Acts 2:1-21, Romans 8:22-27, John 15:26-27; 16:4b-15 Panzer Liturgical Chapel
When a military member gets promoted or reenlists, they
often end the ceremony by retaking the oath of office as a way of recommitting
their call to service. When we attend a baptism or confirmation, we are not
just witnessing what is happening to someone else, but recommitting ourselves
to the promises that brought us into the family of God. I think our celebration
of Pentecost is a lot like that.
This week, we celebrate Pentecost, the coming of the Holy
Spirit by fire, wind, and word. Pentecost — from the Greek pentekostos, meaning
"fiftieth," was a Jewish festival celebrating the spring harvest. In
the New Testament story, Luke tells, the Spirit descended on 120 believers in
Jerusalem on the fiftieth day after Jesus's resurrection… 50 days since Jesus’
crucifixion and resurrection… 50 days filled with doubt and wonder and the bare
beginnings of our mother church. But even when Jesus was among them again,
teaching and breaking bread with them, the disciples were still trying to
figure it out. What would it take to hold them all together, and give them
their new, true identity?
If we remember the story of the Tower of Babel in Genesis 9,
we see a united people, with a common language and purpose, who through
conflict are scattered, speaking many languages, confused, and no longer seeing
themselves as one. Coming full circle, the church’s Pentecost story begins and
ends with many languages, but in the middle, something amazing happens. Tongues
of fire rested on each of the disciples, and God gave them the ability to speak
and understand in languages that were not their own. Even more, the crowd of
strangers gathered also understood the message of God’s love in their own
languages, to the amazement of all.
At the ascension, Jesus instructed them to go and wait. I’m
guessing there was a lot of speculation in those 10 days – would this fulfilled
promise make everything better – or maybe easier? Turns out the answer is yes
and no. The coming of the Holy Spirit, as promised by Jesus, was not just a spirit
of counsel or peace. It came like fire and wind, two of the most powerful
forces on earth. This was Jesus’ way of saying, “Don’t do this without me.”
As we celebrate this Pentecost Sunday, we are reminded what
it means to be the church. First, we are called to be one. We are called to
gather in his name, proclaiming Peter’s message that day – “everyone who calls
on the name of the Lord shall be saved.” Peter doesn’t give us theological
terms to memorize or a checklist of necessary behaviors. Simply said, we are
called to live believing that everyone can be a member of the Kingdom of God.
Over the last 2000 years of Christianity, we have split
apart over differences in the ways we think about and practice ministry in
Jesus’ name. Any time you look at church history, you see controversies keep
repeating themselves, over and over. We have forgotten that the Holy Spirit’s
first gift was to make us one… through the Spirit, we are to speak and listen
in a common language – the language of love.[i]
In today’s church climate, it feels like people are looking
for an excuse to break apart. The Great Schism happened in 1054 and describes
the split between the church in Rome and the church in Constantinople, giving
us Orthodoxy and Catholicism. And ever since, more people have splintered off –
often for good reasons, but it feels like our oneness is less and less evident
every day.
How about this? What if we didn’t think so much about what
makes us different, and instead about what makes us the same? What if we
regularly crossed denominational and racial boundaries and showed the world a
glimpse of that first Pentecost Sunday? Would that help our churches grow?
Would that encourage people to turn toward Christ, rather than away?
Jesus rescued us from the law… being a Christian isn’t about
following a prescribed set of rules, but is about living a life of love in
response to what Jesus did for us. Yes, there are plenty of tried-and-true
methods for doing that, but being a Christian isn’t like putting an IKEA
bookshelf together – Shelf A goes in Slot B. Everybody’s journey is different.
Everyone’s call is personal and individual.
But we forget that – a lot. We fall back into familiar
patterns – what worked for others should also work for us. We creep back to the
shelter and familiarity of old ways and rationalize our behavior. We make our
understanding of the faith the standard by which everyone’s faith is judged.
And we tell people if they want to join us, they have to follow our rules, our
interpretations of Jesus’ teachings.[ii]
But that’s not what Jesus wanted for us. The Spirit makes us one – but it doesn’t box
us in. We get to color outside the lines. We get to experience the call of
Christ for ourselves. We can do that and still be one because our oneness is
grounded solely in Jesus’ love for us and our love for one another.
Second, we are called to tell the story. Sometimes, the only
part of Jesus’ story others will hear is the story you live. I think a lot
about whether my words about Jesus and my actions tell the same story. Yes,
it’s important to know the story, how to talk about who Jesus is and why he
came and who he is calling us to be. But if Jesus only occupies an hour or a
day of our week, then we have missed the point of Jesus coming at all. And if
the ways we talk about Jesus and the ways we live for Jesus are not rooted in
love for God and one another, then we are really missing the point.
When we are confronted with stress and discord in our
relationships with others, our base instinct is to flee to safety and remind
ourselves why we are right and they are wrong. It’s much harder (and healthier)
to stay and work through differences, sometimes coming to an agreeable
compromise, but at least understand a little more about a different perspective.
Nothing about that process is easy, nor is it painless. But it is the way that
the early church stayed united for as long as they did. And it is how the
church grew so quickly in the beginning because people saw Christians living
out their faith and asking, “I want what you have. Introduce me to Jesus.”
Third, we are called to trust the Spirit. In Jesus’ last
discourse, he told the disciples, from THE MESSAGE “But when the Friend comes,
the Spirit of the Truth, he will take you by the hand and guide you into all
the truth there is. He won't draw attention to himself, but will make sense out
of what is about to happen and, indeed, out of all that I have done and said.”
Eugene Peterson’s translation uses the word “Friend” while other translations
use Companion or Advocate or Paraclete, but in every case, this is the one who
stands beside us, no matter what. The Spirit will show the world, that Jesus
has not abandoned us. This is the witness of Pentecost.[iii]
We wish that meant that nothing bad would happen to us, or
that faithful practice of prayer or tithing or acts of service would solve all
of our problems. But that wasn’t what Jesus promised. Many of the first
Christians suffered tremendous hardships, prison, exile, even death. And ever
since, when dedicated Christians have chosen to follow Jesus, their lives have
not gone according to plan. Discipleship – the process of becoming a disciple,
is about listening to the Spirit call us and compel us, knowing that we are not
alone. Paul wrote to a persecuted church in Rome, “… the Spirit helps us in our
weakness, intercedes for us when we do not have the words to speak our truth,
and that nothing would separate us from the love of God. (Romans 8:22-28).
These days – especially today, the world doesn’t make much
sense. It feels like most people are much more vocal about what they are
against than what they are for. Living in that kind of stress is a burden. But
it’s not new. Our fears are not that much different from the fears of those
first Christians. They were not considered powerful by the standards of the
world – they were a rabblerousing, troublemaking sect of God-worshipers, happy
to turn the world on its ear. Perhaps because of that, the influence of the
church spread like wildfire through the Mediterranean world and beyond. Paul’s
missionary journeys and the Christians he left behind in each place grew a
Church that could not be contained by the governments of the day.
Eventually, the Church became one of the most powerful
institutions in the world – which wasn’t always a good thing because when we’re
playing for power, the message of unity and love gets lost. I wonder if our
allegiance to our denominations or theological persuasions gets in the way of
living out the gospel in the most authentic ways. Turn on the television, read
the paper, look at Facebook and you will probably see more messages of shaming
than messages of love, even by people of faith. Is that really what the gospel
is about?
In his book, Crazy Love, Francis Chan begins with this quote
from 17th-century French priest Francois Fenelon, “To just read the Bible,
attend church, and avoid “big” sins – is this passionate, wholehearted love for
God?”[iv] And yet that’s the way many of us live. Maybe
we have forgotten how to take Jesus and his mission seriously – at best, we
have not understood what it means to be the united and universal church.
In 2010, I found a Christian blogger, Rachel Held Evans. She
was in her late 20’s, a wife and young mother, who began to question her
conservative evangelical upbringing, asking the questions that most of us
mainliners were too afraid to ask. Eventually, she wrote some books – four of
them, to be precise, each one braver than the last. I looked forward to reading
her thoughts, hearing her speak, and wondered if I would ever meet her. Sadly,
in 2019 she died at the age of 37 from complications related to the flu, a
bladder infection, and the medications used to treat the ailments that barely
slow most of us down. She left behind a husband and two small children to figure
out how to move forward without presence and wisdom.
In 2015, she wrote a book, Searching For Sunday, as she and
her husband Dan started the hard process of finding a new church home, having
spent the better part of a year sleeping in on Sundays, watching Meet the
Press, and streaming Battlestar Galactica from this new-fangled service called
Netflix. What were the non-negotiables – the things that would be necessary for
their new church home? In the chapter called, “Dirty Laundry,” she likened the
process of church-shopping to losing a few pounds before joining the Y or
cleaning the bathroom before the Merry Maids arrive – we want to look our best
to the people who might judge us for who we really are. She wrote:
The truth is, we think church is for people living in the
“after” picture. We think church is for taking spiritual Instagrams and putting
on our best performances. We think church is for the healthy, even though Jesus
told us time and again he came to minister to the sick. We think church is for
good people, not resurrected people. So, we fake it. We pretend we don’t need
help and we act like we aren’t afraid, even though no decent AA meeting ever
began with, “Hi, my name is Rachel, and I totally have my act together.” [v]
The Spirit calls us to be the church, in our own sickness –
our doubts, our fears, our indecision. We don’t have to have our acts together.
We don’t have to have it all figured out. The church at Pentecost knew
something important – something we need to know, too. They experienced the love
of Christ, convinced that Jesus was God in the flesh. And that love could not
be stopped once it gained a foothold. It melted barriers of fear, guilt, and
self-centeredness, and poured through them like a raging stream. It transformed
their understanding of love, leading them to be like Jesus, embracing sinners
and outcasts, Samaritans and enemies. It gave, not expecting to receive, but
because giving was its nature.[vi]
Through Jesus Christ, God calls us to be one. When we eat
and drink at the table, when we turn to God, when we believe and seek him in
prayer, in church, and in the world around us, he still comes. He awakens in us
gifts for service to one another and the world. And he has begun a new work in
us, and through us, so that his kingdom may be as alive in us as it is in
heaven. So, let’s go be the church. The Spirit is sending us forth! Amen.
[i] Taylor,
Porter, C.,
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/theliturgicaltheologian/2015/05/18/they-were-all-in-one-place-sermon-notes-pentecost-sunday-year-b/
[iii] Pulpit
Fiction podcast, Pentecost B, Robb McCoy and Eric Fistler, May 25, 2015
[iv] Chan,
Francis, Crazy Love, p 21.
[v] Evans,
Rachel Held. Searching for Sunday: Loving, Leaving, and Finding the Church (pp.
87-88). Thomas Nelson
[vi] Smith,
Houston, The Christian Century, (October 4, 2005, p. 10f)
