What Does This Mean?
The Iona Abbey Church is many things—beautiful, thought-provoking, live with sound, spiritual. But there are two things it is not: it is not heated and it is not airtight. The month of May in Scotland, while beautiful, is still pretty cold, especially in outer islands like Iona. So, the second night of worship, Sunday evening, I had learned my lesson and I bundled up in my sweatshirt and fleece coat in order to go to the 9pm worship service. It was beautiful as always—this huge stone cathedral filled with candlelight and people from all walks of life. When we arrived they opened with the welcome and the traditional Opening Sentences which we used this morning in our Call to Worship. Then we were informed that the traditional Sunday evening service was a service of silence. We were to be given 15 minutes in the candlelit sanctuary to just meditate, pray, listen, and connect with the God. The silence would then be broken by a benediction and we were invited to leave or stay as we wished. As the reader finished her instructions she closed with the invitation, “Let us offer our prayers to the Lord…” With that we all became silent. But no sooner had those words been uttered than the wind picked up off the water and began to blow powerfully against the church. As the wind whipped around the tall steeple on this sparse isle, it hissed and whistled and howled. You could hear it pounding against the walls as if it were trying to get in or blow this stone-walled building down. And as the wind persisted, the flames from the hundreds of candles in the sanctuary began to dance as the cracks and crevices of the stonework of this old Abbey church let in the breeze. And then, you could feel it.
No, not the chill. (Although I remember shivering through much of my silent 15 minutes). You felt the Spirit. The prayers rose up from each person in that church and the winds of the Spirit gathered them together, whipping across and around the building while the flames danced above us. The Spirit moved and we prayed and though this was supposed to be a service of silence, the powerful winds made the space anything but silent. I smiled to myself as I took it all in and thought, “It must have been something like this on that first Pentecost day…”
Pentecost is an amazing day with an amazing story to go along with it—wind and flame, disciples speaking in many different languages, public proclamations, speeches, and later on baptisms and conversion of those who hear Peter’s sermon. It is the day we celebrate the birth of the church, the day humanity received the gift of the Holy Spirit as promised by Jesus at his ascension. It is the day the disciples of Jesus became not a club of followers, but a Christian movement, the Church.
And, often, when we read this story, our imagination is captured by the wind and flame, by the immediate gift of speech and proclamation the disciples experience. And why not? The disciples experienced something very profound.
But, for some reason, as I read this story, I find myself drawn to the bystanders and taken in by their questions. After all, they witnessed something very unusual. To start, all they see is a group of misfit Galileans who have been traveling all over the place with this rather suspicious man Jesus. But then, out of nowhere, a wind picks up and flames dance upon this odd group’s heads and each person in the marketplace can hear the story of Jesus in their own language, clear as day. It is very odd. Had I been in the group of bystanders, I may have walked away or joined in the part of the crowd that accused them of being drunk.
But, there was another part of the crowd who asks a very wise question: What does this all mean?
I think this is a question we must ask today, on this celebration of Pentecost as the church in 2011. What does it mean to receive or have the Holy Spirit moving in and among us? What does that look like? What does it mean to be a people of God who are guided and prodded and inspired by the Holy Spirit? What does this mean?
So, while the story of wind and flame no doubt has a tendency to capture our imagination, it is perhaps even more important to lean in closely as Peter begins to answer the bystanders’ perceptive question about the meaning behind all these events.
Peter explains that they are not drunk (after all, it is only 9 morning). But he uses the words from Joel: “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. 18Even upon my slaves, both men and women, in those days I will pour out my Spirit; and they shall prophesy.”
We talk about dreamers and visionaries throughout our history. On the 4th of July we honor our American founders who had the dream of a free country and the foresight to create a foundation for our nation. We speak of the dreams of people like Martin Luther King Jr. or Mahatma Gandhi who worked to lead people nonviolently to stand up for their freedoms and rights under the tyranny of blatant and subtle oppression. We honor the dreams of pastors and church leaders like George MacLeod who had the vision to hire out of-work shipbuilders and ministers-in-training to rebuild a dilapidated abbey on the remote island of Iona in Scotland and create a space for people from all over the world and all Christian denominations to come together around issues of faith, worship, peace, and justice.
But, it is not just these select few. We are people who have the gift of the Spirit moving around and within us. And what does that mean? It means that we are to be people who see God’s future and proclaim it—people who have visions and dream dreams. We are people who have been equipped by the very presence of the Spirit to look at the world—at the war, and hurt, and devastation—and be able to preach a different message—one of hope and peace. We are able to speak of God’s presence in the midst of despair, of God’s peaceful kingdom in the midst of war and hatred and violence. We are to offer a hand of service and a heart of care to those who are on the fringes or poor or oppressed, trusting in a God who loves them more deeply than we can imagine. We are to open our mouths to profess words of justice and peace in the face of social and political situations that look at the bottom line and not towards the care of people. We are people filled with the Spirit and that means we are people who have been gifted with vision, with Holy Imagination, to see a world that moves with the heartbeat of God, even when every bit of evidence seems to proclaim the opposite.
I embarked on my month-long trip, thinking I would just spend time in Scotland—taking in the variety of land, terrains, culture, sights, and peoples during my travels. However, during my time with the Iona community a woman from Portsmouth, England, of all places, convinced me to make a “side trip” to Coventry, England to see the Coventry cathedral. Now for any of you who either know the UK very well or later plan to check a map—this wasn’t a little side trip. It was a 7 hour detour each way. However, she was so persuasive I finally decided to do it. And I will be forever grateful for her persuasion.
You see, on the night of November 14th, 1940, 515 German bombers blitzed the city of Coventry, destroying their water lines, factories, businesses, leveling over 4,000 homes, and damaging hospitals police stations, and even the beautiful Coventry Cathedral. The raid reached its height around midnight and by 6:15 the next morning, all that was left was the burning embers of a once proud industrial and residential town. There was barely an undamaged building left in the city. The next morning, dazed by their ordeal, the citizens of Coventry who had been spared picked their way through their ruined city. And when they got to Coventry Cathedral, a beacon of hope and symbol of faith, their hearts sank. Before them was the shell of what was once a beautiful, grand, gothic cathedral. Except for the stone exterior, everything was destroyed and much of it was still burning. And, without any functioning water lines they had to let it burn.
It would not have been surprising if, following the raid, another kind of flame were to have been fanned into being—the fire of bitterness, hatred, and revenge. But, instead, the Provost of the cathedral, Dick Howard, filled with the Holy Spirit, offered visionary and prophetic words that inspired a Spirit of hope instead of hatred. “We will not seek revenge,” he announced to his congregation, “but we will seek reconciliation.” The cathedral’s stonemason, looking at his ruined cathedral, found two of the charred medieval roof timbers that had fallen across each other in amid the rubble. He tied them together and set up the charred cross on the still-standing stone altar. Then, a minister found three medieval nails in the debris and bound them together in the shape of the cross. And then, on the wall behind the table, Provost Howard then inscribed the words, “Father Forgive.” He made it very clear to his congregation that he would not write “Father Forgive them,” the words of Jesus from the cross, but only “Father Forgive” since they were all involved in the sin of destruction and war. And that charred cross and inscribed words still remain today.
It was clear, by the hope-filled and courageous acts of these faithful people that though the city of Coventry was physically flattened its spirit and soul was not dead. It was decided, immediately, that a new cathedral would be built—not as an act of defiance but as a testimony to hope and as a sign of faith and trust. And, indeed, another cathedral was built, though not opened until 1962, 22 years after the raid. However, this cathedral stands next to the shell of the old one, attached by a brick walkway, a testament of both the destruction of sin and the power of hope. And this new cathedral, much more modern in design and concept, stands as both a physical and architectural testament to hope. Every inscribed stone, every floor tile, every window, every little detail of this new cathedral holds symbolism. But, this cathedral is more than just a symbol. It has become a powerful center of peace-making and reconciliation work. The Cross of Nails has become the recognizable symbol of Coventry’s international work for peace and justice. Coventry has especially reached out to other faith communities in Germany who were bombed during the war, forming a relationship of support and friendship.
And at noon, every day, in Coventry cathedral and in cathedrals around the world, including Coventry’s sister cathedrals in Germany, they recite the simple Litany of Reconciliation. But, as I had the opportunity to experience, on Fridays, the Litany of Reconciliation is said in the middle of the old, bombed cathedral. And then the whole congregation—some days 5 and some days 500—walk together from the old cathedral into the new one to share the Lord’s Supper, a meal of unity and forgiveness.
I was floored not only by these cathedrals, but by their stories. I was moved beyond words by the power and vision of Provost Howard and his whole congregation to be people who even in the midst of war and destruction, sought peace and reconciliation.
And in that place, you can feel it. As you stand in the midst of the old cathedral shell, you can just imagine the congregation standing there, their city burning around them in fires of destruction and then, slowly, the wind begins to blow and the flame of the Spirit begins to flicker. And the fires of God’s love begin to overwhelm the fires of devastation. And those men and women standing there begin to catch it, the vision of God’s kingdom even as they are experiencing hell on earth. And they tie together a charred cross and make a cross of nails, seeking to build out of what is broken. And they have a dream and cast a vision not just for their own cathedral, but for the world. A vision not of resentment and revenge, but a vision of reconciliation and renewal. A vision that continues to inspire and influence the world.
After hours of taking it all in, as I walked away from these two cathedrals, I noticed a little, out-of-place granite stone built into the wall of the old cathedral. It contained these words from Haggai: “The glory of this latter house shall be greater then of the former, saith the Lord of hosts: and in this place will I give peace.”
The Holy Spirit is in and among us. What does this mean?
My prayer on this Pentecost day for all of us is that we will feel the winds of the Spirit moving, the fires of God’s passion and love for this world burning, and that we, too, will claim the call the Spirit has placed on us. May God grant us the courage to be people who have visions and dream dreams, for we are a Pentecost people. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment