Pentecost Acts 2:1-21; Romans 8:22-27; John 15:26-27, 16:4b-15 May 31, 2009 Today is one of the three most important days in the Christian year. Christmas and Easter are the other two. I go to thinking that I’ve seen plenty of Christmas and Easter pageants, but I’ve never seen a Pentecostal play. I don’t mean a play by people from a Pentecostal church. I mean a play depicting the event of Pentecost from the New Testament. We all know about Christmas plays – a Joseph and a Mary and a manger surrounded by little angels in white with halos made of Christmas tree tinsel and shepherds, and wise men, and familiar scripts followed by familiar carols. We’ve seen plenty of Passion plays – depicting the Last Supper Jesus had with his disciples. Pontius Pilate and Herod and soldiers at his trial. Jesus’ mother with a few others huddled at the base of the cross, and at the end of the play, an empty cross or an empty tomb magically adorned with Easter lilies, letting the audience know - without words - of the resurrection. But I’ve never seen a Pentecost play. I can picture it… Jesus at the ‘last supper’ table with his disciples, breaking bread and wine, washing feet, telling them he must leave them…close curtain. Then, the curtain opens and the disciples are hidden up in a room with Jesus no longer present. The room is subdued, dark and still. We see the disciples and Jesus’ mother with some of the women and some others, motionless ,with heads bowed in prayer. Then, behind stage big fans are turned on full blast and one of the more rambunctious kids blows into a microphone, creating a rush of violent wind, his teacher praying that he doesn’t break into what sounds like missiles firing. Then, from the rafters come down thin sheets of red and orange and yellow feather-weight fabric being wiggled back and forth from above. And as these tongues of fire shimmer among the disciples, tongues of flame rest on their heads. The kids in the play had begged to each have one of those long lighters, so they could pull the trigger and flick the switch and hold the flame over their heads. But, instead they each don headpieces with battery powered orange and red Christmas lights. A safe, fireproof, tongue of fire resting upon each of their heads…curtain close. Curtain open and they all are out in the street to see what is happening to the world. They talk excitedly about the wind and the fire in their hidden room. People from other countries, who speak other languages and are in town for a huge festival, hear them talking. The foreigners are dressed in all kinds of international costumes that would put the cast of the Nutcracker to shame. The foreigners realize that they understand what the Galilean disciples are saying, like we wish would happen when we go overseas. We speak English and a Russian understands us. We go to an Italian opera and understand every word. Then, typical of people of every land – some of the foreigners are amazed and want to understand while others sneer and start the rumor that the disciples have been hitting the bottle a little early in the day. And the big finale is when St. Peter steps up to the front of the stage and gives a long speech while his parents are in the audience praying that he remembers his lines. If this were a Catholic play, St. Peter would have the pointed hat of a bishop on representing the tongues of Holy Spirit fire and himself as the first pope. If this were a Baptist play, St. Peter would have on the bathrobe costume of an ordinary disciple and he would say (as verse 38 of chapter 2 reads) “Repent and be baptized every one of you!” The ending for us Episcopalians will be found, of course, somewhere in between. ------ The vestry and I had a retreat yesterday. To start with we spent some time together reading a portion of the book of Proverbs. [Chs 28-29] We read together, had some silence, shared insights. There were many good insights. One theme emerged for us that I hear in the event of Pentecost. It is about moving from hiding away to stepping forth; from a fundamental fear of the world to a strong, sure trust in God. It’s about presence, being present – to God, to yourself, to the world. A sign of the Holy Spirit in our lives is having the quality of presence. Unlike children on a stage, wanting to run around in artificial wind and play with fire we naturally step back from strong winds and hot flames. Once I was volunteering at a nursing home. We were each assigned a resident to visit with. A couple of us got the idea that it would be nice to wheel the two residents we were visiting outside. The day was warm with only a slight cool breeze blowing. I was so surprised when we got them through the front doors and out into the fresh air, they became fearful and covered their faces and begged to be taken back in. They had become so accustomed to the still, stale, air inside the facility that the wind blowing across their faces scared them. But we are actually called to step into the wind and flame of the Spirit. 19^th century Russian Orthodox monastic – Theophan the Recluse: The principal thing to have the light go on within you, even in the midst of the storms of life, is to stand [still] with the mind in the heart before God, and go on standing before God unceasingly day and night until the end of life. When we are standing before God, present to God, we can stand anywhere in this life without fear. As for those flames, - from Michael Ramsey: Flames of fire, and burning, too. Light, warmth, and burning, too. The Holy Spirit will burn us. If we are to have vision, and if we are to have warmth of love, we must be exposed to the pains of burning. All that is unloving, selfish, hard, must be burnt out of our existence, burnt to destruction, burnt to ashes. The Spirit will burn into the core of our being in the ever painful process of disclosure, of penitence, and of divine forgiveness. Only by such burning can our heart be fully exposed to the warmth and our mind be fully exposed to the light. There is no seeing and no warming without the burning. It is thus that we realize the saying of Jesus Christ found in one of the apocryphal documents: “He that is near me is near the fire.” Another thing we talked about has to do with those same flames. In the play, in the biblical account of that Pentecostal event, the presence of the Spirit rests on ‘everyone in the room’. Not just Peter, or not only the twelve, but on everyone who was present. That the reason the Church still exists, the reason Grace-Calvary carries on… To be a place where people can come with their storms and all, and stand with others before God and find that still Presence. To be a place where people don’t have to come already trusting, but can have a safe place to feel the perhaps unfamiliar wind of the Spirit- and can trust more and more it’s movement in their lives. A place where people can open up and allow the flame of the Spirit to purge and bring light to their hiding places. And then with the power of the wind and the flame, we can go out, fully present, to a perhaps bewildered world, that may think we’re a bit off our rocker, or that may wonder what it is that has so enlivened us.