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My grandson Sammy loves superheroes. When he was little, they were the main topic of his emerging conversation. He knew their names, their superpowers, the worlds they inhabited and conquered. Now that he is getting a little older, he doesn’t play with his superhero figures as much, but they come out in his artwork. Sammy has a great talent for drawing and when he shows me his pictures, I usually have to ask for an explanation of who this character is and what he or she does. He is always ready with the story.
I get it. Superheroes make us feel safer. They will come, conquer evil, and restore our world to a gentler power and a more just way of being together.
Sometimes I think we want God to be a superhero. We want God to swoop in and smite the bad guys. We want God to scale the tall buildings we erect around each other and bring them down with special powers. I am dating myself here, but do you remember Mighty Mouse? Remember his theme song? (sing) “Here I come to save the day.”
Or take the words to Superman’s theme song:
Faster than a speeding bullet.
More powerful than a locomotive.
Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound.
Look, up in the sky, it's a bird, it's a plane, it's Superman!
Interesting that we use the image of the bird for the Holy Spirit. It’s tempting to celebrate this day of Pentecost as if God were a superhero. God came down in the form of the Spirit to save the day, to rescue us and make things right.
But that is not what our readings tell us today. In our gospel reading from John, we find the disciples locked away in the upper room. They are afraid that the people who crucified Jesus were going to come after them. What does Jesus do? He comes to the frightened disciples and he breathes the Holy Spirit upon them. But he doesn’t take them away from Jerusalem. He doesn’t fortify the room they are hiding in. Instead, he sends them out into the dangerous world. He sends the Holy Spirit, not to save the day, but to fortify them and give them the courage they will need to follow Jesus in the world.
In Acts today we hear the many voices that proclaim the good news of God. So many different voices! This Pentecost moment is not a nice, neat moment. The Holy Spirit didn’t come to fix the world by wiping out our differences in one fell swoop. The Spirit of God revels and grows and flourishes in these differences. And that can be dangerous.
In fact, the people make fun of the disciples. They suspect this crazy behavior is due to too much wine. Peter tells them, no they are not drunk, they are filled with God’s Spirit. This is not a Spirit that will sweep through in a single bound, but a spirit that will send them out to prophesy and to dream big dreams of a world saved from hatred and racism and materialism and all the ism’s that plague us. They are filled with a spirit that will give them the courage to follow Jesus out of that locked room into their neighborhoods and their halls of power and their public squares and to proclaim the reconciling love of God.
This Spirit we celebrate today is named, in John’s gospel, parakletos. The paraclete, or the one who comes along side of us. The spirit who advocates for us, remains with us, strengthens us and helps us to prophesy and to dream. The Holy Spirit doesn’t remove us from the challenges that face us. She is with us as we face them. That is the promise of Pentecost. That we, followers of Jesus, walk with the Spirit of God at our side out of these walls into the world around us.
Pentecost is an invitation to let go of our image of a superhero God and embrace the invitation to dream of a world imbued with God’s spirit in the midst of it all. This is the day we cry, “Come Holy Spirit.” Come, not to rescue us from the world but, as we so often pray, to “send us out to do the work you have given us to do, to love and serve you as faithful witnesses of Christ our Lord.”
Dreams can be unsettling; they can feel dangerous. Dreaming means opening our minds up to what is possible. Dreaming together means we let go of conventional expectations, the way we have always done it, and our fears of failure, and let the Spirit of God lead us into new places.
What are your dreams for your life? Come, Holy Spirit.
What are your dreams for your family? Come, Holy Spirit.
What are your dreams for this country? Come, Holy Spirit.
Come, Holy Spirit, and enkindle in us the fire of your love. Come, Holy Spirit, give us the courage to leave our locked rooms of fear and convention. Give us the wisdom to dream with our eyes open to the world's needs. Give us the fortitude to be your ambassadors of reconciliation. Give us the creativity to see beyond the ordinary and to dream of the possible, trusting that your Spirit is walking with us through it all.
Amen.
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