Sermon May 23, 2010

Day of Pentecost

Fragmentation. It there was ever a word that described what’s going on in the world today that would be it: fragmentation. Pretty much every institution that past generations have held onto as anchors in an always-changing world – state, church, family, city, town, neighborhood – they’re all experiencing fragmentation. And this fragmentation’s global in scope.

This fragmentation mirrors a story from Genesis:, that begins with this sentence: “Now the whole earth had one language and the same words.” As with several other stories in Genesis this is an “origin” story, it explains how the world came to be the way it was when the author lived. You can almost hear the question: “why is it that everyone speaks a different language?”

The answer that Genesis proposes is that human arrogance in trying to build a tower – remember it’s name? Babel, where we get the word ‘babble’ from – a tower that reached into the heavenly domain – the metaphor contained in the story says that they were trying to be like God. And so they were scattered into different linguistic groups – groups that were frequently hostile to each other.

So Pentecost – with that wonderful statement spoken by a bystander that “in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power” – is a reversal of Babel. With God fragmentation can be overcome. Here is a vision of what might be.

So when these same bystanders wonder: “What does this mean?” we do have an inkling that it has something to do with a new identity that lies at the heart of the new community Luke describes, and, in particular, the way that this new community chooses to live “that unity may overcome estrangement, forgiveness heal guilt, joy conquer despair”. It’s this new community that the writer of the Letter to the Ephesians is thinking of when he talks of the breaking down of “the dividing wall of separation” and the creation of “one new humanity” (Eph 2:14-15)

For Luke, and for Ephesians, a new age has begun with the coming of Jesus and, now, of the Spirit.

It doesn’t feel like that “new age”has come, does it? The fragmentation I described earlier seems to say not.

So – on this Day of Pentecost – I’m wondering what we might have to do differently help bring that age into being. Here’s some stories that, I think, give us a clue about direction:

The first is a Rabbinic story (in “The Misunderstood Jew” by, Amy-Jill Levine): In a dream a devout disciple....was permitted to approach the Temple in Paradise where all the great old sages who had studied the Talmud all their lives were now spending eternity. He gazed in at them, and to his amazement, they were all sitting around tables, just as they had done on earth, studying the Talmud still! The disciple watched them passionately exclaiming and arguing and reverently fingering the text. He wondered, “Is this really Paradise? It seems like the earth.” But then his thoughts were interrupted by warm laughter. [And someone said to him] “You are mistaken. This is not Paradise. The sages are not in Paradise. Paradise is in the sages.”

Luke quotes Jesus on this: ( Luke 17:20-21): “Some Pharisees inquired of Jesus when God’s kingdom would come.” And do you remember what Jesus said to them? “It’s here already, it’s within you”.

So one clue about the future age of the Spirit is to stop looking for it “out there”, and to start looking for it “in here”.

The second story is about dolphins. Now when I say “dolphins” most likely the image that would come to you is Sea World performers, or as exotic creatures that show up in things like “Save the Dolphins” campaigns. One of the (many) books I’ve been reading for my doctorate has this story in it, told by Prof. Jack Hill of Texas Christian University:

“When I was teaching in Fiji, I heard [this] story from a Pacific Islander, Willi Oli: Willi was traveling...on a small inter-island ferry between island in Vanuatu. A major storm developed and the ferry capsized. Willi leaped overboard and managed to hold onto a piece of wood in [the] open sea. As might fell, he began to recall an ancient song his ancestors used to sing for calling the dolphins. He kept singing until dawn broke [; the rising sun revealed that] he was surrounded by dolphins. From then on until he was finally rescued by a passing boat some forty-eight hours later the dolphins continued to swim around him in a protective circle."

“After his rescue, Willi learned from a young woman named Roslyn how the dolphins had also befriended her. After the boat sank Roslyn found herself in the stormy sea with nothing to hold onto. When she called for help, two dolphins swam to either side of her, each gently nudging a fin beneath her arms. In this way they carried her for many hours, only swimming away when she was pulled aboard a rescue boat.”

Stories like these seem to be unfathomable to us because we’re still trying to build the tower of Babel: in our human arrogance we’ve lost the vital connections that exist between all animals, including ourselves, and with our natural world. We don’t think of them, or any other animal, as co-partners in our common pilgrimage. And if Babel contains a metaphor, so does this story: we’ve forgotten how to call the dolphins. We’ve lost our connectedness with creation, we’ve forgotten that God clothes the lilies of the field, holds the birds of the air in the palm of his hand, is the creator of earth, and sky, and sea and all in them.

This is a deeply mystical vision, and – like so much else in our culture – it’s been given its own name: “creation spirituality”. It’s not new, though it’s been popularized in the last 30 years by Matthew Fox, a former Dominican who is now an Episcopal priest. It’s based on the vision of people like Francis of Assisi, Hildegard of Bingen, Nicholas of Cusa and – to many people’s surprise, Thomas Aquinas. Among other groups the Jesuits and Franciscans are its heirs. If you want to find a denomination that is deeply invested in this vision of creation, God, and ourselves you need go no further than where you are right now – it’s no accident that when Fox left the Roman Catholic Church he came to ours.

We are seeing a new Christian tradition emerge – or, perhaps, a deeply embedded, often suppressed, sometimes persecuted tradition emerge because, many are saying, the time is right, the time is ‘now’ – we are truly entering the age of the Spirit. So my invitation to you, on this day of Pentecost, is

• to remember that “The sages are not in Paradise. Paradise is in the sages” – that “the kingdom of God is within” you;
• to recognize that we have all forgotten how to call the dolphins” – that our arrogance has blinded us to the fundamental connectedness of all creation and we desperately need to recover that connectedness; and then,
• to begin the journey inward which is simultaneously also a journey outward into this new vision of a faith that is “as old as the hills”, because it is, among other things, about them, too, as much as it is about us.

Amen.