Spirit – sermon on June 4, 2017
John 20: 19-23 On the evening of that first day of the week, when the disciples were together, with the doors locked for fear, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!” After he said this, he showed them his hands and side. The disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord. Again Jesus said, “Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.” And with that he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive anyone’s sins, their sins are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.”
Acts 2: 1-18 When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability. Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. Amazed and astonished, they asked, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? People from countries far and wide, visitors from Rome, both Jews and converts, Cretans and Arabs—in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.” All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “What does this mean?” But others sneered and said, “They are filled with new wine.” But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them, “People of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to what I say. Indeed, these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o’clock in the morning. No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel: ‘In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams. Even upon my slaves, both men and women, in those days I will pour out my Spirit; and they shall prophesy.’”
Sermon: Spirit by Rev. Doreen Oughton
So, as we talked about in the word for all ages, today is considered to be the birthday of the Christian church. Why do you think that is? In these stories of Pentecost, they didn’t consecrate a building. They didn’t sit down and develop a creed or a statement of faith. They didn’t head to the holy mountain to see if God had any more commandments for them. They didn’t create a membership book or form committees. And all these people in Jerusalem, those who were touched by fire-like tongues and those who heard their own languages spoken were devout Jews. And after this experience many of them continued to worship in synagogues, to study the Torah, to follow the commandments. They kept kosher and circumcised their sons at 8 days old.
So what is our understanding of how this was the birth of the Christian church? What we are celebrating, I believe, is the beginning of awareness and practice of a new Way to get closer to God, the Way of Jesus. It can be a tricky thing to talk about, because what do we associate with new? Better, right? New and improved. The idea gets out there that Christianity is better than Judaism. We take scripture passages that were really disagreements between Jewish sects and use them to disavow Judaism. The Pharisees and Sadducees and scribes in the gospels become not only villains, but stand-ins for an overall Jewish foolishness and hard-headedness. We think Jesus is the first one to infuse God’s law with love. And that’s just not true.
Even the notion of a Holy Spirit is not new to these devout Jews gathered in Jerusalem. The Hebrew scripture has many references to it, right from the start in second verse of the bible – Genesis 1:2, “the earth was without form, and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the Spirit of God was moving over the face of the water.” The Spirit of God, right there in the beginning. The Psalms reference it as a manifestation of God’s presence – “Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me” and “Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence?” As a guide and teacher – “You gave your good Spirit to instruct them,” and “But it is the Spirit in a man, the breath of the Almighty, that gives him understanding.” The Holy Spirit filled and empowered people chosen by God – Joseph son of Jacob, Joshua, Moses, David, Saul and many prophets.
In the time of Jesus and long before, there were many different understandings of the law, of what it meant to be faithful, what the most important aspects of Judaism were. Just as there are many different understandings of Christianity – what it means to be faithful, what the most important aspect of it are. But Jesus was united with his Jewish brothers and sisters in his understanding that they were a people chosen by God to serve and glorify God. Hopefully such an understanding can unite us with all the “people of the book” – Jews, Christians and Muslims.
So again, why is this event – Pentecost – understood as the birth of something? Even if we don’t call it something better, it is something new – a new understanding of the Holy Spirit as something that can touch anyone, that can be claimed by the most ordinary of people, something that spills out and catches on like wildfire. And again, I have to clarify that mercy, generosity and kindness were always part of the Jewish moral code; but Jesus, in his resurrection, gave us a glimpse of the life that awaits us through self-giving love. It was an important marker for those early disciples. There are references from the first century of this celebration.
I’m reading a book called A New Kind of Christianity, by Brian McLaren, with a subtitle “10 questions that are transforming the faith.” He talks about the aha moment he had when he stopped looking backwards at Jesus – through the lens of Christian theologians like Luther or Calvin, Wesley or Aquinas or Augustine. Or as interpreted by faith leaders like the Pope or Billy Graham or even Paul. Instead he looked forward, seeing Jesus as part of Jewish lineage – from Adam to Abraham, Moses, David, and Isaiah. It’s important to keep Jesus in the Jewish story, where, interestingly, no one ever talked about original sin or the Fall, or the eternal torment of hell.
But even more important to this sermon is what McLaren says about the Jewish understanding of goodness in contrast to the Greco-Roman perspective of perfection. Genesis tells a story of a world created by God and called good. Not perfect, but good. Because if it is perfect, there is nowhere to go but down. McLaren says that starting with good allows things to unfold in stages, just as described in Genesis and in all of scripture. Things change, understandings open up, both on the part of God and humans. Things that were meaningful at one point in time become less so, and so new ways of reaching out, or looking in evolve. This happened all through history in every faith, and continues to happen today.
This “new kind of Christianity” McLaren proposes isn’t necessarily better than the Christianity you grew up with, but it is, I believe, Spirit filled. The Pentecost story of a new understanding of Spirit has much to teach us. We learn that there is value in speaking in ways that are relevant to people who are not part of the inner circle. In a devotional on this passage, Rev. Emily Heath tells about someone who used her phone to open her FB page and check-in at the church. Another woman nearby scolded her, saying that church is not a place for cell phones. But Heath points out that check in on FB sent a message out beyond the church’s walls, telling friends and neighbors “Hey, this is my church…and you would be welcome here, too.” She notes that our ways of communicating are changing everyday. She wonders if technology is calling us into a Pentecost moment, wondering, “Are we going to wait for the people around us to walk into our doors to learn the language of church? Or are we going to learn to speak a new language and share our story with others?” It is an amazing story, this story of evolving goodness, of mercy and self-giving love, of power and courage; a story of stumbling, imperfect followers, a suffering servant, of brokenness that does not have the last word. May the Spirit open up for you and for us new ways of sharing it. May it be so.
