A Sermon Preached By

Rev. Peter W. Shidemantle

Day of Pentecost, June 4, 2006

PEBBLE HILL PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH

5299 Jamesville Rd., DeWitt, NY  13214

Phone:  315-446-0960     FAX:  446-0672

phillchu@twcny.rr.com     http://pebblehill.presbychurch.org

          “You both turn your back on life.”

          “We both select from life what pleases us.”

          “A man must come to terms with life as it is.”

          “I have lived life nearly fifty years, and I have seen life as it is.  Pain, misery, hunger . . . cruelty beyond belief.  I’ve heard the singing from the taverns and the moans from the bundles of filth on the streets.  I have been a soldier and seen my comrades fall in battle or die slowly under the lash in Africa.  I have held them in my arms at the final moment.  These were men who saw life as it is, yet they died despairing.  No glory, no gallant last words, only their eyes filled with confusion, whimpering the question, ‘Why?’  I don’t think they asked why they were dying, buy why they have lived.  When life itself becomes lunatic, who knows where madness lies?  Perhaps to be too practical is madness.  To surrender dreams - this may be madness.  To seek treasure where there is only trash.  Too much sanity may be madness.  And maddest of all, to see life as it is not as it should be.”

          The Apostle Peter, preaching on the day of Pentecost, after the Spirit of God had come upon those 120 men and women who were gathered in one place in Jerusalem, causing amazement and, at first, confusion among all the devout Jews who were in the city to observe the Pentecost festival, quoted the prophet Joel, who said that God’s people were dreamers and visionaries.  “I will pour out my Spirit,” God says through Joel.  The Hebrew word here is the one used for pouring water.  God’s spirit will flow indiscriminately and without measure, on all humankind.  Old and young, male and female will share in the dream of it.  God’s Spirit will lead God’s people to dream.  And the church is to be the sign of this new world, this world of the Spirit.

          This is how the church was born, how we were born.  Like children who are fascinated with stories about their own birth and beginnings, so are we all.  We are, in this Jubilee year for Pebble Hill church, remembering and celebrating the strong and hopeful beginnings of this community, remembering and celebrating the decades of ministry and mission, the special memories and the times of challenge that have brought this unique people of faith to where we are today.  (Carolyn Jones)

          But, like the gift of the Holy Spirit itself, beginnings are not limited to the “beginning.”  The Holy Spirit is the ongoing creative, life-giving, energizing power of God that is with the church as it seeks to be faithful.  Christ said he would not leave as us orphans.  The Spirit would come to bring birth and re-birth into new life.  And so as we remember and celebrate the past we also, and at the same time, open ourselves to the new thing that God has in store for us.  I believe that we create that new thing together with the Spirit of God.

          The church was born in amazement and disorientation.  Those who observed the events and heard their own languages being spoken by those who otherwise would not have known them, asked “What does all of this mean?”  Peter proceeds to inform them.  He tells them that God has gifted his people with the power of love and the energy of God’s own self.  It’s not just a group of people who happen to believe the same things or who act together on their own.  They haven’t come together simply for mutual assurance, or assistance, or support.  Those are good things, but they can be found in lots of places and with lots of groups.  But, uniquely, they are a people whose birth as a body has come about through the creative and saving gifts of God, a people who have been given those gifts to use them for the sake of the world.  Because of what happened at Pentecost, those who have been joined to Christ are, as someone has said, “living no longer by our biological possibilities.”  We are more than we know.

          God’s people dream of life as it should be, and that’s a good starting point, don’t you think - for any church looking toward its next 50 years?  So often our minds go right from the dream to the strategy - from the “what” to the “how.”  And that might be realistic, over time leading to reduced expectations of ourselves and our community, and so we won’t be as disappointed as we might otherwise be.  But in a way it’s like a child who dreams of one day becoming a ballerina or a professional baseball player.  If we stifle those dreams too soon, and they lose heart to do everything in their power to fulfill their dream, we may have taught them that they should live by reduced expectations.  Isn’t it far better to support them in their quest, and if over time they discover that their talent in one direction will take them only so far, they will be free to dream in another direction.

          Note that Peter doesn’t say anything about the content of the dreams of God’s people, let alone a strategy of achieving them.  The Bible isn’t a “how to” manual.  God’s Spirit will help us to dream God’s dreams.  Our job is to be Pentecost people, to be hopeful and expectant people.  “When the day of Pentecost had come,” the book of Acts tells us, “they were all together in one place.”  What were they doing there?  They were doing what we are invited to do, what we do, each time we gather, whether we are conscious of it or not.  They were waiting and listening.  In their singing and in their praying, they were waiting and listening for the content of God’s truth to touch their lives.  They couldn’t think it up on their own, and neither can we.  And God’s Spirit came upon them, and they began to speak, as the Spirit gave the utterance to speak.  They spoke in ways that people in their great diversity and differences understood.

          If it were just our voice, our efforts, our imaginations that we depended upon for life and meaning and hope, then our dreams would be limited by our “biological possibilities.”  Our expectations, in that case, should remain small.  After all, if it’s just up to us, it’s about all we can handle just getting from one day to the next.  But what if it’s up to God, and we give ourselves to the dreams that God inspires in our hearts?

          Today, after our worship and fellowship time, we’re going to begin a process of “casting our nets” out into the deeper waters of faith, to try to get a glimpse of what God has in store for those who call upon him in faith in this place and community.  Over the Sundays in June we’ll be invited to touch on our best hopes, recall our most blessed memories, bring up that reservoir of spiritual energy in each of us that is released when our Spirit-inspired dreams are given free expression.  Our past has set the course, risking the depths in forming a community of the spirit.  For (nearly) fifty years we have gathered each Sunday in this beautiful nave - very much like a ship – and have set sail on new adventures, weathered storms along the way, seen some amazing things, shared one another’s joys and bound up one another’s wounds.  Many have come to sail with us, if only for a time.  Many more have been served by us, as we have tried to be a ship of hope and compassion.  As we navigate into a new day there are new adventures that await us, in very different seas.  To minister there, to serve in Christ’s name there, calls for us to dream with eyes wide open.  God’s people aren’t daydreamers, but rather as writer Toni Morrison said in a graduation speech at Sara Lawrence College a few years ago: “Not idle, wistful dreaming, but engaged, directed daytime visions of unusual vividness, clarity, order and significance are demanded of us.” 

          No one who was gathered on that first Pentecost could have imagined the power and the energy and the love that was unleashed that day, what kind of future it would mean.  And this is true every time the Spirit of God touches down on a life, on a community.  Who knows what God has in store for Pebble Hill church in the next fifty years?  Well, with the presence of God’s Spirit it’s like Ezekiel’s vision.  “O mortal, can these bones live?”  “O Lord God, I don’t know, but you do.”  It’s not in our power alone to make them live, but it is in God’s power, through us.  God can bring to life that which is dead in us, bring to new life those things of God that are barely breathing in us, bring to everlasting life hopes that have grown small and joy that has grown weak. 

          And blessed be the name of the Lord, our life and our hope - now and forever.

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