Sermon for Pentecost Sunday, Year B, "On Fire or Burned Out?" Acts 2:1-12, Ezekiel 37:1-14

 Sermon 5/23/21

Ezekiel 37:1-14, Acts 2:1-21  

Pentecost: On Fire or Burned Out?

I’ve been thinking about how we’re going through our seconds of a lot of things in this global pandemic. Last year, congregations made their way through Lent and Easter and Pentecost in the midst of a fairly new pandemic. We were afraid and figuring things out and so sad not to be together, but I was so moved by how quickly pastor and church leaders and congregations pivoted to find new ways of doing things, ways to continue to serve the community, ways to continue to be in relationship with each other in the Body of Christ, ways to continue praising God, journeying in Lent, proclaiming resurrection, and feeling full of the Holy Spirit despite all the struggles. The persistence and faithfulness of God’s people was impressive and inspiring. 

And here we still are. Yes, there are so many signs of hope about the pandemic, as things open in new ways, as vaccines roll out, as healing and recovery of all kinds begin. But there’s also an incredible fatigue, and a sense of finally really taking stock of the toll the pandemic has had on all aspects of life, including, very much including faith communities. Last June, after 17 years of ministry in the local church, I stepped away from pastoring, wrapping up my time as the pastor up in Gouverneur and North Gouverneur to go back to school to work on a PhD. My plans to go back to school were made well before I ever heard of Covid-19. But although I felt some guilt about stepping away from my congregation during such a global crisis, I’ll admit I also felt relieved about responsibilities that would no longer be mine. I wouldn’t have to figure out how to pastor during a pandemic anymore! But so many of my friends, so many of them pastors - they’ve been doing this - figuring out how to lead a church through a pandemic - for more than a year now. And congregations - they’ve been working hard to figure out how to keep it together for more than a year now. And frankly, I think everyone is just exhausted. Done. Drained. How much more can churches take? The list of retiring pastors this year in our Annual Conference is huge. The number of churches in our conference that are closing? - also pretty large this year. And I’ve heard from congregational leaders and members who have stuck it out all this time a sense of fear and foreboding: Yes, things are opening up, slowly. But will anyone come back? And if they don’t, how can we keep going? We’ve hung on for so long, but how much more can we take? 

I don’t say all of this to overwhelm or depress anyone, or to make things seem hopeless. I say it to acknowledge and recognize and face the reality of the state of our well-being as the Church. I say it, because when I first thought about preaching on Pentecost, and I thought about all the metaphors for the day of being “on fire” for God, my sermon title immediately popped into my head. On Fire? How about Burned Out! Last year we could summon the energy to feel On Fire despite all the challenges, with a sense of “we’re in this together.” Can we still? Or have we used up all our energy and creativity and we’re just really tired and really done with all of it, and really scared about how we feel. Burned up, not on fire. 

So that’s why today, in addition to the traditional Pentecost text from Acts 2, we’re also reading an alternate Pentecost text, from the prophet Ezekiel. In Acts 2, the traditional Pentecost text, the disciples are gathered in Jerusalem, waiting. They’re waiting because just recently, Jesus returned to God’s home, leaving earth, at least physically. He’d been with the disciples for forty days after his resurrection, and undoubtedly they wished he’d just stay with them forever. But he leaves, promising them that he’s going to send the Spirit to help them, to empower them. It must be hard to believe, though, and they must feel somewhat like everything they had with Jesus is sort of over. But on Pentecost, a harvest festival that is part of the Jewish faith, the disciples are gathered together, when suddenly this sound like a violent rushing wind fills the air. The spirit rests on them each like tongues of fire, and they suddenly find themselves proclaiming the good news of Jesus and God’s reign on earth in many languages, so that they are understood by all who hear them. At first many think the disciples must be drunk, but Peter gives a fiery sermon, quoting the prophet Joel, and speaking about the dreams and visions that will come to all through the Spirit - young and old, men and women, slave and free. And in the rest of the chapter, after the section we hear today, Peter calls the crowds to repent - and they do! And three thousand are baptized on the spot and commit themselves to discipleship. It is a truly amazing story. It’s so amazing in fact that it feels unreal. The disciples were on fire and the results of their passion for God were immediate, tangible, huge, and transformative. 

I think many of us find our discipleship, even when we feel on fire for God, rarely so immediately and quantitatively transformative. And so sometimes - for me at least, but I’m guessing you might feel this way too - it’s a little hard to relate to Pentecost. On fire? Maybe. But the fire has fizzled, and we’re burned up now. But Ezekiel? I get Ezekiel. Ezekiel was a priest living in exile in Babylon, along with many other Israelites during the 6th century BC. I think it is hard for most of us to imagine our whole community being conquered and living in exile in a foreign land, but this season was Israel’s most devastating experience since their slavery under Egyptian rule. They were a people whose religious roots were deeply tied to their land – the Promised Land – and living in exile represented the results, the consequences of their turning away from their faithfulness to God - they were separated from their land.

Ezekiel describes in this passage an image God brings to him that represents what the exiled people of Israel look like emotionally – like a valley of dry bones – skeletons. “The hand of the Lord came upon me, and he brought me out by the spirit of the Lord and set me down in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones. [The Lord] led me all round them; there were very many lying in the valley, and they were very dry,” we read. Then God asks Ezekiel, “Mortal, can these bones live?” Ezekiel is smart, and says, “You know, God.” God tells Ezekiel to prophesy that God will breathe into the bones and cause them to be covered with flesh and come to life again. Ezekiel does as he’s told, and it happens just as God describes, and the bones live again, given flesh and breath. These newly living beings don’t just spring back to vibrancy though. Instead, they say that their bones are dried up and their hope is lost. But God responds to them: “I will bring you back to the land of Israel. And you shall know that I am the Lord … I will put my spirit within you and you shall live, and I will place you on your own soil.” Ezekiel knows that God is faithful, even when we are not, and so Ezekiel knows that Israelites are not abandoned. Eventually, Israel does come home from exile, and slowly, they come back to life, and reclaim their identity. 

I’m guessing you know exactly what it feels like to be dry bones. Some of you know because that’s what you feel like right now, with the weight of this enduring pandemic and all that it has taken out of you, your family, and our world over the last year. But you probably know just what it's like to be nothing but dry bones from other seasons in your life too, or from other seasons in our world. You might know because you’ve experienced the pain of being mistreated by others, consistently, in ways that wear you down and break your spirit. You might know because you’ve struggled with losing your way, choosing things that drew you away from instead of closer to God, even though you meant to make different choices. You might know about being dry bones because you’ve tried again and again, so hard to be faithful, so hard to share God with others, so hard to be full of hope, so hard to look for growth, so hard to see signs that you were on God’s path, and been unable to find anything that looked promising, until eventually you felt - like dry bones. Burned out. 

As I said, when God asks Ezekiel, “Mortal, can these bones live?” I think Ezekiel responds so wisely. “God, you know.” It’s a wise answer because it acknowledges both that God does know and the implied converse: Ezekiel does not know. And that’s ok. Because God does know, and Ezekiel - and the dry bones - are listening to God. And actually, the disciples on Pentecost were in much the same situation as Ezekiel. They, too, didn’t really know what was going on, as much as Jesus had tried to prepare them. But God knew. And the disciples were listening, and heard the Spirit, moving on the wind. 

Church, can these dry bones live? We do not know in the midst of being dried up and burned out if there is any life left. But we don’t have to know, because God does know. Earlier this week I had the opportunity to go on a retreat day for clergy with Church of the Wild, a new church start based at Sky Lake, one of our conference camps down in the Southern Tier. Church in the Wild is focused on sustainability and care for creation. The focus of the retreat was on figuring out what the next step was in God’s call on our lives. We took a walk around the lake, stopping at spots along the way, reflecting on questions in a guided meditation. On one segment, the leaders asked us to pay attention to nature, to creation, and to think about what lessons we found there when thinking about what God is calling us to in our next step. As I walked along, and noticed everything that was teeming with life in these warm days, I also noticed how much is dying all the time - crunching leaves from last year’s fall, pine needles, trees that didn’t make it through a windy storm or that succumbed to something or another. And yet, all of these dying things were an integral part of the lush life that was unfolding. The dying things made fertile soil for new life to unfold in very literal ways. And so I found myself wondering what in my own life has “died” to make way for new life, and what I need to let go of, in order to embrace what God has in store next. And I found myself thinking about the seasons when I was sure I was burned out and burned up and had nothing left. But God knew better, planning unforeseen joy. 

Church, can these dry bones live? God knows. It’s ok if you’re feeling burned out right now. Because it turns out, God can work with dry bones. If you can’t figure out how to revive and renew and refresh, and if the idea of trying to work for a new vision and new hope and new start sounds exhausting, and if you feel like you’d rather have a good long nap than a bout of the Holy Spirit, and if God birthing something new in the Church universal, and in this particular congregation, and in your individual life sounds too good to be true, or like it means too much hard work, or like you’d rather just be left alone, or like you’ve got nothing left to give, take heart. God is just asking this: that you trust that God knows if we’ve got life left in us or not. And if God knows, God also equips. God also makes a pathway. God breathes life into us. And sometimes that Holy Spirit - literally Holy Breath - looks like a violent rushing wind that has results we can count, and grasp and measure. And sometimes that Holy Spirit - Holy Breath - is just reminding us that there is life where we thought there was only death. And while that might not be a gift we can measure, it is a priceless treasure all the same. God knows what can live and work and move among us, and God is ever faithful, to on fire people, to burned out people, to me, to you. Thanks be to God. Amen.  

Sermon for Ascension Sunday, Year B, "Head in the Clouds," Acts 1:1-11

Sermon 5/16/21

Acts 1:1-11

Ascension Sunday: Head in the Clouds

Today is a Sunday some folks don’t even remember is part of the Christian year - it’s Ascension Sunday. Ascension Sunday is the day we celebrate the ascension of Jesus. After Easter Sunday, Jesus spends forty days with the disciples, a time period I wish the scriptures said more about. We don’t know much about what Jesus does during this time, except that some people get to see and talk to the resurrected Jesus, and he continues to ready his disciples to receive the Holy Spirit after he’s gone again. And then, forty days after Easter morning, when the disciples are gathered in Jerusalem, Jesus says some final words, and is swept up into the clouds. 

Ascension Sunday is kind of weird, I think. I think it is weird because it kind of implies that we actually think heaven is just “up there” somewhere, as if if we could pop above the clouds, we’d find heaven. That kind of imagery worked great when you couldn’t get above the clouds, but since we can just take an airplane ride and get above the clouds, and so far I have seen some pretty sights, but no pearly gates when flying, thinking of heaven as “up there” is a little bit limited. Sure, when I was little, it was hard not to picture heaven as something like where the Care Bears lived - everyone just floating around on clouds. But as an adult, I’ve stopped thinking of God’s eternal home as a place I can get to if I go high enough or far enough. I’m guessing you don’t think of it that way either - as a location we could pinpoint on a map. All of this is to say that the Ascension is a little weird because when Jesus returns to heaven and he “ascends” into the clouds in the scripture, we don’t know exactly where it is he’s going up and off to. 

Does that change what Ascension means to us? Well, to answer that, we’d have to figure out what Ascension does mean to us. Does it mean something to us? The fact that we sort of forget this liturgical day exists, or the fact that we can sort of pass it over, sort of want to pass it over if anything more interesting to focus on in worship that week arises tells me that it doesn’t hold much space in our hearts. But I feel like there’s really a lot here for us to think about. Think about it this way: After the extreme pain of Jesus’ arrest and crucifixion, which also involved the betrayal of Jesus by one of their own, and Peter denying Jesus, a low point in his discipleship, after Jesus’ public, tortuous death, the disciples experience the rapturous joy of Jesus’ resurrection. And now he’s going to leave them again. 

For nearly a month and a half, it must have seemed to the disciples that they could breathe again. Jesus was not dead, and everything could go back to normal. They would follow him once more. They were not abandoned. Jesus was with them again. But now, he’s leaving again. And although this time he doesn’t die - death has no power over Jesus - and this time he isn’t torn from them through violence, this time, he’s physically gone for good. And this time, it isn’t others who cause Jesus to leave them. He’s choosing to leave them behind, to return to God while leaving them on earth, along with responsibility for the mission. Jesus ascends, and there’s no mistaking that he’s no longer on earth with them. They see it happen. There’s no tomb this time. His body is not on earth. When I think about it this way - about the grief of Jesus leaving them again, I’m both surprised we don’t focus on the Ascension more - because there’s a lot of feelings to connect to in this text, and not surprised -  because who wants to dwell on the fact that we’ve been left alone by Jesus on purpose. 

So I’m not surprised, then, that the bit of conversation that we get in our text today shows that the disciples are still experiencing a bit of denial about what Jesus has been trying to tell them - about his leaving, about Jesus’ mission, and about what will happen next for the disciples. I don’t know if the disciples knew, when they gathered with Jesus, that this was their last moment with him on earth among them in this way or not. But their question to Jesus suggests at least some - confusion, if not outright denial. They ask Jesus, “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?” They want to know if Jesus is going to set Israel free from rule by the Roman Empire, to set Israel free from oppression at last. It’s a reasonable question on its own - it’s just that Jesus has kind of been answering that question all along, all throughout his ministry. Many people assumed the messiah, the anointed one of God, would come to “restore Israel,” that the whole point of a messiah was restoring Israel, ending the Roman occupation, letting the people hold the land again that God had given them. But Jesus consistently deflected such requests during his earthly ministry, trying to show that he was not that kind of messiah. The kingdom Jesus was about was the one he talks about in his parables: God’s reign brought to earth, not through overthrowing governments, but through persistently trying to make God’s ways our ways. 

The disciples, though, can’t seem to help but ask again. Because Jesus is now leaving earth, and still, the people are oppressed. Still, Rome is in charge. Has God’s messiah come and gone from earth, and nothing changed? Maybe Jesus has been saving the restoring of Israel for the very last thing. Or maybe they can just go with Jesus. If he’s going to God’s eternal home, a place where surely everything is set to rights, maybe they can just go with him! Jesus has conquered death, so they just can go straight to heaven, ditch this messy earth, and get to the time when God magically makes everything right, fixing what everyone else has screwed up for so long. Jesus corrects their thinking though saying, “It is not for you to know the times or periods that God has set for the unfolding of things. Instead - you’ll receive power from the Holy Spirit, and you’ll do the work of witnessing to what I’ve been doing among you. You’ll carry my message to the whole world!” After he’s whisked away, the disciples are left looking up into the sky, perhaps trying to keep their eyes on him until the very last second when he disappears from their sight. But as they’re standing there, eyes fixed on the clouds, two of God’s messengers, what we call angels, appear and break their reverie: “Hey! Why are you still staring at the sky? Jesus will return eventually, but not right now. Get a move on!” (That’s the Pastor Beth paraphrase.) 

And here, I think, is the tension of Christian discipleship: We want to keep our eyes fixed on heaven, fixed on God’s home, fixed on this place of perfection where everything is finally restored. Oppression and struggle and tyranny and hatred and violence - we long for God to bring these injustices to an end. We long for peace and love and harmony, and we’re pretty sure we’ll experience all that with God. And so if Jesus is leaving for elsewhere, we want to go with him. The disciples might have wanted to literally go, right then. And we, I think, while maybe not ready to check out of this world, are happy to have our heads in the proverbial clouds, thinking of how perfect things will be when God gets God’s way and sets everything to rights. 

And yet: Jesus who ascends to the clouds calls us to keep our feet set firmly on the ground, because while Jesus cast a vision, we’re the witnesses Jesus has appointed to carry out that vision. Do we want to see things restored to God’s vision of justice and righteousness for all? Well, what will we do to see it happen? How will we recognize our own part in the brokenness of the world around us? I keep thinking of the words of a song written by Carl Daw Jr., that was adapted in a beautiful arrangement by Mark Miller, the professor of church music at Drew. The first verse goes, “Till all the jails are empty and all the bellies filled; till no one hurts or steals or lies, and no more blood is spilled; till age and race and gender no longer separate; till pulpit, press, and politics are free of greed and hate: God has work for us to do. The rest of the verses are equally compelling I think. God has work for us to do. We’re part of God’s vision for restoring the world. Jesus promises to equip us with the Holy Spirit. And Jesus promises that even though he’s not walking this earth in the same way beside us, instead he is within us. God is within us. God’s Spirit is within us, closer than ever. The clouds - heaven - God’s home? God’s home is in our heart, and we’re in God’s heart, already. 

So I think we can have our head proverbially in the clouds, and our feet proverbially on the ground, as we serve as the hands and feet of Jesus in the world, doing God’s work, even as we long to draw closer and closer to God. God longs for that too - to have our whole heart and soul. And God knows just how that closeness will come about - through our lives spent loving God by loving one another, feet on the ground, clouds in our heart, committed to carrying out the work of Jesus until God’s vision is our reality. God has work for us to do. Amen.  

Sermon for Pentecost Sunday, Acts 2:1-24, 37-42

Sermon 5/31/20

Acts 2:1-24, 37-42

Pentecost

Today, we celebrate Pentecost, a day when we remember the gift of the Holy Spirit, promised by Jesus to the disciple, sent by God after Jesus’ ascension as comforter, advocate, empowering agent that enables the disciples to stop hiding and start doing the work of Jesus in the world. The word for Spirit in both Hebrew and Greek also means both Wind and Breath - Spirit, Wind, and Breath, all the same word. And so Pentecost is a day when we think of those images and more: the violent rushing wind that produces tongues of fire; God’s breath filling the disciples, giving Peter a voice to preach; the Spirit being poured out on all who gather. 

And we wonder: What is this Holy Spirit thing, exactly? What does it mean for us, what does the Spirit do for us? Sure, God is always larger than our understanding, but I think we can relate to God as creator and parent and ruler, and we can relate to Jesus walking by our side, teaching and healing. But even if Jesus calls the Holy Spirit a Comforter, the Spirit has always felt much more nebulous to me. A Comforter is the delightfully fluffy blanket I can get under to snuggle in my bed on a cold night. The Spirit? The Spirit is weird, elusive, slippery, hard to grasp, even though sometimes I catch glimpses. 

So I’ve been thinking about some of the imagery we use for the Spirit this week. On Pentecost, we celebrate God’s Holy Wind. The wind can cause a turbulent, stormy sea for a ship, putting people in danger. But a sailboat without any wind is powerless. The wind across sand dunes shapes beautiful works of art out of the terrain, and wind also churns sandstorms that congest and blind as sand whips through the air. We’ve learned to use windmills and wind turbines to harness the wind and convert the energy to power our world. At my birthday lunch this year, where I gathered with my mom and brother at a park so we could keep socially distanced, we were delighted when the forecasted rain didn’t come - but then realized the wind was our bigger challenge. My mom’s whole lunch plate got turned upside down, and the balloons she brought had to be tied to a tree, and my brother Tim was chasing my birthday napkins all through the park. The wind, though, was the only thing making some of my outdoor visits this week tolerable in the extreme heat - the wind was a relief, a gift. What kind of wind is God’s Holy Spirit in our lives, in our world? 

This week in my video devotion, I sang for you the song we just shared a few minutes ago: Spirit, Spirit of Gentleness, by James K. Manley. It’s a beautiful piece, and I told you that I especially loved the refrain: “Spirit, Spirit of Gentleness, blow through the wilderness calling and free; Spirit, Spirit of restlessness, stir me from placidness, Wind, Wind on the sea.” It reminds me that the Holy Spirit is not just one thing. Sometimes it is like the gentle wind, and sometimes the spirit is restless, stirring us up when we’d rather be complacent. What kind of spirit do we need moving through our lives, our world, right now? I think usually I’m longing for the gentle spirit, but what I need is the spirit that won’t let me be, the spirit that says my placidness is really complacency, apathy, inaction, and God is calling me to move with the Spirit. 

And I think about breath, God’s Holy Breath. The Spirit as Breath is an intimate image: God wants to give us the gift of God’s own breath! That’s amazing, humbling, overwhelming! God’s breath is in you. God’s breath is what created you, God’s breath is what resurrects you, God’s breath is what gives you life in this world and enables you to embody the work of Jesus, to be the hands and feet of Christ. The Creator of the Universe has given us God’s own breath. How are we breathing, right now? And I cannot think of God’s Holy Breath filling me up without thinking about George Floyd, a black man who we watched die at the hands of a white police officer, who knelt on Floyd’s neck while Floyd gasped for air, for life, for breath. “I can’t breathe.” Lord, have mercy on us. We are so broken by the sin of racism. What does it mean to celebrate Pentecost, to be offered the Holy Breath of God, when we have to reckon with the atrocity of snuffing out the breath, the life, the fire, the Spirit of God in God’s black and brown-skinned children? Baptist Pastor and Harvard University Chaplain Cody J. Sanders writes, “We are asphyxiating the Body of Christ by the violence and violation that has become our way of life” a way that we’ve accepted, he says, as an everyday reality of our world. “We expect,” he continues, “– even as we dread – news of another murder of a George Floyd or Breonna Taylor or Ahmaud Arbery to come across our screens any day. And among the myriad feelings we have when it happens, surprise isn’t one of them. ‘We can’t breathe.’ We’re suffocating in our systemic legacy of white supremacy, and we’re killing our black siblings in the process.” (1) 

What kind of Pentecost do we need today, church? What does the Spirit at work in the world right now, right here, look like? In the midst of a pandemic, one more thing that’s become a source of division, in the midst of our sinfulness, in the midst of pain and suffering and such brokenness, how does Pentecost come to us? What does it mean for us? 

***

Normally when we gather for Bible Study, even our online version, I ask for someone else to read the scripture. I already do a lot of talking in the study - it’s nice to hear some other voices! But this week, when we read through Acts 2, I told the group I would read the first part of the text. Why? Well, because Acts 2 near the beginning of our reading includes a long list of place names that sometimes don’t roll off the tongue so easily. I’ve read this text in worship enough years as a pastor that I can barrel through, even when I’m not sure, but sometimes for readers, all these place names stop folks in their tracks. When Luke, author of the Book of Acts, is describing the events of Pentecost, he tells us that the disciples are gathered together in one place. Pentecost was - is - an important festival and part of the Jewish faith. Shavuot - the Feast of Weeks - is a harvest festival, and also a remembrance of the receiving of the Torah - the law by the Israelites at Mt. Sinai. When the Holy Spirit arrives, it shows up where the disciples are with a sound like the rush of a violent wind. What looks like flames rest over each disciple, and they begin speaking in other languages, enabled by the Spirit. This is important, because people from all over lived in Jerusalem or had come to celebrate the holy day. And everyone, no matter where they’re from, can understand the disciples. Now, Luke could have just stopped at that - telling us that there were Jews from every nation gathered together, and they could all understand. We’d get the point, right? But Luke insists on going into detail. And that’s where the list of places comes in. Who is gathered? Parthians, Medes, Elamites, Mesopotamians, Judeans, Cappadocians, Pontians, Asians, Phrygians, Pamphylians, Egyptians, Libryans, Cyrenians, Romans, Cretans, and Arabs. Wow! All of them are hearing about God’s deeds of power in their own language. 

Why does Luke need to list out everyone of these places? Why not just leave it at “people from every nation” and save us from the tongue twister? I don’t know Luke’s heart, of course, but here’s what I think. Luke wants us to know that the message Peter shares about Jesus Christ and the gift God shares of the Holy Spirit is for everyone. But not just everyone as a generic, catch all term. Luke lists out all these people to make it clear: Every. One. Luke gets very specific. Luke makes it clear that this message is for each one of the everyone. Sometimes, the broadness of saying “everyone” glosses over the wonderful unique particularness of each person included in that everyone. The generic “everyone” allows us to gloss over the particulars we'd really rather not include. It’s like when we know that we’re supposed to “love everyone” and “love our neighbors” but it gets harder when Jesus starts telling us exactly who he means by everyone and who he means by neighbors and it turns out when it gets specific it also gets really hard. Who is there on Pentecost? Each and every one. Theologian Willie Jennings says that Pentecost prods us toward a Spirit that is “boundary-crossing and border transgressing.” The Spirit prompts the disciples to “go to those to whom they would in fact strongly prefer never to share space, or a meal, and definitely not life together.” (2) And when they do, when the wind and breath and fire of the Holy Spirit takes hold of them, it changes the world. 

It fits, then, that Peter uses words from the prophet Joel as the text for his Pentecost Sermon. Peter shares Joel’s vision: “In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh.” But for Joel, for Peter, for God, all flesh is not some generic that allows us instead to leave people out. Joel’s words get specific about just what all means: sons and daughters. Young and old. Even slaves. Even those who had no rights, no status, no position, no power. All of these, each of these - they have dreams and visions and truth to share. Peter’s sermon preached to each one of these in the crowd is effective. Thousands respond to a message about Jesus Christ, who cannot be held by the power of death. They respond with repentance. They respond with baptism. They respond by committing to life together - sharing in learning, prayer, and food and fellowship. And together, each one as a part of the one body of Christ - full of life and breath and Spirit - they change the world. 

How will we respond? If we take our cue from Acts 2, we find some direction in our own baptismal vows. We answer these questions when we’re baptized, confirmed, when we renew our baptismal covenant, when we join the church: "Do you renounce the spiritual forces of wickedness, reject the evil powers of this world, and repent of your sin?" and "Do you accept the freedom and power God gives you to resist evil, injustice, and oppression in whatever forms they present themselves?" Can we say yes with our whole hearts? Can we say yes not just with words, but with deeds? Sometimes, friends, I long for the Spirit to be at work in my life - but I have to admit I’d rather it just ruffle my feathers like a gentle breeze, the soft breath of God, moving on the air. And sometimes, God’s Spirit might fill us just like that. But most days, I know that what I need is a wind so strong that it lifts me from my complacency, lifts me from my sin, lifts me from my apathy. I need to open my heart to the Spirit that sets my heart ablaze with a commitment to seeking God’s justice, to seeing each one, to working to ensure that the breath of God is not snuffed out in violence and hatred, to preaching the good news of Jesus’ boundary-crossing love. 

“Spirit, Spirit of restlessness, stir me from placidness.” Come, Spirit, come. Amen. 

 

(1) Sanders, Cody J. , “‘We can’t breathe’: an apt Pentecost prayer for white Christians,” Baptist News Global, Accessed on 5/30/2020.

https://baptistnews.com/article/we-cant-breathe-an-apt-pentecost-prayer-for-white-christians/#.XtJghIjYqEs.

(2) As quoted by Cody J. Sanders.

Sermon for Ascension Sunday, Acts 1:1-11

Sermon 5/24/20

Acts 1:1-11

Ascension

I don’t know about you, but I find it hard not to read every scripture text these days in light of our current global pandemic. It’s similar to that reaction we now seem to have when we see images, often taken before this pandemic unfolded, of large crowds gathered together. “Crowds? We can’t be in crowds!” It’s hard not to process the world through our pandemic-lenses. And I think that’s true of the scripture too. Our current life experience has so changed our world that it is almost impossible to read the Bible without viewing it anew because of what we’re going through. I think that’s a good thing. Not the pandemic, of course, but that we find that we can’t help but bring our now-everyday reality of global crisis with us when we read the text. I think we’ll find that the scripture is more than up to the challenge of feeding our souls when we come to it with a new perspective.

Today is Ascension Sunday. It’s the day that we remember Jesus’ return to God’s home, his physical departure from the earth, forty days after the resurrection. For forty days after that first Easter morning, Jesus stayed with the disciples, and according to Luke, he continued to give many “proofs” that he was truly resurrected, and he also spent more time teaching about the kingdom of God, about God’s reign. He also spent this time telling the disciples that soon they would receive a gift from God - the gift of the Holy Spirit - but we’ll talk more about that next week. For nearly a month and a half, it must have seemed to the disciples that they could breathe again. Jesus, who had been violently crucified was not dead, and everything could go back to normal. They would follow him once more. They were not abandoned. Jesus was with them again. And then, he leaves again. And although this time he doesn’t die - death has no power over Jesus - and this time he isn’t torn from them through violence, this time, he’s physically gone for good. Jesus ascends, and there’s no mistaking that he’s no longer on earth with them. They see it happen. There’s no tomb this time. His body is not on earth. And I think, particularly in these challenging days, it is hard not to feel the grief, the disappointment, the sense of loss that the disciples experience. We talked about that at Bible Study this week. Donna Peck expressed what was probably running through the minds of the disciples: “Jesus, why can’t you just stay?” Why did Jesus have to leave again? How disappointed and heartbroken they must have been! 

We talked about another aspect of their grief in this text at Bible Study too. Before Jesus ascends, the disciples ask him, “Lord, is this the time when you will restore Israel?” This is a question they’ve asked Jesus a lot, in various ways, during his time with them. Remember, all of Israel was under occupation by the Roman government. For minority groups, like the Jewish people, a relatively small and, in the eyes of the Romans, unusual religious group, living under foreign occupation was oppressive and restrictive. To have their homeland, the land God had promised them, controlled by those who were reluctant at best to let the Jewish people worship and live as they chose - it was painful. Roman rule was impoverishing to most of the people. It meant living in fear, trying to be careful all the time not to disrupt or draw too much attention. After all, look what happened when the dispute between Jesus and the chief priests and elders was brought to the attention of Pontius Pilate? So the disciples and others have asked Jesus before about Israel being restored. It’s what people assumed the messiah, the anointed one of God, would come to do. People assumed that the whole point of a messiah was restoring Israel, ending the Roman occupation, letting the people hold the land again that God had given them. Jesus consistently deflected such requests, trying to show that he was not that kind of messiah. The kingdom Jesus was about was the one we’ve been talking about over the last weeks of listening to Jesus’ parables: God’s reign brought to earth, not through overthrowing governments, but through persistently trying to make God’s ways our ways. Still, though, the disciples can’t seem to help but ask again. Because Jesus is now leaving earth, and still, the people are oppressed. Still, Rome is in charge. Has God’s messiah come and gone from earth, and nothing changed? Again in the text there’s a sense of grief and abandonment. Grief over losing Jesus again. Grief over losing hope about what Jesus came to accomplish. So when the men in white - God’s messengers, angels, - appear and wonder why the disciples are gazing up into the sky, trying to catch one last glimpse of Jesus, when the messengers seem to want to hurry the disciples along, I wonder if the disciples are thinking, “Can’t you just give us a minute, an hour, a year to process this? We’re devastated again!” 

I feel like I connect more with the grief of the disciples in these hard days. Maybe you do too. I think we, too, are both wishing that the things that we’ve loved, the “normal” rhythms of life could stay the same, and that the pain and suffering of this season could be alleviated. We know that God is with us always, but sometimes it is hard to feel that God is close to us, and sometimes it seems as if wherever Jesus has ascended is very far away from our everyday experience. What are we to do? Where is our hope? Is there a word for us in this Ascension story? For the disciples, Jesus gave them two messages: The Holy Spirit is coming, and you are to be my witnesses. And I think in those messages, we find comfort and direction too. 

Jesus promised the disciples that the Holy Spirit was coming. The disciples didn’t know what that meant yet. But we know that the Holy Spirit is God, just as Jesus is God. The trinity - that our God is one but also three - God, Christ, Spirit - is sometimes hard to understand. But the gist of it for the disciples was that although Jesus wasn’t going to be present in human form, walking down the road with them, God was going to be very present - as close as their breath, in fact, filling them up with the Holy Spirit. The power that they saw in Jesus would be the same power that would propel them into sharing the good news of Jesus and God’s amazing love. How God was with them was being transformed, but they were not abandoned. 

Some of you know that I enjoy attending - not every year but about every other year - the Festival of Homiletics, a weeklong preaching conference, full of great worship and preaching, and lectures about worship and preaching. It’s really fantastic. I was supposed to have been at the Festival this past week in Atlanta, Georgia. But, like everything else, it was canceled because of COVID-19. A modified Festival moved to an online format, and while it isn’t quite the same, I’ve been enjoying listening to the lectures and sermons. One standout was from Otis Moss III, pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago. He preached about Jesus and the disciples on the road to Emmaus. That’s a story from Easter day in the scriptures, when Jesus travels with some followers after he has been resurrected, but they don’t recognize him. They spend the day with him without recognizing him, only realizing that it is the resurrected Jesus when he shares bread with them at the end of their journey. 

Moss reflected on how Jesus was present with them for the whole journey, but they only recognized Jesus when the physical exchange of sharing food was made - their needs were met by Jesus. Likewise, he said, God is always present with us, but sometimes we don’t recognize God’s presence. Sometimes, he said, God is just “outside the frame.” Moss, who was, like most pastors these days, preaching into a camera in a mostly empty sanctuary, revealed that the whole time he was preaching, there was someone supporting and praying for him just outside the frame of what the camera could show to us viewers - his wife was there, encouraging him. When the camera pulled back, we could see that she’d been sitting beside him all along, but had been just outside the frame. God is with us, friends. Sometimes, though, God is outside the frame that we’re using to look at the world, to look at our lives. We might need to adjust the way we’re looking to witness God’s presence, but I promise, God is with us.   

And because God is with us, we, like the disciples, can have the confidence to carry out the same assignment Jesus gave to them: we’re called to be witnesses. What are witnesses? Witnesses are those who can verify the truth of events that have taken place. Witnesses can say, “Yes, I was there.” Witnesses say, “Here’s what happened.” We witness with our words and with our actions. In fact, our whole lives are a witness to what our truths are. What does your life - how you live, how you love, how you serve - what does your life say is the truth for you? As I mentioned, we spent some of our last weeks talking about the kingdom of God about which Jesus speaks in his parables. We talked about what things are like when God’s reign is not just in heaven, not just for eternity, but for earth, for here and now. We pray that we would be part of making that possible every time we share in the Lord’s prayer. We say, “Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” We pray that God’s way may be our way, here and now. And so we witness to the reality of God, to the work of Jesus, every time we do something that sort of “narrows the gap,” or at least the perceived gap between earth and heaven. Everytime we  live in a way that exemplifies God’s reign, God’s rhythms, God’s values and priorities, we’re being witnesses for Jesus. And if many people wonder where God is, we are witnesses everytime we help people adjust their focus and realize that God is there, just outside the frame of where they’d been looking. The disciples: they did tear their gaze from heaven and get to work. It was not easy. They did not do it all at once. They had to make many decisions about how they would best carry on the work of Jesus, empowered by the Holy Spirit. But these followers of Jesus became witnesses to the ends of the earth, just as Jesus asked. And slowly, that the work of Jesus in the world does restore and renew us, free us from oppression, conquer injustice, even when it comes about in unexpected ways. In these hard days, what is the witness of your life? 

I can’t promise - and Jesus doesn’t promise - that there won’t be some grief-filled days ahead for us, when we wish we could just go back to a different time, how things were before. But Jesus does promise that God is with us, as close as our very breath. And if God is with us and in us, let our whole lives tell the story. Let our whole lives bear witness to the truth. Amen. 

Sermon for Pentecost Sunday, Acts 2:1-21

Sermon 6/9/19

Acts 2:1-21

Pentecost

The Holy Spirit is weird. Let’s just acknowledge that right from the get-go. Christians are Trinitarian. That is, we worship one God, but we believe that God is a Trinity - three “persons,” one God - Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, or Creator, Sustainer, Redeemer; God, Christ, Spirit. And that’s great. But many of us, maybe even most of us are a lot more comfortable talking about who God is, the one we think of as Creator and Parent, and talking about Jesus, his teachings, and following as his disciples, than we are figuring out what this Holy Spirit thing is. In the weeks between the Resurrection of Jesus on Easter morning, and when Jesus finally returns to God’s home, as we celebrated last week on Ascension Sunday, Jesus keeps talking about this Holy Spirit thing that’s supposed to come and help the disciples feel equipped and prepared to do the work of Jesus in the world. And I’m not sure exactly what the disciples were expecting to have happen, but if they’re anything like me, what I would be thinking is: I’d rather just have you, Jesus. If you’re trying to sell that you leaving isn’t so bad because we’re getting this Spirit-thing that you never quite describe the same way twice, I’d rather just have you, Jesus! Because this Holy Spirit thing just sounds weird.

The Holy Spirit is described as Comforter, Intercessor, Advocate, and Counselor. It is called the Paraclete, a Greek word which means “Called Alongside,” as in something called to kind of journey alongside us. In church history, the phrase, “Holy Ghost” has been used, and that’s just, well, spooky, right? The scriptures use images of Dove and Fire for the Holy Spirit. The word for Spirit in the scriptures is the same as wind or breath - so we can think of Holy Wind and Holy Breath instead of Holy Spirit. Recently I was talking with Don Schuessler about some liturgical resources that come from the Iona Community. That’s a Scottish-based ecumenical movement focusing in part on worship renewal. I used many of their materials this year on Palm/Passion Sunday. And their publishing arm is called Wild Goose. Don and I were talking about what that meant, and I didn’t know. But I’m also going to a worship conference this summer called the “Wild Goose Festival.” So finally I had to look up: Why Wild Goose? And it turns out - the Wild Goose is yet another symbol for the Holy Spirit. Apparently, in Celtic spirituality, the wild goose was often used as a symbol for the Holy Spirit because, like the wild goose, the Holy Spirit has a “tendency to disrupt and surprise” and “moves in our lives in an unexpected fashion.” (1) So, add wild goose to the list as we try to figure out this mystery we call the Holy Spirit.

I think of a 90s song from the Christian band “Newsboys” that I always loved, called “Spirit Thing.” The singer is trying to describe how the Holy Spirit works in his life, and finds it challenging. Some of the lyrics: “It's an early warning sign, It keeps my life in line, But it's so hard to define, Never mind. It's just a spirit thing, It's just a holy nudge, It's like a circuit charge in the brain. It's just a spirit thing, It's here to guard my heart, It's just a little hard to explain. It pushes when I quit, It smells a counterfeit, Sometimes it works a bit like a teleprompter. When it's telepromting you, I pray you'll let it through, And I'll help you with the how, But for now, It's just a spirit thing.” (2)

A holy nudge, prompting us to action. I like that. So, today, Pentecost Sunday, is the day we celebrate that, just as Jesus promised, the Holy Spirit showed up for the disciples in a big way. They’re in Jerusalem, because Jesus had told them to wait there to receive the spirit. And lots of other people are there too, to celebrate the festival of Pentecost, a harvest festival in Judaism, the Feast of Weeks. And suddenly, the sounds of a violent rushing wind fills the place where the disciples are, and something like tongues of fire appears to rest on the head of each disciple, and each disciple begins speaking in other languages that they apparently previously didn’t know, and all the people gathered for the festival can understand them. The experience is so weird, so unexpected and unexplainable that some in the crowd assume that what they’re seeing is the result of drunkenness. Drunken antics of people who have been partying too much. But at this accusation, Peter finally stands up with the disciples, and addresses everyone.

He tells the crowds that what they are witnessing is the work of the Holy Spirit. He quotes the prophet Joel, who talked about everybody receiving the Spirit, which would enable them to prophesy, to tell the truth in powerful ways about the work of God in the world. Joel says God’s spirit will be poured out on sons and daughters, young and old, slaves too - everyone receives the Spirit of God. And Peter, by quoting Joel, indicates that the pouring out of the Spirit is happening right then, fulfilled in the midst of all these people. And from here on out, the book of Acts picks up steam, and the disciples are relentlessly about the work of preaching about Jesus, and urging others to join their movement.

It’s a pretty big switch, when you think that just last Sunday, we were watching the disciples stare up at the sky, not knowing what to do with themselves, not sure what Jesus was doing, not sure what was happening next. They seemed unsure of themselves, unclear on their mission, anxious to be carrying out any mission without Jesus there to guide them. This Spirit-thing, whatever it is, Wild Goose or Holy Ghost, or Nudge from God - it seems to make a big impact.

I think it is pretty easy for us to relate to the disciples when they’re unsure and unclear and confused and sort of stuck in suspended animation, unable to act. I’ve been thinking this week about Imposter Syndrome. Have you ever heard of that before? Imposter Syndrome? Even if you haven’t heard of it, you’ve probably experienced it.  “Imposter syndrome is a psychological term referring to a pattern of behavior where people doubt their accomplishments and have a persistent, often internalized fear of being exposed as a fraud.” In other words, it’s a fear that we’ll be “found out” as not really qualified to do whatever it is we’re doing, whatever it is that people think we’re good at. Like we’re somehow pulling the wool over the eyes of everyone else who thinks we’ve got it together. “The term was coined by clinical psychologists Pauline Clance and Suzanne Imes in 1978, when they found that despite having adequate external evidence of accomplishments, people with imposter syndrome remained convinced that they don’t deserve the success they have.” Folks struggling with imposter syndrome “call their success luck, good timing, and [dismiss it] as other’s believing they were better, more intelligent and more competent than they actually are.” (3)

Probably, many of you resonate with the description I just read. Most of us at one time or another feel like imposters. We feel unqualified. Unequipped. Unimpressive. We feel like we don’t really know what we’re doing, and eventually other people are going to figure us out. And like there is most definitely someone else who would be doing a better job at what we’re doing. They’d be really getting it right. And I think we feel like this when it comes to our faith lives too. Like we’re imposter disciples - pretending we know how to follow Jesus, but feeling on the inside like we have no idea what to do to please God, to be faithful, to live the good lives we know God means for us to live.

I was very young when I started pastoring my first church. And one day, I wasn’t a pastor, and the next day, I was. I had a lot to learn still, even though I’d been to seminary for years and completed all the requirements set forth for me. I felt a little bit like I was pretending to be a pastor, and hoping I would get it right, or close enough to right that no one would figure it out. But here’s the thing, friends. I’ve been a pastor now for 16 years. Some parts of ministry I feel really confident about. But sometimes, when I encounter a new situation in ministry, or when I’m trying to figure out what I should do to best follow God, or when I’m trying to figure out how to communicate the heart of the gospel in a way that will make people show up and listen and invest their lives in this Jesus-thing with me? Sometimes I still feel like I’m mostly pretending that I know what I’m doing! I know you struggle sometimes too. I know you wonder if you’re making the right choices. I know you wonder about how to really hear and respond to God’s voice. I know sometimes people seek advice from you about faith and God and you can’t figure out how you’ve fooled them into thinking you know enough to help them.

But, don’t lose heart! Because this Spirit thing? This Holy Ghost-Comforter-Paraclete-Wild Goose-Breath of God-Wind-Advocate-Nudge that comes in a blaze of fire or in the gentle glide of a dove? As confusing as it is, as hard as it is to describe what the Holy Spirit is, it is for you. What it is is the very Spirit of God, the heart of Jesus, the breath of God, dwelling in you. God is in you. And there is nothing fake about that. No part of that that’s not real. No part of your identity as a child of God that is an imposter in anyway.  

Some of you are probably already familiar with this famous poem from writer Marianne Williamson, from her book A Return to Love. It’s called “Our Deepest Fear,” and I’ve been thinking about it as a sort of antithesis to those times we let Imposter Syndrome undermine our discipleship. She writes, “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness That most frightens us. We ask ourselves Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small Does not serve the world. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking So that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, As children do. We were born to make manifest The glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; It's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, We unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we're liberated from our own fear, Our presence automatically liberates others.” (4)

To me, this is a bit of a Pentecost poem. “You are a child of God. We were born to make manifest The glory of God that is within us.” We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. That’s not about showing everyone how great we are. That’s about showing everyone who awesome God is, and letting God use us to do it. That’s about knowing that we don’t have to do it all on our own, because God’s very breath is within us. That’s about knowing that this Spirit-thing is within us, supporting our work for God, helping us to show God’s glory to the world.

On Pentecost, Peter and the disciples discovered the Spirit thing within them. And they stopped feeling like imposters, and started feeling inspired - which literally means being full of the Spirit. The gift of the Spirit? We’re not still waiting for it. We already have it. Even if we can’t quite describe it, it’s ours. We’re children of God, born to make manifest the glory of God in the world. By the power of the Spirit, let’s get to work. Amen.

(1)  Kosloski, Philip, “How the wild goose became a symbol of vigilance and the Holy Spirit.” Aleteia. https://aleteia.org/2017/10/02/how-the-wild-goose-became-a-symbol-of-vigilance-and-the-holy-spirit/

(2) https://songmeanings.com/songs/view/81225/

(3) Dalla-Camina, Megan, “The Reality of Imposter Syndrome,” Psychology Today, https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/real-women/201809/the-reality-imposter-syndrome. 

(4) Williamson, Marianne, "Our Deepest Fear," A Return to Love.