On Fire

On Fire (2018)
Scripture: Acts 2:1-21
Given on my First Sunday at Cahaba Springs Presbyterian Church

One of the first things I noticed about this space, the very first time I walked in here was the art that adorns the walls throughout the building—little explosions of color against a blank canvas of taupe. My parents, especially my mother, who had taken several art history courses in college, raised my brothers and I with a deep appreciation for art and on the coffee table of the living room of the house we grew up in—a room seldom opened to the rambunctiousness of three boys—sat a large book of historic paintings that spanned the Renaissance and, on occasion, we would sit together and thumb through them with her as she would explain the history of the artist and the symbolism of the piece. My love of art reached a zenith when I was 18 years old and went on a school sponsored senior trip to Europe. While there we spent roughly a week in Italy before going to France and then finally England. During that time, my AP European history professor, who was also in the process of converting to Catholicism, took us to Rome and to VaticanCity . Our trip to the Vatican came at the end of the trip through many different parts of Italy and, if you have never been to Italy, it is hard to fully describe the sheer number of famous works of art—statues, paintings, fountains, ancient ruins that there are — both in the major cities of Italy but also in the more rural areas that one encounters. And so by the time we got to Vatican City we had already seen enough works of art and architecture for 3 or 4 lifetimes. We had seen David and the fontana di trevi, we had seen the Coliseum and Constantine’s Arch, and when you are 18 and spending almost three weeks away from home, and criss-crossing the Italian countryside moving from town-to-town and city-to-city to see and take in as much as you can of the art and culture, it is possible that it all begins to overwhelm the senses. Also, when you are 18, it turns out that you don’t (or at least I didn’t) know my place in the world and that not everyone could say that they had spent the night in the Italian Alps, or had seen the Pietà. Thus, by the time we arrived at The Vatican, most of the senses of young adults on the trip had been overwhelmed trying to take it all in. Until, that is, we arrived at St. Peter’s basilica. That morning, and the only time in the trip this was required, we had to wear much dressier clothes than most of us were used to, the boys wore khaki pants, dark shoes, and either button up or golf shirts, the women had to wear dresses or skirts that were of appropriate lengths. And the folks at the entrance to St. Peter’s took this seriously. The skirt of one of the women on the trip was deemed to be a couple inches too short and the female chaperones spent what seemed like forever trying to figure out some creative way to make her hem line drop those two inches without causing a scene on the top of the skirt. Once inside, one of the things that you experience is the incredible line of people that they move through the Sistine Chapel. The day we were there, it took something like an hour and a half of near constant motion to get from the back of the line and into the chapel but then there is the moment that you move from one side of the wall to the other and you begin to take in the enormity of the ceiling of the Sistine chapel. If you spent a lifetime in that room you could never fully take in each of the intricacies and details that make up the fresco. From the moment that you enter the room until the last few seconds in a line that does not allow you to stop, your eyes dart from one minute detail to the next trying desperately to take mental pictures of the images unfolding in front of your face. There is of course the Creation Of Adam that is probably the most used portion of the fresco and you immediately try to find that on the ceiling but what you discover is that it is just one of roughly 50 different biblical scenes and hundreds of characters on the ceilings. In a world where we often use hyperbolic language to underscore the greatness or the immensity or the specialness of a moment, there are no words to adequately describe this work of art and there is no doubt in my mind that it was divinely inspired and the crazy part of the whole thing is that Michelangelo desperately didn’t want to do it. 
    As the story goes, when Michelangelo was approached by Pope Julius II, he at first declined the commission. He considered himself much more of a sculpture than a painter and the job was going to be very time consuming and the restrictions on the project were, at first, quite limiting on the artist’s ability to freely produce that which he wanted to. Also, it should be noted, he was busily preparing the Pope’s tomb and didn’t have a lot of time to put to such an immense project. It was originally conceived as being a space for an artistic rendering of the 12 disciples but in the midst of much back-and-forth between the artist and the pontiff, a decision was reached to allow Michelangelo to do as he wanted with the massive canvas before him until ultimately 343 figures and 50 biblical scenes were created. Next became the issue of how does one spend 4 years 68 feet above the ground painting with such exacting detail. Here, it turns out, the onus fell on artist himself to conceive of scaffolding that would allow him the free range of motion that such a project would entail. The scenes themselves arise primarily from Genesis and other stories from the Hebrew tradition with the most iconic being the last scene the artist painted—that of God touching the finger of Adam and bringing life to him, a scene that was, after a 4 year project, painted in a day. Let that wash over you. Also included was the genealogy of Christ and other prophetic figures from the time following the completion of the Bible. The enormity of the project captured by the writer, Johann Wolfgang Goethe some three hundred years later noting, “Without having seen the Sistine Chapel one can form no appreciable idea of what one man is capable of achieving.” 4 years prior, there had been a blank canvas in front of Michelangelo, the enormity of the project seemingly overwhelming—a task for which he felt ill-prepared. Then he moved out just a bit in faith, faith that the spirit would carry him where he needed to go. Faith that the spirit would enliven his brush and his mind to envision the images that God would give him. Faith that his whole world would be given a spark that would offer just a bit of light in the darkness. And that spark that he wished for, that spark would light the whole of the church, the whole of the faith, on fire, just as it had some 15oo years prior in a nondescript space, somewhere in the middle of Jerusalem, when another group of the faithful were inspired to reach out into the world and change the course of human history. Forever.  
    So it was that the disciples experienced the spark of the Holy Spirit just as Jesus said that they would. We are told in the scripture for the morning that these first followers of Jesus had gathered together on the day of Pentecost and you get the idea that they are just waiting, probably with little idea of what they are waiting for, to see what will happen next. When last we saw them, they had received a final commissioning from Jesus before he ascended into the heavens and they had headed back to Jerusalem. In the Gospel of John we are told that they are to wait until the gift of the Holy Spirit has come to them and perhaps that is what they are doing. But they are, after all Jewish men, and Jews come together to celebrate Pentecost, the 50th day after Passover, and so we find them gathered this morning. And we are left to envision how it must have felt to have the Holy Spirit come to you. Perhaps it was a slow and steady sound, like the whisper of a breeze, almost imperceptible, at first, like maybe you aren’t sure whether you are hearing something or not, before growing and rustling the curtains, your hair, swirling around in your ear, before something like a rushing wind overtakes them, in almost the same way as when you can often hear wind blowing through a long valley or over the top of a mountain so that you know it is coming before it actually gets there. That was the mighty rushing wind that surrounded their whole beings. And then it happens, the touch of the Holy Spirit, something like a flame hovering just above their heads before tongues of fire shoot out from it, heading towards each one of them, touching each one. How scary an experience must that have been? What must that have been like for each one gathered? To see these divided flames touching each of those with whom they were closest. Surely more than anything they must have been petrified by the experience, because there seems little about supernatural fire engulfing a room that can be comforting and yet, soon thereafter they each become filled with strange languages and words that had to be from some other realm because can no longer contain the gospel of Jesus Christ within themselves but rather are driven out into the streets to tell everyone that they possibly can about the love of God, about the life and death and new life of Christ, about the peace that surpasses all understanding that is only found in Christ, about the grace offered by God that covers each person’s entire lives, every thing they have done and left undone, about the commandment to start in Jerusalem but then to take the gospel to all the nations. And yet, because all of this comes rushing out of each of them with such passion and power, such conviction and strength that all those gathered around them, hearing each of the men speak in their native language, just assume that the disciples must have just started taking a few nips from the fruit of the vine if you know what I mean. The crowds don’t know what to make of this, these men of Galilee, these uneducated working class folks from a region not really known for its education or its eloquence, are speaking in foreign tongues, reaching the visitors from all over the Empire exactly where they are and using their own native tongues to do so. And we are told that many in the crowd were amazed, even as others dismissed them as the town drunks speaking with all the authority of the guy who had sat at the end of the bar all night pontificating on whatever and now its closing time. Until Peter, the rock, the one on whom Jesus will build his church, perhaps for the first time, finds the voice that Jesus had always sensed within him, buried under all the layers of uncertainty and fear as he speaks out, “People listen up, these men before you are not drunk, for its only 9:00 in the morning, but rather an amazing thing is transpiring before your eyes, that which the prophet Joel spoke of, the spirit of God is being poured out over all flesh, young men and women will have visions, your old will dream dreams, even those in the lowliest stations of life will be given the ability to envision the world of tomorrow, a world of peace in the valley and an end to war. A world of shared sacrifice and shared reward. A world in which each child of God is treated with the dignity afforded to her simply because she is a child of God. The reconciliation of the world has begun and you are witnessing only the beginning of everything that God is about within creation. Hear and believe!” We are told later in the chapter that on that day some 3,000 new souls were added to their following and that which was a minuscule rebellious sect of Judaism began to grow into something else. Just as the spirit of God had come to Michelangelo and he had created such divinely crafted art that hundreds of thousands of folks some 600 years later stand in line for hours to witness it, so, too had the disciples been inspired to reach out to all who were before them, each speaking in the universal language of God, sparked a new faith in each new follower, that faith building more and more into a fire that reached out in every direction,as those folks told other folks and those folks told other, other folks, and bit-by-bit, person-by-person the whole of the world was set ablaze. That’s what the spirit of God did on that day, that what it continues to be about on this day. 
    On the door to my office is one of my favorite quotes, often misattributed to Margaret Mead, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.” I don’t know if whoever said that originally was thinking of the disciples on that day of Pentecost when everything changed and the movement that was begun by Jesus began to explode into the world but it certainly confirms the truth of such a statement. Those 12 followers, gathered together to celebrate the Jewish holiday could never have expected to be touched by the spirit in the manner in which they were, they could never have expected to be thrust out into the streets speaking languages foreign and strange to them, they could never have expected to grow their tiny group into the size that it did, there is no way they could have anticipated any of this, and yet, after the spirit touched each one of them, the most important part, the most crucial part of the whole experience, was that they were a small group of faithful followers, who never doubted, not for a second, that they could change the course of history, that they could change the world. And I suppose today that it is possible to set that event off somewhere in the recesses of time and space, to a place where most of us will never go and to a time to which none of us can return. To look back on that time as the good old days, to look back and say those were the times when the spirit of God was really present, lighting folks on fire and sending them out into the streets with purpose and with zeal, but that is no longer now. Now is different. Now is a different era in the life of the church in which our message, our traditions are often met with curious looks and even more curious words. But at the heart of all persons, I am convinced is still a burning desire to touch the face of the divine, to be moved by the holy spirit to do and be great, to walk in the footsteps of those who came before us with a message of love and hope that enlivens generations of persons. And so it is that in each time and in each place are persons who cast their visions over the world and see things as they could be and not how they are. In each time and in each place are persons who gather a handful of people together and declare that they are going to change the course of history. In each time and in each place are persons who draw lines in the sand and say, “here I stand, I can do no other!” On this day of Pentecost, when we mark the descending of the spirit onto our spiritual forebearers, let us not miss the spirit in our own midst, still calling, still pulling, still demanding that we be about the work of reconciliation in the world. Still gifting us with the ability to dream dreams and have visions. Still giving us eyes to see and ears to hear a world crying out for someone, anyone to care. Still entrusting us with the message of reconciliation for a world that has been torn asunder in a billion ways. Still calling us to never doubt that a small gathering of people can come together, can create a unified vision, and can make it happen, because throughout history, it is the only thing that ever has. 
    Sisters and brothers, we are the disciples who sat in that room on that morning some 2,000 years ago. We are the people who have been entrusted both with the message but also with the mission of going out into our world, and using whatever language we have, to reach as many people as with can with the love of God. We are the ones we are waiting for when we are tempted to cynically cast our eyes over the world and say, “I wish this was different. I wish someone would change it.” We are those people. We, in this place, are the church of God, the followers of Jesus, the ones who walk in his footsteps, who tread the rocky ground that he first trod, who heal the sick and visit the lonely, who bring good news to the poor and release to the captives, who bring sight to the blind and set the oppressed free, who declare the year of God’s favor for all people. And we have a sacred duty, a sacred responsibility to simply be open to the movement of the spirit, simply be willing to move one inch, simply stop struggling against the pull of the holy spirit to be closer to God, to simply be God’s beloved, and inviting all those we meet to be God’s beloved as well. And glory be to God in the highest and on earth peace amongst all God’s peoples. Alleluia, Amen.