St. Paul’s United Church Sunday May 31, 2009
The Day of Pentecost
Not In Kansas
Anymore! – Rev. David Mundy
Acts 2:1-21
Romans 8:22-27
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Have you noticed that areas
of the United States have entered into tornado season? It’s not that we are
immune from tornados here in Canada but the southern and Midwestern states seem
to get whacked far more often than we do. When you see the devastation on the
news, aren’t you glad to live in Canada, winter and all? And don’t you want to
say these folk “never buy a home in a trailer park!” It’s
right up there with watching the horror movie where the power goes out in the house”don’t go down those stairs to find out what’s
making that noise!”
The ultimate tornado story is
not the one we see on the television news in the aftermath of a storm. It is
the classic movie which is celebrating its seventieth birthday this year, if
you can believe it. In 1939 MGM released a fantasy musical which proved to be a
bit disappointing for the studio because it wasn’t the blockbuster it hoped
for, although it became a beloved classic over time. It’s theme song Over
the Rainbow was almost cut from the film, but it has stood the test of time
and been voted the best movie song ever.
I’m referring, of course, to
the movie The Wizard of Oz, based on the children’s novel called The
Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum.
In the event your memory is a
little hazy, a teenage girl from Kansas named Dorothy Gale (get it, gale) lives
a rather mundane and frustrating life on a Depression-era farm. The producers
filmed this part of the story in black and white to emphasize the ordinariness
and grittiness of Dorothy’s life. Then the tornado comes, and everyone on the
farm except Dorothy makes it into the shelter. She goes back for her little
dog, Toto, and soon they are airborne, house and all, and make a crash-landing
in the fantastic land of Oz, which is in marvellous technicolour.
Out of this chaos begins a
wonderful, confusing, meandering, sometimes scary adventure. Dorothy meets up
with three companions, a tin man looking for a heart, a scarecrow looking for a
brain, and a cowardly lion looking for courage. All Dorothy wants is to find
her way back home, but she has to learn a lot about herself and life before
that eventually happens and she must go on a journey
before that can happen.
We listened to an impressive
spiritual tornado and adventure story today, don’t you think? Today is
Pentecost Sunday, the day we celebrate the anniversary of Christ’s church. This
year we are celebrating the 175th anniversary of the St. Paul’s
congregation with a series of events, but this morning we are recognizing
nearly 2000 years of Christian witness in the world.
In the book of the Acts of the Apostles we
discover that many weeks after the resurrection of Jesus, his followers are
gathered in the city of Jerusalem while the Jewish festival of Pentecost
unfolds around them with people in the city from all around the ancient world.
We are told of a mysterious event in which the sound of a rushing wind and a
vision of fiery tongues of flames invades the place
where these followers are gathered. Not only that, they begin speaking in a
variety of languages which are understood by those who have assembled
It’s interesting that this
story of the Christian Pentecost event begins with what appears to be chaos,
which certainly grabs everyone’s attention, then moves to Peter’s stirring
message about Jesus who is the Risen Christ, God’s fulfilment, our Saviour.
Peter argues that people aren’t
drunk at nine in the morning, which means he hadn’t been around our “neck of
the woods” on a Saturday morning! Then he launches into a powerful sermon which
explains that what people have witnessed is not cacophonous babbling but the
genuine work of God’s Spirit of life and transformation. This is an “equal
opportunity” Holy Spirit who can work through the young and old, male and
female, the weak and the powerful. As we read on in Acts, we discover that this
new, energized movement is called, simply, The Way.
Do we listen to this story
and hear that God’s Spirit or Breath, or Wind is active in our midst, “faithful
and untamable” to use a phrase from our United Church
Song of Faith?
Are we looking forward to
what God is willing and able to do in Christ, or do have a sense of fatalism
that the best days of the church in our context are over?
I was born in the
mid-nineteen fifties and I’m so old that I came into a world of black and
white, at least in terms of television, and colour came along a decade later! I
grew up during a time of church vitality in Canada where no one gave much
thought to our survival. Churches were so full that people just kept building
new ones and adding onto old ones. But,
by the time I was ordained to ministry in 1980, the United Church was in a
decline that made many people anxious. During the past thirty years I have had
many conversations with people who hark back to the “glory years” of baby boom
kids and expanding buildings and plenty of optimism about the future. Some of
those people just like to engage in a bit of nostalgia, and why not? We all
have our “good ol’ days” memories. The conversations
that make my eyes roll back in my head are the ones where the reminiscing is
really an indictment. If we would just do things the way they were done in 1959
we could have a perfect church in 2009.
Ministers have a hard time
telling folk that they get angry, but I get angry when I hear this, because
there is next to no recognition that we live in a different time which may
actually require different approaches and ways of living the way of Christ. I’ve
been tempted to respond with “Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas any more!”
Nostalgia, for all its simple
pleasures, can also be crippling, if it renders us unable to move forward. The
truth is, it seems to me, that we are going through the difficult birth pangs
the apostle Paul tells us about into a new experience of hope.
When we were at the meeting
of Bay of Quinte Conference last weekend we watched a
videotaped message of encouragement from our moderator, the Rev, David Guiliano. We haven’t heard a great deal from David during
his term as our elected spiritual leader, because he had a cancerous tumour
removed from his head, but he is an impressive man of faith. In the video he
mentioned that he had read a question in the United Church magazine asking
members what three priorities he would set if they were moderator. He thought
“I am the moderator!” so he offered us his three priorities for our church
as he came to the conclusion of his term.
They are:
A
movement from hanging on to letting go. Moderator Guiliano
encourages us to let go of narrow ideas of being the church, including those
that have to do with bricks and mortar.
A
movement to a more radical kind of hospitality. David offers that we need to become as concerned
about getting the church out into the world as we are about getting the world
into the church. I suppose we could call this having a sense of mission to
encounter Christ in the world.
A
movement in our spiritual journey from anxiety to trust.
We
need to trust that God is with us, leading us on, that we need to risk . . . we
know that sometimes the journey is difficult and even painful, but by trusting
that God has prepared for us a promised land or a new way of being in community
together, we can move forward with joy . . .
What a courageous message
from a guy who is still dealing with the spectre of life-threatening cancer.
Of course every journey takes
us somewhere eventually. Do you remember how Dorothy’s time in Oz ends? The Tin
Man gets his heart, and the Scarecrow gets his brain and the Lion isn’t a
coward anymore. Except
we don’t see any organ transplants or some death-defying feat to accomplish
this. They come to a realization that these qualities are actually
within them. And the three of them put together really represent the
combination of intellect and emotion and courage we would all like to have.
Then a breeze sweeps Dorothy and Toto back to the familiar surroundings of
Kansas where everyone kindly figures that her outlandish story is the result of
a bump on the head.
On this Pentecost Sunday, the
birthday of Christ’s church, we can celebrate that God’s Holy Spirit, the
Spirit of the Living Christ, moves in our midst to
give us the brains and the heart and the courage to do what we are called to do
for this moment. If we are timid and if we convince ourselves that we don’t
have the resources, spiritually and financially, to do what God asks us to do,
then we will fail. I will leave it to you to decide whether you need a brain or
a heart or courage. Personally, I could use all three!
I’m tempted to invite you to
follow the Yellow Brick road but in fact we are all encouraged to follow
Christ, as our Redeemer and Friend. As a denomination that is committed to
justice and compassion we can live boldly is this moment and into the future.
Rather than living in black and white, we can live this dream for Christ’s just
world in technicolour. That said our technicolour world is right here in Bowmanville
and the communities we represent. Day by day we will live out our witness as
people of God the Creator, and Christ our Redeemer, and the Holy Spirit our Sustainer.
I encourage you to ask what
it is you are willing to do to be a part of the glorious journey. Maybe you
will start by putting aside the excuses that you are too young or too old, or
too new, or too worn-out, or too uncertain about your faith. The invitation is
to you, today, as Christ’s followers in this room and in this moment.
So with that in mind, we will
conclude with this litany by Garth House.
We remember that your church
was born in wind and fire,
not to sweep us heavenward
like a presumptuous tower,
but to guide us down the dusty roads of this world
so that we may life up the downcast,
heal the broken,
reconcile what is lost,
and bring peace amidst unrest.
Garth House, Litanies
for All Occasions