"Pentecost Dreams"

Sermon Text: Acts 2:1-21

Rev. Caela Simmons Wood

First Congregational UCC, Manhattan, KS

May 23, 2021: Pentecost 

Back when I was in seminary, I spent a summer in CPE – Clinical Pastoral Education. CPE is a rite of passage for many seminarians. My CPE unit happened in a hospital on the far west side of Indianapolis. Right where the city starts to become rural again. I spent 40 hours a week for 10 weeks in the hospital. A lot of the time was spent learning how to provide pastoral care as a chaplain. I went into strangers' rooms and sat with them. I did some praying. I did a lot of listening. 

Another key component of CPE is intensive work with a small peer group. Six of us gathered around a table every day that summer. We talked about God, our families, our ministry. It was a little like group therapy boot camp. Often unpleasant but always enlightening. Our supervisor was named Beth. Beth had this unbelievable ability to ask a brief question that caused the ground to fall right out from under your feet. She was like a ridiculously demanding personal trainer…for the soul. I loved and despised her in various moments. I wouldn’t trade the things she taught me for the world. 

On the first day of CPE, we were all sitting together in this windowless, beige conference room and Beth asked us, as our first exercise, to go around the room and introduce ourselves. Only instead of sharing our favorite ice cream flavor, she asked us to share, in one sentence, our truest thing about God. Nothing like jumping right in with no warmup, right?

I mean, just sit with that a minute. Your truest thing about God. How do you even begin to tackle that question?

So we sat and we stared at those beige walls and we thought. My truest thing came to me right away and then I had to ponder it for a bit….turn it over and see if it was really true. What I said that day was this, “I believe God is a dreamer.” 

So that was back in, let’s see….2008, I think. A lot has changed in my life since then. Depending on what day you catch me in 2021, this may or may not still be my truest thing about God, but it’s still there near the top of the list on most days. 

God is a dreamer. 

When I read our sacred texts, when I hear the stories of Jesus-followers from centuries ago, when I read words by contemporary theologians that make my heart tingle, when I join my spirit with yours on Sunday morning for worship….I experience God as a dreamer. 

Story after story has been passed down to us about our God dreaming reality into existence. In the beginning…..God dreamed. After the flood….God dreamed. In the desert….God dreamed. As our faith ancestors struggled and fought with themselves and others…God dreamed. As a young woman encountered an angel who told her, “Don’t be afraid”….God dreamed. As that infant grew into a man and wove incredible stories of the world being turned upside down…God dreamed. As that man was executed by an unjust government…God dreamed. And when Jesus’s closest friends discovered that death could not conquer Love….God dreamed. 

God dreamed some wild stuff. Some of it defies explanation and seems, literally, incredible. 

Today’s story from Acts is no exception. Here we have the friends of Jesus, heartbroken and wandering, trying to figure out what to do now that Jesus has left the building. They gather together for the Jewish celebration of Shavuot – the holy day that marked fifty days after the Passover Feast. 

This ragtag group of followers were all together in one place. Perhaps deflated. Unsure of what should happen next. Suddenly, a rush of wind fills the room, fills the disciples, and the air is filled with the sound of many people talking in various languages. And as the cacophony of their voices filled the streets below, Jews from all over the known world who were present in Jerusalem came to the house to see what was going on. At first, they laughed, saying, “These guys must be drunk. How can they be speaking my language?” 

But then Peter began to speak. And people stopped laughing as a radical new vision poured forth from Peter’s lips. 

Peter remixes an ancient prophecy from Joel, proclaiming that God’s Spirit will come to all people. People of all genders will prophesy. The young and the old will see visions and dream dreams. Those who have been enslaved have received the gift of God’s Spirit, and they will prophesy. And everyone who seeks a new life will find salvation.

Peter and Joel’s shared vision is radically inclusive. The idea of all people being recipients of God’s Spirit? Radical. The admonition to listen to both the young and the old, finding new dreams and visions? Radical.

Pentecost is all about God dreaming a new world into existence. In the midst of any great trial, God is there with us, casting a new vision of hope for a weary world. 

When we’ve hit rock bottom and we’re not sure how to get back up, the Holy Spirit is there filling in the empty places and propping us up so we can continue to stand. When the phone call comes and the voice on the other end has the worst news, the Holy Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. When depression sets in; when the argument with someone we love feels too big to heal; when we have no idea where our life is headed; when the one we can’t possibly live without has ascended to heaven; when our hatred of ourselves seems too real to overcome; when the pandemic drags on; when toxic systems of violence threaten to overwhelm….the Holy Spirit is there, quietly and mightily sustaining us.

Pentecost is the advent of the Spirit in our midst. And Pentecost is not a one-time event. The outpouring of the Holy Spirit – happens several times in the Book of Acts alone. Just remember Philip’s baptism of the man from Ethiopia; or Paul’s experience on the road to Damascus; or Peter’s encounter with Cornelius, when he discovered God had much wider plans for the followers of Christ than anyone had previously imagined.

In all of these cases, the Spirit comes along and breaks things wide open. The Spirit comes to places of great emptiness and longing and brokenness and rushes in like a straight-line wind in a big field at the beginning of the storm, knocking us off our feet with surprise. But the Holy One also comes in a spirit of gentleness, breathing on us a cool and refreshing breeze, inviting us to be partners in dreaming a new way of living into reality. 

Pentecost is the season for dreaming, my friends. 

Many of us who are adults are a little out of practice when it comes to dreaming, aren’t we? Made in God’s image, it seems to me that we need to remind ourselves that it’s okay to take time to dream. It’s more than okay, actually. In fact, if we are called to be co-creators with the biggest dreamer of all….then dreaming is our birthright. 

We are called to set aside our fear of change and wonder what it might be like to live in a different world. We are called to say, “Shhh. Be quiet for now,” to those insistent voices in our heads that say, “But what about this or that? This is never going to work.” 

We are called to gather together as a church to encourage dreaming. Wild and crazy, preposterous dreaming! We follow the One who laughed in the face of death, flew up into the heavens in a cloud, and sent God’s Spirit to fill us….to make us overflow with Love...to cause us to shout it out in languages we can’t even understand. 

As we walk together through this strange pandemic time of transformation and change, we have a unique opportunity to pay attention to our dreams. When everything has unraveled and we’re not quite sure how it’s all going to go back together again…? What better time could there be for listening to the movement of the Spirit as she dreams through us?

You may be thinking – who, me? I couldn’t possibly. Dreaming is for….fill in the blank. Kids? Those who know more about the subject? People who don’t have so many things to worry about? People who aren’t so darn tired?

Ah, yes. But dreams come to those who are exhausted, too, don’t they? 

We dream when we’re asleep...and we can dream when we’re awake, too. Many wise people have said that when we dream - whether asleep or awake - we are tapping into the movement of God’s Spirit within and among and beyond and through our own spirit. We just have to have eyes to see and ears to listen. 

May the Holy Breeze of Pentecost blow through each of us, through our congregation, through our community, and through our whole world…..may we be wise enough to dream dreams with our Stillspeaking God. And may we be bold enough to share those dreams of hope, resilience, and a just world for all with one another as we dream together with the Spirit.