I was in a foul mood recently. No particular reason, I guess. I was at the supermarket (a stressful place for many of us), and between the vitriol of the election season and an empty mid-afternoon stomach, I found myself, for lack of a better word, grumpy. It's a frustrating state to be in - grumpy people are no fun to be around, but they're also no fun to be.
Behavioral science has taught us that we respond to our physical sensations and our emotional states much more strongly than we do to our intellectual knowledge. Robert Sapolsky, a professor of a bunch of things including Neurosciences at Stanford, describes having a fight with his wife (who is also a brain researcher). After a while of fighting, one of them stops and says to one another, "Honey, remember what the half-life is on the autonomic nervous system."
Meaning, "Let's not just keep fighting just because we feel angry."
Our bodies and our moods can lie to us. They can control our behavior and our thoughts, which in turn makes us moodier yet. Sometimes, it takes something jarring to break our brains out of a negative cycle.
In our recently-begun Bible Study on Acts, this past Wednesday brought us the story of the Pentecost. I know we're a little behind liturgically speaking, but that's okay. What struck me was how jarring the scene must have been for the other people.
Think of it - you're a Jewish citizen of Egypt, making your pilgrimage to Jerusalem for the Festival of Weeks. A month and a half ago, at Passover, you walked nearly three hundred miles to Jerusalem, then walked back. Now, it's time for another pilgrimage, and so you and your whole village make the trek again.
You arrive in Jerusalem. You're tired, you're sore from the journey, you're both excited to begin worship at the festival and (secretly) a little anxious for the pomp and circumstance to finish so you can enjoy the city with your family. In short, your emotions are raw. This is a high-stress situation, and the last thing you expect is for your world to change.
There is a commotion. Maybe it's in the street. Maybe it's in the Temple itself - Acts 2 is unclear. But through the shouts and the cries, through the din of the city and the roar of the worshipers, you hear a voice calling in your own language. Here in this place, so familiar in faith but so foreign in every other way, you hear the language of your childhood, the language of your heart.
"The Christ has come! The Christ has conquered death! Now is the time for the Kingdom - call upon the name of the Lord!"
Would this stop you in your tracks? Would this knock you out of your grump, make you forget the pains of your feet and the anxieties of travel, just for a moment? Would it make you pause and listen? Would you have stopped to investigate? Would you have seen the crowd of Jesus-followers, shouting in all languages and in one language? Would you have possibly even seen a Something that looked like tongues of flame and sounds like a rushing wind?
One thing that you can always say about God is that God surprises us. God knocks us off guard. We're creatures of mood and fancy; we can so easily get worked into a rut of anger, or despair, or pain, or fear, but then, something happens...
Back at the supermarket, I saw somebody making faces at a stranger's baby. The baby was thrilled with the silliness and attention, and the face-maker was thrilled with the response. Slowly, I saw smiles creep across faces all around. Everybody who saw the interaction was brightened and blessed by it. My grump was jarred open, and joy poured in.
All it takes sometimes is a surprise - a joyous, even holy, surprise. Whether in the form of a zealous crowd shouting Gospel in a hundred tongues, or the infectious smile of a child, God surprises us.
Lord our Joy and our Comfort, break into our lives again today with a ray of hope, a spark of joy, a hint of your fullness and glory.
Amen.
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