I WANT TO TELL YOU ABOUT MY FIRE STORY. Three years ago, it was Memorial Day and the end of a very busy weekend. Friends had come over for a barbecue and we were cleaning up and getting ready to settle in for the evening.
So I really shouldn’t have been surprised there would be bad news on the phone when it rang shortly before 5 p.m. There had been a short thunder shower just about 30 minutes before and I did seem to recall a rather loud clap of thunder.
On the line was a member of the church I served at the time. He is one of calmest people I’ve ever met, and he has a very soothing, easygoing manner. He also happens to be a firefighter. In his calmest voice he says to me: “Rachael, I just got a call from the fire station and a buddy of mine, and he said that the church may have been struck by lightning and there may be a small fire inside. I’m going over there now.”
I need to preface this story now to explain my reaction, which at the time was very calm: “Oh, OK, I’ll head over there and meet you.”
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THE REASON I REACTED SO CALMLY was that, almost exactly the year before, the church had also been struck by lightning and it did cause a very small fire in the office but the only damage was done to part of a wall and the phone system. In my mind, this was probably a similar situation.
So I got my keys and took my time driving the short distance to the church. Just as a rounded a corner I saw a huge plume of dark gray smoke filling the sky and large parking lot filled with what appeared to be every fire truck and emergency vehicle in the county working frantically to put the flames out that were shooting out of the roof.
As I got out of my car, my eyes were huge with disbelief. The first person I saw was the city fire inspector, who ironically had just inspected and passed the building the previous week. Officer Patterson grabbed my arm and said, “It’s not as bad as it looks.” My response was: “Well … it’s actually on fire so I think it’s probably as bad as it looks.”
The damage was significant, rendering the whole administrative wing with the exception of one office in the front unusable. It was months of cleanup and hundreds and thousands of dollars to restore that portion of the building. However, I was so grateful, for on a normal Monday there could have been up to five community or church groups in the building.
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WE WERE CERTAINLY BLESSED that only things were damaged. None of God’s children, including the firefighters, were injured or hurt. All in all, it was just things. In my children’s moment that next week, I reminded the children of that old children’s hand play: “Here is the church; here is the steeple….”
And it is true: The church is really about God’s people being the body of Christ in the world — not just inside these walls —and, truth be told, even if these walls weren’t here.
However, what I didn’t realize about experiencing a fire like that is how disorienting it is. I now have a greater appreciation for people whose homes catch on fire. That must be so much more disorienting and frightening, especially with children involved.
It was a strange summer — four staff members and two pastors all working in basically two rooms with no air conditioning. The fire had disoriented us in many ways but it also brought about a new clarity about what was important and made us incredibly grateful for God’s presence in our disorientation.
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SEVERAL YEARS AGO, I PASSED a small church with a very large, very large sign. It was one of those backlit signs that you could use plastic letters to change the message around. It happened to be the week before Pentecost. That particular day the sign made me laugh but also it made me think. The sign read:
« JOIN US THIS SUNDAY FOR A HOLY GHOST EXPLOSION! »
Now, my initial reaction was to consider what exactly would a Holy Ghost explosion look like? Would there be bits of the Holy Spirit falling like debris from the sky all over everyone? Or would it be the case that it wasn’t something to see but rather experience. Would it be people speaking in tongues and raising their hands in worship? Would it hurt? What exactly would it be like? Then I gave pause for a moment — really, what would that be like?
Well, I don’t know what it was like for that congregation on that Sunday, and many years later I really still wonder if that was a tremendously emotional and powerful experience for those people. I’d like to hope it was.
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I DON’T THINK IT IS ANY SECRET that Presbyterians aren’t real comfortable with the idea of Pentecost as described in Acts with the tongue-speaking, with the potential confusion; we’re decent and orderly people.
However, I invite you to think back to the reading from Acts with me. “When the day of Pentecost had come they were all together in one place…” Pentecost was not an unfamiliar day in those days. It wasn’t at all the Christians’ Holy Day that we celebrate as the birthday of the church.
Instead, on the day that Pentecost had come they were gathered together to mark the “Feast of Weeks” which was a day-long harvest festival marking the 50th day following Passover that originated from the days when the Jews had been living in captivity but it also had deeper roots going back to Moses marking the day when Moses when God gives Moses the 10 commandments to help create a community, not just a wandering group of people.
So it is fitting that on this day, God’s spirit is poured out upon them as they gather on the day of Pentecost, the day when everyone traveled to Jerusalem to celebrate the goodness of God toward the nation. And so they gather together and I think that is very important that they are together. The Holy Spirit isn’t poured out in separate places to individuals; it wasn’t poured out just for Peter or just for James or John but for the community gathered together.
I think it is particularly important because the Holy Spirit is poured out for all of them, together, to do something terribly powerful in our world.
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ONE OF THE MOST-ANCIENT HYMNS of this feast goes this way:
“Come, Holy Spirit, our souls inspire ... and lighten with celestial fire.”
It is a prayer that the ignition begun on that first Pentecost day might continue to burn within the church so that we would not lose our fervor. It is a petition for the work of God’s spirit to continue in us individually and as the whole Body of Christ, so that we might live our faith with zest and commitment and do the work of mission boldly and imaginatively.
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YOU MAY NOT RECOGNIZE HIS NAME, but the Rev. James Lemler of Christ Church in Greenwich, Connecticut, is a contributor to “Day One,” a religious broadcast, and he writes this about Pentecost:
“The promise of Pentecost is that every person of faith — every person of faith — can be ignited by the Spirit for a deeper expression of belief and a more powerful expression of Christian living.”
I think he is absolutely correct.
The experience of the fire of God’s Spirit is not isolated to the “greats” of the Christian tradition. No, it burns in people who lead a much more regular existence in their living and believing. It burns nonetheless. I have seen the ignition of the Holy Spirit in people who have made decisions to change their lives in significant ways, who have taken bold new steps in commitment and generosity, who have discovered the capacity for service and caring deep inside of them.
The Spirit is alive and active in people. It is alive and active in you and in me, guiding, inspiring, directing, renewing, advocating, remaking us in the very likeness of God.
This Day of Pentecost is the day that we consider to be the birthday of the church and it is an important birthday. Birthdays are times to reflect on another life lived, another year of life that lies before us. Hopefully, it is another year to do something important. This is the same for the church on its birthday. It is not a time for a tepid or tired church.
It is the time for a new church — a transformed church that is a vehicle of the Spirit to transform people and, indeed, the whole world.
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THE PRIMARY QUESTION FOR THE CHURCH in 2017, I think, is precisely the question as it was for the church in the acts of the Apostles in the first century. Will we become alive and aflame with the Spirit of God? Will we let the Spirit of God transform us into the church of vitality and service, prayer and praise, evangelism and welcome, and witness that God intends us to be?
There was no way the church in the first century could do it itself, and there is no way that the church today can do it itself and there is no way that we can do it ourselves. We are given the tremendous gift of the Holy Spirit poured out in new and powerful ways.
I think in God’s wisdom that people are called together, given ways to live together that is the reason Moses is given the 10 commandments, so that they aren’t distracted by our own selfish impulses and desires but to focus on following God and going where God leads. It is, I think, completely in God’s wisdom that the Holy Spirit is poured out upon the community that followed Christ.
The community is then sent out into the world to do something important and transformative to strengthen Christ’s body — the church — to make it relevant and important as a reflection of Christ on earth.
It is the Spirit poured out that empowers that — that can explode that in each of us and in this part of the body of Christ, right here and right now in this place and community. It is the Spirit. “Come, Holy Spirit, our souls inspire and lighten with celestial fire!”
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THE HOLY SPIRIT IS POURED OUT so that the work of God’s people and together as the body of Christ would be empowered to do God’s work in our world. Not empowered to sit and wait for someone else to do something. Paul gives us some really important insight into what this might look like or how this might be accomplished.
According to Paul, the Holy Spirit pours out the gifts of the spirit upon all of us to be used to create strong Christians and strong churches. But the catch is — and Paul touches on it — it is the work of each part of the community; it is a communal message. It is not to be done for you.
Paul’s message always reminds me of a phrase my grandmother used to say, “If you aren’t willing to do it, don’t expect that it will get done.”
That’s a strong challenge for us, too, to consider if we aren’t willing to commit to being and making strong followers of Christ and people of faith, who will do it? If we aren’t willing to commit to making a strong church that makes an important impact in our families, community and world, who will do it?
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THERE IS A CARTOON that was given to me some time ago that pictured a meeting of a Christian education committee looking completely distraught and beat-up sitting around a conference room table. The caption has the chair of the committee saying:
“OK, so it’s settled — we’ll paint the Sunday school rooms blue.”
Let’s not be that church.
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THERE IS ANOTHER STORY from the ancient church that does apply to the church in our day as well. It is the story of a young monk in the desert of Egypt who goes to a wise older monk and asks essentially what he should do to live a whole and faithful Christian faith and life. The older monk asks him what he does at present. The younger monk replied that he says his prayers, keeps his fast, adheres to his rule of life as best he can, and generally is kind to his fellow brothers. At that point, the elder arises and stands with his hands extended to the heavens when — whoosh! — all 10 of his fingers become lamps of flame, and he says to the younger:
“If you will allow the Spirit of God to direct you, then all of your life can become as of fire.”
That monk spoke to the younger brother and to the church of his time, and he speaks to you and to me and to the church of our time. “If you will allow the Spirit of God to direct you, then … all of your life can become as of fire.”
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LET’S BE THAT KIND of spirit-filled people, spirit-filled church that refuses to be burdened by conflict or dissension but embraces all of its work, big things and little things alike, as God’s Spirit-filled, important work that strengthens Christ’s body in and witness in our world. Let’s be that kind of church that makes our lives and our community better and stronger because it is empowered and alive with the Holy Spirit.
To God be all power, wisdom and might….
