Sunday mornings are hectic in the Syler household, with two priests trying to get ready and get to church on time! By the time I finally get in the car and head to church, I’m usually running a few minutes later than I prefer. This results in a hurried drive from my house to the church, hoping that I do not get behind a slow moving vehicle. This morning I was driving the two-lane country road between my house and Route 5, when I came around a corner and saw two Canadian geese standing in the middle of my lane. I slowed down, finally stopping my car right in back of them. When coming upon most birds in the road, you’ll find that they will fly away as quickly as possible as soon as they realize you’re headed straight for them in a very big vehicle. Not Canadian geese. When I finally stopped my car in back of them, they turned around as if to say, “Hey. How ya’ doin’?” I tapped on my horn, hoping to get them out of the middle of the road. They started walking…straight ahead, staying in the road. I could have just gotten in the other lane and passed them at this point, but really didn’t want another car to come up behind me and hit them. Instead of passing them, I moved my car so that it was coming toward them in a diagonal fashion. I was trying to move them into a driveway, out of the road and out of harm’s way. Finally I was able to get them into the driveway where they were safe from any other oncoming traffic. I drove away, feeling really happy that the Canadian geese were safe from harm. While driving away I looked in my rearview mirror, and those dang geese were right back in the middle of the road! I was so upset. I had taken so much time, patience, and care to get these geese out of harm’s way, only for them to get right back in the middle of danger! Then I thought, “This must be how God feels.” God, despite having responsibility over all the world, takes the time, patience, and care to move each of us off the path of danger and onto God’s path…only to look in His rearview mirror and find that we have gone right back onto the path of danger. Luckily, the church reminds us constantly to get back on God’s path. Today is one of those days. We celebrate Pentecost today, that marvelous day when God sent His Holy Spirit to light the fire of Christ in our hearts, to set us once again on the path to the kingdom of heaven.

In our reading today from Acts, we hear about this marvelous day of Pentecost: “…suddenly a sound came from heaven like the rush of a mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared to them tongues as of fire, distributed and resting on each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit…” (Acts 2:2-4a).

“And in the last days it shall 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; yea, and on my menservants and my maidservants in those days I will pour out my Spirit; and they shall prophesy. And I will show wonders in the heaven above and signs on the earth beneath, blood, and fire, and vapor of smoke; the sun shall be turned into darkness and the moon into blood, before the day of the Lord comes, the great and manifest day. And it shall be that whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved” (Acts 2:17-20).

The Holy Spirit has come down in tongues of fire, resting on each of most of those present, causing them to speak of the amazing works of God. Those on whom the tongues of fire, the Holy Spirit, did not rest, look around, bewildered, saying, “These men are drunk!” And here Peter begins his sermon, chiding those men, telling them that those on whom the tongues of fire have rested are not drunk on wine, but on the Holy Spirit. He proves this by quoting the Old Testament prophet Joel’s prophesy, which I have just read again to you. This is not just any prophesy. Listen to what Joel says: “[God] will show wonders in the heaven above and signs on the earth beneath, blood, and fire, and vapor of smoke; the sun shall be turned into darkness and the moon into blood, before the day of the Lord comes, the great and manifest day…”

There was a mighty wind. There was blood, and fire, and smoke. The sun was turned into darkness and the moon into blood. The day of Pentecost, my friends, was no walk in the park. There were no angels and archangels playing pleasant harps of soft, soothing music. No. This was destruction. This was terrifying.

Over the past week if you have turned on the news at all, you have either seen visions or heard descriptions of this kind of destruction happening now. It did happen, and is still happening, in Myanmar, a country in Southeast Asia formerly referred to as Burma. I hope you have seen or heard the news. I hope the destructive result of the cyclone that has destroyed this country has hit all of you as well. Houses wiped away, tens of thousands of people dead, people continuing to die from disease and starvation, floods. There was a mighty wind. There was blood, and fire, and smoke. The sun was turned into darkness and the moon into blood. There is destruction. There is desolation. There is death. This is terrifying.

I ask that we look at Pentecost perhaps a bit differently than we ever have. Pentecost was glorious, something to be celebrated. It was at the same time, though, terrifying. Pentecost was not a one time affair, either. Pentecost is something that happens often. The problem is that we have stopped interpreting things like natural disasters as ways in which God is reaching out to us, in which God is calling us to a new way of living, of being. Think about this for a moment. There have been many disasters in fairly recent memory: the genocide in the Sudan, the horrors of 911, Hurricane Katrina in Mississippi and Louisiana, the Tsunami in southeast Asia, and now the cyclone in Myanmar. I’m not suggesting that God causes these disasters, that God causes this suffering. It is, I believe, the devil who causes suffering. But God works through all things. In all things, we have the opportunity to put on the whole armor of God and stand up against the wiles of the devil (paraphrase of Ephesians 6:11). We have an opportunity to glorify God. God calls us to new life when these disasters happen. Unfortunately, our hearts are too closed to hear Him calling us.

For example, the gospels have many stories of Jesus healing the sick. In one story, the disciples ask Jesus why this particular man brought to him was sick, if it was because of the man’s sins or the sins of his mother and father. Jesus says that this man’s sickness does not have anything to do with sin. It is in this man’s sickness, and in his healing, Jesus tells us, that God is glorified. God does not cause the blood, fire, and floods. God is glorified through them. Or, perhaps, in this day and age, it is better to say that the hope is that God is glorified through them.

On the day of Pentecost, found in the reading today from Acts of the Apostles, not everyone responds to the destruction as God would have us respond. There is a mighty, destructive wind. There is blood, and fire, and smoke. The sun is turned into darkness and the moon into blood. Some of those present respond by believing in God, by being filled with the Holy Spirit, and, eventually, by spreading God’s word and doing God’s work in the world. Others respond by chiding those who have been filled with the Holy Spirit, suggesting that they are drunk. They fail to respond to the disaster by hearing God’s call to them. Instead they remain cut off from God’s call. They are the ones so drunk on this world that even a disaster will not open their hearts to the call of God.

We, like those in the Acts of the Apostles, have a chance to respond either way as well. In the past we, as American Christians, have failed over and over again to respond to God’s call. We are so drunk on the wines of this world that we’ve lost the ability to hear God’s call to us. Let this destruction in Myanmar, the mighty, destructive wind, blood, fire, the darkened sun and blood soaked moon, be, for us, a new Pentecost. On Pentecost, the disciples became conscious of a new inward power which completely transformed their whole outlook. The Holy Spirit did this. On this Pentecost, might we also become conscious of a new inward power that completely transforms our whole life.

We celebrate Pentecost every year. This isn’t just a way of remembering the Pentecost the disciples experienced. Celebrating Pentecost each year is a way for us to ask God yearly to come upon us as tongues of fire, entering our lives in ways that destroy the life we are living and create in us a new way of being.

My sophomore year of college I received a poem from a friend in the mail. On the day I received it I put it in my Bible, knowing that it served as a good reminder to me. The poem is called “Touched by an Angel” and is by Maya Angelou, one of my very favorite poets. I’ve taken the liberty of changing her word “love” for “God.” They are, after all, interchangeable. God is love.

We, unaccustomed to courage

exiles from delight

live coiled in shells of loneliness

until [God] leaves [His] high holy temple

and comes into our sight

to liberate us into life.

[God] arrives

and in [His] train come ecstasies

old memories of pleasure

ancient histories of pain.

Yet if we are bold,

[God] strikes away the chains of fear

from our souls.

We are weaned from our timidity.

In the flush of [God’s] light

we dare we brave.

And suddenly we see

that [God] costs all we are

and will ever be.

Yet it is only [God]

[who] sets us free.

May we allow the Holy Spirit to destroy our lives this day. It is only once our lives of sin and complacency have been destroyed, after all, that the real work of Christ in us can begin. Choose this day. Choose it now. Choose God, who costs all we are and will ever be. Choose God, who is the only one who sets us free.