Is Pentecost over? Is it EVER really over? I hope not. I hope Pentecost, with its energy, with its excitement, with its potential, lives for ever in the hearts and minds of each of us. THAT’S what should be the driving force behind everything we do with our lives.

But then one of the phrases that stuck with me from this morning’s Gospel passage was, “So far as they were able to receive it.”

There’s such an air of sadness to that comment by the writer of the Gospel, talking about understanding what it meant to be involved with the reign of God. Sadness, yes, because it referred to a lack of imagination, I’d guess, rather than a lack of intellectual ability. Somehow, the hearers of Jesus’ stories couldn’t or wouldn’t let go of their preconceptions. They knew, or thought they did, that “nothing good could ever come out of Nazareth” and so when Jesus acted as if He were excited about the possibility of God’s love becoming reality in the lives of His hearers, it sounds as if the listeners simply turned down their hearing aids, thinking that nothing of any significance could possibly be being discussed.

I get the feeling that there were times when Jesus actually preferred the reaction of the legislative and religious leaders – full of mockery and derision, but also filled with fire and commitment, however opposed to Jesus’ frame of reference these people were. At least Jesus was able to express His opinion to them.

To say, though, that somehow there was a lack of imagination, or willingness to develop an imagination - that IS really sad, and it has bedevilled the followers of Jesus from the beginnings of His ministry to our own day. It shows up among those who think that the outlook is grim - that the financial state of the world and this country is so precarious that it can’t help but create chaos for the national Church, and the Diocese of Oregon, and this congregation right here. In this regard, I think a lack of imagination is tied to a lack of faith, a lack of hope, that things WILL change, that nothing is static - or forever - except the love of God which can never be taken away from us, no matter who is persecuting and abusing whom; no matter how much money disappeared from investment portfolios; no matter how old, how young, how whatever category we may think we and our friends fall into.

But the first four books of our Christian Scriptures are not called “Gospels” - God’s Good News - for nothing. There’s another reaction from Jesus that I pick up upon in that phrase from this morning’s passage from Mark. Jesus seems to be saying, “There’s hope yet, no matter how thick-headed, and stubborn, and reactionary, and introverted you may appear. God has infinite patience while working on bringing the reign to fruition. God can wait for the penny to drop.” And so Jesus continues to spin His stories, one after another, reaching deep into His bag of examples, hoping that one of them, at least, will be just right to touch one person or another.

Annie Dillard wrote a book with the marvellous title Teaching a Stone to Talk. In it she said, “Why do people in church seem like cheerful, brainless tourists on a packaged tour of the Absolute? On the whole, I do not find Christians, outside the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of the conditions. Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping God may wake some day and take offense, or the waking God may draw us out to where we can never return.” (1)

THAT’S what it means to live pentecostally. It doesn’t matter whether or not we all show up with crash helmets, or go to work wearing them, or visit our relatives, wearing them - OK, maybe not there. After all, they could still have us committed. But being committed should the LEAST of our worries. In fact, as Annie Dillard suggests, behaving in a safe way in order to ensure we’re NOT committed, for any reason - for talking out of turn; for showing concern about someone whom everyone else ignores or abandons; for riskily engaging in some form of compassionate behaviour; for smiling in Church; for actually bringing someone with us to Church - behaving in a safe way in order to ensure our self-defined freedom is NOT the way to experience or to live into God’s reign.

An interesting report from Pakistan talked about the development of that nation and of religious life there that challenges us to think about how we live out imaginative lives as followers of Jesus.

“At its founding,” wrote the writer of the article from Christian Peacemaking Teams, “Pakistan was envisioned to be a secular state for Muslims. The notion of a secular Islamic state is an inherently confusing concept that suggests an autonomy for the state in the context of the dominant religion, Islam. … With the growth of Muslim fundamentalism stretching from India through Pakistan and across South Asia the meaning of the nature of a secular Muslim state is being tested. The stretch from secular on one edge is balanced (some would say abused) by the pull towards a stricter application of traditional Muslim law on the other. Similar stretching has occurred in lands dominated by Christians. Fanatic, fundamentalist and fascist expressions of faith and politics claw for power.”

What took hold of my imagination, though, was this comment. “I don’t think it is very helpful for Christians to lecture Muslims about state craft. We Christians tend to forget the substance of our faith when we get power. We forget that in its roots Christian faith requires transparency and vulnerability. Even Christian politicians who come from the bottom usually get snookered into heavy handed institutional notions of statehood and the exercise of power complete with tanks, mines, big armies that break things, and drone air planes. Our arsenal is completed with nuclear weapons. The highest expression of our faith and maybe all faiths is very rarely shown in statecraft. Our laws, their application, our market places and even our credit cards hide our deepest aspirations for equality, peace, a do unto others.., and the cautions about usury (lending money for interest) in both religious traditions.” (2)

Why would we need such weapons, though - be they physical, or verbal, or psychological - why would we need ANY weapons if we had imagination? The confusion of the Athanasian Creed aside, if we believed a basic statement of Christian faith that Jesus, the Son of God, came to earth to demonstrate God’s love and to recruit us to follow Him so that we can live life to its fullest in the company of God - if we believed even HALF of that, and allowed our imaginations to carry us the rest of the way through life, then we’d be incredible witnesses to the Good News.

And if we believed that, then what do we have to worry about?

The living Turkish novelist Orhan Panuk began one of his books with the statement, “One day I had read a book and all my life has changed.” (3)

In some societies, reading a book CAN be dangerous. What about reading the Bible? Yes, it CAN be dangerous, just as it can be dangerous to be a Christian. What Panuk has written about books in general, though, we can apply easily to reading and following the Bible. The author wrote, “What literature needs most to tell and investigate today are humanity's basic fears: the fear of being left outside, the fear of counting for nothing, and the feelings of worthlessness that come with such fears.”

I might add that such fear may come not from having an over-active, but an under-active imagination. Lane Denson, my Tennessean friend, added, “The gospel is probably as much about fear as it is about love. It reminds us that perfect love casts out fear. Fear is not one among many emotions. Rather is fear the wall-to-wall carpet that underlies emotions. Anxiety is fear of the future. Anger is fear in the present, the attempt to regain the balance one loses from anxiety. Guilt is fear of what I have done - real or imagined which can be just as real as real. Resentment is fear of what others have done to me - likewise. Resentment and guilt are among the larger bugaboos for recovering addicts. Love encompasses all these dimensions that Pamuk insists literature must assuage.

Lane went on, in a comment he made last week, “Church is the place to take our fears, to share and to hear the narratives that encompass and inform them. In church, we immerse ourselves in our family history and learn how our peers, past and present, dealt with their fears, their awe before the awesomeness of God. Life is that story, their stories, our stories, our awe.”

I know that some people ascribe nightmares, and fear, and other unpleasant aspects of human life, to our imaginations. But I would suggest that if we allow our imaginations to be rooted in all the possibilities of the subtlety and as well as the bluntness of Jesus’ parabolic teaching, then we can loose ourselves of whatever it is that keeps us Episcopalians so gentile when it comes to sharing Jesus’ desire to have us bring our friends to meet Him.

And one further way to fire up our imaginations is to forget about whether or not something has to be big, or expensive, or strong in order to make a difference - whether it’s for ourselves or for others. That sort of thinking is like the invasive and pervasive blue-green algae in Devils Lake. It doesn’t belong in the lake if life is to flourish. Nor does unimaginative thinking about the relationship between size and effectiveness belong in a congregation of the friends of Jesus. That’s where the reference to a mustard seed comes in. When you go home, take a look at the story on the back of your bulletins. I’ve mentioned Muhammad Yunus and the development of micro loans before. I’ve also mentioned Greg Mortensen and his work described in “Three Cups of Tea”. And last year, we participated in the NetsforLife campaign.

Twenty-seven dollars is what Muhammad Yunus gave those Bangaladeshi women. Twelve dollars is what it takes to buy one treated mosquito net. Twenty-seven dollars is probably less than the cost of a month’s worth of coffee, even if you make it at home. It DOESN’T take much to get the Gospel into action.

Let me end with a cat story. Someone whom I look forward to meeting again at General Convention in three week’s time is Barbara Crafton, currently serving as priest at St James Anglican Church, the American Church in Florence, Italy. She began by talking about her husband, to whom she refers as “Q”. Her American cat’s name is “Ben” - who, she told me, loves to be quoted in sermons!

“Q was watering the lemon trees out front when an Italian lady summoned him to the gate, pointing frantically at the foundation of the rectory. What the...?

“It was Ben. He had gone down into the basement to assist the electrician in the reading of the meter, and had gotten shut in the furnace room. There is a window to the street, and he had leapt up onto the furnace and gone for it. But it is a cat-proof window: he could get his head and shoulders through it, but the rest of him wouldn't go. Ben the Quacking Cat was stuck. You can imagine the racket.

“Q tried to pull him out from the front and couldn't. Stuck fast. He had to go downstairs and ease him out rear end first. He carried him up and outside to show him to the lady, who went her way mightily relieved. Ben slept the rest of the day.

“Ben rarely attempts the impossible, but everybody does once in a while. Me, I do it a lot. Sometimes I fail - because the impossible is - well, not possible. But I have to say: lots of things people think are impossible aren't, really. They're just hard. Or they're new. Hard and new aren't synonyms for impossible. Most people can do more than they think they can do.

“My father used to try to discourage my schemes. It's an impossiblity, he would say flatly about something or other. I always took that as a signal to give it a try.” 4

I guess it all boils down to imagination; imagination and Pentecost. Who’s willing to take a chance, and to take Jesus at His Word?

1. Annie Dillard in Teaching a Stone to Talk (Harper & Row, 1982)
2. CPTnet 4 June 2009 PAKISTAN BLOG: Pentecost in Pakistan by Gene Stoltzfus the original piece is at PENTECOST IN PAKISTAN: MINORITIES AND MAJORITIES June 2, 2009, 4:04 pm http://peaceprobe.wordpress.com/2009/06/02/pentecost-in-pakistan-minorities-and-majorities/
3. The New Life by Orhan Panuk. Vintage Books USA, March 1998. I’m grateful to Lane Denson for making the referral to the author. See also a review at http://www.nytimes.com/1997/04/06/books/pamuk-life.html?ex=1220760000&en=340ce0b6fb60cabd&ei=5070
4. THE IMPOSSIBLE WILL TAKE A LITTLE WHILE by Barbara Crafton bccrafton@geraniumfarm.org