josephholubsermons
May 31, 2009
Pentecost
Acts 2:1-14
The Centrifugal Force of the Spirit
Today is Pentecost Sunday.
Pentecost is a significant festival day in Jewish tradition that
commemorates the giving of Law, from God to Moses, from Moses to the people.
It was celebrated 50 days after the Passover Sabbath. It is only in
Acts, written by Luke, that this particular experience of the Spirit
is recounted. Mark and Matthew
have no such account and John’s description of the giving of the Spirit is
vastly different from Luke’s.
By connecting this Spirit experience with the Jewish commemoration of
Pentecost, Luke is declaring that something of paramount importance
occurred for the early followers of Jesus that is analogous to the
giving of the Torah in Judaism.
As I usually do, the question I ask is not so much
focused on the literalness of the story, but what is the meaning of
the story as Luke tells it?
What is Luke saying about his community’s experience of the Spirit of God by
telling this story the way he did, and can their experience speak to us?
One of my favorite fun activities as a child was the playground
merry-go-round. You’ve seen them I am sure. It was a big, heavy, round,
steel platform mounted on a rotating pedestal with bars to grasp. We kids
would push the merry-go-round faster and faster until our feet could move no
faster! Then we would jump on and grasp the bar and hang out as far as we
could, and at the prescribed signal of "1-2-3 Geranomo!" we all would let
go! The force exerted upon us would send us squealing and
flying outward. The greatest moment was that second or two after we
let go and before we hit the ground; a glorious and precarious moment of
freedom; feeling unhindered; set free by an invisible energy bigger than us.
Of course, that invisible energy is centrifugal force.
I asked a scientist friend of mine for a definition of centrifugal force. He
said, "It’s the force felt by any object moving in a curved line." It's the
centrifugal force that provides the thrill and the excitement! Many people
love carnival rides. The faster the ride spins, the higher it goes, the more
people like it! The sensation of being flung outward, the pressure in the
chest, the queasiness in the gut, the sense of being almost out of control
are all an integral part of the experience.
I remember a time in high school being on one of those wild rides at a local
carnival. We were stuffed into a little torpedo-shaped-capsule.
There were two simultaneous spins: the capsule was spinning and the
whole contraption was spinning.
Suddenly, without warning, the centrifugal force caused the loose change in
my pants pockets to fly out and rain down on the street below. From the
spinning capsule high above the street, I could see the people below
scrambling for my nickels, dimes and quarters -- an unexpected dividend for
them and sacrifice for me. Centrifugal
force - what a glorious thing it is, and what a thrill it provides!
As I wrestle with this story from Acts, it seems to me their "Spirit
experience" is similar to
centrifugal force. If we look back one chapter in Acts Jesus is
meeting with his disciples, and the last thing he says to them is,
"But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you
(the wheel begins to spin); and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem" (it
spins a little faster); "in Judea" (even faster); "Samaria" (faster and
farther yet); "and to the ends of the earth." (Spinning wildly, breaking
free!) Acts concludes 28 chapters later with the apostle Paul bringing the
good news to far-a-way Rome, a place that was symbolically considered the
"end of the earth."
But that's just what the energy of the Holy Spirit does. Luke’s community of
Jesus followers felt the Spirit’s centrifugal force. Do
we feel it? It is the
Holy Spirit’s vocation
to propel us outward, away from ourselves toward others and into the world,
as Jesus, embodying the Kingdom of God: God's love, grace, compassion,
desire for distributive justice and into a right relationship with the earth
that is not exploitative but caring and based on principles of good
stewardship. The Spirit won't allow us to get comfortable, content, or
self-satisfied. The Spirit works to pry us out of stagnation,
self-preoccupation, apathy and indifference.
The Spirit is about the same
work that Jesus was about. The Holy Spirit continues the ministry
of Jesus. In our gospel this morning from John,
Jesus told his disciples when he departed from them physically they
would not be left orphaned, but a power and presence would
energize them to continue His work though them.
They would not be cut off from an
energy source, a love source, a compassion source, a centrifugal force.
I must confess somewhere along the line
I lost my nerve for
spinning carnival rides. I suppose it began years ago when my son
David and I went to Elitch Gardens
in Denver. We rode some spinning contraption, not long after I had
eaten a polish sausage and chocolate shake!
You can guess what happened next. It was then, I believe, I
began to lose my nerve! I grew up! I
became a conservative, careful, cautious, responsible, reasonable, guarded,
level-headed, safety-minded, logical adult. What a shame! Now I
avoid carnival contraptions of centrifugal force. I lost my nerve. What a
tragedy!
In the grand scale of things losing one's nerve to climb into carnival rides
is not a big deal. But what is a
big deal is losing one's spiritual nerve – individually and as a
community. What is a big deal is resisting the centrifugal force of the Holy
Spirit whose purpose it is to move us and our community of faith
beyond where we are
into new things: new things intellectually and new things spiritually; new
paradigms of service and outreach to others; new ventures in the Kingdom of
God. In just the last few
months two new opportunities
have come our way as a congregation due to the inquiry and initiative of
some in our congregation: the weekly Community Dinner and La Puente – the
result of the work of the centrifugal force of the Holy Spirit perhaps?
We must never forget there is another force that would
stop us dead in our tracks,
and that is the force of gravity. Metaphorically speaking we
might call it the gravitational pull of stagnation. This is a
force that works to halt the creative and innovative
centrifugal force of the Spirit. The moment we succumb to the
gravitational pull of stagnation we stop growing, and as a result find
ourselves avoiding taking risks; becoming content to the point we think not
we need not change or grow; hanging on to old ideas simply for their sake;
becoming dogmatic and closed to innovation; building defensive walls of
protection; becoming self-serving; losing our courage and nerve.
When I immerse myself into the ministry of Jesus, I
experience one who was always pushing outward into uncharted
territory, equipped mostly with God’s compassion and grace. In Luke’s
gospel we see him pushing through the barriers of religious and social
prejudice of his time; affirming those that the religious and cultural elite
had marginalized including the ritually unclean, Samaritans, women, the
poor, the lost, a variety of “so-called” sinners and outcasts, and even the
enemies of Israel.
When
the disciples got hung up on who was the greatest, he put a child in their
midst and proclaimed that in the Kingdom of God the last and least are
first.
When Peter wanted to preserve the ecstatic experience on
the Mount of Transfiguration and set up headquarters, Jesus led he and the
others back down the mountain and showed them the most authentic experiences
of the Kingdom of God were found in the tangled and often dangerous roads of
the valley below; the roads filled with need and pain.
He
reinvented religion when he held that affirmation of the lowly and
compassion superseded even the most sacred parts of their ritual traditions.
One last thing I need to mention about my childhood merry-go-round. It
was mounted on a center post; a hub. The center post, the hub, made it
possible for us to be set in motion; to experience the centrifugal force as
we spun; to be propelled outward.
We have a center post, a hub. This morning we gather around that post - the
cross of our Lord Jesus Christ and the holy banquet of God. We must never
forget it's a center post that sets us into motion. We gather around the
table beneath the cross and are nourished with God's vision of inclusivity;
God's boundless grace, and most importantly empowered and propelled;
propelled out of stagnation to action; propelled out of self-indulgence to
self-giving; propelled out of fear to courageous and compassionate service
into world, toward others and the earth by the centrifugal force of the
Spirit.