An Awakening

June 8, 2014 Pentecost

Numbers 11:24-30

Acts 2:1-21

In the 1920’s there was an epidemic known as the “sleeping sickness.”  This mysterious epidemic turned normal, healthy people into living statues.  They were conscious, but unable to move their bodies.  They lived trapped inside their frozen bodies for 20 and 30 years.  Can you imagine the horror of being trapped inside your own body, unable to move or connect with others or communicate -  completely dependent on others to feed and care for you?

This epidemic was later discovered to be a certain kind of brain disease, a form of encephalitis.  Some of these patients wound up in a Bronx Mental Hospital, in a ward referred to as the “garden” because the staff could do nothing but feed and water the patients like they were plants.

In 1969 the clinical neurologist Oliver Sachs diagnosed these chronically institutionalized patients as suffering from post-encephalitis syndrome.  He began experimentally treating the patients with massive doses of a new drug for Parkinson’s disease called L-DOPA.  And it worked, at least temporarily.

 

The 1990 film Awakenings was a screen adaptation of the 1972 book written by Dr. Oliver Sachs about these patients.  The film introduces us to about 15 patients trapped in their bodies as a result of the “sleeping sickness.”  But it focuses mainly on the relationship between a doctor played by Robin Williams and a patient named Leonard, played by Robert DeNiro.

In the movie’s prologue we see Leonard as a playful, active child before the disease shuts his life down.  He was in a catatonic state for 30 years.  From the time he was a teenager into his late 40’s, he was conscious but unable to move or respond or communicate in any way.  His mind was active but his body couldn’t respond.  It was like he had been buried alive.

The film allows us to see his emergence from this nightmare, full of wonder and gratitude at being able to move around and express himself.  His life begins to stir with the desires all human beings have for love and connection and laughter.

Here’s the last line of Roger Ebert’s review of the movie:  “What [the movie conveys] is the immense courage of the patients and the profound experience of their doctors, as in a small way they reexperienced what it means to be born, to open your eyes and discover to your astonishment that ‘you’ are alive.”

Pentecost is the church’s celebration of God’s outpouring of the Spirit in our lives.  Today, I invite you to re-experience what it means to be born, to open your eyes, and discover with astonishment that you are alive, that you are loved by God, and that you are called to share in God’s project of renewing everything in Jesus Christ. 

This Pentecost Sunday can be a kind of awakening for those of us who have been sleeping, frozen, or paralyzed.  You see, it is quite possible for us to be alive but not fully awake.  Some of us have been sleepwalking through life. 

God’s Spirit is right here but many of us are missing out on it because in some ways it’s safer to stay asleep. 

We would be better off, I think, if our congregational life together felt more like a 12-step program.  Some of you who have struggled with addictions have been through a 12-step program like AA or NA.

In a 12-Step program, everyone there is desperate to get better.  They’re tired of the pain in their life, and they’re willing to do whatever it takes to move past what’s harming them.  So they’re willing to talk in unmasked and vulnerable terms about their struggles.  They’re willing to share their lives with others and listen to fellow travelers.  They’re willing to show up every single week without fail – because their very life is at stake.  They’re willing to entrust themselves to a mentor and be held accountable.  They’re willing to begin a process with specific steps and work through them - in order, with great effort - because they’ve realized there is no shortcut to becoming healthy and whole.  They’re awake. 

When we’re at our best as a congregation our lives together feels like that.  But often churches are filled with people who are asleep.  Asleep to their own pain.  Asleep to their own unhappiness.  Numbed to their disappointment and frustration.  Paralyzed and afraid of growth.  Too concerned with appearances to risk honesty and vulnerability.

So on this day of Pentecost, let’s return to the life-giving story of Scripture for guidance on how God’s Spirit awakens us to the fullest life possible.

In the reading from Numbers, we have a scene from Israel’s wandering life under their leader Moses.  Only a few, special people are given the gift of God’s Spirit.  Only the powerful prophets like Moses receive the gift of God’s Spirit.  And so it was surprising when God took some of the Spirit given to Moses and gave it to the 70 elders of Israel.  They prophesied for a bit, then quit.  Two average Joes named Eldad and Medad got the Spirit briefly, and confused people when they prophesied.

Many Israelites were alarmed that God’s powerful Spirit had come to rest on these 70 elders.  They said to Moses, “Make them stop prophesying!”  But Moses replied, “I wish that all the Lord’s people were prophets and that the Lord would put his Spirit on them” (v. 29).

That is exactly what happens in our reading from Acts 2.  God has poured out the Spirit on everyone who is part of the family of Jesus Christ.  It is not trickled only on special leaders here and there.  God extravagantly pours out this Spirit – like a gushing, sloshing, exuberant river – on the lives of everyone connected by faith to Jesus Christ.

This is the very basic storyline of Scripture that defines your life and mine. We are people with tongues of fire above our heads.  We are people standing under the waterfall of God’s Spirit.

The gospels show us the life, ministry, death and resurrection of Jesus from Nazareth.  And when God raises the crucified Jesus from the dead, this Jesus promises the outpouring of the Spirit on all God’s people and then he ascends into heaven.

Now you will never understand your role in God’s story if you don’t get how these things are connected.  You will never get clear on your identity as one of God’s people if you don’t see how Jesus’ leaving and the outpouring of the Spirit are connected to each other, and connected to your life.

The reason Jesus was good news for the whole world was that in him the healing, loving, forgiving, merciful, humble, powerful God of the universe had shown up in the flesh.  Heavenly power got hands and feet.  Divine love became practical, earthly, and tangible. 

Now here’s the kicker: that didn’t end when Jesus left or ascended.  It’s just that now it continues on in you.  You’re the continuation of Jesus’ earthly ministry of love, kindness, encouragement, and healing.  You’re the hands and feet that make God’s love real.  When we pray for God’s kingdom to come to expression on earth as it is in heaven, we’re praying that we become the body of Christ that continues the ministry that Jesus started.

Now for a variety of reasons, we often miss out on this chance to be awakened by God’s Spirit into a powerful, active, serving life as God’s hands and feet.  We find ways to ignore the news that God has poured out the Spirit upon us in a way that pulls us into an exciting life of ministry in God’s name.

Why would we do this?  Why would we turn away from this Pentecostal news that our lives are awash in God’s powerful, life-giving Spirit?  Well, I’d like to get at this with a little introduction to an early 19^th century German philosopher.

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel – that’s his (very German) name.  How many of you have heard of him?  Hegel argued that human beings have a tendency to see themselves as puny creatures muddling through life beneath a big God in the sky.  Now those are my words, not his.  But Hegel argued that human beings tend to exaggerate the distance between ourselves and God.  Rather than picturing God as part of the process of our own life history and development, we picture God as a separate reality, largely disconnected from our lives.

Why did Hegel care?  What difference did he hope to make by writing and teaching?  Well, Hegel assumed that we human beings are missing out on a chance to be fully ourselves when we do this.  That is, when we alienate ourselves from God, we diminish ourselves and make ourselves small. 

Now I’m just using Hegel as an example here.  I don’t really think we ought to be teaching Hegelian philosophy to our grade-school kids in Sunday School.  But Hegel rightly realized an important theme in Scripture: God isn’t somewhere “out there.”  God has freely chosen to visit us first in Jesus, and then in an ongoing way in the outpouring of the Spirit that awakens us to a powerful new life. 

Why does this matter?  It matters because the good news of Scripture is that the world is full of God.  Our lives are full of God.  And this means that it isn’t helpful for us to picture ourselves as helpless, powerless little creatures bumbling our way in the dark, barely able to avoid despair.  Rather, as people filled with God’s Spirit we’re filled with light, filled with power, filled with compassion and kindness, filled with all kinds of creative, resourceful, problem-solving capabilities.

You have received the powerful Spirit of God in your life so that you can extend the healing ministry of Jesus Christ into your little corner of the universe.  That makes you the very hands and feet of God’s grace and love.  God, pour out your Spirit on us.  Set us aflame.  Amen.