I don’t get to read much in the months of May and June because there is just too much to be done around the house this time of year. But there is one book I have enjoyed in the last few weeks, a few pages at a time. It’s called “Ice Ghosts,” and it’s about the search for answers about the failed mission of Sir John Franklin who set out to find the elusive northwest passage, an opening toward the Pacific Ocean in the north American arctic sea. In the 19th century, long before global warming would melt sea ice in that region, this was a big deal as it promised to provide new trade routes. Franklin and his crew had the bad luck of searching for an opening during years when winters were exceptionally harsh and unforgiving. They vanished in one of the most inhospitable parts of the earth, their ships abandoned, with few traces or clues about the fate of the crew, until the frozen ships were found a few years ago. I don’t know what drew me to the book and the story. I am generally interested in history, but I think it’s more in this case. It’s an appreciation for the age of discovery, when people put their lives at risk to map the planet, collect unknown species, conduct scientific research, in the process adding to a sense of national pride.
Today, as we celebrate Pentecost, the Feast of the Holy Spirit, I invite you to understand the Holy Spirit as a Spirit of Discovery, who leads us to unknown places (not necessarily far away!), who teaches us to open our eyes and ears to the wonders of God’s creation, who helps us understand people who are different from us, who leads us to map our world with the eyes of God. One of the biggest tasks in the age of Discovery was to correct maps. Sailors and travelers frequently had incomplete or false information about certain places in the world, which in some cases led to catastrophe. In the same way, we sometimes hold incomplete or even false beliefs about God and ourselves, beliefs that need to be corrected if we are to live fully as children of God. For instance, some hold the belief that church wants you to feel guilty about yourself so they can preach you the gospel. And by holding such a pessimistic view, maybe rooted in some prior experiences, maybe rooted in self-serving assumptions, people deprive themselves of opportunities to find an abundance of spiritual life in the context of a community. Some people think that faith is a belief system that’s written in black and white, a religious textbook, and they don’t want another textbook. But Pentecost encourages us to look at it as an act of trust in God to rediscover our world with God’s eyes. All those who think they know exactly what religion and faith is about, I dare you to invite the spirit of discovery into your journey with God. Some of your spiritual maps might get re-drawn in the process!
I am sure that most of you have had a moment of revelation as you studied scripture or maybe even, miracle of all miracles, while you listened to a sermon. That also happens about every hundred years or so… Suddenly, you come to see a scripture verse in a whole new light. That happens to me a lot, because I have the wonderful privilege of reading and pondering different Bible texts every single week. And, miracle, upon miracles, very often a text that I have previously understood in a certain way is revealed to me in a new way. The Spirit of God helps us to discover scripture anew, and it is never boring.
The Feast of Pentecost is also an anti-nationalist Festival. That sounds like a big and potentially political statement. What do I mean by that? Well, I don’t mean that one can’t be proud of one’s national identity and culture. It’s the “ism” part that receives a rebuke in the narrative from Acts 2. On Pentecost, the Spirit of God disturbed the nationalist feelings of those who thought that every pilgrim who came to Jerusalem should speak Aramaic or be able to read the texts of the Holy Scriptures in the original Hebrew. While that would have been nice, it wasn’t practical for pilgrims, many of whom tried to learn the language of Scripture to be closer to their spiritual ancestors. But, have you ever tried to learn a new language? Do I need to say more? It’s hard!!! The pilgrims from the diaspora who came from all those places that you heard earlier: Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and parts of Libya, they couldn’t fully speak the language and were often treated as second class Jews. You know, they sounded funny!
Ancient Israel had a religious nationalist agenda that went something like this: at the end of time everyone will come to Mount Zion and worship our God in our language, on our terms, and offer us their resources. There are and have been other countries in the world that have the same tendency – having everything on their terms! On Pentecost, God said, “Not so quick!” The miracle of Pentecost was that everybody could hear the other person in their own language – and understand them on their terms! It would have been so easy for God to have everybody hear the apostles speak and understand what they were saying in Aramaic. That would have been no small miracle. But in that electrical, mystical moment of Pentecostal fire, people understood one another in their own native language, validating people’s origins as something precious, worthy of discovery and worthy of our curiosity, certainly part of God’s good creation.
The Feast of Pentecost is then also an invitation to mission. There is that movement beginning at Pentecost, which Luke never gets tired to describe: the gospel spreads from Jerusalem to Samaria and out into the entire world! Let me go back to history for a moment. Not by coincidence, the age of discovery, the 19th century, was also the age of mission. Missionaries were sent to far-away places and learned the languages of indigenous people in years of painstaking work without any textbook. In many cases they were the first ones to record those languages. It was really the only way: to make the enormous effort of learning people’s sounds and words and expressions, to share the gospel in their ways, with their words and metaphors. It’s what the spirit of discovery enables us to do. Today, as you try to discover God’s path for your life, don’t be shy to reach beyond the places, concepts, and thoughts you are familiar with. Don’t be shy to ask your neighbors new questions. Don’t be shy to learn about their thoughts, their feelings, their situation. You can expand your world within a half mile radius from where you work or live.
One last note: in the book I am reading, it is suggested that efforts to find the remains of Sir John Franklin and his crew were unsuccessful in part because people didn’t sufficiently tap into the knowledge of the Inuit people who live in the arctic region. The British didn’t trust them, often described them as savages. Could it be that the Spirit of Discovery helps us value people and appreciate the God-given gifts they can offer? Could it be that we need other people to understand the gospel in deeper ways? Rhetorical questions… May the Spirit of God come upon us!
Amen.