Based on Luke 4: 14-21
I want to begin my blog today with a story from an excellent book I have begun to read. The book is entitled: "In the Eye of the Storm: Swept to the Center by God" written by Bishop Gene Robinson.
"There is a story about Pentecost Sunday. A priest in a large church in Florida, with his usual flair for the dramatic, decided to dramatize the Holy Spirit coming like wind in a particularly spectacular way. He got the engine out of one of the boats used in the Everglades--an airplane propeller attached to a big gasoline engine--and mounted it in the choir loft high in the back of the church. The wind from the propeller would blow out across the congregation when the story of the Holy Spirit was read. It seemed like a great idea.
The priest and an usher gave it a dry run on Saturday afternoon, and although it was incredibly noisy, it worked just fine, and promised a spectacular effect for Sunday morning. So when the great moment arrived, and the lector read, "And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind and it filled the entire house," the engine coughed once and then howled into life.
But the effect was a little different than it had been at rehearsal. The sudden screaming gust of wind sent sheet music and bulletins flying out over the congregation. Coiffures came undone and hair streamed out from faces. A hairpiece flew toward the altar like a furry missile. It was like a scene from the play "Green Pastures" when the Angel Gabriel looks down from heaven and says to the Lord, "Everything that was nailed down is comin' loose!"
Everything was messy, and noisy, and absolutely unpredictable. And that's just the way it is with the Spirit. It's that part of God that refuses to be contained in the little boxes we create for God to live in, safely confined to the careful boundaries we set for God's Spirit. The problem is--the miracle is--God just won't stay put. And God won't let you and me stay put, content to believe what we've always believed, what we've always been taught, what we've always assumed. Change isn't just something to be wished on our enemies--but something God requires of us as well." (Page 9 and 10).
Our problem as followers of Christ is that we want business as usual. We've been taught all about God in our Religious Education or Sunday School classes. We sang the familiar song "Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so." We went through First Reconciliation and first Holy Communion. We have heard that God is One in the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. And because our minds have been given this awesome picture of God, we've gotten to thinking that we know all about God. But what is lacking in all of this, as correct and wonderful as it is, is that it still limits our understanding and view of God. We cannot know God until God comes into contact with us, and through our acceptance of the Holy Spirit's prompting we respond to God with that willingness to cooperate with what God wants of us.
Our problem is that we don't like change. We want God, people, places and events to be exactly as we think they ought to be. And all be damned if things do not go quite the way we think they should. I know this all too well. I was raised in a family with a father who always felt that he was right, and anyone who challenged him was treated with hostility and violence just for disagreeing with him. We want to hold our own in our hands, and we don't want anyone to take from us, what we feel is ours. We want God to be in the boxes we put God in, and we don't want to let the Holy Spirit open up those boxes and change us and mold us into anything that will challenge where we are. This is why the people of Jesus' time responded to him as they did when Jesus stood in the synagogues and proclaimed that he was the fulfillment of the prophesy he had read. The Holy Spirit was releasing a new time, a new era and new activities in their midst. God has finally come to them, but God was going to do things through Jesus that was going to challenge their way of thinking and make impacts on their community.
Another of our problems is that we still think that we worship and serve a God of fear. Fear of hell and God's retribution is still preached by many from the bully pulpits of our churches. Over time we have begun to understand, that "fear of the Lord" does not really mean "fear of God sending us to hell." Fear of God means that we understand that God has loved us so perfectly, so completely that we would never want to do anything that offends God. God has chosen through Jesus Christ to heal us and bring us closer to God through his death and resurrection. "The Lord...heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds. God determines the number of the stars; God gives to all of them their names. Great is the Lord, the abundant in power; God's understanding is beyond measure. The Lord lifts up the downtrodden; God casts the wicked to the ground." (Psalm 147: 3-5).
In today's "Forward Day by Day" we read: "God, in building a kingdom on earth, seems to want more than to give us step-by-step instructions; God wants to teach us to want that kingdom enough to sacrifice for it. God knows that the human heart finds inspiration not in fear, but in love; not in a God powerful enough to "count the number of stars," but in a God tender enough to "heal the brokenhearted and bind up all their wounds." I want to please God, not because of the threat of God's punishment but because God chooses to heal me and others. I might obey a God of fear, but I am not inspired by fear. Perhaps God could tell me by threats and intimidation exactly the life I need to live to find salvation and transcendence. But isn't there something dissonant about using fear to inspire a life of love? Wouldn't this world be better changed by people who want to change it?" (Page 81)
Being a man who is gay, I cannot close this blog without something to say about how Christian fundamentalists attempt to change lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered people through fear and intimidation. There cannot be this dichotomy of wanting to change what God has created out of love, through scare tactics and smear campaigns that injure individuals and families. The absurd actions of right winged Christians towards Kevin Jennings, President Barack Obama and many individuals who work for equal rights for LGBT individuals and families has been nothing short of the opposite of who Jesus Christ was and is about.
When Jesus came and read that prophesy from the Old Testament, he came with the intent on letting the Holy Spirit out so that through Jesus, God could begin to change people. God came to us in Jesus Christ to "heal the brokenhearted" not break the hearts of those already broken. The Holy Spirit anointed Jesus and anoints the Christian community to bring good news to the poor, proclaim release to the captives and recover the sight of the blind. The Holy Spirit did not anoint Jesus or us to make the poor even more poor, to put the captives in harsher prisons and pluck out the eyes of those who already suffer from inadequate vision to see themselves as being created in the image and likeness of a loving God.
The Christian community is called to bring a message of hope to a world where many see hopelessness. And hope comes not from creating fear, but from showing and being examples of unconditional love. People will not enter the doors of our churches if the people in the pews are constantly hearing messages of guilt and fear of condemnation. People respond to hearing that who they are, what they are and how they are, is loved by a God who sacrificed everything to come ever closer to them, so that God can save their souls. The Holy Spirit comes among us Christians to be witnesses of how we let God out of our boxes and let God change us. God does not leave us alone in our comfortable boxes, God wants us to get out of them and grow even more into people who reach beyond ourselves, and embrace everyone around us even when that is difficult for us to do.
Our broken world longs to be made whole. But healing cannot begin until we too have been healed of our own blindness of how we see God the Holy Spirit at work in our lives. Until we allow God to move us from the places we are, into a deeper understanding of ourselves and how much God loves us, the world will continue to be a broken place. Until Church leaders accept that even lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered people are created and loved by a loving God, and given a place of mission and duty in the Church, the Church will not be living up to it's own mission that was given by Christ. Those of us who sit in the pews, need not leave it up to Church leaders to change, but let us be the one's who change and inspire change in them. For they like we are broken people who have placed God in our boxes. We like those who oppose us need to let the wind of the Holy Spirit move us from where we are, to where God wants us to be.
O God, you made us in your own image and redeemed us through Jesus your Son: Look with compassion on the whole human family; take away the arrogance and hatred which infect our hearts; break down the walls that separate us; unite us in bonds of love; and work through our struggle and confusion to accomplish your purposes on earth; that, in your good time, all nations and races may serve you in harmony around your heavenly throne; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. (Book of Common Prayer: For the Human Family, Page 815).
In the Eye of the Storm, by Bishop Gene Robinson. Forward by Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Published by Seabury Books an Imprint of Church Publishing Incorporated. Copyright 2008. http://www.churchpublishing.org.
Forward Day by Day, (ISSN1058-6784) (USPS007-962) Vol 75, No. 3. Published by Forward Movement, an agency of the Episcopal Church. www.forwardmovement.org.
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