Doors, walls, and ceilings [Pentecost]
The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson
Acts 2:1-21
Doors, walls, and ceilings
If you think about it, the Easter season is, to a certain
degree a rather damning critique of the effectiveness of doors, walls, and
ceilings. One has these items for a very
specific reason: to keep things out and to keep things in. And generally, I think we find they are
actually quite useful. Without doors,
walls, and ceilings our habitations would be reduced to a stack of windows in a
field, plus some rather weathered books and items of clothing, also probably
some dangerously emboldened squirrels.
And yet, for all of their general effectiveness in our own
lives, doors, walls, and ceilings continually let the disciples down following
the resurrection. By the day of
Pentecost, if pressed, they might have been inclined to admit that these items
no longer properly functioned in the post-Resurrection world.
It started on Easter morning when the rock door of the tomb
proved insufficient. Following the
Resurrection, the disciples locked their doors, to keep themselves in and the
scary people out, and Jesus still appeared, in bodily form, in their apartment –
on more than one occasion. That same
Risen Jesus made an easy, sudden escape from a dining room in Emmaus –
presumably a dining room furnished with the trifecta: doors, walls, and ceiling.
And now Pentecost. And
the disciples are again confined to a room – not because of fear this time but
because Jesus gave them orders as he ascended into the sky. And if someone gives you orders mid-Ascension,
it seems appropriate to take the orders seriously. They are there waiting, praying, probably also
perspiring – because 120 people in a room is a lot. Surrounded by doors, walls, and ceilings –
those things designed to keep things in and keep things out. And once again they fail to do the job they
were designed to do. With no regard for
the established boundaries, the Holy Spirit bursts into the room and lights
every head on fire. You might understand
if, during the fifty days of Easter, these disciples of Jesus came to distrust
doors, walls, and ceilings.
Inspired, compelled, expelled, by the Holy Spirit, those
gathered spilled out into the streets.
Worth noting: I’ll bet they had to use the door. And again what one might consider possible is
defied. The followers of Jesus,
presumably not terribly well educated in Libyan dialects, transgress the
borders of what they should and should not be able to do: in this case burst
into languages they never bothered to learn.
The scene is chaotic enough to get the gathered crowd
talking. Some are impressed because
rural Palestinian laborers, who probably did not appear terribly cosmopolitan,
are speaking languages they have no business knowing. Others are less impressed. The procession was likely less than
orderly. And anytime the on-lookers ask
aloud if the ministers are drunk, well let’s just say, that is a bad day for
the vergers. And people most certainly were
speculating on the state of these disciples’ sobriety.
Peter, trying to prove his clarity of thought, stumbles a bit
out of the gate. Because let’s be honest,
time of day is not the best argument against drunkenness, and we have all
watched enough sitcoms to know someone in that crowd definitely yelled out, “It’s
5 o’ clock somewhere.”
But then it got good.
And Peter, who by this point, has come to understand that it is not just
doors, walls, and ceilings, tells the crowd about a Holy Spirit that is in the
business of transgressing, violating, disregarding boundaries. He tells the crowd about a Holy Spirit that
falls on sons and daughters, women and men, who falls on old folks and young
people, who falls on the slave and on the free, who falls on the seminary
trained and on the illiterate alike. A
Holy Spirit out-of-control enough to do amazing things in their world. And by this time, the crowd probably hoped
that Peter was drunk because if he was not drunk he was probably telling the
truth; he might actually be right: there might just be a wild Spirit loose in
their world.
Henri Nouwen writes, “[Pentecost] is the celebration of God
breaking through the boundaries of time and space and opening the whole world
for the re-creating power of love.
Pentecost is freedom, the freedom of the Spirit to blow where it wants.”[1]
And that is good news.
Except what if that Holy Spirit blows where we do not really want it to
blow? We have doors, walls, and ceilings,
we have borders and boundaries, for a reason – to keep things, and even people,
in and out. Nations and politicians and denominations,
they rely on these things, erect partitions, create definitions, and draw lines
to exhibit dominance and maintain control.
But then this Holy Spirit: that blows where it wants. It feels out-of-control and a bit too
threatening.
What if this Holy Spirit lights up the wrong person, an
unauthorized, unexpected person? What if
this Holy Spirit blows new life onto both sides of the border wall of
separation? What if this Holy Spirit
doesn’t respect our boundaries and just falls on our allies and on our
enemies? What if the Holy Spirit gets past
our big wooden doors and scrambles our processions and rustles our perfectly
layered vestments? What if this Holy
Spirit blows right into our hearts and starts blowing the cobwebs right out of
our dark corners – where we hide the stuff we do not want God to clear out? See this is dangerous stuff. No wonder some in the crowd hoped the Spirit
was really just the side effect of new wine.
New wine is a personal choice; Holy Spirit is more like an invasion that
cannot be prevented.
Pentecost is dangerous business. There is nowhere to flee from the
Spirit. Doors, walls, and ceilings
cannot protect you from the fire. We set
up borders and boundaries and the Holy Spirit blows where it wants. We draw a line between us and our enemies and
the Holy Spirit straddles the line.
This Holy Spirit is not ours to control. It blows where it wants. Our job is to open our arms, open our hearts,
open our sails and just go with the blow.
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