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Sermon 05/11/2008

Visions and Dreams ~ by Reverand Thomas Cary Kinder
May 11, 2008 Pentecost Sunday
First Congregational Church in Thetford, Vermont, UCC
Psalm 84; Acts 2:1-21; John 7:37-39

The First Congregational Church in Thetford, Vermont, United Church of Christ, is a progressive, Open and Affirming congregation, Open to All. We are diverse people on a journey together following the way of Jesus Christ. We find unity in the shared quest for truth rather than in one common creed. Our church provides a sanctuary for spiritual nurture and growth through services of word, music and silence, and through education, discussion and mutual support. We feel called to promote Christ’s way of nonviolence, creating a loving, just society for all. We care especially for our youth, for the struggling people of our world and community, and for the health of God’s creation. We expect there to be a cost to our faithful discipleship, a cost of our time, talent and substance, and of our selfless love, humble service and personal risk. This is a church of courage and of comfort. This is a church of passion and of humor. This is a church of Christ and of solidarity with people of all faiths who are striving to create a world of peace and justice, mercy and love.

We tend to think that the day of Pentecost marks the beginning of the longest season of the church year, stretching all the way to Advent, but Pentecost is also the fulfillment and triumphal conclusion of Easter.

In the Jewish tradition, the Festival of Weeks played the same role. It came fifty days after Passover, as Pentecost comes fifty days after Easter. It was a harvest festival, a festival of nature, but it was, and still is, also a festival of revelation, celebrating the giving of the law to Moses on Mount Sinai, which happened fifty days after the first Passover and exodus out of Egypt and was their triumph and fulfillment.

According to Rabbi Leo Trepp, the revelation celebrated by Jews on this fiftieth day is both “the incursion of God into history and the human awareness of [God’s] presence.” (The Complete Book of Jewish Observance p199)

All through Easter season my sermons kept coming back to the insistence that God’s power is real, that the power of love and life and light we see in the resurrection story is a real power in this world and in our lives. To use Rabbi Trepp’s words, “the incursion of God into history” is real, but the problem is that it is unprovable except through “the human awareness of God’s presence.” And how can we get that? How can we be aware of the Holy Spirit’s presence? How can we know it when we encounter it?

The spiritual is by definition different from the physical or rational or even emotional realms. Just as our bodies have physical senses and our intellects have one form of intelligence and our emotions another, our spirits have spiritual intelligence and spiritual senses by which they perceive the Holy Spirit. Our spirits know the Spirit when they encounter it. The trouble comes in trying to communicate that Spirit to our intellect. Words fail us. Rationality cannot comprehend it. Our emotions get all mixed up. That is why we have so many images in the Bible to express what the Spirit’s presence is like. They are all attempts to put into words what no words or concepts can fully capture, and no mind or feeling can fully comprehend.

But we try. We say that the Spirit comes on us like a rush of a great wind, or like the breath of Christ breathing on us, or like tongues of fire or at least an electric lightbulb going on over our heads, or like a stream of living water springing up from deep within us and flowing out of us into the world. The Prophet Elijah listened for the Spirit’s voice in the wind and the earthquake and the fire, but finally heard it in the sound of sheer silence. All these are attempts to describe what it is like to experience God’s mystical presence in and around us.

The other way we become aware of the Spirit’s presence is by its fruit. The Apostle Paul listed love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control as the fruit of the Spirit. (Galatians 5:22f) He also listed manifestations of the Spirit, such as the inspired utterance of wisdom, knowledge and tongues, and the gifts of healing, prophecy and interpretation. (I Corinthians 12)

In today’s story from Acts we see many of these, including Peter’s sudden Spirit-filled power and eloquence. Peter quotes the Prophet Joel, speaking for God, saying “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.”

As we prepare to be apart for a while, I feel the Spirit moving me to talk about some visions and dreams, some that I have had, some that we have had together. I believe all these are signs of the Spirit’s presence and action—God’s incursion into history.

Fourteen years ago I was the pastor in West Newbury, but my daughter Cary was still going to preschool in Strafford, so several times a week I would drive by this church—sometimes as many as four times a day. Thetford had been going through a dark time, shadowed by bitter town-wide fights over schools and taxes. I passed by this church and dreamed of it becoming a force of light shining into the darkness of the world, working for peace and justice, healing and lovingkindness.

As I drove and drove and drove to Strafford and Lesley drove and drove and drove to Strafford and Hanover and back every day, my dreams shifted a little. I added to my first dream the additional dream of coming to this church as its pastor someday. Then, lo and behold, just when Lesley and I had decided reluctantly that we had to leave West Newbury to live closer to Strafford and Hanover, this pulpit opened up.

Twelve years ago on Pentecost I preached here for the first time for my candidate Sunday. I talked about the visions and dreams of this congregation that the Search Committee had shared with me: to explore becoming Open and Affirming; to be a caring, healing and comforting presence in the community and a moral force on behalf of God’s creation; to be doing more for children and youth.

That Sunday I felt, and I think we all felt, excited by the vision of great potential here, and the dream that it would be fulfilled.

Today I feel as if, twelve years later, we have fulfilled that vision and that dream. Not that our work is done, but we have arrived at the church we dreamed of becoming. Last week one long-time member came up to me and said she felt as if she were having “an impression.” She recalled “impression” as the word Asa Burton, the pastor here 200 years ago, used in his memoirs to describe felt experiences of the Holy Spirit. She said that our new Mission Statement was giving her the deep awareness of the Holy Spirit’s incursion into our history.

I feel the same way. I feel as if what DOV has done, what we all have done together in coming up with the Mission Statement that is printed in the bulletin and the Vision and Objectives and Goals that flow out of it, is the beginning of a new era here that the Spirit has ushered in through us. It may be less flashy than the new era ushered in on the first Pentecost with a violent wind and fire, but it is no less real. I believe that the magnitude of it is so great that we are only just beginning to comprehend it.

I asked Terry to print the Mission Statement in the bulletin not so I could analyze it, but only so I could direct you to it. I suggest you take it home and put it on your refrigerator or bulletin board, someplace where you will see it often over the course of the next few months, where you can pause from time to time to read a sentence or two. And I suggest that as the congregation worships or deliberates on various issues or gathers to have fun together this summer, that you think of all you do in the context of this statement.

The Holy Spirit has moved among us. Now it is time for us to become aware of what it has done and all it means. If all you accomplish this summer as a congregation is to rest and allow this Mission Statement to sink in, you will have done important work.

Meanwhile, I am going to be off living out another set of visions and dreams. As many of you know, my brother George is famous for developing a form of life planning. A few years ago Lesley and I met with him to talk about where our lives were going. George looks for the dream-flame, or the dream-torch that lights a person up, and when he finds it, he helps people guide their lives to make that vision a reality. My dream was to build a little cabin and spend a block of time every year meditating and writing and being in nature, based in that cabin. Thanks to your gift to me of sabbatical time, and a grant from the Louisville Institute and Lilly Endowment, I will be fulfilling that dream this summer.

But behind the dream are two visions—mystical encounters that felt very much like the Holy Spirit of the Bible.

Once I saw a candle flame grow until it filled my sight with a brilliant light in the shape of a cross, and a voice came out of it calling me “to see, understand and interpret God in all things, all things in God.”

Another time I had a vision where I felt I was climbing down a long, long ladder descending through a dark tunnel. It felt frightening and endless, but I felt I had to give up control and trust that it was leading somewhere. Finally I came out into a golden room, a warm, dry cave that glowed with a golden light, and I saw a man in a white robe squatting on the floor in front of me. He told me his name was Michael, and that he would help me bring what I found in this golden room out into the world, and then he swept his hand and the wall became like a large window on a busy city sidewalk.

I had these visions twenty or twenty-five years ago. I still cannot tell you for certain what they mean, but they feel like our Mission Statement to me—like something that the Holy Spirit has given that I have to continue to live into, and only by doing so will I discover what they mean.

This summer while you ponder the paragraph about our mission, I am going to be looking at the other side of the bulletin insert at the paragraph called “A Definition of Contemplative Prayer and Practice.” This statement was written by twelve contemporary spiritual masters, Christians who practice one of three different forms of contemplation called Christian Zen, Christian Meditation and Centering Prayer. If you read the statement, you will find echoes of the visions I have had.

The statement talks about “a dying to self or emptying to self that becomes a radical emptying to God.” It says, “Through a pattern of abiding in God that we call contemplative prayer, a change of consciousness takes place. This dynamic sharing of God’s nature forms each person and opens them to the mind and very life of Christ, challenging them to be instruments of God’s love and energy in the world. This contemplative consciousness bonds each person in a union with God and with all other persons. It enables them to find God present in all things.”

This paragraph describes how I understand my calling to abide in the golden room and see, understand and interpret God in all things, all things in God. It also reflects the truth that we have seen in contemplatives like the first Christian monk, Anthony, or the American monk Thomas Merton or Jesus himself who found that going apart, self-emptying and abiding in God led them back into the world to serve and to see God everywhere in everyone and everything.

This is the hope and the expectation I take with me as I go into sabbatical time. I hope and expect to come back here better able to serve as an instrument of God’s love and energy in the world. I hope and expect to feel a closer union with God and with you because of this time. I hope and expect to grow, however slightly, better able to see, understand and interpret God in all things, all things in God. I do not expect to dazzle you when I return, the way Moses did after his encounter with God on the mountain for forty days. But I do expect to come back eager to see you again, eager to live into our mission and vision with you in the years to come.

Of course all my hopes and expectations are completely dependent on the grace of God. The contemplative path does not automatically bear the Spirit’s fruit in a person’s life; that is entirely the work of the Spirit. It is out of our hands. All we can do is take care of our part of the transaction, opening ourselves to receive God’s grace and cultivating ourselves to be fertile ground where the fruit of the Spirit may flourish.

So please take good care of yourselves and of this church while I am gone. I know there are some potentially controversial topics you hope to address—the race issue and what to do about marriage equality and what to do with the parsonage. I hope you will seek the fruit of the Spirit to help you through—love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. I hope you will have in all things charity, loving and supporting one another wherever your paths may lead. And if things get too hot to handle, or burdens feel too heavy and you need a rest, I hope you will set everything aside and practice the valuable spiritual disciplines of avoidance and denial until the fall.

In case you didn’t know, I love you and I love this sacred, spirit-filled place. So take care.

Let us pray in silence…

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