St. Paul’s United Church Pentecost Sunday, May 27, 2007
Who Has Seen the Wind? – Rev. David Mundy
Acts 2:1-21 John 14: 27-29
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Which Canadian
novel do you think has made it on to more Canadian lit high school courses than any other? I
don’t have any hard evidence, but I’m guessing it is W.O. Mitchell’s 1947
classic, Who Has Seen the Wind. It is
about a boy named Brian who grows up in a small Saskatchewan farming town
during the “Dirty Thirties.”
There is a surprising amount of God talk in this novel. When he is very
young Brian confounds the Presbyterian minister’s wife by asking if you can
smell God or see God. It is her husband who patiently, kindly
points out that God is visible in the wink of a butterfly’s wings and in
flowers and birds and people.
And then there is the wind, which blows its way through the narrative.
There is the wind which animates the poplar trees and tosses the laundry on the
line. There is wind which whistles around young Brian’s house while he
lies in bed at night and wind which piles drought-dried soil against fence
lines.
There is also a violent storm which appears to be invoked through prayer
to God. One of the other characters in Who Has Seen the Wind is a crazy
old man with a long white beard who is nickname Saint Sammy. Sammy lives in an
old piano box at the edge of town and collects the labels out of underwear. His
companions are horses he has named after Old Testament women such as Naomi and
Hagar, although there is no Deborah.
Saint Sammy is both ridiculed and feared by the children of the town,
including Brian. He is always praying, calling down God’s wrath from the east
wind. No one really pays much attention to his wild predictions. One day though
Brian looks on while Sammy listens for God
From the darkness all around, scarcely distinguishable
from the throating wind, the voice of the Lord came to Saint Sammy. “ Sammy, Sammy, this is her, and I say ontuh you she is
dandy! Moreover I have tried her out!...I have uprooted Dan Tate’s windbreak,
tooken the back door off of the schoolhouse, turned over the girl’s toilet...I
have blew down the power line in four places: I have wrecked the sails on
Magnus Petersen’s windmill!”
Was this the voice of God speaking to and through Sammy? Stranger things have happened when we look in
the bible. W.O.. Mitchell knew what he was doing when
he mixed God and wind together. The first line of his paragraph of introduction
to the novel says “many interpreters of the Bible believe the wind to be
symbolic of Godhood.” This is absolutely true. One of the most dramatic
stories of what we call the Old Testament is of the prophet Ezekiel, a wild and
wooly guy if ever there was one, having a vision of a valley of dry bones which
represent the tired out and dried up people of God. God speaks through Ezekiel
not unlike what happens with Sammy, telling him to call on the four winds to
breathe into the bones so that they can live again.
We are a slightly crazy bunch, ourselves, showing up here from week to
week to worship a divine being we have never seen directly or heard audibly. We
hope that we feel the breeze of the Holy Spirit in our midst,
although we aren’t always sure whether it isn’t the hot air emanating from the
preacher. What a truly remarkable thing
that we do this, and yet we consider it normal.
This is Pentecost Sunday and today we listened to the story of the
improbable, windswept birth of the church in a room in Jerusalem where the
followers of Jesus had gathered for the Jewish festival called Pentecost. No
one could have predicted what happened and we can’t really be sure about what
transpired, even after we hear about in scripture. The writer of the Acts of
the Apostles attempts to explain the unexplainable when he writes that there
was a sound like that of a rushing wind and something akin to tongues of fire
when the Holy Spirit comes. The people present began speaking in other languages
and when they leave the security of their gathering place passers-by are
surprised and perplexed as much by what they can as what they can’t. They do
“sneer “ in the NRSV, and “mock” in the King James
version and “make fun” in the Good News.
The Spirit isn’t nearly finished at this point. Peter, the disciple who
had denied Jesus and run for cover the night of his fateful hearing before
religious authorities was now willing to step forward, boldly. Peter preached a
sermon with “bold urgency” (The Message) which speaks of dreams and visions for
people of all age. Drawing on the tradition of scripture, he offers a hopeful
future in Christ.
Who has experienced the powerful wind of the Holy Spirit? We don’t actually see the wind, except in its
effect and only then if we are willing to notice its subtle influences, along
with the grand entrances.
Sadly, the church is often the least adventurous gathering in town.
Church folk are inclined toward “tried and true” rather than innovation or
adventure. We tend not to want to be shaken or stirred. In Who Has Seen the
Wind the group of teenage girls conducts a Candlelight Carol service which
the minister of the Presbyterian church feels is
lovely. Then he gets a letter from a woman in the congregation who protests
vigorously because the use of candles, which made the service dangerously
“Catholic.” When the minister takes the letter to the Session he discovers to
his dismay that the members side with this negative outlook, not because they really agree but because
they don’t want trouble.
Sure, we can laugh and shake our heads at this picture, but it all too
accurate. Through the years I have served a number of congregations and there
have always been new people who have entered into community life, some of them
with very little church background. These newcomers are often eager to make a
contribution but they often find resistance to even the simplest change.
Eventually they find a way to ask me if the church is always so cautious and
change-resistant.
Some of them stay and learn to fit in. A very few get angry and leave,
while others quietly leave. Too often I end up gently defending the
conservative approach and end up wondering why. It becomes harder all the time.
We generally accept that some people are touched by the Spirit of God
and led to improbable places in order to share the gospel and serve. We are
happy to celebrate those choices by others and if we think they are a little
loopy – well it’s a good loopy. We can
say “bon voyage and Godspeed”to Deb Laforet and her family as they embark on
ministry in Saskatchewan because there is a precedent, a tradition, for doing
this. Better them than us, many of us might think. Yet we are all called to the
risky and rewarding business of being Christ’s people. Loren Mead has been
writing on the transformation of the church for decades and he offers this:
The Holy Spirit has always represented
something unruly to the people of the church. People who love God and love the
church are always discovering that the Holy Spirit paints outside the lines we
draw to order our church life.
Who has seen the wind? Even though we cannot tame or control the wind
which is the Spirit of the living, unpredictable God, we can choose how we will
interpret and respond to that manifestation in every age and circumstance. Do
you hear this? We choose! There is a book called The Practicing
Congregation: Imagining a New Old Church which uses a painting by artist
Leonard Freeman called Lord Build This House. What is so wonderful about this image, from
my perspective, is that it can be interpreted in different ways. It shows a
church building being lifted off its foundations and the people inside have
raised their arms. This could be a snapshot of destruction, the church
destroyed by a windstorm, the way buildings in a Kansas town were turned to
kindling by a tornado a couple of weeks ago. The people
inside might be raising their hands in supplication, crying and asking “why
us God?”
Or they may be lifting up their hands in praise. Actually, I
corresponded with the painter and as you might imagine it is the latter. There
is a message that God cannot be contained in the four walls of any building,
and that when the Spirit comes a power is unleashed which is unpredictable and
enlivening and ultimately hopeful. The
church is never a building. It is the
enlivened. Spirit-blessed
people of Christ who understand that they have a mission for
their community and beyond.
Deborah, you may already know that Stoughton Saskatchewan, your
home-to-be, is
not far from Weyburn, where W.O Mitchell was born. Which
means that it will probably be breezy much of the time! You may need to
put some lead weights in the boys’ shoes to keep them on the ground, although
I’m confident that Jeff will be fine! No doubt you are already hoping and
praying that your first congregation is windswept by the Holy Spirit, so that
God will be at work and Christ will be honoured and glorified. We will pray for
you and trust that your gifts will be used to their fullest in that community.
Thank you for answering Christ’s call.
We would appreciate if you will also pray for us as well, that we have
the courage to be the church as Christ would want it to be in this place in
2007. In the gospel lesson for today Jesus says farewell but not goodbye to his
followers.
“Peace I leave with you: my peace I give to you. I do not give as you as
the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be
afraid.” This is a blessing for Deb and
Jeff and Evan and Joshua.
It can
our blessing as well, and an invitation into the fullness of life which Christ
offers. Who has seen the wind of the Spirit? We experience that refreshing
breeze, if we are open and ready. Thanks be to God!