GETTING OFF THE GROUND
May 23, 2010, Pentecost and Confirmation Sunday
Acts 2: 1-17
Michael L. Lindvall, The Brick Presbyterian Church in the City of New York
Theme: The Holy Spirit empowers us to do things beyond our own power.
Creator Spirit, breathe your life into the ancient words of Scripture we’ve just
heard. Bear them across the ages on your wings; root them in our hearts, and
there may grow new life in us. And now may the words of my mouth and the
meditations of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my Rock and my
Redeemer. Amen.
The front pews this morning are filled with 21 wonderful young people being
confirmed into the Christian faith. They've studied and prayed together; each of
them has said what they believe, and this morning we're launching them, as it were.
Being launched, getting off the ground, flying, is what I want to talk about this
morning. It’s a word we all probably need to hear, but I’m aiming it especially to
the 21 young people in the front pews. Of course, I don't mean flying in the literal
sense. The question I want to wrestle with is this: “How does your faith take off?”
“How do you launch a life that will know meaning and purpose, accomplishment
and joy?”
I'm going to launch my response to this eternal question with a story. This story
was told by a famous 19th Century Danish theologian and philosopher named
Soren Kierkegaard. Kierkegaard lived in a time when the church was incredibly
stuffy, stuffier than it is today. Most of the other Christians he knew in
Copenhagen were upright and uptight, stiff-backed and hard-hearted. Their
Christian faith didn't seem to exactly soar.
Kierkegaard's story goes like this: Once there was a flock of barnyard geese in
Denmark. They lived very comfortably on their farm. They had plenty to eat and
the barn was warm in the winter. It was a secure life as goose life goes.
-1* Because sermons are meant to be preached and are therefore prepared with the emphasis on verbal presentation, the written
accounts occasionally stray from proper grammar and punctuation.
Once a week, all the geese on this farm would gather at one end of the feeding
trough and stop their goose-gaggling for a moment. Then one of them, the one
they called the "preaching goose," would struggle to the top of a fence. These
barnyard geese had forgotten how to fly, you see. Anyway, the preaching goose
would exhort all the other geese about the wonderful glories of goosedom. He
would tell them how wonderful it was to be a goose; how much better it was to be
a goose than to be a chicken or a turkey. He would go on and on about their great
goose heritage and then he would close with soaring words about goose potential,
all the marvelous possibilities of their future as geese.
Occasionally, when the preaching goose was talking, a flock of wild geese would
fly overhead. They would be winging their way south from Sweden to the south of
France, flying thousands of feet in the air in their perfect and mysterious
V-formation. Whenever this happened, all the barnyard geese would grow very
excited. They would look up to the sky at the wild geese and point and hop around
and say to each other, “That’s who we really are. We’re geese! We weren’t
created to waddle around this old barnyard; we were meant to fly.”
Then the wild geese would disappear from sight. For a while you could hear their
honking echo over the horizon. Then all would be silent. And the barnyard geese
would look at each other; they would look around at their familiar barnyard. The
farmer brought them all their food; the barn was so warm. Maybe it smelled, but it
was all they knew. And they would waddle back to their good old barnyard.
That is exactly what did NOT happen in the passage Alie just read from the Book
of Acts. A little background to the story… In the First Century, Pentecost was a
major Jewish festival. Jews don’t observe it today, but two thousand years ago,
Jesus’ disciples, who still considered themselves good Jews, met for a quiet
Pentecost dinner in Jerusalem. Remember it’s about seven weeks after Easter.
The baffling brilliance of first Easter may well have faded a bit. Things were still
tense in the city. Resurrection or no, these disciples were terrified. Remember,
they were identified with a guy who had just been executed for treason and heresy.
Jerusalem was a dangerous place. On top of the danger, they frankly had no idea
what to do next. So you can only guess that this Pentecost dinner probably started
-2* Because sermons are meant to be preached and are therefore prepared with the emphasis on verbal presentation, the written
accounts occasionally stray from proper grammar and punctuation.
out low-key – everybody laboring over the past weeks, picking apart the details of
what had happened, thinking about the past, not the future.
Then something happened that changed everything. There aren’t many passages in
the Bible where things change as much from the beginning of a story to the end of
the same story. At the beginning, the disciples are hiding out, huddled in a rented
room, afraid and directionless. At the end of the story, they’re so fired up that
somebody accuses them of being drunk. They’re talking about daughters
prophesying and young men having visions and old men dreaming dreams. These
disciples who had been consummately timid one minute are recklessly bold the
next.
So what made the difference? What got those frightened disciples out of their
Upper Room hide-out and off the ground? Well, they didn’t go off to “disciple
college” to get advanced degrees in discipleship. They didn’t take preacher
training classes. They didn’t sign up for night classes on theological debates.
They didn’t go to Barnes and Noble and buy the latest book on strategies to sell
your religious intellectual property. They didn’t attend motivational seminars in a
rented ballroom, listening to some guy pacing the stage, and hyping them up about
their hidden potential as disciples. It was nothing they did. It was nothing from
inside of them.
Later they would identify the “something that happened,” the something that
changed them so dramatically, as “the Spirit.” Suddenly, they knew that Jesus was
somehow still present with them. They called this “the Holy Spirit.” Think of it as
the “present-tense of God.” The Greek words they used literally mean “Sacred
Wind.” However you name it or picture it, something really big happened. How
else do you explain the change? One minute, they didn’t have a clue about what to
do next; the next minute this collection of Galilean fisherman and errant taxcollectors are talking about dreaming dreams and visions of the future. One
minute they’re frightened, timid, directionless, mostly illiterate, not-very
sophisticated, little nobodies; the next they’re going out to turn the world upside
down with the story of Jesus.
-3* Because sermons are meant to be preached and are therefore prepared with the emphasis on verbal presentation, the written
accounts occasionally stray from proper grammar and punctuation.
The 21 members of our Confirmation Class in the front pews are kind of like Soren
Kierkegaard’s geese. In fact, all of us are kind of like those geese. On the one
hand, we know we were made to fly. On the other hand, the barnyard is so
familiar, so safe and comfortable.
But the 21 members of our Confirmation Class in the front pews are also kind of
like those disciples in today’s Bible story. In fact, all of us are also like those
disciples. On the one hand, we do like our comfy Upper Rooms and quiet private
dinners. On the other hand, we know we’re called to go out and live lives that
burst with faith, to take some risks for what we believe, to tell the great story, to
live the great story.
In the statements that the Confirmands prepared for their meeting with the Session,
they were asked this question among 14 others: “How do you picture yourself
contributing to the Brick Church in the future?” Here are some quotes from their
consistently excellent answers:
“helping with younger children,”
“acting more mature so children have someone to look to,”
“volunteering at Friday Night Dinners,”
“someday giving money to the church,”
“attending services and listening,”
“reading Scripture on Sundays,”
“participating in the Order of Saint Paul… and youth choir,”
“donating to Yorkville Common Pantry,”
“welcoming new people to church,”
helping “spread the church’s message,”
“more time to community service,”
“going to Beanbag after church,”
“participating in Day of Discipleship,”
“helping people in need,”
and this bold promise, “As I grow up to be an adult, I do not plan on living
anywhere else than the city, so I plan to be part of Brick for a long time.”
Confirmands, you have made promises about how you plan to get off the ground as
Christians, how you plan to fly as the newest members of The Brick Church. But I
-4* Because sermons are meant to be preached and are therefore prepared with the emphasis on verbal presentation, the written
accounts occasionally stray from proper grammar and punctuation.
have to tell you this… After the excitement of this day, you’ll be tempted to stay
on the ground, to be happy in your familiar barnyard, and not to keep your promise
to fly. You’ll think to yourself, “High school is so demanding; life in New York
for a teenager can be a blur of busyness – tests to take and papers to write and
sports to play, no time for church.” Friends may even make fun of your faith.
They may ask why in the world you bother with all that church stuff
Soren Kierkegaard’s geese never got off the ground, but those disciples we heard
in the Bible passage sure did get off the ground. In fact, we’re here today because
they got off the ground. So what got them out of that stuffy room and off the
ground? It was nothing but Spirit – not their spirit, mind you, but the Spirit of
God-with-them. Call it the “Present-Tense of God.” It empowered them to do
what they never could have done on their own.
Confirmands, to empower you to keep the promises you are making, to empower
all of us to get off the ground and fly, we have access to the very same power as
those first Christians 2,000 years ago. God was with them, they discovered. And
here is my promise to you – God is always with you, in fact, God is as close to you
as your own breath. God is as real as the wind that eternally blows off that tall
building on Madison between 89th and 90th.
You only have to do one thing to draw on this Spirit. All you have to do is open
yourself up to it. All you have to do is open yourself to the sustaining,
strengthening, up-lifting Spirit that is God-With-You. Do this and you will be able
to do things you thought impossible. Open yourself up to God’s Spirit in you and
around you, and you will be able to do things everybody’s told you that you could
never do.
I have one last story, a strange and wonderful story, a little mysterious in fact. I
hope you go home scratching your heads about it. I hope it bugs you so much you
can’t get it out of your mind. Though the word “Spirit” never appears in this story,
I think that’s what it’s about. It's an old English folk tale. I’ve come across it in
the writings of Simone Weil, the French Jewish-Christian philosopher, and of
Dorothy Sayers, that doyenne of murder mysteries, but a theologian as well. It
goes like this…
-5* Because sermons are meant to be preached and are therefore prepared with the emphasis on verbal presentation, the written
accounts occasionally stray from proper grammar and punctuation.
Once upon a time, there was to be a great contest between a little tailor and a
powerful giant to see which of them could throw something, anything, the
farthest. Now you need to know that in folk tales, tailors are often symbols
of weakness. This giant is extraordinarily strong and he's been practicing
throwing for weeks. He's sure he can throw anything farther than anybody.
Come the day of the contest, he steps up to the line and with every once of
power in his muscular body, throws a stone into the air in a long arc. It
soars, almost out of sight, and finally comes to the ground at prodigious
distance, landing with a thud nobody hears.
Then the little tailor steps to the line, a frail little man, no expression on his
face. It’s a joke to think that this skinny little character has the power in him
to compete with this he-man of a giant. The tailor steps to the line and
gently lifts his hand into the air and releases a little bird that flies away into
the sky, higher and higher, much higher and much farther than the giant was
able to throw a stone.
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
-6* Because sermons are meant to be preached and are therefore prepared with the emphasis on verbal presentation, the written
accounts occasionally stray from proper grammar and punctuation.