Drenched!

Acts 2:1-21

13 or 14 years ago, I was serving as a camp counselor at Camp Hanover for the summer and leading a group of 12 middle schoolers on a canoe trip down the North Anna river. We’d spent the previous days at camp practicing our canoe strokes in the lake, planning out our meals, packing our waterproof bags. The night before my trip, my co-counselor and I had check-in after our campers were in their cabins for the night. We talked about how we hoped the trip would give our group an opportunity to come together more. We’d been at camp for a little over a week and the group still hadn’t quite gelled yet. The last thing we did that night was to say a prayer together, we prayed for a good, safe trip, prayed for our group to continue to form and grow, prayed for opportunities for the campers to step into leadership positions.

The next morning we loaded our canoes, food, and bags into the canoe rack behind the 15 passenger van, and got all the campers on board. The camp director dropped us off and then left us, after saying a prayer with us, to begin our two day paddle downstream to the pick-up point. It was just us and our boats, sky above and the water below.

Maybe two hours into what was supposed to be a 6 hour paddle to our campsite for the night, the sky grew dark. Very dark. At the first flash of lightning we quickly got off the water. We pulled our boats to the bank and tied them up while the campers began unloading our gear. Halfway through our rushed attempt to set up the first of our tents, the sky ripped open and rain fell in sheets. Needless to say, we got drenched.

Fortunately we hadn’t been attempting to set up all the tents, so only the one got soaked through (which was the tent I got to sleep in, trying to keep myself out of the puddle by lying on top of a makeshift mattress of life jackets...it was still very wet, and also smelled like old, wet, mildewed life jackets). The remaining tents were put up by a team of six, four to hold onto the corners of a tarp while two others set up the tents and rain flies underneath. One of the trip leaders got a camp stove lit beneath an overturned canoe and started cooking dinner in the rain. Once the campers were done setting up tents, they stretched out a ridgeline and hung the tarp to have a place to sit out of the downpour. Despite the downpour, our group worked together to set up camp: shelter, food. As we gathered for check-in that night under the ridgeline we all remarked on how frightening the storm had been and how impressed we all were that the group had been able to come together so well to stay safe and accomplish all that we had accomplished.

In the morning, following a night of steady rain, the canoes were straining at the tow lines we had used to tie them off to roots on the bank because the water level had risen nearly 8 feet overnight and the roots to which the boats had been tied were now well underwater. I’m very grateful that none of the lines snapped and none of the boats were lost. After a quick breakfast we packed up camp and set out for a much longer day of paddling than originally planned. The water was so high and fast, that we made great time. And because the water level was so elevated, we hardly ever had to get out of our boats to lift them over rocks or logs.

I’d be curious to hear how others would tell the story of this trip, what details they’d remember that I may have forgotten. This was the event that truly united our group, that showed us what we were capable of together. It forced us to rely on one another. Looking back, we did have a good safe trip, the group formed and grew, and the campers stepped up into leadership roles, isn’t that what we had prayed for?

There’s a really wonderful scene in the movie Evan Almighty when God, played by Morgan Freeman, sits down at a table in a diner with Evan’s wife, Joan, who is worried about her husband’s eccentric behavior (he’s building an ark in their neighborhood cul-de-sac). Evan, prior to this transformative trask, had previously been a workaholic news anchor with barely any time for his family. His wife had prayed for their family to be closer together, but now she’s confused and frustrated by her husband’s new obsession with building an ark. God notices the look of worry on Joan’s face, and his genuine concern allows her to open up and share some of her doubts.

“Let me ask you something.” God says, “If someone prays for patience, you think God gives them patience? Or does he give them the opportunity to be patient? If he prayed for courage, does God give him courage, or does he give him opportunities to be courageous? If someone prayed for their family to be closer, do you think God zaps them with warm fuzzy feelings, or does he give them opportunities to love each other?”

To wrap up the story of our stormy canoe trip...getting drenched didn’t necessarily make our group stronger, but it did help us to focus in that moment on the strength we already had. It gave us an opportunity to rely on one another, to take care of one another, to be courageous in the midst of a storm.

Considering the forecast for this weekend and next few days, I figured this was an apropos time to share a story about getting drenched in a rainstorm. But I also find it an appropriate story in relation to our celebration of the Pentecost. Long before this scene in acts, long before Jesus rose from the dead and ascended into heaven, long before Jesus promised his disciples that he would send his Spirit to them, long before the cross, long before Jesus’ ministry opened the eyes of the blind, empowered the poor, and bruised the egos of the powerful, even before Jesus was tempted by Satan in the wilderness: Jesus was baptized. John had been on the banks of the Jordan river preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. “I baptize you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.”

At his baptism, Jesus was drenched...and as he arose from the waters, the heavens opened up and the Holy Spirit descended in the form of a dove while a voice proclaimed: “You are my son, the Beloved.” Jesus baptism didn’t make him the son of God, but it did give him the opportunity to hear this affirmation. Following this, drenched in the Holy Spirit, Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness where he was presented with opportunities to be strong and faithful...and through prayer he prevailed.

Baptism doesn’t make us any stronger than we already are, but it connects us to a grace and a strength that Christ has already made available to us through the Holy Spirit. Just so prayer reminds us that we have been drenched, and when the worst of the world tempts us to doubt our strength, prayer can help us remember that we are stronger than we might think. Prayer helps us connect with the promises God has already made us in our baptisms. Prayer is, as William Willimon puts it, “the bold, even arrogant effort on the part of the community to hold God to [these] promises (Willimon, 27).”

There is no mention of water in the Pentecost story, and yet is a story of a community becoming drenched in the Holy Spirit: baptized and brought alive in the promises of God, strengthened and united beyond boundaries they would never have thought possible to break down. God has already called all things good, from the very first. When God called all things out of deep unordered waters by the Holy Spirit God also called all created things good. When Jesus rose out of the deep waters of his baptism, the Holy Spirit descended ad God proclaimed him beloved. When we are baptized, so too are we touched by the Holy Spirit and affirmed as good creatures and beloved children.

We don’t often think of this affirmation as a “promise” of God, but it is. This promise is the safety deposit box in which our forgiveness, and redemption and new life are held in God’s faithfulness. In sin, we abandon our goodness and turn from God’s love. But God does not abandon the promise. God continues to call us good, and continues to love us, and continues to call us back, through forgiveness and redemption to new life, in which we live into the reality of our good, beloved being. Speaking of life and promises...I am reminded of what my Hebrew professor at Seminary once told me about “blessing,” “Blessing is nothing more, nothing less, than the life-giving presence of God.” When God promises to bless Abram so that through him all the earth shall be blessed (which by the way is in the 12th chapter of Genesis that comes after the 11th chapter story of the Tower of Babel)...when God makes this promise of blessing, God is promising to always be present.

The Tower of Babel describes a dispersion of humanity across the earth, separated by language...it’s an over simplification...but it’s a story, not a history. It’s a story which tells of human pride. God’s promises to us are empowering, but they do not make us more powerful than God. While it helps us connect with the promises God has already made us, prayer also humbles us before God and these promises. Prayer not only reminds us of these promises, but also of their source. God’s promise to Abram, coming right after the Tower of Babel story reminds me of this: the promise of God’s presence and the importance of humility in prayer. God might have dispersed the people, but God did not abandon them...they had become too prideful to pray, to prideful to acknowledge God’s presence...their unity was not blessed by the Holy Spirit. Pentecost, however tells a different story.

Pentecost is a story that reminds us how unity in the Holy Spirit goes beyond language, beyond the pride of nationalism, beyond the blessing of just a single family to the blessing of the entire earth. At Babel...no one was calling upon the name of the Lord, but at Pentecost, everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. We don’t create the presence of God by praying, quite the opposite: we are the ones created by the word of God. But by praying we respect and respond to that presence, we open ourselves up to the strong, united community that already exists in the presence of God, also known as the Kingdom of God. We can be too proud to join, be like the scoffers on the fringe of the Pentecost crowd who claim everyone must be drunk...or we stand before the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, saturate ourselves in the sacraments, dip the cup of the new covenant deep into the well of our baptismal promises and just get drenched.