Acts 2:1-21
Pentecost
The world lost one of the great children’s storytellers and
illustrators earlier this month. Maurice
Sendak was the author of dozens of books including In the Night Kitchen, Outside
Over There, and Bumble-Ardy
published only nine months before he died. But
he is probably most famous for his 1963 book, Where the Wild Things Are.
Pamela Paul wrote on the back page essay of The New York
Times book review shortly after his death that, “[Maurice] Sendak [along with]
Shel Silverstein and Theodor Geisel, aka Dr. Seuss, are so much a part of the
childhood vernacular today that it’s hard to imagine their books were once
considered to be wholly inappropriate for children. They brought a shock of
subversion to the genre…. [These] books
encouraged bad, or perhaps just human behavior”
And I agree. It has
always seemed to me that Sendak’s books and illustrations are simultaneously
whimsical and imaginative while, being just the slightest bit disturbing. There’s a lot about ingesting things…eating
chicken soup with rice, a lion swallowing a boy named Pierre who only says “I
don’t care.” Who can forget when the wild things say they love Max so much
they’ll eat him up? It is oddly
humorous, if not a bit disconcerting.
In fact, after Sendak died, I was listening to some
interviews replayed in his memory on the radio show “Fresh Air.” Terry Gross, the host, asked him if had any
favorite comments from readers over the years and he spoke about a letter from
a little boy named Jim. Jim had sent
Sendak a card with a little drawing on it.
“I loved it.” said Sendak. “I
answer all my children’s letters—sometimes very hastily—but this one I lingered
over. I sent him a postcard and I drew a
picture of a Wild Thing on it. I wrote
‘Dear Jim, I loved your card.’ Then I
got a letter back from his mother and she said, ‘Jim loved your card so much he
ate it.’ Just like a real Wild Thing.
Sendak said that little Jim’s response of eating his drawing
was one of the highest compliments he’d ever received. The author said, “He didn’t care that it was
an original drawing or anything. He saw
it, he loved it, he ate it.”
As I mentioned, just nine months before Sendak died, he
published his final book Bumble-ardy about
an orphaned pig who is turning nine years old.
Bumble-ardy has never had a birthday party so when he turns nine his
Aunt Adeline (you can already catch on to the rhyming nature of this story)
plans to give him a quiet party for two when she returns home from work. But unable to wait until half past nine, Buble-ardy invites some swine, who come in for a party and dine.
And mayhem ensues.
The wildness begins. The story
goes: “…the piggy swine/Broke down the door and guzzled brine/And hogged sweet
cakes and oinked loud grunts/And pulled all kinds of dirty stunts”
[pause]
I kind of like to think of this as a Pentecost story.
The followers of Jesus, those intrigued with Jesus, those
looking for something more than they had ever experienced, gather for the
Festival of the Pentecost, a harvest festival marking fifty days after the
Passover. Not only that, but it became a
significant celebration marking the moment of the Ten Commandments given to
Moses and the Hebrew people on Mount Sinai.
I do have to make one huge disclaimer and apology,
although. Comparing a story about swine
to the festival of the Pentecost is somewhat inappropriate, because many of the
party goes were Jewish and pork is not kosher food, so please forgive me for that analogy, but I
won’t dwell on the fact that these characters are pigs…
I don’t know enough
about Pentecost to know what the tone of the celebration might be---joyful,
somber, reflective—but wonder, for those
gathered, if there wasn’t just a bit of a bittersweet feel. Because if you remember, last week Torin
talked about the ascension— Jesus died, resurrected, walked among the disciples
for a handful of days, and then was snatched away again, his physical body
ascending into the clouds—he “ascended” hence “ascension”. The hide and seek game of Jesus continues.
So I can imagine there was a range of feelings among the
disciples and others gathered. Maybe
some were a bit perturbed: OK Jesus, make up your mind, stay with us or
go. Maybe others knew there would be
something more: he’s surprised us once; who’s to say he’s really gone? Either way, they gathered. People from all over, who had made Jerusalem
their home, had gathered.
It was a festival that no doubt had been celebrated
before. Maybe there was an order to the
whole thing. Maybe the people there knew
what would happen. Again, I’m not sure
how it all would have gone down, but we do know one thing--before you know it the
celebration takes an unexpected turn.
The party has an unexpected visitor and the wild rumpus of the Spirit
begins. It was so wild that indeed,
people on the outside thought it was a drunken time, apostles and disciples swilling wine, but Peter says “nay, tis only nine”
And now, two thousand years later, Christianity still points
to this event at Pentecost as sort of the birthday of Christ’s church. Isn’t interesting that we say the birthday of
the church comes not the birth of Jesus, or the death of Jesus, or even the resurrection
of Jesus…but when the Holy Spirit came in all its wildness and chaos and
confusion and joined the people in a power beyond understanding…while somehow,
creating an experience where each person strangely—deeply—understood what was
going on.
This wild thing. It’s
a hard thing for us, and me, to appreciate you know? We aren’t prepared for the wild thing to be
let loose…We are even suspicious, as Torin alluded to last week, about the
nature of this Holy Spirit. I mean, if
we’re honest, the Spirit is probably the most vague member in this trinity. We get God (or at least we can feel what we
mean when we say God). Jesus the Christ
is super clear—we’ve got four gospels to help us see that he was someone who
existed, who had words. But the Spirit…the
spirit is elusive, mystical. The Spirit
doesn’t speak itself…others speak in the
spirit. The Spirit moves. The Spirit breathes.
And you have probably heard me say before our separate
English words for wind, and breath, and spirit all share the one same word in
Hebrew: ruach. Ruach was
what blew over the empty vastness in creation. There are elements of this same
spirit that go with the Hebrew people as the make their exodus from Egypt. And just to make things even more unclear,
the author of John’s gospel says the spirit/wind blows where it chooses. We can’t control it. We don’t know. It is what it is. Will do what it will do.
Try to build a solid faith on that. It
seems appealing and disturbing at the same time. Something that can at once be a cooling,
comforting presence can change and become a fiery presence, leading you to do
things you didn’t think you would do, build things you never though you would
create, begin something that [signal to congregation] two thousand years later
[pause] still exists, waxing and waning, struggling to understand, failing,
succeeding, confessing, reconciling, and all the while…coming and reuniting as
a gathering of Christ. The Church (with
a big C), the church (with a little c). The church that incorporates all languages,
all people, all matter of wildness.
The Pentecost story is one about the universality of God’s
love. The openness of Christ’s
church. The wildness that the Spirit can
wield when we simply gather in worship.
It’s about transformation of people into a church and in turn a
transformation of a church into a people…of Christ.
And you’d probably agree we need to hear a Pentecost message
again from time to time because it has
lost its power. Like Maurice Sendak and Shel Silverstein and Doctor Seuss, it’s
amazing that what was so subversive at one time has become so commonplace. Even this story, which comes around
once a year, is unimpressive to us.
But that’s exactly why this story comes around every
year. Because—forgive me for sounding,
well…Pentecostal—but we need some
Pentecost wildness in our lives, don’t we?
In our life, in my life, in your life.
We need it, but…if you’re like me, you don’t really want it.
There’s no room right now in my life for the unexpected,
thank you very much. How about
yours? Can you handle some unexpected
surprises? Some uninvited party guest?
In Bumble-ardy
there are two disturbing lines, sort of like that “we’ll eat you up we love you
so” uncomfortable humor. When Aunt Adeline returns home from work she is
furious to see such wildness from Bumble-ardy and his party. She says “OK smarty you’ve had your party,
but never again” to which Bumble-ardy replies “I promise, I swear, I won’t ever
turn 10.”
[pause].
Sendak said that those two
lines, Aunt Adeline saying “never again” and young Bumble proclaiming “I won’t
ever turn ten” were his favorite lines.
And he doesn’t know exactly why. But
he said that when he wrote book, he was intensely aware of death. His friend and partner of 50-years, Eugene,
was dying in their house when he wrote it and he said “I did Bumble-ardy
to save myself. I did not want to die with him. I wanted to live as any human being does... Bumble-ardy was a combination of the deepest pain and the wondrous feeling of
coming into my own. [Yet writing it] took a long time. A very long time”
A combination of deep pain and wonderment. I bet that’s what was seasoning among those
disciples that Pentecost. Deep pain and
wonderment…a perfect recipe for the unleashing of something amazing and
unexpected. Those gathered did not want
what they experienced to die with Jesus.
In our lives, we do not want to be taken further down the dark road of
depression or loneliness or aimlessness or pure...mundane life. As a congregation, we do not want to be drug down with what we think
needs to be done because it is what always has been. In life we don’t want to continue marching in
lock step towards death.
What I want, and maybe you want, but certainly the church needs, is a reminder of the Spirit. Remember what Sendak said about little Jim’s
response to his Wild Thing picture? “He didn’t care that it was an original
drawing or anything. He saw it, he loved
it, he ate it.” We won’t ever go back to
the original church in Acts when tongues of fire came down. Or the height of Christendom when people
filled the pews because they had to.
But we can be children of the Spirit, bringing out of
ourselves our deepest fear and wonderment with our eyes lifted ever upward to
receive the unexpected wildness of the Spirit,.
To see it. To love . And…maybe not eat it, but certainly consume into the depths of our being.
And that begins with an openness to let this ultimate Wild
Thing into the party of our lives. Pain,
wonderment, love, joy. It’s the making
of a wild and scary party.
But most certainly…a good one.
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