I Should Be Wearing Green This Sunday

Here are my thoughts for Pentecost Sunday, 2008. The Scriptures for today are Acts 2: 1 - 21; 1 Corinthians 12: 3 – 13, and John 7: 37 – 39.

I should be wearing green this Sunday. Yes, I know that it is Pentecost Sunday and we are supposed to be wearing red. But it is also Mother’s Day and I need to honor my mother as well as honoring my church. So I shall wear green.

You see, I am red-green color blind. That means that things that look red to you look green to me. This peculiar genetic trait is passed from parent to child through their mother.

Now, my mother has told me that no one in her family is color blind so it is not her “fault”. The particular gene in question is recessive in nature so it is quite possible that it has been handed down through the generations without anyone knowing it. So, if I wear something green, it is because I thought it was red and I honor both my mother and my church. But, of course, I will be wearing red.

Red, of course, is the color of fire and it was the fire of the Holy Spirit that descended upon those gathered together in Jerusalem some ten days after Jesus’ Ascension into Heaven in anticipation of the promise that He gave them as He ascended into Heaven. And many seeds do not grow unless there is a fire to germinate the seeds.

I won’t go into the biology and the mechanisms of germination but many wild flowers and trees need the heat of a prairie fire to begin their growth. This has caused many problems out west where, for many years, mankind tried to control the prairie fires instead of letting them burn. And just as we need the fire of the Holy Spirit to start the growth of the church, so too do we need something to sustain the growth.

Many people come to Christ and they are filled with the fire of the Holy Spirit but like a fire that has no fuel, they quickly burn out. They may continue coming to church but they do nothing but sit in the pew on Sunday and offer nothing towards the growth of the church. Pretty soon, others get burned out because the fire that started the growth is soon gone and there is no impetus for growth.

Besides, green is a good color when we think about the church and its beginning. While Pentecost is the day the church began, we need to also think about how the church grew back then and how it will grow in today’s society.

It was my mother that planted the early seeds of faith in the lives of my brothers, sister, and me. Through her, my faith began to grow. Of course, there came a time when I had to take steps in faith without her presence. And that is true for all of us. In each of our lives there is someone who saw to it that our early growth in faith was nurtured, fed, and watered. But there came a time when we had to take those small and hesitant steps in faith on our own. And many times, we have fallen as we took those beginning steps. We have encountered many difficulties in those steps but we endured and we grew. I would encourage you to read Michael Daniel’s thoughts on this subject (Back to the Basics) over on the RedBlueChristian site.

The problem is that many people do not take those steps away from the environment that they grew up in or in which they came to Christ. They are quite comfortable living a life based on the fundamentals of Christianity and are not quite able to make the jump from a sheltered life into the wild, wild world outside the shelter.

When you are in the shelter, you are protected and you do not necessarily have to think or fend for yourself. But when you leave the confines of the shelter and are exposed to the world outside the shelter, things change. And it can be rough.

I think one of the problems that fundamentalists have with the teaching of evolution in the classroom today is that it requires that the students think and question things. There is no conflict if you are willing to see that science and faith are different; but, if you are locked into one specific manner of thinking, it is very difficult to see beyond that frame of thought. I would also add that those teachers who do not understand what evolution is and only teach it as it was taught to them are guilty of the same fixed form of thought.

You have to be taught the basics of Christianity if you are to be a Christian. But the basics go beyond the Old Testament; they include the New Testament and an exposure to what Christ was saying and doing. Too many fundamentalists today seem to be fixated on the Old Testament and the laws of the Old Testament; they are incapable of moving beyond the fixed structure that those laws inherently trap you in. This was the same problem that the religious and secular authorities had when Jesus was offering a new way of life and a new way to think.

We see that in many ways today; those who wish to be in authority are preaching but no one in the congregation is listening. Some do not listen because they feel that the teachers have not listened to them. If there is to be constructive growth in any community, the leaders must listen to the people as much as the people listen to the leaders. But too many people are not listening because the message is stale or out-of-date. The Bible has become a fixed relic of the past instead of the living, breathing document that it was meant to be.

Borrowing a note from the May, 2008, issue of Context, Chanon Ross noted that we often try to make our ministry relevant to those whom we want to attend. And the target audience does come more often and everyone involved feels rewarded for their efforts. But he cautions that increased attendance and our own happiness do not necessarily mean that they have received the message. Relevance does not come from understanding the culture of our audience but, rather whether grasping the total implications of what it means to be a Christian.

Ross points out that,

To say the Apostles’ Creed is to imagine the unimaginable. We not only hope for the impossible — “the resurrection of the body” — we expect it and look forward confidently to its realization. The scriptures are equally imaginative and audacious. They teach us that God came to us as an impoverished, first-century Jew and that this man, Jesus, is the second person of the Trinity. (The Trinity is another exercise in imagining the impossible.) As Christians we understand ourselves to be in the image of a Being who created the vast expanse of the universe by simply speaking it into existence. Let any of us try to wrap our imaginations around that! But if the creeds and scriptures express the core of Christian faith, imagination and audacity are at the heart of Christian practice. WE can neither teach nor practice our faith without them. (Context, May, 200

The people who saw the disciples and followers that first Pentecost could not imagine what had happened; they thought they were drunk. If you are tied to one structure or form of thought, it is very difficult to see another. And that is the problem that many churches have today.

But, as Paul pointed out in his letter to the Corinthians, we have been given many gifts. And with those gifts, we will be able to help others see and understand that which is often unseen and not easily understood. And just as the wild flowers of the Mid-west plains are germinated by prairie fires, so do is the growth of our own gifts started by the fire of the Holy Spirit.

The challenge for each of us today is not to be consumed by the fire of the Holy Spirit but to let the Holy Spirit set ablaze in us those gifts and talents that we have been given so that the church today will grow beyond what it is and will become what it was and what it can be.

When I came up with the title for this little piece, I thought of the phrase “I shall wear purple.” I did not know where I had heard it or when I heard it. It comes from a poem by Jenny Joseph called “Warning – When I Am An Old Woman I Shall Wear Purple.”

When I am an old woman, I shall wear purple with a red hat that doesn’t go, and doesn’t suit me.

And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves and satin candles, and say we’ve no money for butter.

I shall sit down on the pavement when I am tired and gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells and run my stick along the public railings and make up for the sobriety of my youth.

I shall go out in my slippers in the rain and pick the flowers in other people’s gardens and learn to spit.

You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat and eat three pounds of sausages at a go or only bread and pickles for a week and hoard pens and pencils and beer nuts and things in boxes.

But now we must have clothes that keep us dry and pay our rent and not swear in the street and set a good example for the children.

We must have friends to dinner and read the papers.

But maybe I ought to practice a little now?

So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised

When suddenly I am old, and start to wear purple.

So maybe people will understand that when I say that I should be wearing green today, it is because I want the church to grow beyond what is now and into what it can be.