Pentecost 2005

*Preached at Grace North Church by John R. Mabry on May 15th, 2005*

In 1967, a little-known musical combo calling themselves Pink Floyd booked time at a London recording studio to begin work on their first album. The studio was at the now-famous Abbey Road Studios, and they were working right down the hall from another group you may have heard of, the Beatles. The album that resulted was titled "Piper at the Gates of Dawn," and it made a modest splash.

The band had planned to tour extensively, but their lead singer and chief songwriter, Syd Barrett, frustrated those plans. He had developed a taste for lysergic acid and was taking it obsessively. Soon, he began taking it before every show, infuriating his bandmates by doing nothing but standing at the edge of the stage and staring at all the pretty colors. The band tried to compensate. They hired another guitarist, David Gilmour, to handle Syd's guitar parts whenever he decided not to play them, which was, by now, most of the time.

Finally the band was fed up. Just before a gig, they made a decision not to pick Syd up on the way. No one knows how long Syd stood outside waiting for the van. Not long after, Syd Barrett went into the hospital for drug-induced schizophrenia.

With their visionary genius gone, the band very nearly failed, just when they were closest to breaking through. Deprived of their songwriter, they spent a couple of years floundering. They did a couple of spacey soundtracks, and released a live album augmented by studio tracks made up of solo material from the remaining members. Things were looking grim indeed for the Floyd.

But then, unexpectedly, the remaining members discovered their strengths. They didn't have a breakaway genius among them anymore, but they each had talent, and they began stretch themselves beyond what they had assumed they could do. They started writing material themselves, and discovered that, although it was nothing like what Syd would have come up with, it was pretty darn good. In 1970, they released their first Syd-less album of completely new songs, "Atom Heart Mother." An orchestra was recruited for the recording and also toured with the band.

Thus encouraged and invigorated, the band continued to generate material, to hone their chops as songwriters, and toured relentlessly. Now that all the members were fully present and able to play their instruments, things went much better. In 1973 they teamed up with legendary producer Alan Parsons and recorded "Dark Side of the Moon." It was a smash-in fact, it was more than a smash. With the exception of only Michael Jackson's Thriller album, "Dark Side of the Moon" is the largest-selling album of all time.

An unlikely success story? Yes, undoubtedly. But not an unusual one, for this is an archetypal story that has played itself out many times in history. Consider our opening reading from the Acts of the Apostles. The disciples are shut up in a room, scared of their own shadows. They saw what had happened to Jesus, and they were terrified something similar would happen to them. Their visionary had left in a far less conventional fashion than Syd Barrett had done, but those left behind were no less bereft. How could they continue without him? Who were they without him, and how could they possibly face the scary unknowns that awaited them? It had not yet been two months since Jesus had died, and only a few days after the resurrected Jesus had been taken up. They felt paralyzed and unsure what direction to move in next.

Then an amazing thing happened- there was the sound of a great rushing of wind, and tongues of fire appeared over their heads. And they found themselves speaking in all sorts of languages that they could not understand. The enthusiasm of the experience got the better of them and they created quite a racket. People began to congregate in the street near the house where they were staying, and listened in wonder as this small band of people from Galilee were speaking in every tongue known to them, and certainly more than fishermen from the north country could possibly have known.

"They're just drunk," said one of the men, and others agreed. But Peter got a grip on himself and answered them saying, "How could we possibly be drunk, it's only nine o'clock in the morning!" Remember these are Jews, not the Irish.

But the arrival of the Spirit worked a profound change in the disciples. They had gone from huddling in fear, to preaching in the streets, all in a matter of less than an hour. What happened there? What emboldened them? What intoxicated them? What inspired them to stretch beyond their limitations and become more than they were?

Jesus had promised them that a day was coming when he would no longer be with them, but he made them another promise as well. He said that he would send a Comforter, and that aided by this Comforter they would do greater things than he did. This had to sound like madness to them, as obscure and unintelligible as anything else Jesus had told them. But then there was the rush of wings, the tongues of fire, and the inexplicable impulse to proclaim the truth they had witnessed with their own eyes.

But that is not really the amazing part of the story. Sure it's miraculous and dramatic, but spilling out in the street babbling like drunks doesn't really accomplish a whole lot a the end of the day. The amazing thing is that, once the weird intoxication had passed, they kept preaching. The amazing thing was that, even though Jesus was gone, even though none of them could ever hope to match him, or even come close, they went out anyway and they were not quiet about it.

Their visionary was gone, and they had no genius to replace him. But they were all talented, and they stretched themselves beyond what they thought was possible and tried-and in their quiet way, they conquered the world. The fact is that we are not sitting here today because of what Jesus did; we are sitting here today because of what the disciples did. If it had just been Jesus, he would have lived, died, rose into heaven and been forgotten.

We are here because a shoddy band of ne'erdowells were too stupid to know when to quit. We are here because a handful of also-rans clung to one another, worked together, and refused to give up. We're not here because of Jesus, we're here because of those drunk guys with candles on their heads.

So what does that mean for us? The hard truth is that there is more talent and more resources in this room than there was back then in the upper room where the disciples huddled in fear. But what we fail to realize is that the same power that was afforded to the disciples is also given to us. That same spirit that rushed upon the disciples is also rushing through us. The same power, confidence, and healing that radiated from those smelly fishermen is also ours if we want it, if we believe it, if we claim it, if we have the courage to use it.

But how do we access such power? We do not do it by raising up another visionary. We do it by hanging together as a community. The Spirit moves through us and becomes evident in direct proportion to the love we have for one another, the trust we share, the confidence we build because of the talent and cooperation we hold in common.

There will never be another Jesus, but we do not need another Jesus. The only thing we need is each other.

The Chaplaincy Institute is facing this same archetypal situation right now. Gina Rose is recovering from heart surgery, and there is no visionary to replace her. Instead, the community has divided up the responsibilities, is holding together, sharing the burden, and meeting the challenges one day at a time. I do not know if we shall succeed. I only know that we have a better chance working together than if the power were invested in any other one person.

This story is not far from our church community, either. Richard is past the mandatory retirement age for Anglican priests, and the peace of sipping tea in his garden is no doubt beginning to overpower the desire to pound the pavement in his work. As the heir apparent, I shudder at the prospect of filling his considerable shoes. In truth, however, there is no replacing Richard. It is not possible to find someone, or to be someone that can even come close to matching his indominable strength of character, the magnitude of his charm, or his industrial-strength eccentricity. But the good news is, neither I, nor anyone else, actually has to. We will soldier on-not because we can claim a new visionary, but because we hold together, offer to one another our talents, our strengths and weaknesses, and because we are committed to loving one another, come what may. We will have a future not because of any one member, but because of all of us. We will not survive if we are a cult of personality, but we will thrive if we can be a true community.

We may not see tongues of fire, we may not preach in unknown languages. But I tell you this, that same Spirit that was in those disciples is also in us. Jesus is gone. Now, what are we going to do together?

Let us pray

Holy Spirit of Fire, as you rushed upon the disciples in the upper room, blow likewise through the caverns of our hearts and quicken us to your power. Give us the courage to bring forth our talents, however meager we think they might be. Give us the grace to love one another in good times or bad, and to forgive when we hurt each other. As you lit like fire upon the heads of the disciples, inspire our minds to creative action and surprise us with the results. And as you gave the power of many tongues to the disciples, give to us the power to speak the good news of the gospel to anyone we meet in unexpected ways. For we ask this in the name of the triune God, who created us, redeemed us, and comforts us still. Amen.