Finding our way in the wind: a Pentecost sermon on Acts 2:1-21
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The summer before my senior year of high school, my friends and I had gathered in a friend’s modified garage for a movie marathon. It was early August in lower Michigan and it was stiflingly hot. Luckily, the garage had air conditioning, so we had all the doors and windows closed to keep out the humid, sticky air. After an afternoon of watching dark clouds roll in and praying they’d release some much-needed rain, it finally began to sprinkle. We didn’t think anything of it, just glad that maybe some of the heat would disperse for a while.
Suddenly, the power went out and a huge wind swept through the garage, shaking open the doors and windows. The large tree in the backyard dropped some branches. My friends and I grabbed each other and huddled together. The wind was so loud, it was hard to tell if it was the train-like sound of a tornado or something else.
Then, just like that, it was over. My friend’s parents yelled for us to come inside from the back porch, and we hurried in the dark, stepping over tree branches. Later, after the microburst had passed, we would see the downed power lines tangled in the branches that we narrowly avoided.
This is the memory that I feel viscerally when I read the story of the wind blowing through the house at Pentecost.
Pentecost is one of my favorite days of the church year. I love leaning into God the Spirit as breath, the Greek is pneuma, meaning breath or spirit and also relating to the soul. I love God breathing into the earth-people in Genesis, the Spirit entering them and giving them life. And I love the fire--fierce and powerful and prophetic, and also a bit silly, when in the story of Pentecost related through Godly Play, we say “oooh, ah! It’s hot!”
But the dimension of Pentecost I can’t shake this year is the wind. Not a gentle breeze, kissing cheeks or breath in our lungs, but a powerful wind that sweeps through a space, disorienting everything, slamming open doors and windows, knocking photos off the walls, utterly transforming it. Over the last year, our Godly Play storytellers have shared stories in worship as part of our Time with Children. You may remember some of our desert stories, told using the beautiful box of sand that Bob Sittig made for us. The language for Godly Play with the desert stories is specific: “When the wind blows, the shape of the desert changes. You can lose your way.”
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Reminding us that Pentecost imagery of wind and fire recalls the theophany in the Hebrew Bible, African American theologian Dr. Willie James Jennings writes, “The similitude of the wind to the Spirit’s coming suggests not only its absolute power but its absolute uncontrollability. No structure is stronger than the wind, and there is nothing beyond its touch. How much greater is the reality of the Spirit than this weak metaphor?”
So today, even though we know this metaphor can only get us a fraction of the way towards understanding, today let us think of how wind changes things. Moves things around. Even moves us around. Picture trying to walk into the wind like in slapstick movies where a person uses an umbrella to shield themselves from the gale as they try to keep to their path. The wind is literally changing how a person behaves. This is what happens when we encounter the Spirit. As the Godly Play stories say, “You can lose your way.” Or, perhaps, we can find it.
The Holy Spirit is perhaps the most mysterious part of the Trinity. I know not all of us in this congregation are Trinitarian, but bear with me for a moment. First, we have God, the Creator. God is known to us through the Bible as “Father,” “Mother,” “Creator,” “Rock,” “Water.” Then we have Jesus, the one we call Christ, God’s special child. We read about the stories of Jesus’ life in the gospels. Then we have the Holy Spirit, called the “comforter” and “advocate,” given to the people after Jesus’ ascension. The Holy Spirit is the main character in the book of Acts, invisible and yet acting upon each situation and leaving her mark upon each story recounted in those pages. The Spirit, gifting the fruits of love, patience, kindness, gentleness, self-control, and more, in Galatians 5. The Spirit, giving those who love God power that they had never dreamed of. Even knowing what we know about the Holy Spirit, we are left with more questions...more space to wonder…
To fully enter into wondering about the Spirit on this day of Pentecost, we must practice letting go. Let go of the need for certainty, of the desire for clean-cut, straightforward, well-reasoned answers. Let go of our carefully-laid plans and drive toward efficiency. Professor and theologian G. Lee Ramsey Jr. says we should lean into the mystery of Pentecost, particularly important now because our “consumer-driven and technologically saturated world” has been “drained of mystery.” There is truth here. In a capitalistic world where efficiency and productivity are valued more than human dignity, there’s not much space for Mystery. This is, at least for me, and perhaps for some of you, why Godly Play has been so impactful--here is a place where we experience awe, where we ask questions, where we carefully consider answers that work just for now and wonder about new answers we’ll find later.
Wonder. Mystery. Let go. Allow yourself to be swept along in the gusts of the Spirit’s relentless, uncontrollable velocity.
But how do we know when the Spirit is moving? How do we know which way the Spirit is nudging us? How do we know what the Spirit is telling us? Friends, I believe that we never can know for sure with our heads, but we must try to make space to know in our hearts. To do this, we must let go, or at the very least, be prepared to loosen our grip on our egoes, on our reliance on intellectual surety, on our obsession with control.
Dr. Jennings reminded us that the Spirit is uncontrollable. The Spirit does not pay attention to human-made boundaries of geography, cares little for ego or status, dismisses self-preservationist fears and apathy, and denies complacency. The Spirit moves where she will, causing, as the Scripture says, “your children will prophesy, your young ones will see visions and your old ones will dream dreams.” The Spirit is all-encompassing, as the Scripture tells us that “they were ALL together in one place,” the Spirit filled “the ENTIRE house,” a tongue of flame rested “on EACH of them.” No one is left out of the Spirit’s movement. She moves each and every one of us.
Truth be told, whenever I have felt the Spirit move me, it has felt unsettling. It makes me queasy. It is even scary, a little. It is a fire in my belly, a catch in my throat, a rising blush on my face. It is a hand suddenly outstretched, even when trembling. It is a hard conversation I know I must have. It is the spaciousness in the anxiety of not understanding everything. It is the grace to forgive myself and the grace that moves me forward to learn.
Again, Dr. Jennings writes that the Spirit “...is love that cannot be tamed, controlled, or planned, and once unleashed it will drive the disciples forward into the world and drive a question into their lives: Where is the Holy Spirit taking us and into whose lives?” Now, I don’t want you to hear this only as pertaining to some preconceived notion of evangelism popularized by fire-and-brimstone Christians. For those of us in the USA, especially those of us who are well-meaning progressives, it can be hard to hear words about taking the Holy Spirit into people’s lives without conjuring images that bring up shame, frustration, pain and also that make some of us proud to say “I’m not THAT kind of Baptist.” (I know, I do it too) Instead, I want you to hear Dr. Jennings calling out that the disciples were given the Holy Spirit and had to decide what they wanted to do with it. Did they try to control Her movements and keep themselves safe and cozy in their little enclave? Or did they follow the bursts and blusters of inspiration as the Spirit showed them where the world needed more inclusion, more justice, more deep-dwelling love?
Beloved church, that is the question the Holy Spirit presents for us on this Pentecost day: Where is the Holy Spirit taking us? Not, where was the Holy Spirit taking us last week, or last year, or where was the Spirit taking the founders of this church in 1869. Not where is the Holy Spirit taking him or her or them or that group over there? Where is the Holy Spirit taking US? You and me, siblings, this church! Where is the Holy Spirit taking US? Dr. Jennings says that Pentecost is “a revolution of the Spirit always poised to unleash itself at the slightest moment of faithful waiting and yielding.” At the slightest moment of faithful waiting and yielding, the Spirit waits, ready to blow into action, to rustle the leaves off the trees in the autumn of complacency and make way for new growth, ready to shake the foundations of the institutions so that space would be made for what the Holy is doing next.
Seattle First Baptist Church, Where is the Holy Spirit taking us today?
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Friends, to answer this question, we must prepare our hearts for listening to the Spirit. We cannot prepare by knowing enough or thinking enough or even praying enough. We cannot prepare by belittling others or elevating ourselves by telling only the palatable parts of stories or by pretending to be someone we’re not. We cannot prepare by holding selfishly to the way of life that keeps us comfortable but disenfranchises others.
We must prepare our hearts by letting go: letting go of our need for perfection, our shame about the pieces of ourselves that we dislike, that we are scared of, that we hide from others. You are not perfect, I am not perfect, and we as a church community are not perfect. That’s to be expected--we are human! What matters is how we answer the Spirit’s call.
We must prepare our hearts by letting go of our tight grip on all we possess in the world, scared that if we relinquish it just a little we will lose it. We won’t. It’s ok. Let go. We prepare our hearts by taking a breath (go on, do it with me, a full one.) By taking another breath, a Spirit breath, reminding us that God breathed into the first human beings and breathes into us now, giving us life and being. The same breath that enlivens each of you also enlivens me, flowed into and out of the lungs of our ancestors and will be breathed into the lungs of the generations who come after. With each breath, the Spirit reminds us of her presence.
We prepare our hearts by wondering, by exercising our curiosity, by attempting to learn something new. We don’t know everything, and we don’t have to pretend we do. We are allowed to learn, allowed to gain more understanding. And when we know better, we do better.
We prepare our hearts by showing up, ready to work, even if we don’t know specifically what task is at hand. Even if there’s no step-by-step plan or schedule, we can try, just try, trusting that the Spirit will lead us in the right paths.
We prepare our hearts by joining with others who seek what we seek: the way of justice, mercy, and compassion for all people.
It is not easy to give ourselves over to the guidance of the Holy Spirit, particularly for those of us raised in USAmerican culture who have been taught that our value is in what we produce and the status we gain and how we keep up the appearance of having it all together.
It is not easy, but it is worth it. We who in God live and move and have our being do so because the Spirit’s power is at work within us.
Dear ones, the Spirit cannot be boundaried by rules and regulations, by walls and borders, by societal norms and legalese. She doesn’t schedule a meeting or show up on the most convenient day for our lives, prim and proper, knocking sweetly at the door. The Spirit blusters and blows around us, sweeping the windows open and rattling the pictures on the walls, moving in our lives and even moving us. The Spirit is heard as our descendents prophesy about a world without state violence that is possible if only we would make it so; as children see visions of dismantling white supremacy and ending misogyny and homophobia and transphobia; as elders dream dreams of a safe, healthy, vibrant planet to pass on to the next generations. Yes, the Spirit sometimes speaks in quiet whispers, but also in shouts during rallies and marches and cries without words, calling us in the voices of our siblings at the margins to listen, listen, listen.
On this Pentecost day, as the Easter season has drawn to a close and the green, growing days are ahead of us, we remember how those disciples were gathered all in one place. We remember Jesus’ promise that the disciples would not be left orphaned after he was no longer with them in person. We remember how the tongues of flame lit on every person’s head and how God spoke to the people in their native languages, not in the language of the Empire, but in the language of grandmothers in the kitchen, the language of songs and stories passed down from generation to generation. Those gathered in the house were surprised by the Spirit, and surely those who heard them preaching and teaching in all the languages of the world were also surprised. Today, we, too, are part of this story of Spirit, as we practice opening our hearts to be swept into the narrative, ready to be surprised by the power of the Holy.
Again, I quote Dr. Willie Jennings: “Those gathered in prayer asked for power. They may have asked for the Holy Spirit to come, but they did not ask for this. This is real grace, untamed grace. It is the grace that replaces our fantasies of power over people with God’s fantasy for desire for people.”
Friends, God desires us. God wants to be with us, to be Emmanuel, God-with-us. God wants us to follow the wisps and the flurries and blusters of the Spirit, bending us as trees in the breeze but never uprooting us. God desires us to have this grace, this real, uncontrollable grace.
So let go, friends, and get swept along in the Spirit. Let go, Church, and get swept along in the Spirit. Let the Spirit’s curiosity guide us as we wonder toward what God is doing with us next. Yes, like the wind, the Spirit changes the shape of our lives. Maybe we will lose our way...but oh, Beloveds, what if we find our way?
May it ever be so. Amen.
This sermon originally preached May 23, 2021 for Seattle First Baptist Church.
