TEXT: Acts 2: 1-20
This is a special day in my life. I am honored to be standing in this spot at this important time in the life of the congregation. I must say, however, that the build up to this moment makes me nervous. I read the announcement I was coming with a little embarrassment, because some of those words only my mother would believe, then said to myself, “This first sermon better be stupendous: engaging and scho-larly, both biblical and relevant to the time, soaring the heights of vision and plunging the depths of spiritual awareness.”
Then, still talking to myself, I continued, “Are you kidding? This is a time of transition. Everyone knows the year ahead will bring changes. We just hope to step across those thresholds without stumb-ling too much. Even if you could do all those things,” said I to myself, “it would be silly to try to preach today in ways you probably will not do later. You have work to do here that is very human, sometimes difficult, often joyful, and always important. No need to show off. No messaging of egos here, Turner. Besides, these folks are wise and experienced in the ways of the world. You won’t fool them.” (At 61 I’ve noticed I talk to myself more than I used to do.) So, with what is pretty normal fare on this abnormal day, here goes. Here goes, that is, with one hesitation.
The hesitation is this. It is a heartfelt privilege to be here. But I can imagine some of you saying, “Are you crazy?! Privilege? This is a difficult time for the congregation. We have just said goodbye to an admired senior minister whose time here embraced some of the most far reaching changes in the history of the church, and they were handled skillfully and faithfully.” It is true this is not the church it was a decade ago – or three decades ago. But as one who has watched this place out of the corner of his eye for thirty years, those changes are not only good, they are wonderful.
I know many of you are grieving, mourning the loss of people you admired. No sooner did Larry and Carol depart, than Will Dixon and Betsy did too, taking with them the love of many of you. I saw it in your eyes. They will be back in the Spring, but I’m not surprised if you are feeling a little… abandoned. So well you might ask: “What are you doing here? Couldn’t you find an easier job that this?” And for just those reasons, I say again: it is a privilege. What am I doing here? – is a good question. Just what does an Intentional Transitional Minister do? That we will learn together across the next year. I can tell you that we will ask vital questions of identity, leadership, connection and vision come September, when we really start to “get into” our time together. But for now, as Paris shows off as only it can, and as summer deepens and vacations await, let us look at wider vistas.
It was four weeks ago that Pentecost Day ushered in the most energetic and mysterious season of the Christian year. But back in Madison, Wisconsin, USA, I wasn’t preaching. I was grieving the loss of my little college-town church where I served the past two years. The new guy had come a week before. My interim time there was over. In this pulpit, Will Dixon was preaching about transition, about saying goodbye, and trying to get to ready for me…among other things. So there was no sermon directly about Pentecost here or there. That will not do.
Let's begin gently by remembering that Pentecost gets its name because it comes fifty days after Easter; and this year it was a late, the Eighth Day of June. Leave to the Spirit to burst into our busiest time: always late May or early June, when the world’s going schedule-crazy trying to get through the end of one school or program year so it can relax for summer. In churches those weeks are often called Hectic Time. Pentecost made it worse by being ‘late.’
Obviously we start, then, by confessing that we don’t have the foggiest idea what Pentecost means. We know that it has something to do with the Holy Spirit. Then we think about those spirit-filled folks called Pentecostals and become uneasy. We could read the Pentecost passage in the Book of Acts, but would that help? Peter has visions of the moon turning to blood, the disciples jump around with firedancing on their heads, and the onlookers think: It’s only nine a.m and already these Christians have sipped too much communion wine.” Does re-reading that story help much?
It is just about now that the Sunday school teacher tells the kids: “Don't worry, children. The disciples were not really drunk. (She doesn't mention the bloody moon.) It's the Holy Spirit, all right, but don’t worry because this is really a story about the birth of the church.” Sure it is, but as soon as we turn Pentecost into a churchy affair, what started out as a strange, wild witness to human unity suddenly becomes a solemn and then a predictable business. Before you know it we are going in precisely the wrong direction, saying silly things like: "Pentecost is late this year" -- as if the Spirit of God were required to come and go according to our schedules.
The Spirit of God, on which we rely – which creates the world and everything in it – is not convenient and is not predictable. On its own schedule it empowers us to turn our lives around, it opens us to new ventures, it challenges our most comfortable assumptions. It might even hurt, if hurting leads to healing. Oh yes, the lessons from Mark we’ve been reading these weeks, about Jesus’ challenge to sickness, are not there by accident. Healing is often a dangerous thing, rejected as often as it is welcomed. To be healed truly requires change, which requires Spirit. Pentecost in Christian faith is, above all, the season of renewal and great human hope. Therefore, “this is not the season when we seek the repose of emotionless stoics, not the time to calm ourselves by doing violence to our affections, and not the moment to stomp out the fires of anger or grief or joy -- but to set them ablaze, that they might do their redeeming work.”
All of which means I have not come to Paris - and this “church-in-transition” - so you might be “beautiful, well-disciplined children,” all properly buttoned down, instead of being open to each other, and thus vulnerable to each other, “thinking Christian life is about being nice instead of being good.”
This is a time for human emotion as rich as our biblical imagery: a season of spiritual thunder, when sparks are kindled in the heart. And it compels us to get off our rear ends, muss up our well-coiffed hair (those of you who have some), embrace each other, light our fires and stir our spiritual blood. Or as Annie Dillard warned us about this years back, if we really understood the good news of God, we could not come to church in our Sunday best. We'd be wearing work boots, crash helmets and flack jackets. For this is the hour of God's ultimate hope for us, which -- in our sophistication, our apathy and our fear -- we have too long ignored.
Remember, it is not Christmas when Christ is born or even Easter when Christ is risen, but Pentecost that brings the spirit promised by Christ to impact our lives and shape our communities. Finally, after the fear of passion and crucifixion, after the anger and confusion in the weeks that followed, finally the power of love is declared the winner in a struggle as old as ancient Palestine and as new as…as well as modern Palestine. For this is the time when the Church ripens into birth, not as an institution of long faces and solemn assemblies butt as a state of mind, a commitment to a new way of seeing the human enterprise. We call it Community, where our differences are encouraged to speak out and are celebrated in unity. I tell you, once you taste this honey, you will not settle for some saccharine sacred substitute anymore.
You know this. You know that when we try to pin down life, planning things so we'll never be surprised, never be hurt – but also never loved, nurtured or thrilled – then we have a pretty boring deal. Ah, but this is the American Church in Paris. And what a gift to the world you are.
Now, if we ask what really happened on that first Pentecost Day, when the disciples received the Holy Spirit and the church was born, I think we have to answer: "Who knows, for sure?" That would be like asking every family member to remember the same details of the first granddaughter’s wedding ten years ago. That would be like France to decide that only one cheese is the best. Faithful living knows the Spirit cannot be neatly defined, thank God. She is free, blowing where she will and resting upon whom she chooses. Sacred stories always come in different versions.
Surely we are lost if we take the second chapter of Acts literally. Let me plant my banner on this first Sunday to say that literalism degrades scripture by reducing its rich imagery to one sterile interpretation. We never know, and the Bible hardly tells us, the full nature of the Spirit. We only see her effects on the lives of people. Now those who were watching and waiting for God, sitting on the sidelines, hiding away in confusion and anger, began to be moved and used by God. Paralyzed by fear, now they are liberated in love. The name of the book, after all, is Acts. It is action producing and only then thought provoking.
Of course we need good thinking and sound scholarship. But first the Spirit brings not a book of philosophy but a call to commitment, not a plan all laid out but a purpose that grabs and propels. Jesus did not walk up to Peter and Andrew by their fishing boats and say, "Here, guys, read this! You might find it interesting." He said, "Come, follow me! Let’s build an outpost of hope in a fearful world." To answer that call demands faith carried openly, perseverance lived joyfully, risk taken with confidence, and – above all – humor…lots of good humor. And we had better learn to laugh, because this can be messy, this spirited church stuff. If it is real, it is deeply human, with lots of stumbles and bumbles.
“Christianity has never been congenial to those milling around finding Jesus terribly interesting, trying figuring it all out before they commit. In fact, hell is the place for those who find God terribly interesting. And heaven is the place where people are in touch with God, where they open themselves to the flow of the Spirit, where they are intoxicated, captivated and liberated by God”…and just can’t wait to get into the action.
I believe that a Church that lives in the power of the Spirit will embrace the fear and anger we see in and around us today so that we might heal them in the arms of affirmation. It believe such a community of concern will break free from the hope-deadening grip our conflicts impose on us when they are ignored or denied, rather than addressed. It will refuse to put up with pat answers and damaging patterns of behavior, whatever their motivation. And it will say NO to conventional biases and bigotries so it can say yes to the Spirit herself.
Thus far I’ve talked a lot about “the church.” What could this mean to you as a person in such a church? Try this: a church living in the spirit will help you open the locks on your heart so that you can see the beauty in that neighbor who, just a week before, said or did something you thought you could never forgive. Such a church will unfetter your memories and reconcile you with that relative you cannot stand. It will liberate your mind so that when you meet someone who differs radically from you, you will rejoice instead of recoil. The keys to these locks are: the honesty of the search together, the embrace of our questions, the willingness not to walk away in anger but to hang in with hope, and the commitment to what we discover along the way.
It’s a long way from Madison, Wisconsin, to the Left Bank of the Seine, and things are still a little strange. But it’s a lot further from Manila or Luanda or Melbourne or Kingston or Vancouver or Colombo or Seattle – and look at you. I mean, look around and look at you…. look at yourselves. What a bunch! Thanks for trusting the Spirit that brought me to this good place. It is a more than a privilege to be here, it’s an honor. Sure it’s a time of transition. It always is. Of course grief and confusion hang heavy for some of us. They always do. But ours is the best job possible. It must be, for nothing less than our corner of God’s vineyard is at stake. In this magnificent location, with even more magnificent people, how can we fail?
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