“On the whole, I do not find Christians, outside of the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of 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 someday and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return.” – Annie Dillard
The disciples could never return to the time before they left their locked room and spoke the intimate truth of their experience of the risen Christ with such power and confidence that the hearts and minds of strangers from foreign lands received and believed them. The image of a strong wind, tongues of fire, foreign languages, and accusations of morning drunkenness are attempts to capture the power of their experience. Perhaps Annie Dillard’s words can rouse us to anticipate the power of God and wake us from sleepwalking through life, so caught up in everyday demands and world crises that we embrace the comfortable routine of worship, grateful when it is more comfort than challenge.
Pentecost is our yearly wake-up call, a reminder that the living God has given us a mission and the power to carry it out. So wear red on Sunday, sing and speak in many languages, and proclaim the good news of God in your life! And maybe wear a bike helmet and hold on tight—the Holy Spirit is always up to something. It’s our choice whether we listen and respond, knowing that “…God whose power, working in us, can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine: Glory to God from generation to generation in the Church, and in Christ Jesus for ever and ever. Amen.” Put on your seat belts!
Bishop Kara
