“THE ANSWER IS BLOWING IN THE WIND”
ACTS 2:1-12
Usually,
on Pentecost Sunday,
I share a few words with the Confirmation Class but this morning I want to
speak to the older folks who are here.
I want to speak to the moms and the grandfathers, the choir members, the
members of that august body called the Church Council and everyone who is old
enough to remember the Bob Dylan song “Blowin’ In The Wind.”
Let
me begin with a
story. The story is about a little
girl who was watching her mother prepare the Sunday dinner one day. The
mother took a ham and cut the
end off of it before she put it in the oven. That puzzled the little girl. “Mommy,” she said, “Why do you cut the end off of the ham
before you put it in the oven?”
The question surprised the mother.
“I don’t know,” she said.
“My mother always used to do it.
I think it makes the ham taste better.” The mother then went and asked her mother the same
question. “Mom,” she said, “Why do
you cut the end off of the ham before you put it in the oven?” “I
don’t know,” she said. “My mother always used to do it. I think it makes the ham taste
better.” The mother’s mother then
went and asked her mother the same question. “Mom,” she said, “Why do we cut the end off of the ham
before we put it in the oven?” The
question surprised the mother. “I
don’t know about you,” she said, “but
I always did it so the ham would fit in the pan.”
That’s
what happens sometimes. You keep doing things the same way over
and over and over again regardless of whether it makes sense or not. Churches
can be like that. That’s because we have our tried and
true ways of doing things. That was also true for the faithful people who were
there on that first Day of Pentecost.
The Jews who were there had their familiar rituals and routines but then
everything changed when that mighty wind came down from the heavens and those
tongues of fire began to dance on the disciples.
The
disciples began to speak
in tongues and people didn’t know what to think. They accused the disciples of being drunk but then Peter
stood up and set the record straight.
"Men
of Judea and all
who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you…this is what was spoken through
the prophet 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…’”
The
Spirit of the living God went
to work that day and ushered in a new community of faith; a new community of
faith that did things differently and looked at things differently. Now fast
forward the clock to
today. Today we welcomed nine young men and women into this Body of
Christ. The question for us old
timers is simple. Will we listen to their dreams? Will we pay attention to their visions? Will we let the
winds of change move us down the paths that will allow us to be disciples of
the risen Christ in a world that is very different from the one that we grew up
in? One of these days that may
mean a big 80” TV in the sanctuary.
Or it may mean a rock band to lead us in singing praises to God. Or it
may mean letting go of something that we thought was true but wasn’t the whole
truth.
These
are questions that every single
community of faith is going to have to wrestle with in the coming years and the
stakes are high. Everywhere
you look churches are struggling.
Some are even closing their doors.
So
the question is simple. we
can listen to the dreams and visions of the next generation or we can hunker
down like the elderly man who gave his minister an ear full one day. “Reverend,”
he said, “I don’t know why
you have to use all those crazy new translations of the Bible when you read the
Scripture during the service.
What’s wrong with the King James Version of the Bible? If it was
good enough for the Apostle
Paul it’s good enough for me.”
To
paraphrase the words to the
Bob Dylan song from many years ago,
“The answers my friends are blowin’ in the wind. The answers
are blowin’ in the
wind.” Amen.
Rev.
Dr. Richard A. Hughes
May
19, 2013
