If you read Steve Blow’s column in today’s paper, perhaps you were made aware that this Tuesday, June 6, 2006, is potentially a very interesting day for numerical reasons. It is the 6th day of the 6th month of the year 2006. 6-6-6. Blow points out that there are expectant mothers who are hoping and praying that their baby won’t be born with a birthday of 6/6/6. Blow also points out that this date, 6/6/6, happens to be his 54th birthday. So, he’s celebrating instead of grieving over 6/6/6. He actually used this occasion to make fun of people who, through the centuries, have made fortunes scaring Christians, of all people, out of their money, using the simple math of 666 (Steve Blow, "I’ll have a devil of a birthday," Dallas Morning News, June 3, 2006).

We religious types do love a mystery, don’t we? If the mark of the success of Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code doesn’t tell us anything else, it proves that, if you can find a way to scare people, especially Christians, especially by questioning their most fundamental beliefs, then you can make a lot of money. A lot of money. Just out of curiosity, let’s watch and see if it is not true that, during the next presidential election, the winner election will be the one most successful at scaring us, one way or the other.

Rarely do we appreciate the fact that the Gospel mystery of the work of God in Christ is not a mystery at all, in the sense of an impossible puzzle to be solved, but a wonderful, mysterious reality, like the beauty of a sunrise, or the birth of a child. Or, the black beak of a cardinal set inside blood-red feathers in the spring. Not a puzzling mystery to be solved, but a mysterious reality to simply be celebrated.

Like some works of art or music, or like vistas of nature, or the exhilaration of knowing true love, if we could understand the mystery, it would lose its beauty for us. Yet, even in the earliest recordings of the ancient church, as we have seen in Acts 2, we have these words of profound mystery. "Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs in their own languages heard, on the day of Pentecost, about "God’s deeds of power." How do you explain that?

Even those people there that day wanted to know how to explain it. "How is it," they asked, "that we hear, each of us, in our own native language?" All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, "What does this mean?"

How do you explain it? Some tried that day. They wrote it off to the fact that these early believers had taken their communion party just a little too far and were drunk at 9:00 in the morning. Drunk people have been known to do a lot of strange things, but instantaneously learning a foreign language and being able to speak it coherently enough to be understood by those who spoke it natively, that’s a little much of a stretch. Wouldn’t you agree?

Nonetheless, how do you explain it? It’s frightening to see how far some people will go, trying to explain the unexplainable mysteries of God. Again, if you can’t make enough money scaring people with mysteries, you can still make a lot of money offering them illogical explanations of the inexplicably frightening.

Sometimes we do need more information, just to survive, about what might lie ahead. My father recalled to me one time a memory of having been working on an oil derrick in southeast Texas after getting out the Navy at end of WWII. At the top of the derrick, he happened to be looking across the way when he saw a car driving at full speed when the wind blew its hood back over the windshield. He watched to see what might happen next when, all of a sudden, two heads popped out, one on each side of the car, as the driver and passenger both tried to see where things were going before the driver could bring the car to a stop. If your view is blocked and you can’t see where you’re going, it’s only natural to want to make sense of things and try to get more information as quickly as possible.

All of us in this room, at this very moment, maybe even to the point of distraction from worship or from friends or family, all of us in this room are in one way or another, every day, trying to make sense of life. Why? How? How am I going to pay my bills this month? How am I going to make this marriage work? What am I going to do with these children I love? How can I survive this job just one more day?

Those are great questions. In some ways, they’re view-blocking questions, and we turn to God for help. Then we jump into a chapter like Acts 2 and find that we end up with more mystery than solution.

We can try to figure out what God’s up to, as these people did that day. Or, in the face of the inexplicable, we can try to make sense of everything. Or . . . or, in the face of inexplicable confusion and evil and sadness, we can try to find something to celebrate.

That was Peter’s approach as he answered those people who asked the question. There was no way to truly explain these people speaking languages they had never studied. Instead, Peter chose to celebrate all of the strange activity as the outworking of God’s mysterious promise from centuries before, through the mouth of the prophet Joel. Speaking words that Joel himself could not possibly have fully understood, Peter quoted Joel as saying, "In the last days, ‘God declares that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams. Even upon my slaves, both men and women, in those days I will pour out my Spirit; and they [both men and women, ordained or not] shall prophesy.’"

These are not spiritually mysterious tongues the scripture has recorded for us here, but languages that were known on the planet at that time. Languages that represented every nationality gathered that day at Pentecost when the Spirit fell upon men. The study of those languages, by the way, is fascinating. How are there so many different languages? How did that all really happen? We know so very little. Languages are a fascinating mystery. I actually have grades on my transcript from Greek and Hebrew to prove that not all mysteries about language get solved before the test is taken.

But, how do you explain what happened at Pentecost? The reality of these people’s lives had been suddenly and radically altered. Just a few days before, they had either been witnesses to the resurrection of Jesus or told by those who had witnessed it. These people, most of whom were already followers of the Jesus, found themselves in a moment which must have felt something like driving down the road at 70 miles an hour when the hood blew over the windshield and they couldn’t see where things were headed anymore. When they asked what was going on, the answer Peter gave to those who wanted the mystery solved didn’t really help a great deal, unless they were willing to see beyond the human experience to the divine mystery being played out in their human experience.

Isn’t that the way it always is? Isn’t that the challenge of faith for all of us today? The willingness to see beyond what is familiar and obvious? Beyond what we can figure out and explain, or even what leaves us stumped about just trying to get through this life, to what can only be explained in terms of God doing his mysterious work among humanity. Can I ask you a question? If someone today were to ask you your life story, to tell the whole story of your life, would there be any part of it that you would have to say could only be explained in terms of God doing it, because there is no other explanation?

Peter’s explanation to those people that day is that God was simply doing what he always promised. God is giving his people a word of hope during a time of despair. "In the last days." Already, every time you read those words in scripture, minds go racing in 666 different directions. "In the last days," Peter said, "when it appears that the very ground upon which you walk and the air you breathe is at risk, these things will always be true. God’s people will always have a word. A word from God. A word of hope. Dreams and visions, God promised, they will always have." Now, we’re neck-deep in it! Talk about mystery. Dreams and visions? What’s that about? How does that help us now?

Did you dream anything last night? If you did, is it anything you can tell anyone else about? Did the dream scare you, or did it make you laugh when you woke up? Did you dream in thrilling colors, or just bland black-and-white? What did you dream, just last night?

I had a dream this past week that flat scared me to death. This is a true story. There were three things in the dream that scared me. My sons were misbehaving terribly. They had gone off the deep end. Because I don’t have their permission to share with you what they did in my dream, I’ll just have to leave it there. They didn’t actually do it; I just dreamed they did it.

The second part of the dream that scared me involved us not being able to sell our house in Rockwall, so we could actually move into Dallas. The third part of the dream had something to do with a cheese enchilada the size of a floor mop! In the last days. Prophecies, dreams, and visions. What do you do with those?

Maybe the better question would be, what would we do without them? Do you have a dream for your life? Do you have a vision for life? For our church? For your family? It all comes down to this, doesn’t it? Do you believe God is at work in this world? Or do you believe that God created the world and, at some point in the future, will do something with this mess we’ve made of it, but for now, we’re just kind of on hold to make the best of things while we can? Sadly, that what too many spend their days doing, just making the best of things, surviving, but not dreaming and visioning beyond the moment.

Where do you fit into that spectrum? Do you believe that God is at work in this world? Is there anything about what you believe that gives you hope beyond what you can explain or control or manipulate into being?

Too often the word "prophecy" is misunderstood to mean something that someone is going to reveal, or has revealed, about God and what he’s going to do in the future. In fact, more often than not in scripture, and especially in this case, when the scriptures refer to the act of prophesying, which the scriptures promise us in the last days we will do, it simply means to speak a word from God to people about life and hope and faith.

Even the Old Testament prophets were misunderstood to be foretelling what God would do centuries hence. More often, they were actually forth-telling what God was already up to in the lives of those who were listening to them in that moment.

To me, this is the meaning of Pentecost. God has always wanted, not so much for us to understand everything, but to trust him in everything. In fact, if what we had was total understanding, we would have no need of faith that carries us beyond what we can see and feel and make sense of in any given moment. If you had to give me the choice between making it work the best way I could and trusting God, I’ve come far enough to know which of those two I would take already. Have you?

This is the meaning of Pentecost. God is at work in our world while we are alive, and speaking to us, just as he did those people, in terms we can understand. Not so much in order to help us understand, but in order to help us trust him when we cannot understand. To trust him about our families and our marriages and our jobs, our finances and our health, and whatever else we want to put on that list. There is nothing about our lives that God does not care about and which, in some way, we cannot know is mysteriously at work accomplishing his purposes in our lives.

Did you celebrate with me while ago, when we sang the hymn, "Great Is Thy Faithfulness?" Did you celebrate with me the words, "All I have needed thy hand hath provided"? Could you say that this morning? If I asked you to go row by row, person by person, and I were to ask you, "Could you give that as your testimony?" would you be able to stand and say, "Yes. All I have ever really needed, God’s hand has provided"? I can.

Peter was defining the Pentecost moment to reassure the followers of Christ that God will always have a hopeful word about his presence in our lives. Why do you come to church? What are you here for this morning, if not to be reassured of that?

Just so you’ll know, there isn’t enough money on the planet to pay me to pastor a church unless, in serving that church, I found hope for what God was mysteriously about in this world. I am here because I believe in the mystery of God. I believe that mystery is being worked out among us in ways we can’t understand.

All this talk of dreams and visions, Peter was reassuring the believers, meant that God’s children would never be without a word of hope for the future. For the present or the future. Not, again, an explanation of how it would turn out. Just a word of promise of his presence with us in it, no matter how it turns out. We will not ever come to a moment in our lives where we are not with the presence of God in it.

We have this. A word for now, and a promise that God’s work will be done. Prophecies. Dreams and visions. Even if there were prophecies that totally explained in the most minute detail how the world would come to an end, who the beast was, and when Jesus was coming back, to the hour and the minute, maybe on the 6th hour of the 6th day of the 6th month of the year 2006, but they left us with no hope to get from now until we go to sleep tonight, they would be of no value. And God knew that.

This is his promise to us today, in this moment. We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now. When I see Stephenie Cheshier, I think "labor pains." Groaning in labor pains. And not only creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly, like a woman about to give birth. While we wait for the adoption, the redemption of our bodies, we have this (see Romans 8:18-27). Not an explanation of all things, but hope!

Hope for something that is seen is not hope. "For who hopes for what is seen? But, if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience. Likewise, in the meantime, the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray [in the middle of all this] as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. And God, who searches the heart [even those hidden places, where only your footprints have ever tread], knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints [us] according to the will of God." Jesus is praying for you, even as you pray to him. Right now. Jesus is praying for you. For you, Kenny. And you, Stephanie. And you, Nancy. For you, Bob. Os, for you. Kathy, for you. Jesus is praying for you. Jana, Jesus is praying for you. Steve, Phillip, Bud, Charles, right now, you have that, if you have nothing else. You have the prayer of Jesus.

Last night, we were sitting around the dining table for what, for me, was a very sentimental time, because it’s one of the last we’ll have in that house in Rockwall, around that table, as a family. Cameron was eight when we moved there. Griffin was 11. They are now 17 and 20. So, we have spent the bulk of what will become their earliest childhood memories in that house we are leaving this coming Saturday, about 10 o’clock in the morning, if you’re interested. WE have a lot of memories in that house.

We were talking about the move last night, yet again, in terms of its importance to our being more a part of the Cliff Temple community. Cameron asked a strange question, one I thought he already knew the answer to. He said, "How did Cliff Temple find you, Dad?" I told him the story again because families are bonded by the stories they share in common. All those stories you tell again and again at Thanksgiving and Christmas and laugh about are very, very important stories. They bond you together.

So, it’s important, as we’ve done this morning, taking the supper and reading the scripture and singing hymns of faith, to rehearse our church family story, which is greater than the story of just this church. It’s a story that has rooted in ancient history. Last night, as we told the story, it seemed like the right time to bear witness of my faith to my sons again. This is what I told them as we finished dinner about my experience of being called to Cliff Temple eight years ago. That God always has a word, and God always has a way, even when it seems impossible, because Jesus is praying for you.

If I died today, and my sons inherited nothing from me (and, if I died today, this is about all they would inherit from me) it would be the absolute confidence that God will never abandon them. Never! That God will always help them find a way, no matter how impossible things might seem. That God has a future for them beyond what they can see, just outside their windshield. If I can leave that to my children, then my life has not been a total loss. I’ve actually done something worthwhile.

There are some folks who look at the future and see nothing but bleak hopelessness. In terms of the glass half-empty-half-full analogy, they see the future only in terms of what won’t be or can’t be, or frighteningly might be. It makes me wonder for those people if they have any family stories from the past about how God is always present in the past, the present, and the future.

If you never, ever had one of those stories, you can have one today. If you are not a follower of Jesus, you could be today. And, as the scripture has promised, you can become an adopted part of his family in which this instantaneously becomes your story. Just as we shared a communion meal last night and rehearsed the story of our family, we have shared a communion meal here this morning and rehearsed the story of a Jesus who was born for us, who died for us, who was raised again for us, and who, until he comes again for us, spend the time in the meantime praying for us, day by day, name by name.

Even if everything you’ve ever understood is taken away, the God who gave you life and will give you life again will never abandon you to just the resources of your own wits, intelligence, creativity, and resources. "‘Even my slaves," God said through the prophet Joel, "those who have no family history but one of enslavement and despair, even my slaves will have stories, family stories of hope. Present and future hope."

That’s what Pentecost meant. You and I can have a family story of faith and hope. It also means in this very moment, while we wait for that story to have its ending, in the meantime, Jesus is praying for us. That’s what Pentecost means. Thanks be to God!