St. Paul's On-the-Hill Episcopal Church

The Rev. Stephen C. Holton, Rector

May 11, 2008; Pentecost

Mothers' Day

Acts 21-21

GOD IN OUR OWN NATIVE STORIES

No longer Anonymous, Telling our stories, In a Vision for Everyone

I want to thank the Youth Group for reading the story of Pentecost. It may have been difficult for them – to get up in front of all these people, and read.

It is an example for us – that we are called upon to overcome our nerves and speak to others, because they want to hear our stories, and hear God's stories in a way they understand and from people they know; which is to say, they want to hear God's mighty deeds of power in their own native languages.

Who will speak to them in their own native languages?

We will. But God makes it easier. God makes it easier by first speaking to us and through us.

The process with the Youth Group actually began a few weeks ago, when we gathered first in Bible Study. I provided expertise in Scripture, but they provided expertise in life.

What they said, as they read this, is that the Holy Spirit makes you stronger, and gives you more power and ability than you had before. They noted that the effect of the Holy Spirit and perhaps of the Church is to bring people together out of all their diversity, since the people in Jerusalem were from all over but heard the same story in their own native languages.

They noted the weirdness of the weather patterns before the great and glorious and wonderful day of the Lord.

And they noted that when the disciples were speaking, and the Spirit was coming upon them, the crowd around them thought they were either drunk or stupid.

How many times do people think you're drunk or stupid, or dangerous or naïve when you have a great idea, or when you actually try to believe and live by all the Bible says about justice, mercy, love, forgiveness, God's power active in your life, God's dream and hope for the world.

How often do people think you're drunk or stupid when you think you could actually live the way Jesus says, in the loving community he suggests – like the community of the disciples?

No wonder people thought they were drunk or stupid. People would these days too. They think that about any young person with a big idea, any old person who dreams dreams, any young one who has a vision.

Nothing has changed.

Yet the prophet Joel says: “Even upon my slaves, both men and women, in those days I will pour out my Spirit; and they shall prophesy.”

Talk about drunk or stupid. Men and women? Slaves? We only started getting around to that a little over 100 years ago. The Bible had us beat by about 2,500 years. No dream is too radical for God.

But it will get you called drunk or stupid – if anyone overhears you dreaming God's dreams.

But that's exactly what God wants us to do – dream God's dreams, and speak of them.

You notice the disciples are not dreaming out loud; or at least, not in public. They're in the house. The people are outside.

Then the sound of the mighty wind comes, the sound of the Spirit; and they see the flames on each other's heads, and they realize something is up. We've learned long ago that they're not too bright but even they realize something enlightening has happened.

Then they speak in other languages – and we hear them listed here, all the languages of the ancient world.

But it doesn't say they were given anything new to say. It doesn't say that God gave them a new story.

So presumably they were telling the old, old story, of Jesus and his glory, of Jesus and his love. They were talking about the same thing they always talked about – that we still talk about – when they, and we, got together on a Sunday morning – of Jesus and his love.

God just wanted to make sure that other people heard about it too.

So he sent a communication tool, Himself as the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit seems to be all about communication – the dove over Jesus at Baptism, the Voice at the Transfiguration, the Spirit at Creation; now the One who makes understanding possible.

God does not want us to change our stories. He wants other people to hear them. And like the disciples, we're too shy or scared. Maybe we're not scared of dying anymore. But we're scared of seeming drunk or stupid. So we keep it to ourselves.

But God will have none of it. God empowers us. God witnesses through us, and makes us witnesses of him.

But he does not do it by making us tell others his stories about him.

He does it by letting us tell our stories about him. We speak in our own native languages, our own heartfelt languages, so others will understand.

We don't have to change our stories – even if they seem stupid. We have to tell them.

So the Lord makes it possible, with the Spirit of Communication.

What happens – when you speak the language of your own heart, and speak of how God's presence has affected your life, and not in the language of doctrine or liturgy but the language of yourself – is that at first people will think you're drunk or crazy or stupid. You are not in touch with the real world, the world of the flesh. You're just a spiritual person, an out of touch person.

But keep on talking. And after a while, the ears will stop listening; and the heart will start hearing. And they will listen with the ears of their heart – as Benedict said. And the reason they will do that, is because you will be speaking in their own native language, the language of their heart; and they will hear it for the first time in years.

It will not be the language of the corporate world, which they had to learn; or the language of the school yard, which they also had to learn. It will not be the language of politics or partisanship which they also had to learn.

It will be in the language they have learned not to listen for because they have learned it will never come and has never come, perhaps since they last spoke it to their mothers or heard their mothers speak it – as we think of them on this Mothers' Day – the language of their hearts.

But when you speak the language of your heart, and tell your story – in spite of what people may think of you – they hear it in their hearts and, perhaps for the first time in a long, long time, think of their story and how something or someone we would recognize as God first spoke to them.

In saying something worth saying – even if its laughed at – we give the gift of hearing something worth listening to.

And God wants people to hear that. So he helps us say it.

He helps us say it – to all people, in all conditions. What we have to talk about is not just for spiritual people, for some people, for special people; but for all people. It affects all lives.

Joel says – as Peter quotes him – that “I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh.”

Not just some flesh, some people, special people, religious people, saved people! But all people. All means all. Why don't we understand that? Why are we always trying to minimize God's mission into tiny little bits that we can understand? God passes all understanding.

And he says: all flesh! Not all spirit. In those days, just like now, people divided the world into the spiritual and the material, the worldly and the religious, the real and the unreal.

And they said – only spiritual people have time for that. Only they can go to church or synagogue or temple. I don't have time. I'm not good enough. I have too much work to do.

Into this atmosphere God says in Joel, and in Acts, and is still trying to tell us – I will “pour out my Spirit on all flesh” - all people, spiritual and worldly, religious and non-religious. All. Flesh.

There is nowhere you can go from my presence. There is nothing that will disqualify you. I will find you. I will love you. I will bless you.

God's vision is for everybody. Those who can get to church, and those who can't.

You know, on this Mothers' Day, I've been thinking about what, in particular, might distinguish a Mother from all the other talents and skills and responsibilities we all might have.

And for whatever reason, one has stood out for me as I've been thinking about it.

Mothers clean up the mess. I mean everybody does but mothers seem to have the particular responsibility.

And in my house, sometimes that distinction is made particularly clear – between the spiritual and the physical and stuff like that.

Its a Sunday morning and I've got to get to church. Someone, some person or some animal, has thrown up on the kitchen floor. Someone's got to clean it up. “Bye honey, I've got to get to church. Happy Mothers' Day.”

The spiritual and the physical.

But God says: “I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh!” God is saying to me – you might be going to church but I'm also going to be with her, on the kitchen floor, cleaning up the mess. Because I have poured out my Spirit upon all flesh; and I have come to all people, in all situations. Wherever they find themselves – that's where I want to be.

And that's the story God wants you to tell – wherever he accompanied you, wherever he held your hand, on your way, and in your need.

Whatever you told your old friend, whom you know, about God; that is what he wants you to tell your new friend, whom you don't yet know, about God.

That is what will bless her soul, or his heart. And not because they will learn your story, or memorize your story about a doctrinal Jesus, a ritual Jesus, spoken of in ritual language.

It will bless their soul because the language and story of your heart will wake up their heart and remind them of their own language and their own stories and the secret ways in which God has been blessing them – all these years.