Pentecost Sunday: "Weaving a Web of Witness"
Acts 2: 1-21; Romans 8: 9, 22-39
June 4, 2006

Jesus was an amazing weaver. He wove together the stories of the Old Testament with new insights. He wove new life from the broken lives of individual people. He wove together the lives of those who heard him teach, giving them a sense of the power they have to change the world in which they live. Such are the stories which are the legacy of our faith. They make up the text of the Bible. The very word "text" comes from a Latin root which means "weave". The stories of our faith weave us together and the web is intricately woven and strong….knots, tangles, and all! This intricately woven web, the community of faith--the church whose birthday we celebrate today; and the Holy Spirit is now the Web-Weaver.

The church is bound together by the continuing living presence of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit weaves a web of witness and commitment between believers, across generations. The web forms through the amazing power and diversity of the spiritual gifts each one of us has received from God. Each one of us a living text. Each one of us sighing a sigh too deep for words….knowing God uses all things for good for those who believe….nothing can separate us from our God….or each other….if we choose to go beyond what other’s see as ordinary and there see the extraordinary presence of God….God holding all things, all of creation together for all time to come.

A web of connections.

When I lose my way…
When I get confused…
When my resolve falters,
Or my insights fade….
I look to the sky, to the stars.
I listen to the trees, to the wind.
I taste my blessings and I hear the oldest voice.
Then I make my way.
Then I fuse with deeper self.
Then I solve simpler puzzles
And look out, see the far away.
See it. Be it.
Me….it.

We’ve been knitting into the mystery. Not making shawls…yes, we make them…but being together into the mystery, connected in stitches, in the prayer, in the wisdom of those who teach us…connected with those throughout the ages who knitted for the love of giving to others, who put aside the busyness and slowed into the knit one, pearl one. We weave our hearts together into the mystery of our God.

(Bring out the old piece of knitting)
Knitting…
I’m sitting in the sunshine, knitting into the mystery….
dropped stitches, knots and all.
I’m knitting here sitting into the mystery….
Stopped itches, no’s, and stall….

I love this piece of knitting. It’s full of holes and knots just like me. And it helped me realize some very special things, too.
The quality of the knit is in the holes.
Knots add strength.
We think we are to begin with cheaper stuff to practice. So we discover if we really do want to make a commitment?
But, the cheap stuff doesn’t work so well. It unravels and tangles. You need the good stuff from the beginning. (Bring out the new.)

God gave us God’s best…in Jesus. God gives us the Holy Spirit so we don’t unravel and can find our way through the tangles. We need both. We need the texts and stories of a living Christ showing the way and redeeming us, the presence of the Holy Spirit nudging and prompting us, and we so need the new creation we are in God, moment to moment. Made able. Able to listen…to each other’s deepest wisdom, each other’s needs, dreams, visions. A flame upon each of our heads. Look, and I bet you’ll see it. You’re on fire!

The church is not about education, property, finance, even worship

God’s church is about hearing, understanding, wisdom, visions, dreams made real as we are woven together living out into the world….our one mission: to integrate such into ourselves moment to moment and live it out into the world daily. We are woven into this mission. The church is mission. Me, you, and all God’s people woven together.

Each of us is here today because people of faith in past generations have listened and acted….and so weaving us together......and now we the weavers. We are weaving the web of witness to sustain the world and make a way for those who will follow us.

Let us remember those who wove this web for us. Think of one person in your web of faith who believed/s in you and has invested their spiritual gifts in your life? Hold the name of this someone in your heart. This someone is a gift just for you from God. Let us take a moment to thank God in our hearts for this someone, perhaps saying: Thank-you God for........who believed in me. Through the spirit's gift and our faithful God, these witnesses we have named have woven us together. Can you feel it? Can you see how we are woven into one? We are.

This is what I invite us to do as a way of honoring the web of witness which has brought us here.....and to honor the web we pass on to those yet to come. I am going to tie this yarn onto my finger/my chair and toss this ball of yarn out amongst you. Be ready to catch. When you catch it you are invited to stand if you would like and to say out loud: Thank-you God for........who wove me here! Then, tying to something near by or your finger, wrapping the pillars as we go, toss the ball to someone else on the other side of the sanctuary. You may intercept the ball as it passes by you and toss it again.

Now, what does this remind you of? Yes, a spider's web. You know, part of the genius of the spider's web is that it can transmit information to the spider whenever and wherever it is touched. So, now, everyone who would like to is invited to stand up and take hold of the strand of yarn closest to them. If far away, join the web by touching those close to you. (Go ahead.) Feel how the vibration of each individual's touch is immediately transmitted across the web to every other individual in contact with it. Our unique gifts shape and form this web and make us one. Let us all name those who have woven us into this web.

Please be seated.

Woven into one community, we vibrate! What vibration is our congregation sending out? How are you now the weaver?

You named someone who has believed in you. There is one who will always believe in you. That one is Jesus Christ. Christ believes in us more than we believe in ourselves. Jesus knows our gifts to be worthy, powerful, and needed. Jesus calls us to weave our gifts faithfully into the world. The future strength of the web of faith is created as each individual acts on their faith within community.

It is the communal experience of faith that creates the web of the future for future generations. Our spiritual gifts work together, not to glorify ourselves, but to build up this body, this web, which is the church, the Christ-body community. Through our witness, we can claim for ourselves membership in the first and most powerful web site on an internet that was established more than two millennia ago. Our web-site, our web of witness, is unmatched in power, unhampered by time or space, immune to hackers. It's all brought together by the master Web-Weaver, the Holy Spirit, who has woven a web of love-relationships into the strongest structure in the universe, the church, you and me woven together.