On Fire--a sermon for Pentecost

Rev. Teri Peterson
RCLPC
On Fire 
Acts 2.1-22, 24, 32-33, 37-39 27
May 2012, Pentecost

When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability. Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. Amazed and astonished, they asked, ‘Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs—in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.’ All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, ‘What does this mean?’ But others sneered and said, ‘They are filled with new wine.’ But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them: ‘Men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to what I say. Indeed, these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o’clock in the morning. No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel: 
“In the last days it will be, God declares,
that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh,
 and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
and your young men shall see visions,
 and your old men shall dream dreams. 
Even upon my slaves, both men and women,
 in those days I will pour out my Spirit;
 and they shall prophesy. 
And I will show portents in the heaven above
 and signs on the earth below,
 blood, and fire, and smoky mist. 
The sun shall be turned to darkness
 and the moon to blood,
 before the coming of the Lord’s great and glorious day. 
Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.” ‘You that are Israelites, listen to what I have to say: Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with deeds of power, wonders, and signs that God did through him among you, as you yourselves know— God raised him up, having freed him from death, because it was impossible for him to be held in its power. 
This Jesus God raised up, and of that all of us are witnesses. Being therefore exalted at the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured out this that you both see and hear. Now when they heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and to the other apostles, ‘Brothers, what should we do?’ Peter said to them, ‘Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ so that your sins may be forgiven; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you, for your children, and for all who are far away, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to him.’

I know not everyone gets as excited about things as I do, but think back to the last time you were really excited for something. What was it? Can you call up that feeling of anticipation, of joy, of passion? When we’re passionate about something, we can feel it, and so can the people around us. We talk faster and louder, for some of us our color rises and people wonder if we’re burning up inside—and we are! That excitement calls up the fire in our bones and our bellies, and we can talk for hours, at a speed and volume that may very well lead people to wonder if we’re…well…drunk, even if it is nine-o-clock in the morning.

 That kind of passion, that kind of excitement, that kind of love is contagious. Especially when we share things that have called to us, changed us, brought us joy—and when we share in terms others can understand—it makes people want to be a part of that experience or to take action. The fire spreads. Sometimes it’s a slow burn, other times it’s a wildfire driven by wind.

 No one knew what to expect when the Spirit blew into that room all those years ago, igniting the church with love. They hadn’t put together a committee and made careful plans. When the Spirit blew in, they were just an average church—a bunch of people who like to tell stories and host potlucks, with their good and bad habits, their fear and their faith intermingled, uncertainty about the future just as prominent as their love of singing and eating together. What would they do? Who would they be? Why were they here? What was the point? Sure, the fellowship and the worship are nice, and people are friendly, but what are we here for? And can we make it? Do we have a future?

 It’s into this uncertainty that the Spirit comes, whistling and rushing and filling, setting their hearts and their tongues aflame. They were overwhelmed with love, igniting a holy fire in that place. They couldn’t help themselves, they had to talk about it—and not just amongst themselves. They can’t just use the words they’re comfortable with, they can’t just communicate on their own terms—they learn at last to reach into people’s hearts and truly speak in ways others can understand. Finally, they can pass on their excitement, their hope, their stories, their love—they can share the thing that has changed their lives.

There’s a reason that Pentecost is often called the Birthday of the Church. It’s because this is the day when we learned who we are, why we are here, and what to do about it. It’s the day a gathering of people who like potlucks became the Body of Christ commissioned to share the love of God with the world. It’s the day a small group of scared men and women who weren’t sure they could survive the coming year were transformed into a community that shared everything, welcomed the stranger, clothed the naked, and fed the hungry without worrying about the budget. It’s the day a bunch of people who thought they knew the story found out what it means to be a storyteller. They didn’t just wait for people to come and notice that they were friendly but struggling, they went out and spoke the language of literally every nation on earth, and found they had more than enough resources for their task. All those names John had to pronounce are the names of every nation that was known at that time—every. single. one. That’s how far God calls us—to every single place, to change the life of every single person, one story and one meal and one small flame at a time. It’s not enough to be on fire with love ourselves, it’s not enough to say we’re just one light, not enough to stay in our upper room and wait for the Spirit to do something else for us while we worry in comfort…we have to do something about it, until the whole world is on fire.

(video will play at this point)



We come to the table, bringing what we are able…we’re looking for a calling, something we can do to change the world…well, the first answer, as Howard Thurman says, is to ask what makes you come alive—because what the world needs is people who are alive. What is your passion? What makes your heart beat faster, what brings color to your cheeks, what makes you talk faster and louder? The world needs that passion. The church needs that passion. We need that fire to spark within and among us.

Of course, sometimes the church and the world are afraid of passion, of fire. It threatens the way things are, it brings change and that often means pain before the new life takes hold. The heat makes us uncomfortable, and we back away. Or worse, we look for ways to contain it in our safe fire pits, or even to put it out. A few years ago a friend of mine was leading worship on Pentecost when, during the prayers near the end of the service, a candle on the communion table burned dangerously low and the gauzy red tablecloth, which was wafting on the breeze of the air conditioner, caught fire. After a few moments of shouting, confusion, and frozen uncertainty, someone thought to grab the baptismal font and dump the water on the table to douse the flames. While this was a perfectly practical and good thing to do, it does make for a strange metaphor. As my friend put it, “in an absurd clash of symbols, the waters of baptism actually extinguished the fires of the Spirit.”

We can laugh about that, especially since no one was hurt and nothing was damaged. But the reality in the absurd clash of symbols is hard to miss—sometimes entering the church community (which is one of the things symbolized in baptism) can be the fastest way to douse the flames of passion with “we’ve never done it that way before” and “you should…” and “that’s not what we do here.” Working through the channels to get something done, to try something new, to put passion into action, can be exhausting, and many people simply give up—why bother? It’s easier to just come to worship and be filled, or to drift away, or to find some other place where I can put my passions and gifts to good use. Flames belong in their place—safely contained in fire pits or rule books, not actually burning and heating and spreading.

 But the fire that the Spirit ignites can’t be contained, any more than Jesus could be contained in a tomb or God could be contained inside the Bible. God has a way of bursting out of the confines we put up, and this is no different. The people gathered there literally spoke to the ends of the earth—because the promise is for you, and your children, and everyone who is far away, everyone God calls. Wind and fire will work together to spread God’s transforming love, setting the world on fire. Will we fan the flames, or dig the trenches?

 May the fire of God’s love burn brightly within us, and through us into the world.
Amen.

monday morning haiku

meant to take out trash
memory sparked by truck's sound
oh--maybe next week.

dear internets...

...it's not that I don't love you.

Quite the opposite.

I love you too much, and that means that I do not get enough work done.

And by "not enough work" I mean the three enormous writing projects that are all due in the next 3 weeks. Some of them in the next 4 days. One of them in the next 18 hours.
(which is to say: my regular job gets done just fine. It's the stuff I need to do in addition to all that I'm finding difficult! not to mention that I haven't washed any dishes in a week, nor exercised for several weeks...)

SO: don't take my absence the wrong way. It's just that I have to do a lot of writing, and you are so seductive with your pictures, your interesting articles, your funnies, your pithy sayings. The little blue twitter bird and the red facebook notification bubble are so seductive that I can't help myself. Therefore, I'm going to have to turn you off for a bit. I'll be back, though....I couldn't stay away if I tried.

mwah!

ten on tuesday

okay, so it's barely still tuesday, but whatever. in no particular order, 10 things.

1. I am working on two writing projects and one presentation, plus of course my regular job. One writing project requires me to say whatever I have to say in 500 words or less. The other writing project requires me to write nearly 5000 words on a single topic. I would dearly love a writing project that has a word requirement somewhere in between.

this is what I do now, everywhere I go, even on vacation in Sonoma

2. I am a bad cat mom. Sunday morning I ran out of cat food but forgot to go to the store...Sunday night/Monday morning I had two hungry cat-monsters. I gave them some wet food I had on hand, but on their apparently very empty stomachs that just led to cat vomiting. gross.

3. I am grateful for my friend Elizabeth's newfound lack of carpeting, which led to her SpotBot coming to live at my house. It makes cleaning up the evidence of bad cat mothering much easier.

4. We had a very awesome Earth Day at church, and I so love our music ministry and the ways they can really pull everything together.

5. Since I have these two writing projects and a presentation all coming up in the next 4 weeks, naturally I have been spending time making arrangements for an event that is 3 months away. Because that event is a trip to Scotland, and sometimes a girl just needs to put some hard numbers to the daydreams.

6. I got parsnips in my box from Door-to-Door Organics last week. I still have no idea what to do with those. Suggestions welcome.

7. I have about a dozen books to read, but am putting them all off until the big writing projects are done. Like a reward, sort of. I hope that works.

8. I have run out of ice cream. I don't know how it happened, but one day I had ice cream and the next day I didn't. Well, okay, I know how it happened (I ate the ice cream) but I'm not clear about how I allowed this situation to progress to the point of having no ice cream in the house at all. It's quite distressing.

this is how I feel about ice cream. you can see why I'm sad to not have any.

9. Good thing I have girl scout cookies, courtesy of every girl scout I know across the country. Thanks Grace, Iona, Abby, Anna, Lily, and Selam!

10. I asked the confirmation class this week what was exciting in their lives. They didn't have anything exciting, which I thought very strange. I usually feel like my life is pretty boring, but compared to theirs my life is a whirlwind of excitement!

every day is earth day: a sermon for April 22 2012

Rev. Teri Peterson

RCLPC

every day is earth day

a bunch of different texts

22 April 2012, Easter 3B (off lectionary), Earth Day

Nehemiah 9:6

You made the heavens, even the highest heavens, and all their starry host, the earth and all that is on it, the seas and all that is in them. You give life to everything, and the multitudes of heaven worship you.

John 1:3

Everything came into being through the Word, and without the Word nothing came into being.

Psalm 24:1-2

The earth is the Lord’s and everything in it, the world and its inhabitants too.

Because God is the one who established it on the seas; God set it firmly on the waters.

Psalm 19.1-4

Heaven is declaring God’s glory; the sky is proclaiming God’s handiwork.

One day gushes the news to the next, and one night informs another what needs to be known.

Of course, there’s no speech, no words—their voices can’t be heard—

    but their sound extends throughout the world; their words reach the ends of the earth.

Job 12.7-10

Ask the animals, and they will teach you, or the birds of the air, and they will tell you; or speak to the earth, and it will teach you, or let the fish of the sea inform you. Which of these does not know that the hand of the Lord has done this? In God’s hand is the life of every creature and the breath of all humankind.

Genesis 1:1, 31, 2:7-9, 15

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth... God saw all that he had made, and it was very good.

The Lord God formed the human from the topsoil of the fertile land and blew life’s breath into his nostrils. The human came to life. The Lord God planted a garden in Eden in the east and put there the human he had formed. The Lord God took the human and settled him in the garden of Eden to farm it and to take care of it.

Ezekiel 34:17-18

Is it not enough for you to feed on the good pasture? Must you also trample the rest of your pasture with your feet? Is it not enough for you to drink clear water? Must you also muddy the rest with your feet?

Romans 8:22, 19

We know that the whole creation is groaning together and suffering labor pains up until now. The whole creation waits breathless with anticipation for the revelation of God’s sons and daughters.

Yesterday morning, eleven of our youth and six intrepid adults woke up early and went to join in the Community Clean Up Day. We spent two and a half hours picking up trash from a park that had a stream running through it…you would not believe how much trash collects in a tree-lined stream. Cans, firecrackers, plastic bags, candy wrappers. We also had a few big finds—lots of golf balls, part of a realtor’s sign, a five gallon bucket, and an old boot. Some of the people who walked their dogs in the park stopped to talk to us, and more than one thanked us for the work we were doing, and promised to remember us whenever they walked in that park. But a few of them followed that up with “I’m glad someone does this, because I wouldn’t.”

Now, I’m not against people not wanting to get dirty. It was cold and muddy work, cleaning up that stream. It was hard to pick our way through trees and bushes to get the trash that collects in the underbrush. But how many of us walk past things we could do to help? Most of that litter didn’t start out in the stream or the underbrush, it started out blowing down the street or dropped on the playground, but we walked by. Not all those candy wrappers got embedded in the dirt because someone pushed them into the ground—they were dropped and forgotten, or noticed and left anyway, or even stepped on and ignored. “It’s not that important” right? “It’s probably biodegradable.” “It’s dirty.” “It’s just one wrapper, one cigarette, one plastic grocery bag, one water bottle.” We say the same things about letting the water run when we wash dishes or leaving lights on even when we aren’t in the room. It’s just a little thing—does it matter?

Even when we do pick things up or dispose of them properly in the first place—what happens to them? Do we recycle, or throw everything away because it’s quicker? How did we end up with so much disposable stuff in our society, and where does it all go? Few of us live near a landfill, so we hardly ever have to think about what happens to the stuff we throw away. But it goes somewhere, and sits and sits and sits, taking up valuable land, or it collects in the rivers and oceans, like in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, which is a floating island bigger than Texas made up entirely of plastic waste. Our pattern of consumption and waste leaves a mark—whether it’s a garbage island, a slick on the mud at the bottom of a stream, unbreatheable air, or mutant fish—and that mark hurts other parts of God’s creation, from animals to plants to other human beings who can’t find clean water or healthy enough soil to grow food. How did we get here?

Some of this is the byproduct of living in a wealthy society with a culture of disposability. To make life more convenient we have also made it expendable. As an example, this week I saw an interesting photo-article about school lunches around the world. While the food differences were intriguing, the most interesting thing was the dishes on which lunch was served. The only disposable things in the entire set of 20 countries’ lunches came from American schools. Styrofoam or paper trays, plastic fruit cups, plastic forks, paper cups, foil chip bags. In other countries, ranging from Japan to France to Kenya, students ate lunch served at school on real dishes. Some of them had metal bowls, others ceramic plates, but nothing was disposable until you got all the way to the end of the article, to the American lunch.

Into the middle of this reality we hear the word of God for our day: “Is it not enough for you to feed in the good pasture and drink from the stream, must you also trample and muddy the rest of it?” God planted a garden, placed human beings in it to take care of it, and called everything “very good.” All around us God’s creation calls out in praise even as we use it for our own purposes. And before I get myself into trouble, let me just say: yes, human beings are the pinnacle of the creation story as told in Genesis 1. God makes all the rest of creation, then makes human beings in God’s very own image, and places us in this beautiful gift of a world.

But the gift is more like a loan—because, as we learn in the rest of scripture, “The earth is the Lord’s and everything in it.” The world belongs to God, not to us—our job is to take care of it and use it wisely, to love God partly by loving the things God has made. Our job is not to use it however we want with no thought to the rest of the beautiful web God has woven, no thought for the future of the system and those who will live in it after us. When one strand of a web breaks, the rest is weakened as well, and that is true for God’s creation just as it is for the icky little spiders who weave those webs I can so blithely use for a metaphor.

Most of the time when the Bible talks about creation, it’s about how all of God’s creation sings, it’s about how even creation praises the Lord so why can’t we seem to learn, and it’s about instructions for taking care. Huge chunks of the Old Testament are about how we ought to care for the land, give it fallow seasons, not pollute it, and use it wisely so it will produce good fruit—enough for everyone! In fact, the word used in that Genesis 2 creation story, where we heard that God took the human and put him in the garden to farm and take care of it—usually that is translated as “to till and keep it.” And that word that can be translated as “keep” or as “take care” is the same word as in the blessing—“The Lord bless you and keep you.” We are to care for, to keep, the gift of God’s creation in the same way that God cares for and keeps us. This is not a gift given lightly! The land was such a gift for God’s covenant people, and the way to keep the gift was to treat it carefully and with respect. And yet when we get to Paul, we hear this: “we know that the whole creation is groaning…waiting with breathless anticipation for the revelation of God’s sons and daughters.” Groaning…breathless anticipation…the whole world is waiting for us to become who God has made us to be, to see what a complete set of God’s creatures participating in God’s kingdom might look like.

Well, aren’t we all God’s children? Here we are, we haven’t been hiding or anything…so how come the world hasn’t noticed yet? How can there still be more to wait for?
Perhaps because someone living as though they are made in the image of God, the creator of all things, would not walk through a park and proclaim that they wouldn’t stop to pick up some trash.

Perhaps because someone living as though they are made in the image of God, creator of the first garden, would not feed themselves and trample the rest of the pasture while others are hungry and thirsty.

Perhaps because someone living as though they are made in the image of God, creator and owner of the world and all that lives in it, would not stand silent while their culture continues to regard everything (including some of its people) as disposable.

Perhaps the issue is not that creation waits for the right people, but that creation waits for us to grow into our inheritance, into our true selves, into the creatures God created to live in this delicate web of life. All creation groans and waits breathlessly for us to be transformed by God’s grace so that the image of God is revealed in us. When we take a place in the web of creation, rather than trying to remake it to our liking, subdue it for our uses, and force it to follow our own way, we may very well find ourselves singing the same song as the sky and stars and birds and fish and sea—every day, not just on Earth Day.

May it be so. Amen.

some tropical delicious for a strange spring day

Today, thanks to Door to Door Organics, I had a little Egypt flashback. When I first went to Egypt, one of the stranger and more wonderful things I encountered was the ubiquitous juice stand. You can always recognize it by the bags of fruit hanging out front, which will usually give you a clue about what's in season (and therefore what you can get). In the summer and early fall, mangos are in season.

Apparently in Peru, mangos are in season right now.

So...in my Door to Door Organics box last week were two delicious looking mangos. Now, every other time I've had mangos in the US they have been beyond disappointing. In fact, when I went to Egypt, I thought I didn't like them! But one slice into one of these mangos (after removing the Peru sticker) told me this was the real deal.

So...I had one of my favorite things: mango juice! I popped the flesh of the two mangos into a cup, put in some water, and whipped out the immersion blender...soon I was transported to one of the best parts of that year (the food!). :-) 16 ounces of fresh mango juice...unfortunately sans the fun juice man and his jokes (which are probably much funnier if your Arabic is better than mine ever was!)

Definitely a good thing on a day filled with some of my least favorite things: lightning, thunder, and rain. It's like sun in a cup!

And healthy too!

fasting for Lent

Lent is a common time to practice fasting--abstaining from things in the hope that when we discipline ourselves, we are more likely to see God's presence around us. When we don't give in to every craving for a snack, or spend our time constantly consuming or distracting ourselves, we have more energy (spiritual, mental, and physical) to pay attention to what God is calling us to.

In that spirit, each week during Lent many in our church family are fasting from different things.

The first week we fasted from snacking between meals. I didn't find that too hard, until the end of the week--something about Friday made me crave all kinds of snacks I'd not cared about earlier in the week. But whenever I wanted a snack during the week, I spent a moment thinking of those who don't have enough to eat, and feeding my hunger for justice instead of my hunger for Girl Scout Cookies (of which I have many!).

Last week we fasted from text messaging and computer/video games. The fast runs Monday-Saturday, and by mid-morning on Monday I was already in withdrawal. I hadn't realized just how much I use texting as a way to convey and receive short bursts of information and to keep in touch with various friends throughout the day. I talked on the phone more than usual last week! It's interesting to think about the differences in types of communication. What's lost when relying so much on texting? How can we maintain connections and at the same time not be tied to that medium? And then the games...I was super afraid that I would end up losing (aka being force-resigned from) all my Words With Friends games--because if you don't play for a certain number of days in a row, you lose. :-( I was theoretically prepared for giving that up, but I confess it hurt my too-competitive soul just a bit. That doesn't seem to have happened, thanks to my friends being slow players too, so I didn't have to face those "consequences" (yes, I realize what a ridiculously tiny first world problem that is). And I really did have more time when I wasn't checking in on my games every few hours.

This coming week we're fasting from TV and movies. I don't have tv channels, and I rarely watch movies, so it shouldn't be hard, right? Well...yes and no. I mean, I do have Netflix and Amazon Prime streaming video, and I usually go to a friend's house to watch the Monday night musical extravaganza (The Voice and Smash). And, much bigger than that, when I work out each morning I watch some tv. It's my moment to just let my mind veg out while I work my muscles...I watch the previous night's Daily Show, or I watch streaming netflix tv shows. This week, no tv during workouts. I'm not entirely certain what that's going to mean, but I suspect it means that I'll be taking advantage of the nicer weather to get outside!

As I was contemplating this situation, a parent at church reminded me (via basically preaching back to me my sermon from 2 weeks ago) that multitasking is often the enemy of the deeper spiritual and creative life. She told me to keep the tv (and the ipod) off and just go workout, focusing on what I was doing and nothing else...and that might just turn out to be the time when problems would be solved, my brain would be free to do its thing, and I might even find that my spirit was more free too. It could help to "clear the clutter" (to use a phrase that's been in our Lenten liturgy each week) if I would just take advantage of this opportunity rather than seeing the fast as a burden.

Well, she told me! and of course she's right. So this week, no tv or movies. hopefully some clutter will clear and my own spiritual vision will come into focus. When it does...I can text you about it. ;-)