It began in the beginning. God in Spirit hovered in the darkness and called out "Let there be light." A word spoken into the void birthed .... a new start? a new expression of 'life'? a new manifestation of God's divine being? the shift from an attitude of love to the concrete creation of creation?
That is where it all began for us. Sometimes we got the God connection with a little bit of help from the stories passed down through generations: stories about Abraham and the promise of land, and Moses and the rescue from slavery, and the actual land flowing with milk and honey, and King David who pulled it all together for about 70 years.
But the earth was it's own place of Babel, with folks arguing about which god truly gave life and what that god demanded and how wrong everyone else was. It wasn't a pretty time, but we would have recognized it because we experience it daily on the news.
So began act 2 of God's unfolding plan: pulling himself apart from the otherness of God, Jesus took on human flesh. So we could see. So we could hear. So we could experience the depth and breadth and power of God's love for all humans and all of creation. It looks like feeding hungry people; it looks like clothing the naked; it looks like eating with foreigners. It looks like forgiveness, even when it means forgiving your enemies. It looks like the cross.
20th century theologian Karl Barth pointed out, 'if God didn't want us to know that God was God, we wouldn't.' Jesus was a gift; a concrete example for we concrete learners; an example of how we can do it, even if imperfectly.......and God's love covers all the imperfect places.
But taking on human flesh meant taking on human death as well, and so we, those who look to Jesus to know God, stand here alone........or do we? Enter act 3 and the Holy Spirit.
Jesus told us the Spirit was coming: an advocate, an encourager, a strengthener, a teller of truth. The Spirit is the power of God moving among us......as it has from the beginning when that power moved across the void and called into being life as we know it. Now we know that the very Spirit which raised Jesus from the dead is moving among us..........granted it took a rush of a mighty wind and the improbable tongues of fire to get our attention, but it worked!
The world has turned yet again. Now the Spirit calls us into the great drama of God's creation. Now the Spirit calls us to point the way: see? there is God at work! See over there where college students are donating their stuff to give it to others who need stuff? God is at work. God is at work in the students and in those who step up to make it happen and in the relationships forged between all the workers and in the new life now made possible. There! It's is God at work.
Those folks in that room were blown out of their seats by the wind and fired up by that holy fire. They began babbling in any and all languages so that no one would be left out. They had a story to tell and everyone was going to get a chance to hear it. Jesus - who is God: love and grace and forgiveness and hope - is the path of life because that path is wholly in tune with the God of all Creation.
A drama for all the ages.
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