Haunted by Words

In a few more days, I head off to camp. This year, I'm a counselor and a keynote speaker for the high school kids. God help me. Seriously.

The curriculum is based on how we got the Bible; I'm spinning it a bit to be why we care about the Bible. There's lots of talking about story, as you can imagine.

At the same time, I'm prepping my sermon for the Sunday after camp, which just happens to be Pentecost. The story we tell each year is the coming of the Holy Spirit to the church at that feast, creating something knew. Pentecost is often called the birthday of the church.

In this weird place where I'm figuring out how to talk with high school kids about what the Bible is and why it matters and preaching the story of Pentecost, I realize how many words from the Bible haunt me.

I vividly recall sitting in a class on the history of my denomination when one of the other students turned and said with more than a little irritation, "Did you memorize the entire Bible?" Well, in the world where I grew up, memorization of scripture was a big freakin' deal. In a lot of ways, the goal was to memorize the Bible.

These words, though, linger in other places. As one of Jesus' early followers, Peter, explains what is going on, he quotes the prophet Joel, "'In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh, and your sons and daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams. Even upon my slaves both men and women, in those days I will pour out my Spirit; and they shall prophesy."

The first time I really heard those words was when Berenice Clifton, a character on the '80s sitcom Designing Women whose craziness was described as "an arterial flow problem above the neck," quoted them. The episode was called "How Great Thou Art." The topic was women in ministry, and she was fighting a Southern Baptist minister who was adamant that women should be silent in church. I took notes the first time I saw that episode, at least mental notes, and went flipping through my Bible to make sure all the things she was saying were really in there. Even though I'd read the Bible in its entirety a few times by then, I heard what I'd been taught; somehow, I skipped over what would become life-giving texts.

When, in college, we had to memorize a few passages of scripture for biblical survey classes, I more or less hugged the list of texts to my chest when I saw Joel 2:28 on it. Here were the words that I had thought were marginal words, and they were important enough to be tested on. It was a dream come true for this Bible nerd still trying to hear the possibility of call.

Now, ten or twelve years later, I'm preaching on these words, as I have before. And I can't shake all the times I have heard these words before. They haunt me. They are friendly ghosts for sure, but ghosts nonetheless. They bring back other times and places even as they invite me to new things.

My conclusion, at best, is this, "You're doing it right." From the Gospel architect Luke to screenwriters to my own teachers, "You're doing it right." For I'm certain these words will haunt me all my life as they have so many faithful before me. The words will push me to new places. The words will bubble up in moments of fear, offering assurance. Words that will do all those things--yeah, you're doing it right.

I'm so grateful for these words, these ghosts. Perhaps most of all, I love that I get to introduce others to these beautiful, haunting words.