“Who Are We?”

Pentecost

May 15, 2005

Scripture Reading:   Acts 2:1-24

Rev. Dr. Carol L. Kerr

Blue Point Congregational Church

When I was a kid I use to wonder, what if somewhere in the universe there is someone else in the universe on some other planet in some distant galaxy who looked just like me, and who was wondering at that exact same moment if there was someone on a distant planet that was just like her.  In my own childish way it was the beginning of a life long habit of wondering “Who am I really?”  Am I unique in the universe?  What makes me unique?  What makes me me?  If there is a duplicate somewhere out there would I still be me and the twin out there would still be she?    On and on my ruminations would wander and wonder. 

This habit of trying to get as close as I can to find out who I really am continued throughout my life.  In college I would look in the mirror at my eyes, watching the colors, watching the pupils open and close as  I played with the lights  I would watch the reflection of the mirror, reflecting in my eye, reflecting the mirror, reflecting my eye.  My poor roommates!  There were just trying to learn something so they could get a job when they got out.  I never ever thought about getting a job.  I thought about getting answers.  So, I ended up a minister, because I couldn’t think of any job other than ministry that would pay me to keep up my habit of wondering about who I am albeit in a more theological way.    (Aren’t you glad you are paying me for this?) 

As odd as this habit may sound, a year ago I discovered notes my 8^th grade niece had left around our family cottage.  She had stuffed them in dusty places and books.  When a person happened upon one of these notes it would state her name, Genevieve Leet, the date July 20, 2003, and the request to put you name and date on the paper and return it to its obscure spot to be discovered yet years later by another person.   I think this was Genevieve’s way of wondering who she was.  She was trying to remind someone of her existing at that moment and at that time.  Who am I?  She wondered.  I am the one who is here now, she attempted to say with her notes.  So I, a fellow identity seeker, understood her quest perfectly and filled in the blanks and returned the paper as per her instructions. 

Like I said, here I am as your minister still wondering identity questions.  Only my life long obsession has spread out from just myself, “Who am I?”  to our church, “Who are we?”  It is Pentecost Sunday.  Pentecost is the day that is the beginning of the church.  The church didn’t begin with the life of Christ, nor did it begin with his death or his resurrection.  Rather the church began on the day of Pentecost.  This is the day that the powerful wind of the Holy Spirit beset the disciples with tongues of fire and empowered them to preach the good news of our faith.  Since it is the Pentecost Sunday I figure it is a good time to talk about my life long question,  “Who are we?”  Who are we the Blue Point Congregational Church?  Who are we really?

Brooding about this I came up with two possibilities:  Are we our pies or are we the cracks in our mortar?  Are we all those confident and happy things that we know about ourselves or are we our insecurities our failures and our limitations? 

The Blue Point Church is known for our pies.  At the bean suppers I stand at the pie table and I say hello to people coming in.  It is a good spot to kick up a little conversation because they hem and haw over the pie table, which should it be?  Apple, cherry, custard, pumpkin….  I say “Hi I am the minister of the church.  Glad to meet you.” and present a fun warm and friendly face.  I find a place for them to sit.  The bean supper is in serious trouble when our pies begin to run out.  Even I, who am a terrible cook, have devised a decent blueberry/raspberry pie that is pretty good for the bean suppers.  Is our church about being sweet and homemade, full of people as individual as the pies they make.  Are we about being host to the community and of course fundraising at the same time. 

We welcome people calmly and cheerfully on Sunday mornings like a sailor with fair winds on a sunny day.  Is that us?  “Hello, have a bulletin and sit anywhere you would like.”   Are we all those happy moments and joyful epiphanies that occur in our church.  Are we the well sung hymn?   Are we our glorious organ and sublime stain glass window? Are we the children running happily in the basement after service?   Are we that circular table in the basement corner where some of us gather at coffee hour and we talk and talk, and spill crumbs on our sweaters and enjoy each other.    Are we our website that remains 24/7 ready for a hit from a seeker Sunday night long after we all have gone home?  “God is still speaking…”  our sign says.  Are we our sign?

Are all the confident and happy things that we know about ourselves?  Are we our pies or, are we the cracks in our church mortar.  Are we the cracks in the bricks on the face of the church we were just talking about at the vestry meeting.  The ones that we are having a special church meeting to talk costs.  Are we the cracks in our congregation that need to be fixed.?  Are we the times we all have longing and restless and sick and full of conflict.   Are we not what we yearn for but the constant yearning itself?   How expensive will that be to fix that?    Will there ever an end to fixing the cracks in us?

Are we our committees?  And when we can’t find enough people to be on our committees does that mean we can’t find enough people to be us?  It is not only an administrative problem but it is a existential problem too?

 Are we simply a set of separate people sitting in the pews like left over popcorn kernels in a bowl.  Are we just individuals who have stumbled in here looking for answers.  In here are we just as confused as the rest of the world out there - having watched the evening news, for instance,  and watched that car chase in L.A. that ended in the world witnessing police shooting a guy. 

Who are we?  Who are we the Blue Point Church?  Are we our pies?  Are we the confident and happy people we present at times?  Or are we the cracks in our mortar?  Are we really all those problems that need to be fixed?  Maybe we will never know who we really are.  The question seems so infinite, impossible to answer, it goes on and on…  I am tempted to resort to my childhood speculation is there another church somewhere out there in the universe just like us who is wondering if there is a church just like them wondering about their identity?  Perhaps the thought is not such a crazy one after all.  There may not be another church out there in the galaxies somewhere just like us but I do know there was another church wondering very similar questions.  The disciples two thousand years ago in upper room were wondering the same thing…  “Who are we?”

After many resurrection appearance Jesus had finally left them.  He has ascended to heaven.  After a train has roared pass the silence is deafening for those left behind on the platform.  So the disciples had retreated to the upper room.  That didn’t know what to do next.  The sat around wondering “Who are we now?” with Jesus gone.  They prayed.  They picked a replacement for Judas.  They fidgeted. 

There weren’t many of Jesus’ followers left.  Maybe about 120.  One hundred and twenty measly people.  They were not much bigger than us when you think about it.  After three years of Jesus trudging all over Galilee and  Judea and a whole bunch of other places they had only 120 members to show for it.  Think of all the miraculous deeds he performed, and the healings and those great teaching about love that thrilled everybody.  Think of the way the crowds cheered and followed him around.  He was forgotten so quickly.  He was betrayed so easily and left.  Of course, they too had betrayed Jesus and left him at his crucifixion.  Only they rationalized that now, saying they had been in danger what else were they to do?   Who are we?  Are we dumb for sticking it out even now?  Maybe our first instinct was right.  Maybe we should just go home and give up.    Are we our rationalizations?   Or are we the really smart ones.  Are we the ones who see more clearly than everybody else?

Of course we know how they feel.  We think of the crowds that come to church on Christmas and Easter.  Yet, soon the attendance drops down.  When the big popularized and commercialized Sundays are over where did everybody go?   Of course there are Sundays when we didn’t attend either…

The disciples were tempted to think they were their history.  They were tempted to think that the big crowds and the accolades were it.  Without that, it was all over now.  We might be tempted to look back to the hay day of the church, the fifties and sixties when the church was bursting at its seams and think it is all over now.   Perhaps we should just be open on the big holidays.

They were all together in the upper room going around and around with a question mark hanging in the air like an invisible elephant.  Then Pentecost happened.  Suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind.  It filled the entire house where they were staying.  Divided tongues as of fire appeared among them and a tongue rested on each of them.  Suddenly they knew.  Suddenly knew who they were and what they were about.  The question itself was blasted out of existence by the power of the Holy Spirit.  In modern language they were in the “zone” like they had never been before.  Out of nowhere things started happening effortlessly.  They knew many languages and started speaking in all of them at once to the faithful of people from every nation living in Jerusalem.  The prophesy of Joel was coming true before their very eyes:

In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and daughters shall prophesy and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams.  Even upon my slaves, both men and women, in those days I will pour out my spirit and they shall prophesy.  And I will show signs in the heavens and on the earth – blood, fire, and smoky mist.

The Holy Spirit turned a motley group of disciples into the church.  It gave them purpose, determination, power to accomplish things beyond their wildest dreams.  I heard on PBS news this week they discovered a flower that blossoms in.05 seconds.  It has a feeler that extends out from the bud and when it is triggered the blossom bursts opens and propels its pollen out at  over 2000 miles per hour.   Unbelievable isn’t it?  But it is true.  Sounds like what happened on the day of Pentecost. 

Professor Gilbert Bilezinkian said to his college class about the day of Pentecost and the early church

… there was once a community of believers who were so totally devoted to God that their life together was charged with the Spirit’s power.  In that band of Christ-followers, believers loved each other with a radical kind of love.  They took off their masks and shared their lives with one another.  They laughed and cried and prayed and sang and served together in authentic Christian fellowship.  Those who had more shared freely with those who had less until socioeconomic barriers melted away.  People related together in ways that bridged generations and racial chasm and celebrated cultural differences.  Acts 2 tells us that this community of believers, this church, offered unbelievers a vision of life that was so beautiful that it took their breath away.  It was so bold, so creative, so dynamic that they couldn’t resist it.  Verse 47 tells us that “the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved

On the day of Pentecost the disciples no longer wondered who they were because the Holy Spirit made them what they became.  The answer to their question is the same answer to our question.  Who are we?  We are neither our pies nor our cracks we are the power of the Holy Spirit touching us with tongues of fire.  If we remain silent for a moment and listen it will seem like nothing is happening.  Listen… I don’t see a great wind, or tongues of fire swooping down.    But, I must believe everything is happening.   The disciples were transformed.  We are being transformed by the Holy Spirit. 

How can this be?   On one hand, I don’t know.  It is up to the Holy Spirit to do its work in ways that are beyond all of us and mysterious to all but itself.  As the gospel says The wind blows wherever it pleases.  You hear it sound, but you cannot tell where it comes form or where it is going.  So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.  (John 3:8)

On the other hand,  it is imbedded in finding the gifts God gave us, our talents and strengths, and finding ways to use them for Jesus, for the church and for the world.  I have talked about this before.  But wouldn’t it be wonderful to do?  For us as a church to help each other find the things we naturally love to do, the things we are naturally good at so that we feel we are really living our lives.  Wouldn’t it be wonderful to help each other figure out how to use those things for God?  Wouldn’t it be wonderful if all of us were able to help each other find the place where our deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meets.?  (Frederich Beuchner) 

Instead of tongues of fire coming down I envision it more like film getting developed.  Remember how that use to happen before digital cameras.  The film would be exposed to the light.  But when you took it out of the camera it looked like nothing.  You had to put the film in basins of special chemicals.  Then as you were watching you could slowly see images emerge.  At first they were shadowy, ghost like images.  But, if you kept them in the solution long enough they would become clearer and clearer.  You would start recognizing things, a nose, a mouth, a smile, and eye and in the eye the reflection of the camera taking the picture.  There was not nothing.  There was a picture on that black opaque looking film all along, it just had to be developed.  That is how I see our gifts and talents.  The power of the church is to find ways of exposing those talents so that the reasons God gave them to us emerges.

How do I know that this would be the work of the Holy Spirit?  Because we will no longer be asking the question “Who are we?”   The question mark hanging in the air will disappear entirely like it did on the day of Pentecost for the disciples.  It will no longer come to mind because we will be living out our essential selves actively and in such a fulfilling way.  The question “Who are we?” becomes the statement “Try and stop us.” 

How are we going to start doing this?  Well, I have an idea that might get us on the way.  It is something I have been working on in my counseling practice.  I have been learning about a thing called “Positive Psychology.”  It is a branch of psychology that studies what are the traits that make life most fulfilling for people.  They have found 24 signature strengths that these happy and fulfilled people will have in varying degrees across cultures.  They are creativity, curiosity, open-mindedness, love of learning, perspective, bravery, persistence, integrity, vitality, love, kindness, social intelligence, citizenship, fairness, leadership, forgiveness and mercy, humility, prudence, self-control, appreciation of beauty and excellence, gratitude, hope, humor, and spirituality.  Every single one of us has some of these traits.  Not only do we have them, but they are the things that we love to do and make our lives worthwhile

They have devised a short questionnaire on line that we can take.  It is scored immediately and you can find your top five signature strengths.  Mine are creativity, humor and playfulness, spirituality and faith, wisdom, and capacity to love and be loved.  I would like as many people who are willing to to take the questionnaire and we will share it with each other creating ways of using those strengths in and for the church.   I hope everyone on each committee will take this test.  I hope the Sunday school teachers will take the questionnaire.   When enough of us have taken it I will lead a small group discussion.  We can also buddy up to help each other keep in touch with our signature strengths.  As a congregation we will brainstorm and devise ways of helping each one of us use those strengths for God.  We will pray about our strengths, read scripture in light of them, share ideas, brain storm and begin to make our church a place where volunteering is about actualizing what is the best and most fundamental parts of who we are.  Let me repeat that…

In this way may the Holy Spirit who is our Light will shine within us, warm and transform our hearts.  The Spirit will fill us with enthusiasm for the vision of God and make truth vibrant in our living.  The Spirit will dance amid our gifts and encircle us with joy and immense meaning. 

Let us end with a short  prayer I found by Bruce Prewer:

Holy Spirit, Soul of Love, unleash your abundance within me until every faculty is transfused with your healing immensity, and that I may have the vision to discern the footprints of Christ in this twenty-first century and possess the love and courage to follow wherever he leads me.  To the praise of the Name that is timeless and to the glory of the Love that is boundless.  Amen.