Oak Chapel United Methodist Church

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St. Peter's basilica, in Rome, is the largest and (I think) the most beautiful church in the world. Of course, its walls and ceilings are glorified with some of the greatest sculpture and painting in the world, but it's size alone is staggering. We entered the church and heard a choir singing - and we couldn't find the choir! Looking up into that great dome above the altar (which, itself, is above St. Peter's tomb) makes one dizzy. At the top of that enormous dome is a round opening, and through the opening one can see another dome, smaller, blue inside, like the sky. And inside that small, blue dome, at the very top of the church, is a dove. The Holy Spirit. The church was born on Pentecost, when God poured out his Spirit on those eleven disciples in Jerusalem, and the church has always existed, and exists today, only by the presence of the Holy Spirit. At the highest point, in the very center of the very church that stands at the center of Christendom is the symbol of God's Spirit. And that is as it should be.

Whatever one says about Pentecost, one thing is irrefutable. Something happened that changed, transformed, those eleven men in a most remarkable way. Something, some power, took a handful of fearful, confused, human beings (uneducated, untitled, unprivileged) and gave them the wisdom and the courage to change the world. Men who could hardly speak among family and friends could now speak before kings and princes. Men who had lost their direction, now knew the way. Men who had been all tied up in self, now were willing to live and die for Christ Jesus. The Holy Spirit (which is simply God among us) does amazing things. Jesus told his disciples that they would be better off with him dead, because then they would have the Holy Spirit. It would comfort them and give them courage.

If it is true that the Spirit gives us the courage to live, then let us have more of it. For life without courage, without the willingness to take risks, is full of bitterness and regret. Sixteen years in the insurance business has left me stained with a morbid concern for safety. Loose carpets and wobbly handrails worry me. Safety is good, but it's nothing to base one's life upon. "Safety First" is good advice, but is not a good life motto. Suppose Jesus, or Paul, or Martin Luther, or John Wesley had taken "Safety First" as their theme. We would never have heard of any of them. One of the first lessons one learns in the long pilgrimage of faith is that there is no safety in safety. Faith requires risk taking. One preacher has even said that "risk" is just another word for faith.

I would take the few minutes I have, on this Pentecost Sunday, and challenge you to take the risks of faith. And I would assure you, as Jesus assured his disciples, that (if you take those risks) the Holy Spirit will be with you, will take away your fear and give you all the necessary courage. For example, there is the risk of moral correctness, of telling the truth about life and about human behavior. That can be dangerous. We live in an age of rampant individualism, when people become very offended if they feel someone else is criticizing their behavior. If I stood on a road waving my arms to warn drivers that the road ahead was washed out, and cars going on would meet disaster, but the drivers said, "Damn you, it's a free country. Get out of the way. I'll drive where I choose, don't tell me where to go and where not to go," who would have done the right thing? That is what it means to state the moral truth in love: not to be sanctimonious and judgmental, but to warn of the danger inherent in certain behaviors. There is a risk in that. We will be called prigs. But we must do it, out of our love for others, and God's Spirit will be with us.

I challenge you to take the risk of love. No easier way to get hurt. To love someone else, or to try to help someone else out of Christian love, and to be rebuffed, is painful. Some who have been hurt in love never get back to it again. There is a huge risk in loving, a risk for which we need the courage that only God through his Spirit can give. For the only way to love is heart to heart, and to expose the inner feelings and fears of our hearts to someone else makes us vulnerable. But not to do so robs us of life's greatest experience. It's a risk we take. But we have to be able to love.

Related to the risk of love is the risk of commitment. There is a huge resistance to even the simplest commitments today, and I don't understand it, because (It seems obvious to me that) any decent society is built on commitments, and contracts and promises. One bride told me that over half the people she invited to her wedding didn't respond! Not a "yes," not a "no." I can only think that that small commitment scared them. "Something else might come up that I would rather do." "I might be too busy on that Saturday." "My dress might be at the dry cleaners." Could it be that we have been so hurt by commitments made and not kept that we have concluded it's better not to commit at all? What an awful way to live! It takes courage to make a promise, to say things like "for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, 'til death do us part." The Holy Spirit gives us the courage to make such commitments.

Another risk we have to take is the risk of dreaming. For every person who hopes and dreams great things, there are a hundred who will discourage him or her. There was a small crowd on the bank of the Hudson River, on the day in 1807 when Robert Fulton first tested his steamboat. The story goes that one old fellow kept saying, "It'll never start. It'll never start." Then, suddenly, Fulton's boat began to belch smoke and pulled away from the shore, like magic. And the old man said, "It'll never stop. It'll never stop." There are people like that. These are the "can't do" people, the great majority They are the safe ones. They never fail, but they never succeed either. Because, as Wayne Gretzky said, "You miss one hundred percent of the shots you never take." The heroes of history are the ones who stood before all the naysayers, and said "yea." Life can be better. Dreams can come true. The Polynesian children in South Pacific sing Happy Talk. We all remember Oscar Hammerstein's wonderful words: "You've got to have a dream. If you don't have a dream, how you going to have a dream come true?" But it takes courage to dream. It's a risk. God's Spirit gives us the courage to take that risk.

Depression and anxiety are twins. People who are depressed are often fearful, and people who are fearful (who cannot find courage to overcome their anxieties and make decisions, and plan, and move on) are often depressed. Doctors are working on the chemistry of that. (We know that the same drugs often relieve both symptoms.) But, without knowing the chemistry, there is a common sense connection between depression and fear. When we live our lives anxiously, and make all our decisions out of fear, we take the color out of life. We are protected, safe, but life is now in black and white. No longer very interesting. No longer worth living. So courage is not just something nice to have. It is an essential part of happiness and health. God gives us that courage. Those eleven disciples were to become utterly fearless - or, if not fearless, at least no longer crippled by their fears. They were transformed by the Holy Spirit. And that same promise of transformation and newness is ours.