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Pentecost Sunday

Acts 2
1On the day of Pentecost [a] all the Lord's followers were together in one place. 2Suddenly there was a noise from heaven like the sound of a mighty wind! It filled the house where they were meeting. 3Then they saw what looked like fiery tongues moving in all directions, and a tongue came and settled on each person there. 4The Holy Spirit took control of everyone, and they began speaking whatever languages the Spirit let them speak. 5Many religious Jews from every country in the world were living in Jerusalem. 6And when they heard this noise, a crowd gathered. But they were surprised, because they were hearing everything in their own languages.

Ezekiel 37
11Then he said to me, "Son of man, these bones represent the people of Israel. They are saying, `We have become old, dry bones--all hope is gone.' 12Now give them this message from the Sovereign LORD: O my people, I will open your graves of exile and cause you to rise again. Then I will bring you back to the land of Israel. 13When this happens, O my people, you will know that I am the LORD. 14I will put my Spirit in you, and you will live and return home to your own land. Then you will know that I am the LORD. You will see that I have done everything just as I promised. I, the LORD, have spoken!"


It is the preacher's prerogative to alter the "cut" of the Bible passage of the day. The makers of the lectionary, the three-year cycle of readings we use worship, did a great job in creating an overview of the life of our faith as reported in scripture. All the key passages are there, every theme is lifted up and for the most part the readings of the day simply happen upon us and we worship.

Sometimes, but not often, the "cut" is wrong. The passage is too long. The passage is too short. The passage chops the text into little bits and leaves us with the scriptural equivalent of papier-mache. Or in today's example from Acts 2, the scripture is just cruel:

Parthians and Medes and Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the districts of Libya around Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs--we hear them in our own tongues speaking of the mighty deeds of God.

Is it reasonable to ask Marg to list half the towns in the Greco-Roman world? What kind of cretin would make someone repeat "Phryia and Pamphylia" out loud? And where the heck are they anyway? And why are they included in the passage? Would it not have been easier to simply say "people from all over"?

In truth, I removed the list of towns and regions to save Marg but also to draw them to your attention. It is an old preacher's trick to remove the things we really want to highlight and build a little interest. For those reading along, the question becomes "why did he skip that stuff, why not leave it in?"

Luke (who wrote Acts) is trying to tell us a couple of things, beginning with the truth that there were Jews living everywhere in the ancient world. This may seem self-evident, knowing that after centuries of exile Jews had managed to disperse to every region of the known world. It also reminds us that when the exile ended and Jews returned to Israel, there were many that were unable or unwilling to return and formed the first wave of what we now call "the Diaspora." In this sense, the events that Luke describes for us are international in scope, and not limited to the earliest followers who were still largely Galilean.

***

The Holy Spirit took control of everyone, and they began speaking whatever languages the Spirit let them speak. Many religious Jews from every country in the world were living in Jerusalem. And when they heard this noise, a crowd gathered. But they were surprised, because they were hearing everything in their own languages.

Clearly this was an international gathering, something international in scope. But this is where I begin to argue with myself. It was international, but also profoundly local. The speaking and the hearing was language-specific, it was not some global tongue from the mouth of the Most High, but rather words spoken in languages and dialects that individuals could hear.

Anyone who has spent time in a foreign land can tell you about happening upon a conversation in your own language. Some describe it as being "transported" to a sense of home or experiencing a moment of welcome in an unfamiliar place. Anyone who has lived away for an extended period will tell you about ex-patriots, people who form a community, some from the same place and some simply made up of people "from away."

International but local, worldly but other-worldly, together but separate. What is really happening here?

***

So far my academic program involves a lot of reading. A shelf of books on a topic I thought I understood. It turns out that the purpose of school is to remind you that you don't know stuff and then attempt to cram said stuff into your brain. It is a voluntary kind of suffering, since I chose the program, and for that reason I think it only fair that you suffer with me.

Sometimes I read a sentence aware that it appears in my native tongue yet remains seemingly incomprehensible. I read and reread. I try to read it in different ways, and then the light will go on. The following is just such a sentence, and I will read it in a way that makes sense and also may help us today.

What is that God who created the world, who made a people for himself, and who now is moving toward the goal of his Kingdom--what is that God doing, according to the words of this particular biblical passage? (Achtemeier, p. 37)

What is that God doing? For Elizabeth Achtemeier, that God is always acting in human history. Our goal, is to figure out how. If the Spirit moved during the Festival of Pentecost, we need to understand what that could mean. Pentecost, in a pre-Christian understanding, was an early harvest festival, a time of thanksgiving for the bounty of God, but also a time of covenant renewal. One commentator called an end of gestation and the beginning of birth. How appropriate that we have been living with Easter and resurrection for seven weeks, a kind of holy gestation period and only now is something coming to birth.

What is that God doing? That God is birthing a church, a gift of the Spirit that remains a tangible reminder of God's wish for community. Karl Barth described the Holy Trinity as 'Speaker, spoken Word, and response in our hearts.' The church, then, is created by the 'response in our hearts' and remains subject to both the metaphorical 'response' (the Spirit) and a literal 'response' (our work). The Spirit birthed the church and we became her proud parents. How are we doing?

Okay. Maybe not so well. Not sure. While some argue that Christianity remains the world's fastest growing religion, we inhabit the least fertile part of the vineyard. I recall vividly someone arguing that perhaps the 500 year-old experiment called the Protestant Reformation was coming to a close and soon only Roman Catholics and Pentecostals would remain. So what, you might ask, if the name of Jesus is still uttered and the Gospel still proclaimed, what does it matter if mainline Protestant Christianity ceases to exist? Difficult questions, indeed.

Perhaps we should step back and let St. Paul say a word:

In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express. And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with God's will.

I can't imagine a better response to the state of the church. Spending 72 hours meeting, eating and sleeping church during the annual meeting of Toronto Conference has the added side "benefit" of focusing the mind on the state of things. If I were grumpy, I would say this:

We are in free fall. The longest discussions were over spending the proceeds from churches now deceased and the scrapping will only increase. We have lost our focus, we tell ourselves things we have long known and are no longer relevant to our life together. 500 people in the room seem to have 500 ideas of who we are and what we stand for. The room was cold and there was no coffee.

If I were less grumpy, I would say this:

We are in a liminal place, on the edge of some new transformation, a barely perceptible edge where the future looks uncertain but potential for new life is limitless. The Spirit has led us to this place and urges us forward. Like the seed that must die before growth begins, the church is in the process of becoming something new, something that with God's help will be more faithful and more relevant to the lives of the people of Toronto. We may not know what to pray for, but the Spirit still intervenes, if only to hear our sigh and strengthen us to keep moving.

***

This morning we also heard the story of the valley of the dry bones found in Ezekiel. We heard the familiar progression of bones and sinews and flesh and skin and breath and the command that the prophet speak to the army of bones and give them this message:

O my people, I will open your graves of exile and cause you to rise again. Then I will bring you back to the land of Israel. When this happens, O my people, you will know that I am the LORD. I will put my Spirit in you, and you will live and return home to your own land.

We gather for the new festival of Pentecost and we recognize that it is a festival of exiles. There are some who remain nearby but there are many more who are far off, living beyond the region of the church and longing for something, longing for a form of return. Perhaps they do not know us. Perhaps they know and have forgotten. Perhaps they were in our midst but moved away. Whatever place they find themselves, we need to pray for their return, pray for a community that will love them and set them free. We must remain the church of the Speaker, the spoken Word and the 'response in our hearts,' ever seeking to make a home for those who long to return. Amen.

posted by michael jacob kooiman @ 1:20 PM