Unity Church of Dallas - Rev. Townley's Message

A Message from
Rev. Ed Townley,
Acting Senior Minister

Receiving Your Own Tongue of Fire

Dear Friends,

If our collective consciousness had fully and properly understood the message of Jesus Christ in the immediate aftermath of his earthly ministry, I think perhaps this coming Sunday – not Christmas, not even Easter – would be the biggest and most joyful annual celebration of the Christian calendar.

It’s Pentecost! It’s the Sunday chosen to commemorate the fulfillment of the great, loving promise Jesus made to his disciples. “I will not leave you desolate,” he assures them in John 14. “…the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.”

The story of Pentecost is familiar. The faithful disciples have been through a wild roller-coaster of emotions in a short period of time. From the joy and awe of personally receiving the spiritual teachings of Jesus through the terror and despair of his crucifixion to the hopeful but bewildering realization that he continued to be a loving presence in their lives – it would be a lot for anyone to process in a lifetime, much less in a few short weeks.

And now their immediate sense of Jesus as a tangible presence is gone, and they are alone together in a Jerusalem house, lost and uncertain about what might come next. Suddenly “a mighty wind” fills the house, and “a tongue of fire” descends upon each of them individually.

Do you see why Pentecost should be our most joyfully celebrated holiday? It’s not about the unique events in the life of Jesus Christ; it’s about the fact that we are – all of us – individually empowered to carry on the spiritual process of creating, choice by choice, the new human consciousness that Jesus calls “the kingdom of heaven.”

Jesus had tried to prepare them. ‘It’s not about me,’ he taught them in essence. ‘I’m only here to help you receive the spiritual empowerment that will come from Source – from the same creative Energy that I have been teaching and demonstrating. You don’t need me – in fact, my being physically here among you is becoming an obstacle. So I’m going – and once I’m gone, if you stay in the consciousness I’ve taught you and seen in you, the same Holy Spirit that has guided me will all but overpower you with the energy, light, love and understanding you need to continue the work of transforming human consciousness into the kingdom of heaven.’

Certainly the first three stages of the disciples’ emotional journey are very, very familiar to us all. We move from a rich new appreciation of spiritual possibility – in ourselves and in our lives – to a shocked sense of grief when our expectations are dashed and the dark, shadow powers of the human experience seem to destroy every semblance of the Light. But the Light cannot be destroyed, and our despair is dissolved as we experience that Truth. We’re still confused, still uncertain about what it all means. We’re still keeping our new spiritual awareness secret from a world we’re sure would reject it – and us. We are very much like the man who cries to Jesus “I believe! Help my unbelief!”

Our judgmental human minds insist that this is a ‘bad’ place to be in consciousness – we’ve obviously done something ‘wrong’ to cause us to be here. In fact, it’s an essential place to be. We cannot receive the Holy Spirit of inspiration and empowerment if we don’t think we need it -- if we insist we can manage totally on our own.

Left to their collective ego consciousness, the disciples might have set busily about the work of ministry – forming study groups, developing a vision and priorities and action steps to get the Word out to the world. It would have worn them to a frazzle – and it would have blocked them from receiving the only Energy that could really move them forward. Instead they sat in their shared uncertainty; and they received both the inspiration which – however unexpected it seemed – had been promised to them in no uncertain terms, and the Power that would accomplish more than their human minds could even imagine.

I think all of us are somewhere in this process at this moment. Too often we move through the first three stages again and again, each time trying to fill any sense of uncertainty with frantic ‘action steps’ of our own design. How often do we sit patiently, anchored in the spiritual Truth we have found, aware that we haven’t a clue about what the next step might be, open to the gift of divine Fire that will empower us to move forward in confidence, grace and love!

So Happy Pentecost! May its gift to you this year be the discovery and reception of your own divine Fire – and may you find yourself, through any and every challenge, expressing the love, grace and power that you are!

Blessings!
Rev Ed

Message Date: May 8, 2008