Have you ever had a Twinkie, those little sponge cakes filled with vanilla cream made by Hostess? I never had one as a kid. My parents didn’t buy much in the way of processed food, and certainly not prepackaged snack cakes. Plus, the part of Pennsylvania I grew up in was devout Tastykake territory. I suppose the stores carried Twinkies, but Tastykake was all I ever saw anyone buy.
It was only several years ago that I had my first Twinkie. My daughter had a role in the middle school production of the Wizard of Oz. The concessions were always based on the musical, and someone decided that since there’s an army of Winkies they should sell Twinkies! I realized that now was the time for me to try out one of these junk food icons.
I went to the concession area and my son and I each bought a Twinkie. He had never had one either. I tore off its plastic wrapper and held the Twinkie in my hand. What delicious experience was I about to have? What had I been missing all this time in my life? I was about to find out. I took my first bite of a Twinkie ever.
At the risk of offending all of you who are Twinkie lovers, I was very underwhelmed. BLAND! I don’t know what I was expecting. Perhaps it was a richer flavor and texture of the sponge cake. Or maybe a stronger flavor from the vanilla filling. I don’t know. It was just bland. Since then I’ve not had another Twinkie. Maybe I had a dud Twinkie, but I doubt it. When I’m in the mood for a snack cake I’ll seek out a Butterscotch Krimpet from Tastykake! I will confess though that I am still curious about all the fuss I hear about deep fried Twinkies you can get at the state fair. I’ll have to go there and try one of them sometime. Although I don’t know how deep frying something in fat is going to improve it!
However you feel about Twinkies, everyone will agree they have a nutritional value of zero. I checked it out too. I went into a store and found some on the end cap of an aisle. Not being willing to spend any money on them, spun the package around to look at the nutrition information. Yep. Zero – unless you count like more carbohydrates than your body should consume in a day!
Twinkies are made from heavily processed ingredients and they’re loaded with preservatives. There’s not a trace of anything natural in them! That makes them easy to mass produce. And it makes them completely uniform. A Twinkie bought in Tops in Farmington will taste exactly the same as one bought at a store in Los Angeles.
In some ways I believe our lives may be like a Twinkie. While I won’t go so far as to say our lives are artificial, I think we often live insulated from reality – or perhaps I should say insulated from the rawness of the earth. When was the last time you made something from raw materials? Like you got the board you needed by cutting down a tree, or you created the shirt you needed by first planting the cotton, or maybe feeding a sheep? When was the last time you pumped and hauled your own water?
Do you see what I’m getting at? I don’t mean to criticize human progress. I certainly don’t want to condemn the way our economy is (at its ideal best) a complex community of people all working together for the common good. However, many of us rarely truly interact with the raw world. Other than perhaps raising some vegetables in a garden, we interact with a processed reality. It is predictable and uniform.
Similarly our society’s expectations of “success” tend to make us pretty predictable and uniform. Perhaps I could say our society has a cookie cutter approach to shaping us:
get an education,
get a job,
buy a house,
have a family,
save for retirement,
…oh, and do some community service along the way to make sure you’re a good person.
I think many people unknowingly wear blinders through life. They just do what everyone else tells them they’re supposed to do to be successful.
Sometimes when people pray to God for help in life I fear they may be asking for help to get through the preset model of life society expects. They want God to answer according to the way they think God has to act; because they’ve confused God and what society expects. But is God so bound? Certainly there are overlaps between what society considers virtues and the qualities Christian faith elevates as good, but they are not one and the same.
In the Acts 2 reading for this Sunday we remember that the Spirit is wild and untamable. There is the sound of a rushing wind. There are tongues of fire. There is speaking and understanding in different languages. And there’s Peter, who after years of following Jesus and never really getting it, is finally putting it all together. Let’s not underestimate the miracle of that!
There is no limiting or controlling the Spirit. The Spirit will act when and where God chooses to act. The Spirit will not be bound by any cookie cutter life our society expects. And the Spirit is not interested in giving us flavorless processed reality. The Spirit may come in very raw ways.
And yet the Spirit is also dependable.
For the last several years we have not followed the usual lectionary but chosen our own scripture reading series. However today our texts are right from the normal lectionary. I like the contrast there is between the Acts 2 reading with the dramatic entrance of the Spirit and the gospel reading from John 15 and 16. There Jesus speaks of the “Advocate” (as translated in the NRSV). We talked about this just a couple weeks ago. Staying closer to Greek it would be better use the word Paraclete rather than Advocate. You’ll remember that a paraclete is many things simultaneously: exhorter and encourager, comforter and consoler, helper, advocate, and counselor. And so we know the Holy Spirit, unpredictable as it is, is also sure and dependable. God’s Spirit is always with us. God’s support is constant and sure.
Today we have the Rite of Confirmation. Two of our youth will make an affirmation of their baptism and in so doing become adult members of this congregation. I don’t expect the Holy Spirit to come whooshing through this building in a visible way. And I don’t expect tongues of fire to appear on everyone’s head. But then again, one never knows.
We do not commend these two boys for doing what the church says is right and then give them a roadmap for the rest of their faith lives. Instead the questions they will answer will be about their priorities in life. They ask what are the guiding principles they will live by – and those principles are the working of the Holy Spirit. Sometimes it might be a nudge. Sometimes it might be a whisper. And sometimes it might be the sound of a mighty wind and tongues of fire and all sorts of stuff.
The two boys and all of us are children of God. We are not Twinkies. God does not mass produce people into uniform disciples. God is with each of us as individuals and all of us as a community. God may call you to do something absolutely wild. The Old Testament characters Abraham and Sarah were in their 70’s when God called them to pack up everything in their established lives and just move on. Don’t dismiss the working of the Spirit because it doesn’t conform. God will be with you every step of the way.
And yet let’s not overlook the possibility that God may call you do something that the world labels boring and mundane; or unimportant. Again, the world’s labels don’t matter. We shouldn’t try to be thrill-seekers unnecessarily. Nor should we look down on those whose lives seem simple. The Spirit calls us and accompanies us always.
God is drawing us and all of creation into its sure future. The Spirit is with us always giving us an important place in all that God is doing.
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