Getting the point of Pentecost (sermon from Sunday, May 20, 2018)

Readings:  

Acts 2:1-21 
(You can find a wonderful dramatic reading of the Pentecost story at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-I65buSrhc)

Romans 8:22-27
(Paul in his travels around the Mediterranean, and the churches he helped establish -- like the church in Rome, have no illusions about life.  They know the realities of loss, sorrow, poverty and powerlessness in the world and in their own lives.  But faith in God, commitment to the risen Jesus, and openness to Spirit give them a hope not everyone has,  In his letter to the followers of Jesus in Rome, Paul encourages them in their faith.  He reminds them that God's Spirit is at work in their life and the life of the world much more than we can see and understand.)

Today is Pentecost Sunday.  The birthday of the church.  The day the Spirit of God and Jesus came down and filled the hearts and lives of 120 followers of Jesus, and turned them into a spiritual powerhouse. 

I don’t know, do you think we should have done more?

We took down the white-draped cross of the Easter season, to show the transition to a new time and new age.  We moved the pulpit back up to let the Word of God be our guide into life.  We put on the Pentecost antependium, to remind ourselves that we are people and a community of holy Spirit.

But should we have done more?  One year we had balloons to bounce around in the sanctuary – a sign of the joy and freedom of Spirit-ful living.  Another time I think we had a birthday cake.  I know we’ve had red and yellow streamers around the sanctuary to remind us of the tongues of fire.  And what about the fans blowing full speed, and some kind of whooshing-sounding chant to help us feel and hear the rush of the Spirit around us?   To re-create some of the excitement of the first Pentecost gathering, and maybe symbolize part of what Pentecostals experience every Sunday?

I don’t know. 

I was struck this week by something Thom Shumann, a colleague in ministry and an American Presbyterian pastor wrote in an on-line conversation this week:

“I dread Pentecost [he wrote].  There, I've said it.

“Oh, at one time, it was one of my favorite Sundays.  I loved inviting people to wear red (even the first time I did that, taking off my traditional black preaching robe to reveal a bright red one).  I liked using the balloons, and loved the processionals, and coming up with news ways to represent this day.  But not anymore. 

“See, now I find Pentecost to be one massive guilt trip.

“After all, I've never preached a sermon that made 3 people, much less 3000 want to be baptized.  I've never gotten folks so excited about the good news that they suddenly start wanting to share it right as soon as they get out the door.  I've never (fortunately, I think) been in a church where suddenly a multitude of languages is spoken.  So I find Pentecost makes me feel pretty guilty. 

“And folks in the churches feel the same way.  Most of the congregations I have served have felt burnt out; they don't feel flames dancing on their heads.  They are lucky if one or two new folks show up once in a while, much less multitudes.  They, like me, probably wouldn't know what to do if the windows suddenly burst open and the Holy Spirit came racing in.

“Part of it, I think, comes from the fact that the story of Pentecost has been turned into a model for the successful church.  The place that can reach out and bring in all the seekers.  The place that can offer program after program.  The place that is full of power, the place that can pull off pyrotechnics, the place where the preacher entertains multitudes and sends them off thrilled beyond belief.  But that ain't me, or any of the churches I have been blessed to serve.

“And thus, every time I read the Acts passage, I feel overwhelmed by guilt.  And I wonder if the folks who read and hear it feel that as well.

“So, this year, no more guilt.  This year, no more focus on the great words that converted thousands.  No confetti wands or red robes; no balloons released to the sky; no more highlighting the flames, the sound, the rushing wind, the speaking in tongues.

“This year, just a gentle reminder to folks that we have many things to say that are gospel to those around us, and we will continue to speak of grace to despairing world; we will continue to model peace to those who are filled with fear and anger; we will continue to stand up to oppression and to walk with those burdened with injustice; we will listen to our neighbors from Somalia, Eritrea, the Middle East, and to those from Appalachia and the hard streets of poverty and addiction…”

… or, we here at Fifty might say we will continue to listen with caring hearts to our neighbors from Syria and the rest of the Middle East, and from our First Nations, from downtown Hamilton, and from the other side of whatever divides Winona into fragments.

Like Paul as he travelled around the Mediterranean and like the Christian community established in Rome, we will continue to feel the stresses and strains of our society, and lament along with everyone else the sorrows and the sufferings of our day.  And instead of pulling back into fear, anxiety and polarizing isolation like some do, we will continue to have faith in the Word and Spirit to renew the face of the Earth; we will continue to reach out in hope to what good, new thing God and history are bringing to be, even when we can’t see it yet; and in the name of Christ we will continue to build bridges of love and connections of compassion to all.

It’s what the very first verses of Genesis are about, where we’re first introduced to the Spirit of God breathing and brooding over the dark and chaotic waters of life – an Earth full of potential but so much at odds with itself that the divine dream of anything good coming of it seems foolish.  From then on for the rest of the story, the sum total and point of Spirit throughout history and eternity is to be weaving order from the strands of chaos, shining light into darkness no matter how deep, calling life out of death no matter how final it seems, and helping goodness and God-ness to emerge within the miraculous mess we call life on Earth.

And we will continue to be moved by that Spirit – going to visit the lonely widow down the road or in a nursing home; donating food to the mom-and-pop-style, but absolutely necessary Stoney Creek Food Bank; making quilts to donate to the Wesley Centre and Inasmuch House; giving away a meaningful part of our precious Peach Festival money in mission to others less fortunate than ourselves; giving rides to people who need them to get to the doctor, the hospital, or worship; welcoming the other into our community and our company for no other reason than God loves them and brings them to us and us to them as a gift.

And, to return to Thom Shumann’s thoughts, “it's not always very ‘successful’ ministry, it's not always noticed by the denomination, or the media, but it is what we are called to do, and to be, and to live out.  Because the Spirit these days seems to be moving with gentleness while our culture is overwhelmed with cruelty; the Spirit seems to be speaking in the tongues of the broken, the lonely and the forgotten, not the powerful and the pundits; the Spirit appears maybe most often as that gentle nudge at our back sending us to serve the folks that everyone talks about but does nothing to help.

“So no more guilt.  Just a quiet recognition that Pentecost is not always spelled with a capital P.”

As much fun as we sometimes have celebrating Pentecost with balloons, red and yellow streamers, fans turned on full blast and chants of whooshing sounds, the point of Pentecost is not to make church or even just our worship exciting. 

The point of Pentecost then and now is to save the world. 

The point of Pentecost then and now is to draw us, as followers of Jesus, into Spirit’s great and cosmic work of bringing the world into harmony with the good will and Word of God, in whatever ways are ours to follow.

And we get the point.

Towards Pentecost Sunday (May 20, 2018)

A little Pentecost prep ...

Have a look at this logo for Pentecost:

Have a good, long look at it.  

Notice the different elements within it.  

What does each of the different elements suggest or represent?

How are they related?

What does this logo say to you?

Where does it lead you? 

See you Sunday?  

And if you have any other plans, wherever you are and whatever you are doing may Spirit be with you, and you be open to Spirit.

Living up to the name (sermon from Sunday, May 13, 2018)

Reading -- John 17:6-19
(In the Gospel of John, on the night he is to be betrayed to the authorities and arrested, Jesus washes his disciples' feet, shares a final Passover meal with them, and prepares them for his leaving and their continuing mission in the power of Spirit.  He also prays for them -- thanking God for giving him these followers, recalling that he has made them distinctive and strong in the world by what he has shown them of God's true nature and way, and praying that they will remain strong in the community, the mission, the theology and the joy into which he has led them.)

From Jesus’s prayer for us on the last night of his life, in the language of the Contemporary English Version: 

Heavenly Father,

you have given me some followers from this world,

and I have shown them what you are like …

While I was with them,

I kept them safe by keeping them focused

on what you really are like, and how you work in the world.

Or as it says in the New Revised Standard Version:

I have made your name known

to those whom you gave me from the world.

While I was with them,

I protected them in your name that you have given me.

This week I traded a few emails with Kathy Cushnie because this prayer that Jesus has for us reminded me of something I heard years ago about Jean Jones, Kathy’s mom.  When I began ministry here in the summer of 2001, Jean was already in the hospital – the 2B Ward of West Lincoln Memorial.  She died not long later, and I am very glad to have got to know her even that little bit.  She was a woman of considerable culture, education, civility and strength, and one thing I heard from a number of her family after her passing was what she would say to them whenever they would leave the house to go out into the world:  “Remember, you are a Jones … and your mother’s child.”

Kathy says, “Oh, the memories that brings back.  It was said quite sternly.  I guess she was aware of the pitfalls out there but knew she couldn't shelter us.  We had to find our own way.”

Remember your name, and who you come from. 

And haven’t all our families and all our mothers – all our birth and adoptive and surrogate and spiritual and substitute mothers said that same thing to us in some way as we have grown up, gone out and found our ways into the world? 

And what it is – what it means in each of our cases, is usually something quite simple.  What each of our family names reminds us of, and what nobility and goodness, what human and divine thing, what part of the image of God in the world our sense of origin calls us to live out, is not complicated.  

When I first married and moved away from my parents’ home to the far-away, big, bad city of Toronto, and my first wife and I moved from a student-housing apartment into a real house in a real neighbourhood, the first and only question my mom asked was, “Is there a grocery store nearby?”

She had grown up with poverty and not always much food on the table or in reserve.  Her mom had worked hard to put food on the table each day.  When my mom became a mom herself, she also worked hard to be sure we were fed and fed well.  So even from 2,000 kilometres away she helped me remember that one of the things that makes a house a home, and makes life good is that no one ever need go hungry.

As a mom, one of Japhia’s proudest stories about her daughter, is when Tiffany was in public school and pointing out a new friend to her in a group of them in a park.  She said he was that one, the one doing such and such, the one right over there, the one in the green shorts.  Never once did Tiffany think to mention he was black – the only black kid there, in fact.  It didn’t cross her mind that the colour of his skin was noteworthy.  To Japhia, at least one thing her family name means is that all are welcome.  And it makes her feel good that in her children’s homes and lives no one is excluded or separated out by prejudice or pride of any kind.

Remember your name, and whose child you are.

The Buddhist teacher Chuang Tzu says:

When you realize where you come from,

you naturally become tolerant, disinterested, amused,

kind-hearted as a grandmother, dignified as a king. 

Immersed in wonder of the tao,

you can deal with whatever life brings you.

Jesus says:  

I have made your name known

to those who you gave me from the world.

They were yours, and you gave them to me ...

Now they know who they are -- 

that they are yours, as I am yours.

Holy One, protect them in your name -- 

in your way of being and working in the world,

so that they may be one, as we are one.

All humanity really is God’s family – God’s sons and daughters, God’s children, the spirit and image of God in the world.  And this never goes away.  This is a given of our life on Earth and in the cosmos.

But does everyone remember?  Does everyone recall their holy birth, and whose child they really and ultimately are?

Which is why Jesus came.  To help us remember.  And to draw us together in the world as an intentional family of remembrance within the larger family of forgetfulness, a family that lives true to its deepest name and takes pains to live out what simple, uncomplicated thing it is to be real children of God. 

Father Richard Rohr puts it this way:

“God’s basic method of communicating God’s self and of saving the world is not the ‘saved’ individual, the rightly informed believer, or even a person with a career in ministry, but the journey and bonding process that God initiates in community: in marriages, families, tribes, nations, events, scientists, and churches who are seeking to participate in God’s love, maybe without even consciously knowing it, [by living out from their heart what they breathe in, in the life of the family God helps them to be.]”

Remember your name, and who you come from.

"Building such communities in contrast to the surrounding society [he goes on to say] … was precisely the early church’s missionary strategy.  Small communities of Jesus’ followers would make the message believable:  Jesus is Lord (rather than Caesar is Lord); sharing abundance and living in simplicity (rather than hoarding wealth); non-violence and suffering (rather than aligning with power) … because corporate evil can only be confronted or overcome with corporate good … And it’s hard in any age to imagine a future for the world with counter-cultural, God-shaped communities like that."

So what is our family name?  What way of living have we learned through Jesus that saves us from the evil one today?  And that will help to save the world?

And how do we put ourselves often enough and deeply enough into the life of this family, to really breathe in the name and the way of being that is its essence?

When he is the vine, it can be quite a ride to be one of the branches (sermon from Sunday, April 22, 2018)

Readings:

Acts 8:26-40   

(The Book of Acts tells the story of the beginning of the Christian church.  It's a story of firsts -- first business meeting of the disciples getting organized, first decisions, first prayer meeting and Bible study, first experience together of the fire and passion of Spirit in their bellies, first stewardship program to share what they have for their common mission, first healing of an outsider, first time in prison for challenging the status quo, first martyr for Christ, first time having to go out into totally new territory -- which is the story today.  Until this story Philip was just "one of the disciples" -- nothing remarkable about him, until one day he followed a special prompting of God to go somewhere and do something totally new to him.  Because there's always a first time, isn' there?

John 15:1-8

(When people outside the early church looked at the followers of Jesus, they marveled at the way the disciples cared for one another, and reached out to others beyond their circle to make a difference in the world.  Where did such ordinary people get such extraordinary power?  The disciples knew the answer, and in their record of Jesus' final Last-Supper conversation with his disciples, they share the secret.)

Look up.

Not wa-a-a-a-a-ay up like in the Friendly Giant. 

And not up to heaven.

Just up to the ceiling.  Still inside our sanctuary and building.

“I am the vine, you are the branches”

What a wonderful reminder of our strength.

And of our purpose and mission.

So locally appropriate, given we’re in Niagara wine country.

And it was done by one of our own – at least, some one who used to be a member here.

And so compact, ordered, bounded, set – just like we like church to be.

But is that really how it is?

How old are those leaves and grapes painted on our ceiling?  How many seasons have come and gone since they were put up there?  How many changes have come to who and what we are as church?

A vine is a growing thing.  Its leaves and grapes mature every year.  Grow old quite quickly.  And then there comes the pruning and letting go, that have to happen for a real return to the source, and a growing out again with new leaves and grapes. 

Isn’t that more like what we do here?  And what we celebrate about our church?

And ... even when you look at just one season – what’s here at any one time in our life as a church -- like right now, it's not always as easy to be a vine together, not as idyllic or comfortable or comforting being branches and leaves and grapes together as that painting on our ceiling suggests.

Rev. Thom Shumann, whose prayers and calls to worship we sometimes use in our liturgies, tells the story of one church he served where along one central interior corridor wall, they painted a long green vine, with tiny little branches.  Then each person, whatever age, whether member or guest, was invited to put their palm in paint, leave a palm-print at the end of a branch, and sign their name.  It was a lovely visual reminder of the life they were called to lead as the church and as far as he knows, it's still there on the walls.

But, he says, it also proved to be a visual reminder of how hard it is to be God's vineyard, because the person whose palm print is closest to yours might just be the one gossiping behind your back; just like the neighbor who you lived next door to for decades might be the one having the affair with your spouse; and the folks who talk most about “community” might be the ones who tear it apart if they don't get their way.

He says as attractive as the image of us being in a lovely and pastoral vineyard might be, it just ain't easy.  Just being baptized doesn't make us love our neighbor as much as we love ourselves.  Singing hymns next to our enemies doesn't make us bosom friends.  Claiming to be a “warm friendly church” doesn't always include the stranger; and when it comes to setting aside our lives and our agendas for others, well, he says, just sit in on any church board meeting. 

He concludes that maybe the worry about being pruned from the vine is the least we have to worry about.  Our biggest concern and the thing we find hardest to live with sometimes is that it’s Jesus’ vine and not ours, and it’s Jesus and God, not us, who decide who we get to be with and grow close to.  It’s the fullness of his life and the fullness of God’s love, not the limits of what we want that get expressed in the true vine.

Which makes me wonder if this may be a helpful image of the vine that Jesus is.

It’s a little wild.  Somewhat twisted, even perverse.  And do you notice how in some places it’s even unclear what’s part of the vine and its growth, and what’s just wind blowing around it?  There are even different kinds of grapes growing on it – some red, some white, all from the one great vine.

Does that seem like us sometime?  With our different tastes in music for worship?  With some of us coming to worship in suits and ties and good Sunday dress, and others more casual and comfortable?  With the different kinds of programming we enjoy, the different needs we try to meet, the different expectations we have of what makes us a church? 

If so, if that's what we're like ... maybe hooray!  And if not, maybe the question is why not?

One other thought.  I know Jesus is talking about a grape vine here.  That's the Hebrew-Scripture image of God and God's people – of God planting and caring for them in the world, and them bearing good fruit for the world because of it. 

But might there also be something to be said for a vine like the trumpet vine as an image of Jesus and the kingdom of God, and of our life as followers of him and citizens of it?

I have had experience with a trumpet vine.  One year I was looking for something to fill and brighten up an empty stretch of fence between our and our neighbour's yard.  I saw the trumpet vine at the nursery, read about its colourful, full beauty.  I bought one, planted it, and before long was pleased with its growth and its colourful blooms.

No one told me, though, how prolific a trumpet vine is.  Within a couple of years as it grew it began to spread far beyond where I wanted it to be.  It spread underground in all directions.  Soon it was popping up in the herb garden, around a white pine (which it threatened to strangle if left unchecked), in the lawn, way on the other side of the yard among the peppers and rhubarb, and even coming out from under the back shed.

Can you imagine what it took for me to beat it back?  What measures I had to resort to, to bring it under control, and then get rid of it?  How long it took?  And how even now it is not really gone?  There are still occasional little shoots in scattered places.  It's still alive under the surface of the yard, and I'm just waiting for the day when it bursts forth all over.

Like Jesus?  And like the kingdom of God in the world?  Not bound by our expectations and designs?  Not limited to what we may find comfortable and nice?  Ready to break through where we least expect it -- both in here, and out there?

That's what the early church found.  Theirs is a story of one first after another, one surprise after another, one new experience after another of the kingdom of God for them to get used to, and learn to become part of.  Like when Philip -- mild-mannered Philip just minding his own middling business as an average disciple trying to follow Jesus in his own life, when suddenly he finds himself led out of his comfort zone into a place he's not been before, with a stranger not part of his community, and by golly this stranger is reading things about God and asking questions to which Philip knows in his heart the answer is Jesus.

Who knew?  That the Jesus-vine and a hunger for the kingdom of God would pop up like that out there?  It makes me wonder what kind of spiritual hunger is all around us out there in the wilderness of Winona's old and new communities.  And what kinds of questions people are facing, to which we may have part of the answer?

The Jesus-vine -- the kingdom of God as a living reality, like the trumpet vine, is everywhere just under the surface, just ready to emerge given half a chance.  Good news for the world.

Good news for us too.  Because how often do we -- like me in my back yard, out of our desire to keep our lives in some kind of check and some kind of manageable order, end up killing, or at least limiting within our life the the life of the vine -- tamping down the spiritual urges, limiting the growth of commitment to God, putting a little circle around our faith just to keep it under control and not take over everything?

The good news is that no matter how hard we try to kill it or keep it under control, we cannot.  Because this is God we are talking about.  It's Jesus.  The kingdom of God. 

And if there's one thing we know in the aftermath of Easter -- in the season of Easter, it's that you cannot really kill God, at least not for good.  God will go on, as Jesus goes on and the kingdom of God goes on. 

And all we have to do at any time when we feel cut off from the life of that vine, is re-connect.  Re-connect to the source.  Re-connect to Jesus.  Re-connect to the life of God's kingdom in the world.