About 4 months ago Epiphany Lutheran church gifted House for All Sinners and Saints a full set of used paraments. As a group of us went through these beautiful altar cloths we came finally to the red set and found this: An image of a descending dove with completely crazy eyes and claws out. Yep. As though the Holy Spirit was a raptor.  “Man,” someone said. The Holy Spirit looks dangerous. We can’t use this one.” That was completely sound advice.

People describe Pentecost as the birthday of the church... which has always kind of smacked of over sentimentality to me. Because it’s not exactly a quaint story. It’s a little dangerous.

The crazy stuff that happened on that day in first century Palestine bears little resemblance to what the church has become in the 21st century. There were no organs or committees or coffee hour or vacation bible school.  At the so-called birth of the church there were no ushers handing the Parthians a bulletin. The Medes didn’t have a bake sale after the service. It can be hard to see any resemblance at all from how we started to what we have become.

Well, unless we look at the people. In which case there is no difference what so ever. All the Christian archetypes were already in place on the very first day.

The story opens with that small group of believers isolating themselves all together in one place. Like in John’s gospel when they were all gathered behind locked doors, as the text says for fear. Fear of the people who didn’t get their church. Fear of impurity. Fear of reprisal. Fear of dilution. They were afraid of other people so they all stayed together. Had they actually known better they would have been even more afraid because what was about to happen would have freaked out even the bravest amongst us. The danger they were in wasn’t from outsiders – it was from a God who is about to crash the party and bring in everyone they’re trying to avoid.

And here we all are still, just like at Pentecost. See, we still have fear and isolation in the church. It’s called sectarianism.  So nothing’s changed there.  And those people who did the whole crazy speaking in tongues thing that frankly I don’t really get…well, there’s the Pentecostals. Nothing’s changed there. And then the first time people started speaking in tongues there were probably also the polite people who know better than to lose control in ecstatic religiousity. We call them Presbyterians I believe. Nothing’s changed there. Then that long list of how many different nationalities were present was of course added by the first UCC’er or other good liberal flashing their multicultural credentials.  Nothing’s changed there. Then there were those who witnessed this powerful act of God---this Pente-chaos--- and, in an attempt at intellectualizing the experience of the faith, all they could think to say was “well what does this mean”. So they were like, the first Lutherans.  Nothing’s changed there.

And those who said “They are drunk on new wine” must have been some Evangelicals focused on the personal morality of others. Nothing’s changed. Then finally there’s the nice but completely naive guy who says” O come on there’s no way they can be drunk…it’s only 9 o clock in the morning” So there we have what we call the Methodists. Nothing’s changed a whole lot.

People are people. There are the emotional ones, the judgmental one, the naïve ones, the proud ones and of course the ones like myself who insist on categorizing and naming everyone as though people can be reduced to a label. I mean honestly…it’s ridiculous.
So there we all are even from the beginning. Flawed, smug, confused, embarrassed and embarrassing…and the very people to whom God sends the spirit. Because see, God hasn’t changed either. Just like that first Pentecost God still messes up our plans and interrupts our pride.

This is what is so dangerous about the whole thing. That red parament with the crazy raptor dove is actually more apt an image for the Holy Spirit than the soft focus hallmark card doves softly flying in a water color sky. The Spirit will mess you up. The Spirit makes a mess of all our plans and projects. Because the radical and mysterious and dangerous thing the Spirit does is form us into the Body of Christ.

I’d rather not be seated next to a Mede or a Capadotian. I’m not so interested in being the Body of Christ with the naïve Methodist or the speaking in tongues chick. And to all of this the Spirit says “Oh yeah? Well it’s not about you…and trust me that’s a good thing.” It is the Spirit who turns us from a they into a we.

And the “It’s not about you” thing goes for both us as individuals and us as individual churches and denominations. As special as we think we are … we simply aren’t the body without all the others even the ones we’d rather not be included with and the ones who’d frankly rather not claim us either.

But the good news is that none of us have any idea what we are doing. Just like those at the first Pentecost.  We don’t know how to pray as we ought but the Spirit intercedes as St Paul says…with sighs too deep for words. The Spirit intercedes by swooping down like a hawk to mess us up, and then from that chaos forms us into the body of Christ.