven expertise and thoughtfulness in raising money, but also discover the same passion and commitment in raising people.  I have a dream for experiences here that feed mind and heart, that inform our living and working and the stewardship of ourselves.  And I still have a dream that one day, off of the Narthex, in the Conference Room, in that long line of photos of male heads of staff, that one day there will be a female head of staff (not me!)… and of course, for gender balance, one or two male associates.  I do have a dream.  Lots of them.

Breathing space unlocks our dreams.  Maybe you are short of breath.  Where do you need breathing space?  Maybe you hunger for freshening, for a new perspective, for a wind to blow.  Maybe you long for the Spirit of God to blow things upside down in your life, or in the world, or in this church.

This interim time is meant to be a time with some breathing space.  By that I don’t mean that this is a time to take a breather!  Instead, this is a time to breathe deeply, to inhale the Spirit’s life, and to exhale whatever takes our breath away; fatigue or fear or failure.  We can be open to the power of the Spirit during this interim time.  This might mean listening to people; new people whose voices we haven’t heard before.  This might mean inviting people to come address us.  Not just to affirm how strong and healthy we are and how much we’ve done, but also to work with us on where we believe God is calling us.  However great this congregation’s history, however strong our current mission, it is hard to say we’ve maxed out the Holy Spirit’s ability to use us!

The story of the first Christian Pentecost makes an extraordinary claim about God’s breath in our lives and in the world.  Pentecost means we cannot safely relegate God to sometime “back then” or over “there” – to many billions of years ago in creation, or to acting a couple of thousand years ago in the Middle East.  We cannot shelve God to an “on call” status, waiting for us to request divine aid.

Pentecost means that God took the initiative to intervene in the lives of all sorts of ordinary people in ways they could not possibly expect, ways that were beyond their control.  And if God does that – even if God can do that, or sometimes does that, then we can never be completely confident again about just what God might do next.  The whole world suddenly becomes alive, saturated with Spirit, filled with greater hope and greater possibilities than we ever could have imagined, but also stripped of tidy predictability. (Marguerite Shuster, “All Bets are Off,” The Living Pulpit, April-June, 2004).

William Willimon was right, the Holy Spirit can turn things upside down.  But what the words I quoted don’t fully convey is that the Spirit does this not because the Spirit is arbitrary, but because the Spirit is also the Spirit of Christ.  Some have called the Holy Spirit the shy member of the Trinity.  The Spirit does not seek attention, but rather operates to make Jesus known, blowing as a witness to the one who was crucified, died and was raised.  The Spirit longs to set things right because Jesus promised that the first would be last and the last would be first.  The Spirit breaks down walls because Jesus longed to unite people, not divide them.  The Spirit blows away our prior understandings of God because that is what Jesus does to our own ways of thinking about God.  We cannot tame our “wild and wonderfully free-Spirited God.”  (Leonora Tubbs Tisdale, “The Wind that Blows the Doors Off, Journal for Preachers, Pentecost, 2003).

At Pentecost the upending wind of God created a community that was more inclusive, more loving and more focused on outreach than anyone could have imagined.  After Pentecost the disciples no longer were clutched by fear, but driven by joy; no longer withdrawn and isolated but full of God’s love and hope, so much so that others were attracted to their faith and light.

When people walk in a new direction in a life of love and service to Jesus Christ the Holy Spirit has worked.  When a sermon moves you, or a moment in your week feels like a “God moment” to you, when the truth of the gospel comes home to you, the Holy Spirit has worked.  When you volunteer in the Food Pantry and an east side neighbor who has very little in terms of money or status, offers you a blessing that blessing carries the breath of the Spirit.  The Holy Spirit saturates life, the holy in the ordinary, blowing in the church, blowing in all creation, gentle as a sigh, violent as a hurricane.

Come, Holy Spirit, come wild Spirit wind of God.  Blow in our world, in this church, in us, at times and in places and among people we do not expect.  Fill us with your mysterious, divine breath of life.  Amen.

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