Remember your first science project? Or more precisely, what is the first science project you remember? Often, one of the first science projects children undertake is to watch a plain little caterpillar spin a cocoon about itself until it is completely shrouded within a chrysalis. The wonder of transformation is made real to the children when, days later, an entirely different creature - a beautiful butterfly - emerges from the apparently lifeless shell.
As children, we immediately focus on the delicate creature that emerges so mysteriously from the cocoon. With the actual process inside the cocoon unseen, there is a lot of romance about the cocoon. A creepy, crawly caterpillar is magically transformed into a radiant, soaring butterfly. Sounds wonderful, doesn't it?
Forget it. For the caterpillar, there was nothing "wonderful" about it. A caterpillar doesn't just grow into a butterfly. A caterpillar must undergo molting and metamorphosis - the dramatic silence of the pupa in which the insect's morphology is entirely rearranged. How ironic that in today's vernacular, that word "cocoon" has come to mean exactly the opposite of what it means to a caterpillar. A cocoon isn't safe. A cocoon is where a caterpillar risks it all- where it enters total chaos, where it undergoes total rebuilding, where it dies to one way of locomotion and life and is born to a new way of living. A cocoon is where a caterpillar allows itself to disintegrate into a blob of gelatinous liquid without structure or identity so that it can emerge with sharpened sensory perceptions and breathtaking beauty.
Only in taking the risk of entering that inert pupa can the caterpillar go from dormancy to potency, from ugliness to beauty. This is the reason why the butterfly is an authentic symbol of resurrection! Not because it's cute. But because it risks dying to be born to a new life.
On Pentecost morning, the miracle of the Holy Spirit was not that of multilinguistic translations. The miracle of Pentecost was and is this: Pentecost power proclaims a fundamental transformation. The presence of Christ's Spirit burst out of accepted, established parameters. Holiness became accessible to all, even the fearful disciples, and was preached forth to all who would listen. Human attempts to keep the Holy Spirit contained in one holy language or one holy place failed. Christ's sacrifice split open the chrysalis and sent the Holy Spirit soaring out into the world.
What was happening was that the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Trinity, God at work in the church and in the world, had entered the disciples. Now this was not the first appearance of the Holy Spirit in history. It was the Holy Spirit that brooded over creation in the beginning of the world. It was the Holy Spirit that spoke through the prophets. It was the Holy Spirit by which Jesus was conceived in Mary. And the Holy Spirit is still acting today in the church and in the process by which each of us is called to be the persons God created us to be and the church God called us to be.
Remember the story in the Old Testament about Moses and the burning bush? Out of this fearsome energy, the voice of Yahweh calls Moses to deliver the children of Israel out of bondage to Egypt. You see, this is what God's fiery spirit does. It calls us to take risks. Moses tried to decline, but Yahweh would not accept any of Moses' excuses for declining service. The burning bush symbolizes Moses' call by fire to incredible risk. We serve a God who not only gives us life but also uses our lives to fulfill divine purposes.
Most of us would hold as commonplace the notion that God calls unlikely persons into service. Peculiar people are called to particular tasks at particular moments in history. What we forget is that we are those peculiar called to a particular task at this particular moment in history - called to risk being a church in the fullest sense.
Were it not for the giving of the Spirit, there would be no Christian Church. We celebrate Pentecost not only as the birthday of the Church, but because there is something about the strange, ecstatic events of that day long ago that is available Sunday after Sunday in this church and in every church.
They were there: Peter, John, and James, and the other apostles. They were there: the women and Mary the mother of Jesus and his brothers. They were there, when the wind and the flame of God's presence came. They spoke a language that all humanity could comprehend. They spoke a language that ended the separation of races, nations, and cultures. They spoke a language that lifted women from their second-class status as men's property and child- bearing machines - for when the Spirit fell upon them it made no distinction between male and female. They were there also: Those who did not yet believe, did not yet belong, hearing for the first time the language of God's love for them.
On this specific day of Pentecost so long ago something particularly alarming and astounding occurred. After a theophany, or manifestation of God's Spirit, persons of different cultures, backgrounds and races all heard the Gospel in their own languages.
Divisions and differences were overcome. Disparities and distances yielded to unity and commonality. The good news was cutting through language barriers and speaking directly to the hearts and spirits of men and women. The Gospel was understood as a language for all and open to everyone.
A church is a sanctuary, a place of refuge, a place to celebrate, to rejoice, to praise God. Coming to church is coming to a sacred place at a sacred time to deliberately bind ourselves to God and to one another. Being part of a faith community is to risk being open to serving God in ways we had not anticipated. Otherwise, the church degenerates into a mailing list.
The time has come now, some twenty centuries after Pentecost, for a fresh renewal of pentecostal power. The fact remains that there are men and women who are not permitted to receive the Gospel in their own languages - for many reasons. Unfortunately, caring is too often underexpressed in our churches. Too often, when the church should be faithful, it is fearful. When we ought to be concerned, we are cruel. When people need our warm compassion, we offer them cold intransigence. Gay and lesbian people are the people today who have been told they don't belong in Church, and churches that welcome and affirm gay and lesbian people are being told they don't belong either. That Pentecost is not for them.
The one language people need is compassion. Judgment, fingerpointing, and callousness will not heal wounded hearts. Everyone needs tenderness and the language of mercy and understanding. Those churches that have learned the language of compassion, churches across denominational lines (just ask Presbyterian and Methodist churches how they are doing!) have heard the call to be risk-takers, as they proclaim the language of mercy and understanding.
The disciples' language became large enough for everyone only after God's Spirit of life and new birth replaced postcrucifixion despair and defeat. On that day of Pentecost, the disciples not only received the breath of new life, they also tasted fire from on high.
For our language to become large enough to be pentecostal speech, we need fire: the element of burning and renewal; the force that alters molecular structure and transforms the composition of compounds; an active principle of burning, according to Webster, characterized by the production of heat and light.
Fire has two properties. Fire can destroy or create. We need both of these properties. When fire comes to us as sunshine it grows plants, flowers, and fields. When it falls as lightning, it burns and destroys forests, ignites grass and foliage.
What took place at Pentecost was fire that burned up divisiveness. Fire melted away pettiness, melted down selfishness, and forged away the deformities and aberrations of sinfulness and brokenness. We need such fire for ourselves, for our church, and for our denomination.
The other fire is growth. That's the sunlight of possibilities. Once that sunlight begins working on the soil, tender plants of understanding, forgiveness, patience, and kindness begins blooming. Growth fire teaches us to love everyone. We need such fire for ourselves, our church, and our denomination. But working with fire is very risky; it's transforming; it empowers us to be the people God created us to be. And if you think that's easy, just ask the caterpillar as she spins her cocoon. There is no such thing as a risk-free life.
Cocoons are self-contained pockets of risk. If that frumpy, dumpy little caterpillar didn't take the ultimate risk of re- creation, something which can be experienced only in the cocoon, she would never be able to break out as a butterfly. The way to the safety of a transformed life is found in risk.
Did you ever see a little kid nervous about taking that first step onto a moving escalator? They hesitate, halt, hover on the edge, reluctant to step off that edge. That first step is difficult but once they take it, the movement of the escalator carries them along effortlessly. When they play stop and go at that first step, there is the greatest danger. People topple over them or they panic and bolt forward, dragging others with them. They are safer taking the risk of getting onto something beyond their control than they are holding back. The hardest part is that first step of faith.
We cannot NOT be risk-takers. To be followers of Christ demands it. The danger today lies with safety; the benefits lie with risk. We must give up the church's "safety-first," risk-free approach to ministry and mission. We need to embrace a more entrepreneurial, risk-taking, failure-embracing strategy. Can we support the more imaginative and energetic self-starters in our midst? Are we ready for hands on ministries, even though we're a small church? Are we ready to run that kind of risk?
The disciples risked ridicule and retribution by proclaiming the gospel message out to that crowd in words they could all easily understand. They took a chance and believed that the authority and power of the Holy Spirit would work through their words. It was a profound risk. But that moment of proclamation brought into being the church as the new creation of God. There is no safety in safety; there is only safety in the risk and dare of a life of faith. Faith is but another word for "risk."
God is the biggest risk-taker of them all. God created you and me with the right of refusal. God built risk into the very heart of the universe: at an atomic level, at a cosmic level. God is big enough and bold enough to put the very being of the Godhead at risk by creating you and me.
That doesn't mean that God is endangered by our right of refusal. But it does mean that God suffers through the lives of hurting people because of our right of refusal to take risks of ministry. God created a cosmos where the creation can participate in God's own creativity. That is risky, and it is our call.
That also means that, while you and I don't get safety, we do get joy and delight and the experience of the divine as we become the people God created and called us to be. We get the privilege of participating in the creativity of God, to take risks with our Creator. That's being church - that's taking risks.
The Rev. Esther Hargis
May
18, 1997
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