June 11, 2000

Pastor David G. Mullen

Acts 2:17-18

Recently someone shared this parable A mother is sitting in a chair, working on a beautiful embroidery piece. Her pre-schooler is playing on the floor nearby and sees mommy working intently and quietly. Curious, the child walks closer and looks up at the bottom side of the material in the embroidery frame, and of course, it’s all a mess of hanging thread, and color strands running this way and that. The kid asks, "Mommy, why are you making such a mess." Mommy look down and chuckles and says, "I’m not making a mess. Here, come up on my lap and look." The little one climbs up and sees: not a mess of colors and loose threads, but lovely stitches, forming an as yet incomplete picture of flowers. "Wow! Mom, that is beautiful!"

So we often think God’s making a mess. Must have looked like that to some when on the Day of Pentecost the Spirit roared in like wind and danced like flames on the heads of the confused followers of Jesus. It looked confusing, it was even frightening as a crowd drew together and wondered if the loud and suddenly multi-lingual apostles were drunk.

Well, things can look really messy, especially when everyone’s talking. I wonder whether these kids’ mentor-teachers ever questioned their calling–or even God, after a particularly rambunctious and messy class session! And sure, I wonder what these kids will think of God and the world as they grow up and begin to deal seriously with an existence far from the ideals they’ve been taught to honor and revere.

There’s no doubt that things down here on earth can get horribly messy. What do you suppose the disciples thought as they saw Jesus nailed to the Cross? But Jesus on the Cross is the archetype of human existence–all humanity on a Cross, God’s children of every generation suffering through unbelievable cruelty, violence, persecution, and even death camps. We look up like toddlers and cry, God, why are you making such a mess?! What is the meaning of all the anguish, this shattering of dreams? Heart-broken, some turn away from God

The church itself sometimes doesn’t do much to improve on God’s reputation with the disillusioned. Self-righteous judgment and hostility toward other faiths, and even toward each others--these have never been far from the followers of Christ. What irony that the One who came to bring the love of God to all ended up with centuries of followers who did just the opposite. No wonder people turn away, seek other spiritualities. One sensitive soul, the Romantic Poet Shelly, wrote, "I could believe in Christ if he did not drag along behind that leprous bride of his, the church."

Seems pretty clear then, that whether contemplating the world or faith communities, if all we are looking at is the evidence from this side of things, this side meaning that we live like toddlers, looking up on the work God is doing, it doesn’t look like much. It’s a mess.

Ah, but remember the parable that began this sermon. Maybe on the first Pentecost fisherman Peter was like the toddler, lifted up by the Holy Spirit, seeing for the first time what God’s creative work really was. What God is working on is beautiful, a plan to stitch together a new creation. See, said Peter, the pattern was already there in the prophets, remember what Joel said about the visions and dreams and signs of wonder. See how it all comes together in Christ!

And that is what the apostle Paul was seeing. Paul knew about the mess the world was in. He wrote, "We know that all creation is still groaning and is in pain, like a woman about to give birth." But he saw more, saw God’s beautiful working from above: "The Spirit," Paul said, "makes us sure about what we will be in the future…"

Is the world only a mess? No, say Peter and Paul. Pentecost was and is like the Holy Spirit inviting the faithful up into the lap of God so it possible, if only for a moment glimpse the astonishing beauty of what God is doing.

But what is this lap of God? Jesus told his followers, The Spirit will come and guide you into the full truth. Her rich tradition of worship, sacraments, the seasons of the church year, the lectionary, the moral teachings, prayer, and faith, guided and shaped by the Holy Spirit, make the Church the lap of God. Every liturgy is an invitation for us to hop up on the lap and see what God is up to. For the full truth of what God is doing is beautiful. It’s an inspiring vision that saves us from ourselves, from a merely childish view of a messy world to a child-like wonder at the creative beauty of the mystery we call God. Unless you become like a little child, said Jesus, you cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven--or see it!

It’s in the lap of God that we finally glimpse why Jesus had die on the Cross. It’s in the lap of God that we find a guiding, creative presence on the flip side of what we usually view as only mess, cruelty, and injustice. It’s in the lap of God that we find our vocation to life in service of God’s plan to mend the universe. Those are the great moments of life, when so much of what we’ve been told, learned, and experienced, all comes together in a way that makes us say, "Wow! That’s beautiful."

This is a day then to be young again, children of God awed by the work of God! "Your sons and daughters will prophesy. Your young will see visions and your old will have dreams." Visionaries, that’s what we called to be. Robert Browning pointed out that some people discover a bush and pick blackberries, just another bit prickly work, while others, like Moses, see the bush as aflame with the presence of God. The vision!

Think of it this way, then. Traditional Catholic masses always used this sending word: "The mass is ended, go in peace." But now, because of our worship, because of the power of the Spirit that blows like the wind through our liturgy, and lifts us up, we may say: "The mess is ended, go in peace." For once again we’ve glimpsed the work of God. In Christ we see the goal. The Church becomes again Christ's beautiful bride. And the Spirit puts our lives back together again in hope.

A mess? Only from the downside! On the upside, here in this lap of God, we've got fire and faith in our eyes, for we’re already catching a glimpse of the day when the final stitch is worked and the whole universe exclaims with all God’s children, "Wow! That is beautiful!" Amen.