Pentecost Year B
May 19, 2024
Acts 21: 1-21
Today we celebrate the birthday of the church, the day the Holy Spirit was given to the followers of Jesus who were still in Jerusalem. They’d been there since Jesus’ resurrection, waiting. They weren’t really sure what they were waiting for, but Jesus had told them before his ascension that they were to stay put. By now these scraggly group of misfits knew that it was a good idea to listen to Jesus even if they didn’t understand what was going on. Many of them had failed Jesus when he was arrested and I think they didn’t want to do that again.
So here they are, all of them together, these folks from Galilee, in a house in Jerusalem just waiting on God when they, and those outside, hear a very strange sound. A violent wind ushers in the new era. The Spirit of God doesn’t come in as a still small voice this time, but a sound that echoed down from the beginning of time when God began the creation of the world by uttering a sound.
And then tongues of fire were dancing above their heads and the sound beckoned to the people outside. People, mainly Jewish, from all over the known world. Men and women alike and no matter where they were from, what language they spoke, they all heard the sound of the Gospel in a language they understood. Not translated to them, but spoken directly to them in their native tongue.
And so, in vivid imagery and sound, the purpose of the church was demonstrated to the disciples and to the crowd who were gathered in Jerusalem for the Pentecost, the Jewish harvest festival that occurred 50 days after the Passover. And it came like no one was expecting and changed them forever.
And so the very first church service began. The “speaking in tongues” was not gibberish that no one had ever heard, it wasn’t an unknown utterance, the tongues were different languages. Something understandable, not spoken to benefit the disciples who were doing the talking but benefitting the people who were listening. And these people were from all over. They had brown skin and black skin and white skin and everything in between. This gift was sent to these listeners and the disciples were the conduits, the instruments by which the Spirit spoke to all people. A baptism of fire and the beginning of the church.
Does church matter now, 2000 years later? We could go on about how the church has failed, and it has failed many of our brothers and sisters and kinfolk. It has put up walls and locked doors and created rules of who’s in and who’s out, and at times it has seriously caused harm. We have to acknowledge these sins and make sure we turn around, when we need to, and go in a different direction. One that is hopefully led by the Holy Spirit that invites us to participate in the work of God in the world. Because when we don’t, we cause harm or lose our way.
I spent my whole lifetime to get to this point of becoming a priest in the church because I still believe the church matters. And in all these decades my love for the church and what it could be and sometimes is, has stayed alive. Because the first church I can remember experiencing loved me into itself. A bedraggled family that really didn’t fit in, was loved in and back into a community that exuded God’s loving mercy. So, I knew at age 13 what the church meant.
That doesn’t mean I didn’t experience rejection or disillusionment after that. It doesn’t mean that there’s plenty that needs fixing, but there’s the point. Jesus is a healer of the broken and his church is the hospital. The Spirit nurses us in our weaknesses and failures to restore us to wholeness and we should open those doors to anyone who seeks the solace of God.
Folks are looking for real people who are just trying to make it through this life and looking for companionship along the way–they are looking for God, they are looking for guidance, not pat answers. Folks are tired of the wars, both military and culture wars. They want to know what we are for, not what we’re against.
Rachel Held Evans, a 21st century prophet who died unexpectedly at the tender age of 38 and whose silenced voice I still grieve, wrote in her book Searching for Sunday, “We don’t want to choose between science and religion or between our intellectual integrity and our faith. Instead, we long for our churches to be safe places to doubt, ask questions, and to tell the truth, even when it’s uncomfortable. We want to talk about the tough stuff–biblical interpretation, religious pluralism, sexuality, racial reconciliation, and social justice–but without predetermined conclusions or simplistic answers. We want to bring our whole selves through the church doors, without leaving our hearts and minds behind.
We aren’t looking for a hipper Christinaity,” she continues. “We are looking for a truer Christianity, a more authentic Christianity. Like every generation before ours and every generation after, we’re looking for Jesus–the same Jesus who can be found in the strange places he’s always been found in: in bread, in wine, in baptism, in the Word, in suffering, in community, and among the least of these.”
Eugene Peterson wrote in his memoir, The Pastor, “God gave us the miracle of congregation the same way he gave us the miracle of Jesus, by the Descent of the Dove. The Holy Spirit descended into the womb of Mary in the Galilean village of Nazareth. Thirty or so years later the same Holy Spirit descended into the collective spiritual womb of men and women, which included Mary, who had been followers of Jesus… The first conception gave us Jesus; the second conception gave us church.”
I love the church. I love it when it is full of people and we are singing our praises to God in one voice, when our prayers are gathered together and lifted toward heaven. I love to come in here and sit by myself and look at the table that invites us to share a meal together every week and feel the years of prayers and tears and joys that have filled this space. It’s why I’ve worked in the church now for almost 20 years, and why I think she still matters. The sacramental mysteries of the church still matter.
“The church tells us we are Beloved in our baptism,
The church tells us we are broken and can be mended through confession
The church tells us we are commissioned to serve through Holy Orders
The church feeds us in our communion
The church welcomes us through our confirmation
The church anoints us in the anointing of the sick or dying
The church unites us in marriage.”
Of course there are also the unofficial sacraments of pilgrimage, foot washing, the sacrament of The Word, the sacrament of making chicken casseroles, and many other outward signs of an inward grace.
It was this that drew me and many others back to the church, the richness of our story alive in our liturgy and the story that is told without words through our symbols and art–everything should mean something that surrounds us in this space. When faith becomes too abstract, the sacraments teach us to touch, taste, smell, hear, and see God in everyday life. When we come to the table, we get God out of our heads and into our hands. Christianity isn’t simply to be believed, but lived, shared, eaten, spoken, and enacted in the presence of other people. Try as we may, we can’t be Christian on our own. We need a community, we need the church.
We are in an age of information overload and most folks don’t want more information about God. That intellectual knowledge can turn you dry as dust if it isn’t mixed with the living water, the incarnation of Christ in us. The bread of life in us as we are longing to know more God in our own bodies. People don’t want more about God, they want more God.
What we are and do and offer together makes a difference. It’s not about entertainment, people get that everywhere. It’s just as important for that one person that is seeking Jesus when they walk through that door as for a hundred. If Jesus chose that ragamuffin group of disciples who really missed the mark sometimes, and filled their ears with the sound of his Word and lit them on fire to become his church, his body in the world, then you are just as qualified. For a generation that is struggling to understand what the church is for, may these sacred mysteries remind us to taste, touch, smell, and see God today, and not give up. The church matters, you matter, and you will matter to others in ways you may never realize. So, happy birthday, church! Taste and see that the Lord is good.
Magdalena's Musings 