God's Politics: A Sermon for Pentecost*

The cover of our service leaflet this morning tells us beautifully what we celebrate today. “Filled with the Holy Spirit,” it says, and the image is a dove on an orange, flame-like background.

If you were to go home and do a Google image search for the word “Pentecost,” you would find that human creativity has had a field day with this event.

My search produced more than 700,000 hits! I did not look at all of them, and I’m sure there were duplicates. But I can tell you that just the first page of results contained 21 images, each of which was unique but all of which were recognizable by most any Christian as images of the event we call Pentecost.

What would be the common elements of those images that make them so readily recognizable? Tongues of fire, of course, and almost always a dove. 

From the blog Walking in Light with Christ

But we just read the story from Acts, and doves are not mentioned. Only tongues of fire. So… why do most of our Pentecost images include doves?

The doves are, of course, a reference to the baptism of Jesus by John the Baptizer in the Jordan River. On that occasion, the Gospel stories tell us, the Holy Spirit descends upon Jesus in the form of a dove.

It is not surprising, therefore, that many, many Christians down through the centuries have been baptized on Pentecost. And that brings us to another name for this particular Sunday. It is a name that comes from our tradition as part of the Anglican Communion, which began as the Church of England. The name is “Whitsunday,” which comes from Old English and means, nor surprisingly, “white Sunday.”

Why “white Sunday”? Because many people were baptized on this particular Sunday. And the color people wore to be baptized? White, of course.

The Christian church has always understood and affirmed a powerful and direct connection between the baptism of our Lord by water and the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove, and the baptism of the disciples by the Holy Spirit in the form of tongues of fire on Pentecost.

Now, I want to go back to those Pentecost images I found with my Google search for a few minutes. In addition to the dove and the tongues of fire, what would they have in common? Who do you suppose they depict receiving the Holy Spirit?

If you are thinking the 12 apostles, you are correct. Almost every image contains exactly 12 male figures… plus one woman. And who would that woman be? Mary, the mother of our Lord, of course. 

                                      

So, how does that fit with our story? Actually, not very well! Luke the historian, who wrote the book of Acts, begins his book with the Ascension of Jesus into heaven. Then in chapter 1 verse 12 he tells us that Jesus’ disciples return to Jerusalem and all were together in one place to await the coming of the Holy Spirit—just as Jesus had instructed them.

In Acts chapter 1 verses 13 and 14, Luke names some of the people who were there: The 11 apostles are named in verse 13. And then verse 14 says, “All these were constantly devoting themselves to prayer, together with certain women, including Mary the mother of Jesus, as well as his brothers.”
                                       

From The Sacrament of Pentecost

At the end of chapter 1, Mathias is chosen to replace Judas. The story makes it clear that he and another man were nominated from a larger group then chosen by lot. In other words, many scholars think about 100 disciples of Jesus were probably present at the first Pentecost, and a number of them were women!

Our artists over the centuries have tended to simplify the picture a great deal. Again, many depict just 12 men and Mary receiving the Holy Spirit. A few of the images I found depict 12 men, Mary, and two or three other women. Only a couple of images actually show the larger crowd that was there, a larger crowd that includes a number of women, and children!

From The Bridge Online

So, why is that important? It is important because Pentecost has another meaning that tends to get lost in all the imagery of doves and fire and apostles and Mary.

The other meaning is that with Pentecost, God let it be known that the Gospel message and the Holy Spirit of God are for everyone. Not just a handful of Jews, but everyone. Not just men and one or two women, but everyone. Not just people who looked and thought alike, but everyone.

To fully appreciate how this happened, we need to go back to a story that is told in Genesis (11:1-9)—the story of the Tower of Babel. You will recall that the people of the earth at that time all spoke the same language: “one language and the same words,” says Genesis.

To us, that actually sounds rather good. Wouldn’t it be easier for us all to get along, to communicate better, if we all had one language and the same words!

What happened, of course, is that things went so smoothly that people got rather cocky and over confident. They decided they didn’t need God. And so, in Genesis 11, they say to one another, "Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves; otherwise we shall be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth."

Now the Lord God comes to check out what they’re up to, and does not like what he sees. The Lord sees that the people are arrogant, and that they think they can build their way to heaven, without turning to the Lord their God.

And so the Lord puts a stop to the nonsense. The Lord goes down and confuses the people’s language, makes them speak all different languages so that they no longer understand each other, and the Lord scatters the people over the face of the earth.

This is often referred to as “the curse of Babel”—that humankind around the world developed different cultures and different languages. And it certainly made it harder for people to communicate and to understand each other and to get along.

But Pentecost changed all that. Pentecost reversed the curse of Babel, and today’s reading from Acts describes how it happened. The Holy Spirit comes, first, with the sound of a violent wind, and then tongues of fire. And, Luke says, “All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.”

But that’s only half of the miracle! The other half is that the listeners “from every nation under heaven…each one heard them speaking in the native languages of each.” And what a diverse array they were: Parthians, Medes, Elamites… etc., etc.

At Pentecost, God demonstrated that it was okay for people to speak different languages, and that through the power of the Holy Spirit, people could in fact understand each other and worship together anyway.

In fact, there’s a special kind of unity, a unity of the Spirit, that comes precisely from diverse humans of different languages all worshiping the same God together. The coming of the Holy Spirit transformed human diversity from a curse that divides… into a miracle that unites.

AMEN.

*This sermon was preached at St. Luke's Episcopal Chapel in Grambling, La. as a dialogue with children. The adult congregation listened in and enjoyed it too.
                                      

I Want You: A sermon for 18 March 2010*

Last week when asked if I was interested in preaching tonight, I was fresh from consecutive Sundays of what had seemed to be reasonably successful sermons, here at St. Alban’s two weeks ago and last Sunday at St. Thomas’. And so I didn’t hesitate to say yes.

It was not until two days ago that I realized the readings I would be preaching from are in celebration of a saint—Cyril of Jerusalem—whose feast day is March 18 on Roman Catholic and Episcopal church calendars, but who does not even appear on the Lutheran church calendar, which doesn’t recognize anyone outside of the Bible as a saint with a capital S in any case!

I’m sure Garrison Keilor could do something really creative and funny with this situation. For me it’s a lesson: Beware of becoming proud of preaching. You will live to regret it!

Fortunately, the Gospel of Jesus Christ is an equal opportunity message. It is no respecter of denominations. This evening’s lesson from Luke is an excellent “unity” passage.

But before I go into that, I do want to say a few words about Cyril of Jerusalem. He is an important figure in the history of all Christians, and he is especially important to those of us who have similar liturgical traditions.

Cyril was Bishop of Jerusalem for most of the second half of the 4th Century. He is credited with developing liturgies we still use today during Holy Week. We know this not only from his own writing, but also because of a Spanish nun by the name of Egeria (i-JEER-ee-uh). Egeria made a late 4th-Century pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and, to our great benefit, she kept an account of her travels in the form of a long letter to her sisters back home.

She was in Jerusalem at a time when the church year we are so familiar with today, with its seasons of Advent and Lent, and principal feasts like Christmas and Easter, was still in formation and becoming widely adopted. In fact, she helped with the dissemination of those early church practices, such as Bishop Cyril’s liturgies for Holy Week, by her detailed descriptions in an eyewitness account. In fact, she’s still doing it due to the wonders of modern technology. You can buy her account in book form today on amazon.com, complete with many annotations that demonstrate how historians have pored over it.

It’s also important that when Cyril was Bishop of Jerusalem, the early church was in great turmoil. The divisive issue of that day was how to understand Jesus, specifically how to understand the divinity of Jesus.

To put it as simply as possible, one pole of the debate is expressed in the Nicene Creed we still use today: Jesus the Christ is “eternally begotten of the Father” and “of one Being with the Father.”

The folks at the opposite pole of the debate in the 4th Century believed that the Son was divine but lesser than the Father and not eternal. In their words, “there was a time when the Son was not.”

I daresay most of us don’t debate that issue much anymore. It seems pretty well settled to us. But in the time of Cyril, it was not. In his 36 years as a bishop, Cyril was exiled three times by superiors from opposite poles of the debate. Ultimately he spent nearly half his years as Bishop in exile.

In other words, Cyril, being a moderate, managed to rile both extremes of the debate. So I admire Cyril. I have often thought that people who provoke both sides of a polarized debate must be doing something right.

Every time I look at church history, I am struck anew by two things. On the one hand is a history of divisive issues, issues that caused blood to be shed in many cases, and in others, the splits and splintering into the many denominations we know today.

On the other hand I also see an extraordinary continuity in such things as the worship practices many of us share. And not just those denominations represented in this worship space this evening.

A few years ago I was privileged to go to the Dominican Republic on a mission trip along with a handful of folks from St. Thomas’. One of my lasting memories of that trip is worshiping with brothers and sisters in the faith, each of us speaking in our own language but united by the familiarity of our common liturgy.

To a great extent, whether we see division or unity depends on where we focus our attention . The church as a whole and every denomination has plenty of divisive issues facing it today. It also has plenty of unifying beliefs and practices. What you see depends on what you focus on.

Looking at the history of the church helps keep these things in perspective. But an even better way to keep things in perspective is to focus on the Gospel message. In tonight’s passage from Luke, Jesus is speaking to some of his disciples. We do not know how many or which ones in particular.

Earlier in this last chapter of Luke, Jesus appears to two men on the road to Emmaus. After he leaves them, they rush back to Jerusalem to join “the eleven and their companions,” we are told in verse 33. I’m guessing the women who went to the tomb and are named at the beginning of the chapter are among them, but we just don’t know. Luke has a much more important story to tell.

Suddenly Jesus appears. He once again explains the scriptures to them and this time, because he has opened their minds, they get it. He establishes a context, reminding them that what has happened is not an accident of history but fulfillment of the Divine plan. He repeats the essential elements of the Good News: Christ has died, Christ is risen, repentance and forgiveness of sins must be preached to all nations.

And then he puts it to them: “YOU are witnesses,” he says. “You are witnesses of these things.”

Occasionally I wish we liturgical denominations weren’t quite so traditional in our worship liturgies. This evening, for example, it would be kind of fun to have the advantage of gigantic screens here at the front of the church, high on the wall on both sides of the pulpit.

If I had such a resource, I know exactly what I would put up there tonight. It would be that much-published poster of Uncle Sam, with his white curly locks and goatee, his stovepipe hat bedecked with stars, his red and white striped trousers and blue tailcoat. He leans toward the viewer making stern eye contact. He points his finger right in our face. “I WANT YOU,” he declares, in all capital letters across the bottom of the poster. And we all know that he isn't addressing us as southerners, or from Iowa. "I want you" means every one of us.

Jesus does not address us as Episcopalians or Lutherans or Roman Catholics or Baptists or whatever. He does not address us as black or white or Hispanic. He does not address us as U.S. Americans or Africans or Europeans.

He addresses us as believers, as a community of faith in all of our diversity. “You are witnesses,” he says. Go. Tell the good news.

AMEN

*This sermon was preached to a congregation of several denominations participating in a Unity in the Spirit ecumenical Lenten series.