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.