When the Spirit Plays with Legos

 Pentecost Year C

Genesis 11:1-9 and Acts 2:1-21

Almighty God, on this day you opened the way of eternal life to every race and nation by the promised gift of your Holy Spirit: Shed abroad this gift throughout the world by the preaching of the Gospel, that it may reach to the ends of the earth; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. 

Every year, I try the same lesson at school. And every year, it fails. When the small group of 10-year-olds have read the story of the Tower of Babel, I haul out my big bin of classic Legos. The students can’t believe their eyes. “We get to play with Legos in class?!” they gasp in wonder.
          “Yes,” I explain. “You are going to work together for 10 minutes to build the tallest, most amazing tower that you can. But here’s the catch: There will be no talking! You may make noises. You may gesture. You may even speak a language that others don’t know, but you may NOT speak one word of English. I want you to feel like those folks in Babel who have to work together while no longer understanding one another's speech.”

          After some grumbling, the wide-eyed students dig into the blocks. Here’s what happens:

Invariably, they start out working together, using gibberish and directing one another with pokes and pantomime.

Invariably, half of the students quickly give up. They find more pleasure in pulling out interesting bits of Lego than in trying to communicate with the others. Instead of a common tower rising high in the air, several small, individual creations start to pop up around the table.

Invariably, one or two of the students decide that this won’t do. Not allowed to talk, the self-appointed leaders start using physical violence to convince their classmates to cooperate. They try to smash the individual creations, or slap away wayward hands, or snatch all of the pieces. And then I have to intervene.

This part of the assignment works as expected. Lack of communication has confounded the unity of the group. I snap a photo of their work.

          Then I move on to the counterexample. “That was hard, wasn’t it?” I affirm. We’re going to build again, but this time you are going to be able to talk to one another,” I explain. The students cheer and wiggle with excitement. “Let’s see what happens. Ready, set, go!”

          This part of the lesson fails every time.

          Invariably, they start out working together, talking merrily and planning great things.

          Invariably, half of the students get distracted, mining for cool pieces in the pile of Legos and doing their own thing.

          Invariably, the self-appointed leaders get annoyed. They try to gain the attention and obedience of the creative-types. They cajole and insult in turn. When their wayward classmates don’t listen, they abandon words and start to grab, destroy, and snatch. And then I have to intervene. When I snap a photo of the second “tower,” it is not much higher or grander than the first one.

          Every year, the children prove that the Tower of Babel story is not as simple as we often make it out to be. It is about more than language.

God has told humankind after the Flood to spread out and start over with a new kind of world. “Scatter, multiply, fill the empty land with my beloved children. Create, plant, harvest, care for my land,” God cries. And instead, what do the people do? They stop in the land of Shinar and settle there. They stop exploring. They stop listening to God’s desire for them. Unity becomes an excuse for the powerful to take control. “Make those bricks, or else,” the strong ones bellow like the Egyptian lords to their Hebrew slaves. “More straw, more bricks, faster, faster! Babel must be Number One.”  Like a teacher watching her lesson plan go awry, God has to intervene.  God confuses and scatters the proud in their conceit. God sends the cautious and fearful sprawling over the face of all the earth, ready or not.

            Our Christian Pentecost is often cast as the undoing of the scattering and confusion at Babel. If so, it too must be about more than language, about more than showing off how many foreign tongues we know. All of those Judeans gathered in Jerusalem for the Jewish festival of Pentecost were Jews. They might have been born—or had ancestors who were born—in far-flung regions of the Mediterranean world. But they already shared a common identity—and language. Like the disciples, many of them likely understood both Aramaic and Greek. Aramaic and Greek were common languages learned throughout the region for the purpose of trade and commerce. Gathered on Pentecost in Jerusalem, the disciples could have just spoken Aramaic to the crowd, and all of those Phrygians and Cappadocians would have understood them--no big deal. If the problem that day were one of mere comprehension, there was no need for a miracle.

 While they could understand Greek, these Jews would also have had “birth languages” that they spoke at home with family and friends. It is these “birth languages” that they heard coming from the lips of the disciples. My daughter learned about the importance of “birth languages" when she spent her junior year abroad in Senegal. She went over there thinking that everyone would be speaking French, the “official language” imposed by the French colonizers and inscribed on the brochures. What she learned was that, while many people understood French, they hated speaking it. To them, French rang out in tones of oppression and fear. In order to join the conversation, my daughter had to quickly learn Wolof, the birth language of the people in her region. Only in Wolof would the people share their deepest identity and bare their souls.

When the Judeans in Jerusalem began to hear and to speak God’s word in all of their various birth languages, God was speaking to their inmost being. God didn’t act like the many Christian missionaries who went over to Africa saying, “You had better learn our language and follow our cultural patterns if you want to know God.” Instead, the Holy Spirit was bringing the Good News to each small group, celebrating and amplifying their diversity by using their birth languages. After the miracle at Pentecost, the identity of Parthians, Arabs, and Cappadocians did not depend on their ability to speak Greek or to share one culture; instead it was based on the Spirit gathering them as a diverse Christian people under the Lordship of Jesus.

What matters at Pentecost then is the spiritual transformation. What matters are changed hearts and emboldened souls: hearts and souls ready to go out to spread the hope and promise of new life to all the nations of the earth. Suddenly, Jesus’ fearful disciples are no longer hiding in an upper room for fear of persecution. Suddenly, they are empowered to shout the Good News of hope and freedom in Christ. Suddenly, the downtrodden Judeans are no longer unified only as a conquered people speaking an imposed tongue. Now they are free to hear the Good News in their God-given diversity.

An interesting fact in our lesson from Acts is that Luke’s list is not historically accurate. The Medes and Elamites no longer existed as nations in Luke’s day. They were ancient peoples of the region, gone way before Jesus was even born. The outpouring of the Holy Spirit cannot be bound by time or place, Luke shows us. If Luke could place the long-ago past in the presence of the Spirit, couldn’t present-day Episcopalians, present-day St. Andreans, be there, too?

We, too, live in and among a great deal of fear and trembling these days. The Powers and Principalities that oppress and control seem to grow bolder every day. Our common language is interwoven with lies and threats. Some birth languages are ridiculed and denied. Social media carves us into small groups that don’t understand one another. Even the Church shrinks and huddles, too afraid of dying truly to live.

But today, yes, today and every day, the Holy Spirit takes a giant bucket of Hope and Promise and pours it out in our huddled midst like Legos on a table. “Whoosh,” fall the pieces, bouncing and crashing and stirring up dust. Flames flicker and bulletins rattle and little children shout, “Hurray!”

 “Build,” God says, “build my Kingdom of Love! Carry it out into the world and scatter it among all people.” The Spirit whispers to me, to you, in our birth languages, encouraging the diversity of our gifts. “It’s OK to paw through here to find the pieces that speak to your heart,” She encourages. “Find them and hold them up for all to see. Don’t hoard them. Build with them. Join them with what others have found. Go on—I am with you. The power of Love holds you up on all sides.”

“What does this mean?” we ask with the perplexed Judeans. "What does this mean?" we ask with my amazed students. But we must answer. Will we build together? Or will some withdraw, while others try to maintain control? Are we ready to join together in dreaming God’s active dream of Love for the whole world? The Spirit is stubborn. Like my lesson plan, the question will just keep coming, again and again.

Love and tears

Easter 4C

Revelation 7:9-17

Acts 9:36-43

When I read our first lesson about Tabitha, I couldn’t help but sigh. Why does the only woman actually named in the bible as Jesus’ disciple have to be famous for her … sewing?! Not all women can sew, you know. The last time that I darned a sock, I proudly lifted up the finished product—only to find that I had sewn the sock to my bedspread. If I had to serve the Lord by sewing, we would all be in trouble. Women can do other things!

On the other hand, perhaps I’ve underestimated the power of sewing.

One hundred and fifty years ago, a little girl named Ashley was the property of a plantation owner in Charleston, South Carolina. The world was a frightening place for Ashley and her mother Rose. One day, when Ashley was nine years old, her master sold her, and she was forced to leave her home--alone, without her mother. There was no time for long goodbyes. Ashley’s mother, in desperation, looked around their cabin for something to give her daughter as a remembrance. She grabbed up an empty cloth flour sack and stuffed it with a few handfuls of pecans and a tattered, hand-sewn dress. She took a knife and cut through a few locks of her hair and tucked them into the sack, as well. Placing it into Ashley’s hands, Rose told her that this sack would always be filled with her love. 

A dress; a lock of hair; some nourishment; a mother’s love. There’s something else that Rose put in that sack, too. Something that the story doesn’t mention: A mother’s tears for her daughter. Tears of loss; tears of anger; tears of desperation; tears born of captivity. Living under the heavy burden of chattel slavery, Rose and her daughter had shared many tears.

Ashley was whisked away, never to see her mother again. Long after the pecans were eaten and the dress worn and outgrown, that sack became Ashley’s prized possession. Ashley cried her own tears into the sack—the worn cloth soaked with her own anger and loss, fear and love. But at the same time, Ashley would hold the sack close and hear her mother’s voice, feel her mother’s strength, even across the distance.  The sack of love and tears became her comfort. When Ashley was an old woman, she gave that sack to her daughter. And when Ashley’s daughter died, she gave it to her own daughter. In 1921, Ashley’s granddaughter took out her needle and thread. A free woman who could read and write, this granddaughter sewed the story of her great-grandmother’s love onto the sack filled with so much love and so many tears. Oddly, perhaps, she used cheerful, colorful letters in her embroidery. 

Only a few years ago, this sack turned up at a flea market in Tennessee. It now sits behind glass at the African American museum in Washington, DC, where I saw it last summer.[1] You can’t look at this sack without being shaken both by the evils of the world and the strength of a mother’s love, all at the same time. Even from our own privileged and relatively comfortable positions, we all know how it feels to cry. And we know how it feels for love to mingle with our tears and dry them. Mother’s Day is perhaps an appropriate time for us to ponder the strange mixture of love and loss in our lives. For many, this is not an easy day. It can be a day of weeping, mourning, and regret, as well as a day of joy and gratitude. Yet it is also the fourth Sunday of Easter, a day of Love resurrected, a day of mending.

Think back to a time when you were sad, and someone held you close and wiped away your tears. Perhaps you were a little child, and it was your mother or your father who rocked you and kissed away your pain. Maybe you were older, and it was a dear friend, or a spouse, or a nurse at the hospital? Or maybe even a stranger? Can you feel the strong arms around you? The calming whispers? The reassurance that everything will be OK? I still have the rocking chair where my mother used to rock me—even after I was much too big to fit easily in her arms. In that old rocker, I can remember clearly feeling safe from whatever pain was pursuing me at the time: the achy breathlessness of asthma; a bully at school; a cruel teacher; and especially my own failures, real or imagined.  On my mother’s lap, I can remember feeling the shadows pull back. I can remember flickers of hope and strength filling my body, as the tears dried to salt on my cheeks. It’s there that I found the courage to go back out into my world. It’s amazing, isn’t it, the transforming power that love has, when someone simply sits with you and absorbs your tears?

          "God will wipe away every tear from their eyes,” we hear in today's second lesson. The world-changing power of love in the midst of great evil is the message behind our reading from the Book of Revelation. It’s no surprise that the 19^th century “slave bibles” created by our Anglican forebears for enslaved Africans omitted the book of Revelation entirely.[2] Its poetry was too dangerous to the status quo. Revelation is less about the “end of the world,” than it is about the triumph of freedom over oppression. The author of this strange and dangerous book was likely a recent refugee to Asia Minor, fleeing the Roman-Jewish war in Palestine. Like Ashley and her mother Rose, John of Patmos and his fellow Jewish Christians struggled to survive in the midst of Roman oppression and violence. In their pain, they turned to God for salvation—and found it.

Their God was not a powerful Ruler dressed in the garb of a Roman Emperor. The God of their refuge was Jesus, who died on a Roman cross. Their God was the sacrificial Lamb, slain yet triumphant, bloody and yet risen from the dead. Their comforting shepherd was himself a bruised and battered sheep. In the image that John shares with us today, the enthroned Lamb has gathered us all around him in adoration. Ashley and Rose, their owners, Tabitha, the persecuted Christians, you and me, all sorts and conditions of human beings, we are all scooped up from our trials and tribulations and set down into the lap of God. Secure in God’s loving presence, we find the strength to wave the palm branches of divine victory. We who can cry, “Crucify him!” just as quickly as we can shout “Hosanna,” we are transformed by the sustaining love of our shepherd, the Lamb. Wiping away the tears of our captivity, God sets us free to love like he does.         
 A desperate mother gives her daughter a sack filled with love and tears. A granddaughter embroiders it in colorful thread. It ends up in a museum and sings out in hope and love to the descendants of the enslaved and to their owners alike. A Christian widow takes up her needle and thread day after day, faithfully sewing together scraps of cloth. “Clothe the naked,” her teacher Jesus told her, and so she does it. Only after her death is she acknowledged for her loving care. And her mundane generosity becomes the fertile ground of resurrection.

We too can take out our mending needles to sit and sew with the God who mends all things. We too can embroider God’s story of love onto the torn fabric of our world. That’s a kind of sewing that even I can attempt. I invite you to sit with the question: How can my life testify to the shepherding Love of the Lamb? What threads will I use to embroider love?

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[1] Vera Bergengruen, “This Scrap of Cloth is One of the Saddest Artifacts at New DC Museum.” McClatchy DC Bureau, September 23, 2016. Found at https://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/national/article103443792.html.

[2] See https://www1.cbn.com/cbnnews/us/2018/february/freedom-in-christ-how-this-bible-was-used-to-manipulate