http://www.lectionarypage.net/YearB_RCL/Pentecost/BPentDay_RCL.html
Pentecost 2012
Sarah
J. Kooperkamp
I always get a little nervous when I see a magazine cover
with some sort of image of Jesus or declaring something about Christians these
days. And as much as I am nervous, I try to have a look and actually read the
article. I have a tendency to assume that the article will describe Christians
and Jesus in ways that make me feel like I have never encountered either. So I
think you might understand how I felt when I saw a Newsweek magazine in my
therapist’s office with Forget the Church, Follow Jesus in huge letters on the
cover. Below it: Christianity in Crisis. Ugh. The words weren’t helped by the
image of Jesus, a white man with longish hair, wearing a jean jacket and a
flannel shirt, seemingly standing in Times Square. This did not seem like
something I wanted to read. I was
uncharacteristically early, about 10 minutes early for my appointment and I was
able to read most of the article before my therapist called me into her office.
By the time I sat down in the office, I had forgotten all of the personal
things I wanted to talk to her about, and all I could do was explain to her
(over and over again) how wrong this article had gotten it.
Now, I don’t want to
be unfair to Andrew Sullivan, the author of the article. He does point out a
lot of ways in which the Church as an institution has either failed or gotten
in the way of the message of radical love we find in the Gospel. He points to the
sex abuse scandals in the Catholic Church, the overly politicized religious
right, and the Biblical fundamentalism of some Christians in America that
somehow ignores a century and a half of Biblical scholarship. And there is no
denying that mainline protestant Christianity and the Catholic Church in America have
seen tremendous declines in attendance and support over the last 70 years. I
suppose this congregation and this church building are both a recognition of
this reality and a refutation of it. We have weathered many storms here, and
there certainly have been declines, but we seem to be experiencing growth as a
community. The troubled state of our building represents the physical effects
on the decline of the mainline churches. For us that decline is very personal.
And so, Sullivan concludes that Christianity is in
crisis. We too might declare here that the state of the church building, and
the amount of funds needed to repair and restore it might mean that we here at
St. Ann and the Holy Trinity are in crisis.
Sometimes it can be a
good thing to recognize that we are in a crisis. A crisis can kind of go in one
of two ways, the fear is, of course, that things will just fall a part, but the
alternative is that something new is done. In Sullivan’s article, he is arguing
for something new to be done, his new thing is “forget the church, follow
Jesus”—and yes, this indeed reduces his argument somewhat, but he sees the
church as so broken at the moment that the truth of Jesus’ life, death and
resurrection is not the central message that is preached from the Gospel each
week. If we turn to our scripture reading today we see crisis—in Acts, the
disciples are all living in a house in Jerusalem. They aren’t too sure what to
do after Jesus’ death. In the 40 days of Easter after the resurrection Jesus
has visited with them often. And then there is Jesus’ ascension. Now what? They
wonder. What do they do now that Jesus is both dead and ascended? Who is with
them now? How do they tell that story? What are they supposed to do with it?
God sees this crisis among these early followers of Jesus, and God does
something new.
The new thing that
God does is to fill them with the Holy Spirit and send them out to preach about
God’s deeds of power. In some ways this matches up to Sullivan’s image of Jesus
as a figure we can all as individuals follow. If we each, speaking our own
languages go out into the world, living as Jesus lived, preaching as Jesus
preached, filled with the Spirit surely we will make the world a better place.
Surely we will be helping to bring about the kingdom of God that Jesus tells us
about in the Lord's Prayer.
But I
think there is more to God's new thing than individuals receiving the power of
the Holy Spirit. First of all it is significant that the thing these disciples
receive is language. We know the importance of the word in John's Gospel from
the prologue which begins "in the beginning there was the Word. And the
Word was with God. And the Word was God. " And the word was God-- what a
powerful reminder of how language and words relate to God. When we hear those
words that begin John’s Gospel “in the beginning” we are of course reminded of
Genesis. Our biblical memories pull that text forward and there too we see the
importance of language. Creation happens when God speaks. "Let there be
light" and there was. God’s words bring something out of nothing. So now
that our biblical memories are bringing forth all these texts about words and
beginnings I think we might be in a better place to understand the new thing that
God is doing. Language is the way we come into existence. It is the way that
God interacts with the world. Language
is necessarily relational. We have speakers and listeners. The Word begins with
God, but then it is sent out. The Word comes down to interact with humanity.
The gift of languages from the Holy Spirit is so that the disciples can go out
and forge relationships. So it's not just a miracle- this power from the Holy
Spirit. The miracle is not just the ability to speak a language that was unknown
to the disciples a moment earlier--It's also something quite ordinary. The gift given by the Holy Spirit is gift
that compels the disciples out into the world to be with others. The
opportunity to be a part of new communities and new conversations is the gift
that is granted to them.
John's
gospel today sort of lays out this plan for relationships- there is a trickle
down aspect to them. There is God's relationship to Jesus, Jesus' relationship
to the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit's relation to us. And then the gift that
the holy spirit brings to the disciples is the ability to have new
relationships with people all over the world. Our relationships with one
another- when they are loving generous and kind echo God's love to us. When we
share our self with other people we are in the presence of the Holy Spirit. Not
to step on the toes of our preacher for next week at trinity Sunday- but the
three in one nature of the trinity emphasizes God's relationality. The Holy
Spirit’s part of the trinity is one I think a lot of us have a hard time
defining. For some of us, I think God as creator and God as Jesus are clearer
to us. The Holy Spirit might seem a little mystical to us, or maybe its just a
little strange. And yet, the Holy Spirit, the advocate in John’s language, is
the part of God that is most with us. John’s describes the Holy Spirit as the
part of God that guides us into the truth. So following John we can demystify
the Holy Spirit a bit: it’s the feeling inside urging us towards generosity,
compassion, love, justice, and doing the right thing. It is the feeling that
helps us to consider others. It’s the desire to help someone carry a stroller
up the subway stairs. It’s the impetus to give to charitable causes. The Holy
Spirit is the thing that brings us together here. It helps us to get to church
in the mornings, and be a part of the community. When we share the Eucharist in
a few moments—it will be with the help of the Holy Spirit that the bread and
wine are transformed in to the body and blood, and it will be with the Holy
Spirit’s help that we are transformed from a group of people in the same room
into the Body of Christ.
And
that’s what Pentecost is all about: The Holy Spirit’s transformation of
individual follower’s of Jesus into the Body of Christ. We think of Pentecost
as the church’s birthday because it is only with the power of the Holy Spirit
that we are able to come together and become the Church. The gift of speaking languages was so that
the church could be open and available to all. But the Spirit’s gift to all of
us, regardless of our language skills, is the Church.
So what then of Andrew Sullivan? I think that ultimately
what is wrong with his article is that with out the church, he is denying the
power of the Holy Spirit to do a new thing. There is no doubt that there is
trouble in Christianity in America, but we need the church more than ever to be
guided into the truth by the Holy Spirit. We need the community of the church
to gather together every week, remembering Jesus’ life, death and resurrection
to give the Holy Spirit an opportunity to be present with us, to guide us
towards the truth, the truth of loving relationships, the truth of justice, the
truth of equal opportunities, the truth of God’s greatness, the truth of the importance
of God’s creation, and the ability to do something about all this. If we forgot
the church and followed Jesus, we would do plenty of good, but we wouldn’t be
open to the role of the Holy Spirit to guide us towards that goodness.
And what then of
our crisis? It is perhaps a reminder for us to attune our ears and prepare our
selves for the new thing that God might do among us. It is a chance to really
feel for and be open to the ways in which the Holy Spirit might be guiding us
towards the truth. As a church we know that there is a lot of work to be done
here. We understand that, and we know that the Holy Spirit is going to have to
play a role in helping us out, but Pentecost is an opportunity to take some
time and listen for the Holy Spirit. We will listen by talking to one another,
knowing that that Holy Spirit is in our relationships with one another, and in
our language as we speak. We will listen by gathering together every Sunday and worshiping. And we will listen by going out into the world, as the disciples
are asked to do, and forging new relationships. We will do it by the power of
the Holy Spirit.
AMEN.
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