Sunday, June 29, 2014

Unbound

Image Source
June 29, 2014
Genesis 22:1-14
1After these things God tested Abraham. He said to him, “Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” 2God said, “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains that I shall show you.” 3So Abraham rose early in the morning, saddled his donkey, and took two of his young men with him, and his son Isaac; he cut the wood for the burnt offering, and set out and went to the place in the distance that God had shown him. 4On the third day Abraham looked up and saw the place far away. 5Then Abraham said to his young men, “Stay here with the donkey; the boy and I will go over there; we will worship, and then we will come back to you.” 6Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it on his son Isaac, and he himself carried the fire and the knife. So the two of them walked on together. 7Isaac said to his father Abraham, “Father!” And he said, “Here I am, my son.” He said, “The fire and the wood are here, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?” 8Abraham said, “God himself will provide the lamb for a burnt offering, my son.” So the two of them walked on together.
9When they came to the place that God had shown him, Abraham built an altar there and laid the wood in order. He bound his son Isaac, and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. 10Then Abraham reached out his hand and took the knife to kill his son. 11But the angel of the LORD called to him from heaven, and said, “Abraham, Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” 12He said, “Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him; for now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me.” 13And Abraham looked up and saw a ram, caught in a thicket by its horns. Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up as a burnt offering instead of his son. 14So Abraham called that place “The LORD will provide”; as it is said to this day, “On the mount of the LORD it shall be provided.”


Sermon: “Unbound”

My name means “laughter”, you know.  Isaac.  It’s an onomatopoeia like sizzle or cuckoo, meaning it sounds like the noise it makes.  I suppose when an angel of God told my ninety-year-old mother Sarah she was going to have a baby, she responded with “isaac isaac isaac” in laughter.

But the laughter (that’s me) nearly died one day.  That day is forever burned into my memory.  It started out like any other day: my dad Abraham said we were going on a little hiking trip for the weekend, up to Moriah.  He saddled the donkey, brought supplies and a couple of his best young workers.  I didn’t really think he’d brought enough food for me for the way home again, but didn’t say anything because my ol’ Dad seemed a little on edge. 

He continued to seem on edge to me.  Sure, I was six, but I could still tell.  I kept meeting his eye to catch him giving me a strange sort of look, and he kept looking angrily up at heaven with no explanation.   And there was the wandering – we wandered and wandered until finally, on the third day, he stopped.  He told the workers to stay with the donkey, and took my hand.  “Let’s go.” he said. 

I’m not sure why I felt afraid, but I did.  He was my dad, I trusted him completely, but I was still unsettled for some reason.  But I came with him.  I saw the oil and the wood to make a sacrifice to God.  Even at 6, I understood the way this ritual worked.  “W…where’s the lamb, Dad?” I asked with worried eyes as big as dinner plates.

His eyes teared up for a minute.  I’d never seen my Dad cry.  Now I was really scared.  “God will provide,” he choked out. 

When he told me to lie down on the altar, I knew what was happening.  I don’t know if I was too stunned to cry out or so shocked by the situation that I said nothing, but I obeyed.  Shaking like a leaf, I laid down.  He bound me, tying up my hands and feet, and though tears now poured down my cheeks, I didn’t say a word.

Just as what I feared would happen was about to happen, there was a voice.  It didn’t even startle me.  I barely noticed it.  I was beyond noticing anything at this point.  “Abraham!” It roared.  “Do not harm your son!  I know you fear God because you haven’t even withheld your son.” 

My dad fell down to the ground with relief.  And then he rose, his face broken with grief.  He untied me, with each motion weeping, “I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry, Isaac,” over and over again.  I was unbound, free.  My life was saved.

And my heart was broken. 

At first, though, I used this experience to my advantage.  When my dad would ask me to clean my room, I’d just say one word, “Sacrifice!” and he would clean it for me.  That was one powerful guilt trip.  I got all my favorite toys that way, never had to clean my room and my dad was always going out of his way to show me love. 

But as I became a teenager the wounds of that fateful day began to fester.  I became withdrawn, irrationally angry at the littlest things, and I never looked my dad in the eye. 

That day took its toll on him, too.  He never laughed anymore.  His faith in God was steadfast as ever, but it took on an almost maniacal, obsessive edge.  He seemed to think that if he took one misstep, God would sacrifice him like he almost sacrificed me.  Or perhaps he wanted to prove his fear of God so God would never ask of him again what was asked that horrible day.

It’s been many, many years since that day.  I said goodbye to my dear, kind mother Sarah, and welcomed my wife Rebekah.  I had children, Esau and Jacob, who in their own way tricked me the way my father once had done. 

But in the end, that angry fire of my teenage youth has burned down.  It is still there, a smoldering, glowing ember of regret and sadness, but now it looks much more like pity than rage.  You see, I now feel sorry for my dad.

I mean, what sort of God would ask a father to kill his laughter, his long-awaited son?  I don’t want to believe in a God like that.  And so I don’t.

This isn’t to say I don’t believe in God.  I do.  I taught my children the stories of Yahweh and through them and their children, and their children’s children, you’ve heard of these stories, too. 

Did God order my dad to kill me that day in Moriah, or was my dad just really sick?  Oh, I’ve spent my entire life asking that question.  And the answer is always the same: I don’t know. 

What I do know is this: my dad regretted listening to that command, and acting on it.  He regretted not showing his fear of God in some other way that wouldn’t have made me forever fearful of him.  And, you know what, while I realize this probably isn’t perhaps “theologically sound”, I get the feeling God regretted that day, too.

Because this same God later learned what it was like to lose a son.  This God watched as people bound him to a cross, and this God didn’t provide a lamb that time.  This God’s laughter died, too.  But, not for long.  Three days of death and sorrow, and then an eternity of life and laughter.  Three days bound in a tomb, and then a resurrection that would unbind all of creation for all time.

Maybe it takes the fear to find the laughter.  Maybe it takes being bound to appreciate freedom.

Honestly, just as my anger at my dad turned to pity, I feel sorry that our God had to endure such horrific violence. 

And I don’t know why that happened any more than I know why my dad nearly killed me doing what he thought was God’s will.
But this I do know: love is stronger than death.  Our scriptures say that, too.  We human beings are a terrible mess of beauty and violence, pain and laughter.  That is life.  But somehow, in ways we will never be able to understand, even if we were meant to, that love of God endures the very worst harm we can do to each other, and even the worst harm it can seem like God brings us. 

Perhaps the point, if there even is a point to this rambling story of mine, is not in the binding, but the unbinding.  Being bound in fear and the threat of death was part of my story, yes.  But it wasn’t the end.  In the end, I was unbound – freed – so that I could try to give my children the kind of blessed life I missed out on. 

I do not pretend to understand fully the way our wild God works in this world, even now, after all these years.  But this I do know: God wants us all to be unbound in the end.  So, let go.  Be freed.  Live this very precious life with as little regret and anger as you can muster.  And, oh yes, laugh.  As often as you possibly can, laugh.  Amen. 

Sunday, June 22, 2014

The God Who Answers

June 22, 2014
Psalm 86:1-10, 16-17
1Incline your ear, O LORD, and answer me,
for I am poor and needy.
2Preserve my life, for I am devoted to you;
save your servant who trusts in you.
You are my God;3be gracious to me, O Lord,
for to you do I cry all day long.
4Gladden the soul of your servant,
for to you, O Lord, I lift up my soul.
5For you, O Lord, are good and forgiving,
abounding in steadfast love to all who call on you.
6Give ear, O LORD, to my prayer;
listen to my cry of supplication.
7In the day of my trouble I call on you,
for you will answer me.
8There is none like you among the gods, O Lord,
nor are there any works like yours.
9All the nations you have made shall come
and bow down before you, O Lord,
and shall glorify your name.
10For you are great and do wondrous things;
you alone are God.
16Turn to me and be gracious to me;
give your strength to your servant;
save the child of your serving girl.
17Show me a sign of your favor,
so that those who hate me may see it and be put to shame,
because you, LORD, have helped me and comforted me.

Sermon: “The God Who Answers”

What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.
God never gives you more than you can handle.
If God brings you "to" it, God will bring you "through" it.
You’re being tested.
God needed another angel.
Everything happens for a reason.

When things aren’t going very well in life, we love clichés like these.  We want to be comforting, present, say something to make it – whether “it” be the loss of a job, pet, parent or friend – better.  But there’s another saying we should remember:

“If you don’t have something nice to say, don’t say anything at all.”

You see, these sort of statements have the best of intentions, and the worst of implications.  They intend love and concern and care.  But they imply that God sends hardship upon us in a strength-testing game of chess with our souls.  They imply that God’s character is self-serving, taking those we love to satisfy God’s own needs.  They imply that life is nothing but a golf course set out before us (that’s for you US Open fans), with one hole following the next, and no freedom on our part to deviate from that course God’s made for our life, even if we feel that we’re stuck in the sand.

No, as nice as they’d like to be, these sort of clichés aren’t really what’s helpful in a time of loss and uncertainty.

Honestly, y’all, I’m in that sort of time today.  My sweet little old dog Hayden had to be put down last week.  Enough of you are pet people to know how that affects a person.  I’m a bit down, a bit tired, and in need of reassurance.

And I’ll not find it in “everything happening for a reason.”  I’ll not find it in God giving me as much as I can handle.  I’ll not find it in the sort of strength this week is supposed to instill in me. 
As people of faith, I find, you find, we find, our reassurance in one place above any other: scripture.  And today, our Psalm reading isn’t saying everything happens for a reason.  It isn’t saying God gives us as much as we can handle or that being tested is part of growing our faith.  What Psalm 86 has to say is this:

God is God (we are not).
God is the One we lift our soul to.
God is good and forgiving, abounding in steadfast love to all who call on God.
We can call to God in times of trouble and God will answer us.
God is great and does wondrous things and, again, only God is God.
God is our help and our comfort.

I need to hear and remember these truths today.  Maybe you do too.

Maybe you’re struggling with loss in some form.  Maybe you’re feeling overwhelmed with life’s busyness or lack of it.  Maybe you’re trying to be there for someone who is hurting and don’t know what to say.  Maybe you’re hurting yourself and trying to pray to God and don’t know what to say.

Let’s forget those empty clichés. But let’s never forget the steadfast love of our God.  For in that steadfast love, we find what we need to sustain us, not just on the joyful days but, more importantly, on the not-so-joyful ones.

It’s not fancy, or complicated, or cliché, this steadfast love of God.  It is simply exactly what we need it to be, and exactly what a hurting and divided world needs it to be.

So my sermon for you today is, perhaps selfishly, really a sermon for me in the midst of a difficult week.  It’s me reminding myself to cling to this steadfast love of God, to the promises of God in scripture, and to the ways children of God have shown that love to me in this time. 
But it’s also me reminding you to do the same: cling to that steadfast love, and extend it to others.

I don’t have a funny story today.  I don’t have clever words or an intellectual theological lesson. 

I simply share the words of Psalm 86, in hope that you and me both will cling to their truth. 
You are my God; 3be gracious to me, O Lord,
for to you do I cry all day long.
4Gladden the soul of your servant,
for to you, O Lord, I lift up my soul.
5For you, O Lord, are good and forgiving,
abounding in steadfast love to all who call on you.
6Give ear, O LORD, to my prayer;
listen to my cry of supplication.
7In the day of my trouble I call on you,
for you will answer me.

For in the end, nothing else matters, does it?  Not the clichés, not the well-crafted words, not the heady theology or deep understanding.  It’s incredibly simple, really (though the church has always tried to complicate it): God’s steadfast love, a love we know most fully in Jesus Christ, is for each of us, and we ought never to forget it. 


Thanks be to the God who hears our cry, to the Son who raises us to new life with him again and again and to the Spirit who is our Comforter and Hope this day, and all the days to come, amen.

Sunday, June 15, 2014

It Was Very Good

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June 15, 2014
Genesis 1:1-2:4A
1In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, 2the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. 3Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. 4And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. 5God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.
6And God said, “Let there be a dome in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.” 7So God made the dome and separated the waters that were under the dome from the waters that were above the dome. And it was so. 8God called the dome Sky. And there was evening and there was morning, the second day.
9And God said, “Let the waters under the sky be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear.” And it was so. 10God called the dry land Earth, and the waters that were gathered together he called Seas. And God saw that it was good. 11Then God said, “Let the earth put forth vegetation: plants yielding seed, and fruit trees of every kind on earth that bear fruit with the seed in it.” And it was so. 12The earth brought forth vegetation: plants yielding seed of every kind, and trees of every kind bearing fruit with the seed in it. And God saw that it was good. 13And there was evening and there was morning, the third day.
14And God said, “Let there be lights in the dome of the sky to separate the day from the night; and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years, 15and let them be lights in the dome of the sky to give light upon the earth.” And it was so. 16God made the two great lights — the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night — and the stars. 17God set them in the dome of the sky to give light upon the earth, 18to rule over the day and over the night, and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good. 19And there was evening and there was morning, the fourth day.
20And God said, “Let the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the dome of the sky.” 21So God created the great sea monsters and every living creature that moves, of every kind, with which the waters swarm, and every winged bird of every kind. And God saw that it was good. 22God blessed them, saying, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.” 23And there was evening and there was morning, the fifth day.
24And God said, “Let the earth bring forth living creatures of every kind: cattle and creeping things and wild animals of the earth of every kind.” And it was so. 25God made the wild animals of the earth of every kind, and the cattle of every kind, and everything that creeps upon the ground of every kind. And God saw that it was good.
26Then God said, “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.” 27So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. 28God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.” 29God said, “See, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit; you shall have them for food. 30And to every beast of the earth, and to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.” And it was so. 31God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.
2:1Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all their multitude. 2And on the seventh day God finished the work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all the work that he had done. 3So God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it, because on it God rested from all the work that he had done in creation.
4These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created.


Sermon: “It Was Very Good”

Every morning
the world
is created.
Under the orange

sticks of the sun
the heaped
ashes of the night
turn into leaves again

and fasten themselves to the high branches ---
and the ponds appear
like black cloth
on which are painted islands

of summer lilies.
If it is your nature
to be happy
you will swim away along the soft trails

for hours, your imagination
alighting everywhere.
And if your spirit
carries within it

the thorn
that is heavier than lead ---
if it's all you can do
to keep on trudging ---

there is still
somewhere deep within you
a beast shouting that the earth
is exactly what it wanted ---

each pond with its blazing lilies
is a prayer heard and answered
lavishly,
every morning,

whether or not
you have ever dared to be happy,
whether or not
you have ever dared to pray.

To me, creation is poetry.  That’s why I can’t help but share a favorite poem from Mary Oliver.  Genesis 1 is a verse-by-verse love poem to the created world, with God expressing that love over and over again like a proud parent proclaiming, “and it was good.”

I read this text as poetry, and so it doesn’t really matter to me whether it all happened in a certain number of days or millennia.  It matters that it touches our souls, not just on the pages of this holy book of ours, but also on walks in the woods, in the painted barns of Cameron becoming one with vines and branches, in the eyes of a beloved pet, in the thundering power of a storm and the hushed calm afterwards.

It’s not enough to just hear or even believe the story of creation.  We must let it enter our bones, stir within our souls, so that we do not take this precious gift for granted.  No one forced God to create the world.  God did not create out of coercion, or boredom, or curiosity about what might happen.  There was one and only one reason God created – and creates still: love. 

Each leaf and branch is filled with the love of God, each drop of water (the same water that has ever been, by the way: we drink the very waters the Spirit hovered over at creation) each drop of water is holy, each creature that soars through the skies, walks the earth or swims in the ocean proclaims the handiwork of that great poet Creator.

It was all called good.

And then we were made.  Now to be honest, there are a few words that create trouble in the story in Genesis of us being made.  They are: very, subdue and dominion.

Let’s start with very.  That poetic naming of everything as “good” reaches a pinnacle it seems after we were created: God then said it was “very good.”  Like children proudly brandishing a gold star, we are quite fond of that “very.”  It means we’re perhaps just a little bit better than everything else.  That we matter more, that we’re more important and certainly more powerful.

And therein lies our arrogance as human beings, right from the start of things.  That “very” isn’t just for us, you see.  It’s for the whole of the created order, which includes us, but isn’t limited to us.  God took a good long gander at everything God had made and God saw that it – all of it – was very good.  We’re made in God’s image, yes, but we only bear that image in the context of the entire created community God made.


On to that next troubling word: subdue.  As in, “fill the earth and subdue it.”  We human beings like this even more than that very!  We have long assumed this is a permit from the Divine to bend creation to our will and profit.  And perhaps if someone else was asking us to rule or subdue the earth, it would mean that.  But it wasn’t a politician or executive asking us to subdue the earth.  It was God.  And remember, every single thing God made was made not out of coercion or curiosity, but out of love.  

So any subduing or ruling we are called to must come from a place of loving all God has made: every tree and rock, every drop of water, every child made in God’s image.  Subdue looks more like stewardship than a dictatorship over the planet. 

It’s also important to realize that we’re not the only ones who rule in this creation text.  The sun rules over the day, giving light and vitality to all green things, and the moon rules the night, crafting the ebb and flow of the oceans like a great orchestra conductor.  The ruling of creation is always done with love.

And now for that final problematic word: dominion.  Humanity is told to fill and subdue the earth and “have dominion” over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.

But like a contract with our Creator, there are conditions to this sort of dominion.  We’re not told we are to have dominion in order to build our national resources, or add short-term jobs to our state economy.  The terms of this “dominion contract” don’t include promised benefits of money, status or security.  The only benefit included in this dominion contract with our Creator is food.  We are to have dominion in order to eat, but even that sort of dominion must be rooted in a love for God’s creation.

All of creation is indeed very good.  As Mary Oliver would say, creation is our best way to communicate with the Creator.  It is our prayer.  Let’s not neglect those prayers, or silence them with our ambition and thus cut off our lifeline to the One who made us. 

Let us pray: with each song of a bird, with each clean drop of water, with each sunlit tree.  That prayer of creation goes on whether we join in or not, but if we do, we will find the same prayer said to our Creator over and over again, first uttered by that greatest of Poets, “It is very good.”   Amen. 

Sunday, June 8, 2014

Our Sons and Our Daughters

Picture taken by a church member at the Crazy Horse Memorial in South Dakota.
 We used this as our Prayer of Confession in worship.
June 8, 2014 - Day of Pentecost
Acts 2:1-21
1When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. 2And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. 3Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. 4All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.
5Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. 6And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. 7Amazed and astonished, they asked, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? 8And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? 9Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, 10Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes 11Cretans and Arabs — in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.” 12All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “What does this mean?”
13But others sneered and said, “They are filled with new wine.”
14But 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. 15Indeed, these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o’clock in the morning. 16No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel:
17  ‘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. 

18  Even upon my slaves, both men and women, 
        
in those days I will pour out my Spirit; 
               
and they shall prophesy.
19  And I will show portents in the heaven above 
          
and signs on the earth below, 
               
blood, and fire, and smoky mist. 

20  The sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood, before the coming of the Lord’s great and glorious day. 21  Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.’”


Sermon: “Our Sons and Our Daughters”

I wish I had been there, on that first Pentecost day, the birthday of the church.  How incredible it must have been!  That Spirit swooping in like the sound of a hurricane, with flaming tongues hovering over each person’s head. 

I mean can you even imagine?  We get startled when someone drops a hymnal!  We’re talking flammable heads, y’all!  It doesn’t get less decent and orderly than that.  I imagine that if that sort of thing happened here, we’d all be taking turns dunking our heads in the baptismal font before anyone got hurt or our church set fire.  We’d have the fire and rescue squad here immediately.

Pentecost is a strange story.  But when I read this familiar text yet again, I noticed something exceptionally strange about it, something I’d not seen before.  It talks about this diverse gathering of Jews from many cultural backgrounds being bewildered and astonished.  This isn’t new: of course they were.  But was it by those gail-force winds?  Nope.  Surely it was the Pentecostal pyrotechnics that shocked them?  Nope, not even that. 

It would seem that none of this really phased them.  So what was this source of bewilderment?  A sound.  Not a heavenly sound, but a very, very human sound.  The sound of the voice next to them, and the voice next to them, and the voice next to them.  Everyone spoke in other languages, and heard in their own, about God’s deeds of power.  Everyone understood everyone else.  That was the power of the Pentecost story.

It never really was about the rushing wind.  It never really was about those flaming tongues.  It was – and is – about the sound of people really hearing one another, across all sorts of cultural barriers.

It’s easy to overcomplicate the Pentecost story into a magic show of sorts by God to show the might of the Holy Spirit.  We do this when we think the Holy Spirit will come blazing a burning trail in our hearts showing us the one exact way to go in our lives.  We do this when we speak of Her (the word for Spirit in both the Old and New Testaments is feminine, so I use that today) as a possession who comes to live inside us when God decides we’re worthy or deserving.  We do this when we wait and wait and wait for God to give us direction while the Holy Spirit waits and waits and waits for us to just step out in faith.

The Holy Spirit doesn’t need the bells and whistles, the fiery show and furling winds.  She just needs a voice.  That’s the power of Pentecost: your voice, my voice, our collective voice as a church, the voices of those who go silenced, the voices of those who speak a different language than us, they all matter. 

Because that is how the Spirit first spoke that Pentecost Day…through ordinary human voices.  Which is, of course, why that voice of God was so easy to mock or ignore.  Several said those speaking were just drunk (on a different kind of spirit, you might say).  This shows something powerful about the vulnerability of God.  God wants to speak through us – and so God is willing to risk being ignored or silenced in order to do so.

And so we should never take the voice of another lightly: it might just be the voice of the Spirit.  As Peter promised, through Joel, “I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your young men shall see visions and your old mean shall dream dreams, even upon those in captivity – male and female – I will pour out my Spirit, and they shall prophesy.”

But what happens if no one listens to those Spirit-filled sons and daughters, young and old men, captive men and women?  What happens if we dismiss their voices as drunk, or irrelevant to our lives, or lesser than our own?  Where does the prophecy go?

Unfortunately, we know the answer to that question.  We in the church have often been about the work of hearing people, but we have also silenced others.  This day, when we receive the Presbyterian Women Birthday Offering for Native American women who have been victims of sexual abuse, we confess, I confess, that our history is complicated.  We have brought the good news of Jesus to Native Americans, and we have brought the bad news of cultural superiority.  We have brought education, and we have brought exploitation. 

It would be nice to just let history be history, and keep our faith in a safe space beyond complicated human relationships.  Except that we all know history isn’t just history – it impacts our realities today, and faith that is divorced from complicated human relationships isn’t really faith.  And, of course, there is that pesky Spirit.  She spoke through the voices of complicated humans – and the power of Her message was in people finally, finally understanding each other.

And so we have to acknowledge our history, while proclaiming with the voices God has given us that we are building a new reality for our sons and daughters: a place where young girls do not live in fear of abuse and college women do not suffer violence because they say no.  A place where young boys are raised to understand that “being a man” involves compassion as much as courage, vulnerability as much as strength. 

Let us not silence the sons and daughters of our society: they are our prophets.  They are how the Spirit chooses to speak, just as much as She speaks through each of us. 

Yes, I wish I was there that first Pentecost Day.  I can just picture a mother walking away with her little girl, and the wide-eyed daughter looking up with amazement saying those powerful Pentecostal words we want all of our children to say, “Everyone heard me!  And I heard them, too.”  We don’t need the flames.  We don’t need the wind.  We don’t even need the red outfits.  We just need to really hear one another.  That is Pentecost.  Amen.