"Dancing Like the Northern Lights" (sermon)

Two Rivers Pastoral Charge
Sunday June 8, 2025 – Pentecost
Scripture Reading:  Acts 2:1-17


The northern lights follow an 11-year cycle, give or take, related to the solar cycle or the sunspot cycle.  There was a peak beginning in 1989 that I remember – both because I remember gathering with my family in front of the picture windows in the house I grew up in, with all the lights turned out, watching the northern lights dance; but also because a huge solar flare that year caused widespread power outages in the middle of March Break.  Two years later, the sunspot activity was reaching its peak – I remember that fall I had a Tuesday night babysitting job, and it seemed like every Tuesday as I headed home down the road, I was accompanied by dancing lights in the sky.

In the early 2000s, there was another peak in the cycle – by then I was living in Thunder Bay, and I have memories of driving home at night, and being able to see the northern lights, even in the city.  In the winter of 2017/2018, after living in Halifax for a couple of years, I moved to northern BC for my internship, and I was excited that I might get to see the northern lights again – unfortunately that year fell at a quiet point in the solar cycle, and I was only able to see them once that winter.

When you see the northern lights dancing, they both feel close enough that you could reach out and touch them, but also far away and remote and massive and awe-inspiring.  You can’t predict what they are going to do next – you can only watch and gasp in amazement as they dance.  They are both very real, as well as mysterious and beyond our ability to control.

Which is why I love the northern lights as an image or a metaphor for the Holy Spirit.  She dances where she chooses. We can’t predict or control where she will go or what she will do next, we can only watch and follow and join the dance.  She is beautiful, and awe-inspiring, and covers all of creation.

But like all metaphors, this one eventually breaks down.  We can’t literally touch the northern lights, but the Holy Spirit is dancing within each of us, and in the space between us.  And while the northern lights might cause us to feel awe, we aren’t transformed or changed by the northern lights, whereas the Holy Spirit is working in each one of us, shaping us and transforming us into who God created us to be.

But I also want to say that just like the northern lights come in cycles, our ability to sense the Spirit’s action ebbs and flows – sometimes in our lives and in our church, we can sense her vibrancy, leading us to new places and to new ministries; but sometimes she feels further away.  But just like I still got to see the northern lights up in BC even during the quietest point in the solar cycle, the Holy Spirit never ever goes away or abandons us.

Today is Pentecost, and we remember the Holy Spirit coming in power to Jesus’s disciples – the lights were dancing brightly that day.  This month is also when we are celebrating the 100th Anniversary of the United Church of Canada and we can look back at our history and see times when the Spirit was dancing brightly among us – maybe in 1936 when we, as a church, ordained the first female minister; maybe in 1988 when the church discerned that sexual orientation should not be a barrier to full participation in the church, including ordination; maybe also in 1988 when our teaching changed so that children were explicitly invited to take communion because we wouldn’t exclude children from the family table anywhere else.  1988 feels like a year when the Spirit was dancing brightly in our church!  But we might also remember times when the Spirit felt more distant – maybe in the years before 1969 when the church was operating Residential Schools; maybe in times and places, including today, when racism has excluded people, even within the church.  But the Holy Spirit is always with the church and will never abandon us.

This month, we can look back not just on the past 100 years of the United Church of Canada, but also the past 2000 years since that first Pentecost.  And we can also look forward – to the next 100 years, or to the next 2000 years.  Where is the Holy Spirit going to lead us next?  What new dance steps is she going to teach her church?  Just like the northern lights will always dance in the sky, so too will the Holy Spirit dance in our hearts, dance in the church, dance in the streets, dance in all of creation.  And may we have eyes to see hear, and ears to hear her, and a heart to join the dance.

 

 

When I went to change the hangings at Long Reach United Church

this week, I discovered that the red Pentecost hangings there look like

the Holy Spirit dove is already dancing among the Northern Lights