Pentecost

I've said this before, but I'm say it again..  sometimes we church professional-types give the impression we're running   -or at least working in-   a museum.   A museum of faith and important church stuff, for sure... but still a museum.   There's some important things in it.  And there's things we can learn from it.    But as interesting as it may be, we sometimes fall into the trap of making this all sound like it's behind glass, behind exhibit windows; interesting for sure, providing us food for thought often, but not necessarily impacting our lives enough to change too much of it.  

Sometimes we can talk about these events, situations and stories as if they are history, accessible enough to study, but not accessible enough to live in - as if they have little connection to us today aside from our inherent interests in the historical and cultural.  

Now I like history, I enjoy learning about it.  It's cool stuff, there's some good background and information there - about people, and events, etc.   And we church professional types can do the same with this church stuff; we can explain about some past events, we can fill-in some gaps (about the culture at the time), we can give you "the rest of the story" - as Paul Harvey used to say.  We can even share the theology of the time in question; about what they thought about God, about what was important about religion and God at the time, about how all this fit into the politics of the day even.   Like it's some museum piece...  like it all sits in it's own time and place, uncontaminated by us - uncontaminated by our world, with our problems and issues, lacking our hopes and dreams, our desires to connect to a living God.  

We can go down the "museum" hallways, and see the various exhibits.  Going down the first wing, the "Hebrew Wing", we can see where it all starts;   our first exhibit - the Story of Creation!    Here we see the wonder of creation from the perspective of the early Israelites... as they explain how things came to be, from nothing at all, to seeing everything spring into existence.

We can see Genesis Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 side by side here... we can see the differences in the stories, maybe the cultures and peoples that influenced the stories (Chapter 1 story is heavily influenced by the Babylonian story of creation -- Enuma Elish.   The Israelites most likely learned the story from the Babylonians when they were in captivity after 586 BCE).  There's more interesting stuff... but really, all this was a way of explaining where everything came from, who they where as a people, and.. most important of all... who this God of theirs was!   This God had created everything... everything....    and, just as important.... this God liked the creation!  

We move down the hall a little bit from the creation stories, and we come to the stories of Abraham...  Abraham - the father of the covenant story!   Here we would see the story of this creative and marvelous God calling Abram out of the tent... this old man... and asking him to look up - and with little air or light pollution, Abram would have been able to see the brilliance of the Milky Way galaxy displayed above him.   He would have looked at the hundreds, thousands, millions of stars and lights and colors, and marveled at it all.  

And this God would have said to him - Abram, can you count the stars?   I will make you the father of a great nation... and your descendants will be as countless as the stars you see above you!

And his name was changed from Abram to Abraham!   And it would explain somewhere in the  exhibit that a name-change reflected some change in the person- some deep, personal, spiritual change.  And his wife's name was changed too - from Sarai, to Sarah, for they would both be instrumental in this plan God had for them and their descendants.      

And this exhibit would also have to include Abraham's son Isaac, and his grandson, Jacob.   These also were part of this deeply spiritual and human story of faith.   Jacob, the flawed, messed-up, marvelous creature.   There are places in the story, in the exhibit, where he gets the better of life, and places where life gets the better of him.  

And there's that one story of Jacob....  the story that wraps up all the other ones...  the moment where the stars lined up, the moment where the veil between the material world and the spirit world parted just a little, and Jacob is there, alone, on the rivers edge...  in the dark of midnight battling with his demons...  wrestling with his angels.   He finally comes to terms with his life!    After all these years!   And he get's blessed!    And, like his grandparents, his name is changed from that day forward!   Jacob becomes Israel... "One who struggles with God...  and prevails"!

Each exhibit holds a myriad stories.   Each story holds its own treasures.  Each story expresses the brokenness of life, the wholeness of being, the wonder of the mystery, the simplicity and complexity of being human, the triumphs and failures, the hopes and faiths of the characters.  And intermixed, intertwined within all that is the story of God's active and living spirit weaving in and through each story.

And we come to the Christian exhibits.   These start with the Gospels... Matthew, Mark, Luke and John -- where the story of this person Jesus starts.   The first Christians wrote these accounts, an act of faith really, as a means of trying to make sense of this man, trying to answer the question of who the man was for them.    

Mark starts out with Jesus at his baptism.   No birth narrative here, just a man coming out of the desert to be baptized, being prepared to do Gods work.  In that moment, the Spirit falls from the heavens - is thrown really - plummeting into Jesus......  that same Spirit that moved on the disciples on the day of Pentecost!    Here he is the son of God!    

Matthew and Luke felt they needed to make more sense of who Jesus was, to explain further, so they added birth narratives.   In these stories, his sonship to God was recognized at his conception and birth.   He was indeed born the son of God!

John, on the other hand, pulls his divinity further back... further back...   "en arche..."   "In the beginning".   John connects the words from the very first exhibit - from Genesis - to this one.  "En arche..."    "In the beginning.."  These are the first words of the Greek version of the Hebrew Scriptures...   "En arche..."    They are the first words in the Gospel of John... "En arche"   "In the beginning.... was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."

The story of Jesus unfolds in each telling....  each Gospel...  each letter,  "or epistle" - as the exhibits would explain.  The exhibits would continue with the epistles from the disciples - from James, from Peter, from Paul, from John... each sharing their take on what was important to their respective communities.  There they would - the letters.  Well, not the originals - those are lost to history.   But the exhibits would indeed contain some of the oldest copies for sure!    There they would be... for all to see (and read, if we knew koine Greek).   We'd be able to glean who they were, what they found important, what they thought, what they believed about God and Jesus.  

And the Pentecost story would be there too.  We'd be able to read about the disciples being flooded with the power of this Spirit.

And finally we would end our tour in the museum with the letter of John... the revelation of John to the church community in Rome.   He was writing to them in their time of persecution under Emperor Nero, encouraging them to remain strong and faithful!    In the end, my dear brothers and sisters, God will prevail!      It's all there in the museum for us all to read and see and experience... interesting, fascinating...    behind glass.  

It's all there... and when our tour is finished for the week, we leave the museum and go home...
Sometimes we pastors give the impression this "story" of faith is done, that it's closed....  that the power of God is safely contained behind glass...   that the Spirit is revealed only in the stories and characters revealed in the texts.    If I've ever given you the impression that this is all part of a museum - as interesting as museums are! - if anyone has given you this impression.. we have done you a dis-service!

Folks, as interesting as this all may be, these are not museum pieces!  As historical as these stories may be, the qualities and passions they reveal are not artifacts of history!   The human-ness and divinity they reveal are not limited to one slice of the human experience frozen in space and time!    

The power of the stories aren't limited to historical events and theological points.   The spirit that weaves in and through the stories... is still moving... in  and  among  and through     your stories....  your lives.....  

These stories are not old... they are ancient!     They are not limited to one people in one part of history!     They are not museum pieces....     they are the seeds of faith and mystery that birth in us every day.   They are not behind glass....  they are interwoven in our DNA....

This is not a museum... you are not customers, or the "public"...   and I am not a curator.    We are children of God... hearing stories of faith, and living stories of faith... and the Spirit -- that same creative and energizing Spirit from the stories -- is with us as well.