This Sunday-That-Shall-Not-Be-Named is near-universally celebrated by the Christian Church as the time when the Holy Spirit entered into the world and christened the church, but as the good Midwestern-Lutheran knows any good thing must come with strings attached, and in this case the Spirit's "good works" only cover the depth of the sinister plot that leads to good Lutheran boys and girls speaking in tongues and/or saying "Amen!" in church. Midwestern Lutherans know that this must be stopped at all costs.
But at this point I should admit that I have a little problem: I really like The-Sunday-That-Shall-Not-Be-Named, I like talking about the Holy Spirit, and perhaps I should enter an AA program for saying so up here, but I like getting excited about things generally in church. This is a most counter-cultural stance in Midwestern-Lutherandom
I know. I am one of us. For our people, showing excitement over anything, least of all the workings of some foreign "Spirit," is a sin of great magnitude. We're lefse people: a little sugar hidden in the cavity of our mixed-marriage of potato-bread is about all the excitement we can handle. Too much enthusiasm may lead to sin, or worse yet, it may cause people in town to look at us strangely. Better to never do anything unusual or exciting in life than be shamed by one's neighbor. This is why being a Midwestern Lutheran is hard. It's an exercise in internal self-righteousness via external self-restraint.
The funny thing is that people here mostly don't see it that way. There is a kind of salt-of-the-earth humility that allows Midwestern Lutherans to experience a multitude of wonderful blessings and manage to remain stoic in all encounters public and private. On the Sunday-That-Shall-Not-Be-Named we remember that some people have the gift of speaking in tongues while we have the gift of Eeyore-ism.
But on days like The-Sunday-That-Shall-Not-Be-Named we are also left in a bit of a quandary. We can't break out of our shells, which is undoubtedly what the Holy Spirit will do to us if we let it loose, but we also want to remain good and faithful Christians. So what do we do? We make a big fuss about the color of the day and we make certain that all of our banners have stitching with flames! Happy Red Vestment Day! Then, we treat the Holy Spirit like it's our honored guest. We allow one day (that's actually the language we use... "allow" ... as if God needs our permission) to keep the Spirit happy lest it start to do crazy things with us.
Being a Midwestern Lutheran is oh so hard.
This is all cultural and engrained. It's not that we choose to sit quietly in our pews and smirk silently every time something amusing happens in worship. It's not that we choose to glance around and make certain that nobody is looking at us whenever we get up for any reason. It's not even that we choose to avert our eyes when somebody in worship doesn't know the proper decorum and we're embarrassed for them. It's just who we are. And it's hard. Really hard.
You see, it would be much easier to celebrate The-Sunday-That-Shall-Not-Be-Named with praise and dance and loud, out-of-tune singing. It would be much easier to show emotion, but we just can't do it. It's who we are. Most churches have realized that this kind of movement of the Spirit is really quite freeing. They understand that it allows people to be less self-conscious, which happens to be near to the heart of the Spirit's activity in seemingly every place and time. Most churches understand this. But we can't. We're too stoic, too weary, too fearful of what will happen if we say "Amen!" a little too loudly.
Being a Midwestern Lutheran is hard.
It is my prayer that this Sunday the Spirit is going to burst through the chains we have strapped to it and cause the very walls of the church to thunder with its movement. Many Midwestern Lutherans would be very careful with such words. I can imagine them saying, with slow, Fargoan accent and all, "Hey now, pastor, be careful what you pray for! It might just happen then!" To which I say, finally and absolutely: good. I hope it does. I hope we are shocked and appalled by what the Spirit does, because this Sunday-That-Shall-Not-Be-Named holds the key to our church's future, the key to breaking through the cultural bonds that hinder our proclamation of the gospel, and the key to dying to ourselves.
Only then will we be able to say, "Being a Midwestern Lutheran isn't so hard, after all."
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