“Good boy? WHO’S the good boy? I am the only good boy! Who is this other good boy, because it can’t be me; she’s not petting me. Why does she keep sitting there and talking and not following through on her promises?”
With each new favorite word woven into the story of her imaginary trip to the park saying “I love you” to some unknown “handsome boy” and munching on “snacks,” the dog gets a stunned, shocked look on its face. The words lack any follow-through, and the dog realizes he’s been had. He finally stalks off in disgust as his owner keeps prattling on, and snickering at his response. As she ends the story with lots of uses of the word “snacks,” the lowest blow of them all, the dog has had too much, and starts barking—which in his language obviously means, as a toddler I once knew would say when she was disgusted with someone, “Shut up, you crazy lady. You’re drunk.”
In our story from Acts today, through a gift of the Holy Spirit, Jews from all over the Mediterranean and Middle East, gathered for an important Jewish festival in Jerusalem, suddenly hear the gospel of Jesus proclaimed in their own languages. Even though the people talking obviously are not native to their homelands and languages. These complete strangers, natives of dozens of lands in which Jews had been scattered during their many exiles, hear about a story of incredible power, filled with wondrous words, words of promise. And just like poor Zeus, when some of them hear this amazing gospel, itself filled with wonders too great to keep in, some of the listeners react in disbelief and suspect, despite the early hour of the morning, that those who are speaking to them in a frenzy of joy, are drunk.
In the reading from Acts 2:1-21, we are reminded of the power of words in the response of the disciples after the power of the Holy Spirit comes over them, giving them the gift of language. In a blink they are outside, in the streets, doing exactly what the disciples were told to do in our gospel reading—they are out in the world, testifying to the power of God as revealed in Christ to the people they encounter there. It’s probably the most excitement you and I have ever heard coming out of a church meeting.
In a kind of reverse of the curse of the Tower of Babel, now these disciples, many of them simple country folk, have just learned to speak other people’s language. I think that’s an important point for us too in the Church today: we are called to speak to people in their own languages first, rather than expect them to immediately understand the language of Christianity.
But the disciples’ first new language came as a challenge even earlier, for them as well as us. As soon as those early disciples answered Jesus’s call to follow him, they had to learn the language of Jesus—a strange language, then and now, awash in a grammar of grace rather than a grammar of vengeance.
This language, this grammar of grace, was filled with strange ideas, in which the greatest is the least, the least is the greatest, in which forgiveness and grace are more important than being right or self-righteous. Even after Jesus’s life on Earth was done, we can see that the disciples were still trying to make sense of that language. And we are too. We ourselves as Christians 2000 years later also continually work at acquiring that same language-- and it’s still just as alien and difficult for us as it was for them. The power of the Holy Spirit is here to help us continue learning Jesus’s counter-cultural grammar of grace and reconciliation.
The Spirit hovered over the waters at creation, and God spoke goodness into the world. The Spirit breathed the Church to life at Pentecost, and blew those disciples out into the streets with the explosive power of love and truth to proclaim the good news to those who most needed to hear it—and in their own languages. The Spirit hovers over us even now, hoping to reinforce the goodness in our hearts. The Spirit is always trying to speak to the soul, using a language that we understood instinctively in childhood, but often have allowed to slip away as our hearts sometimes harden and we become more “worldly-wise.” That’s why the language of love that God imprinted on us at creation, during Jesus’s ministry and again at our baptism, often seems like a foreign tongue. It’s hard for us to trust in words like “grace,” “mercy,” and “forgiveness” for ourselves as being real, much less for us to speak and live them out to others.
As we were discussing these readings in Bible study this week, we reflected with a sense of wonder what it would be like to have those around us really understand what we are saying. Too much that we say gets lost along the way from one person’s mouth to another person’s ear. And the more people become different from us, the worse that lack of understanding often becomes. And yet here are these followers of Jesus, seized by the Spirit, pouring out into the streets and speaking and being understood by people who come from vastly different cultures from those of the disciples.
But that’s exactly what we are called to do as the Church. We are called to speak to the soul of each precious person we encounter, and hear the echoed whisper of that goodness and love vibrating from them—especially when it’s hard for us to do so, when we allow our differences, our fears, or our suspicions to divide us rather than strengthen us. Words do matter when we are speaking to the soul, and the word is Love.
As I talked about last week, story is one of the most powerful forces in the world—and story is bound up in language—language that can hold nothing back, or language that can attempt to limit access to the good news. And we have to give up the idea that we can domesticate Jesus for our own purposes, or that we should hold the Holy Spirit at arms’ length because we fear being seized by love and sent out into those streets just like those disciples all those years ago.
Language is powerful—just as the wind that is often a symbol for the Spirit is powerful. Language can help span divides, soothe grief,-- and spark conflagrations too. Especially when language is used to divide, to wound, to taunt, or to assault the very basis of the truth, as we have experienced these last few years.
We are called, and empowered by the Holy Spirit, just like those disciples, to the proclamation of the power of love.
Willie James Jennings, in his commentary on the Book of Acts, call this moment, “The beginning of the miracle of Pentecost, the revolution of the intimate. This is the beginning of a community broken open by the sheer act of God, and we are yet to comprehend the extent to which God acts and is acting to break us open. Indeed it will be a community created by the spirit precisely in the breaking open.”(1) The gospel launches a revolution of the intimate, because in speaking of the love of God, we are called to be vulnerable and unguarded in sharing the story of God’s unifying love in a world that only profits by division and turning us against each other in competition or downright hatred.
The story we hear today is the story of the first great promotion of the gospel of Jesus since his execution and resurrection. These last 50 days, they had been an insular little community, locked behind doors, afraid even though the assurance that Jesus most often gave were assurances to not be afraid and instead be at peace. He said those two things—don’t be afraid and peace be with you—so that the disciples would be able to share in Jesus’s work, and he offers us the Spirit to help us now.
With each new favorite word woven into the story of her imaginary trip to the park saying “I love you” to some unknown “handsome boy” and munching on “snacks,” the dog gets a stunned, shocked look on its face. The words lack any follow-through, and the dog realizes he’s been had. He finally stalks off in disgust as his owner keeps prattling on, and snickering at his response. As she ends the story with lots of uses of the word “snacks,” the lowest blow of them all, the dog has had too much, and starts barking—which in his language obviously means, as a toddler I once knew would say when she was disgusted with someone, “Shut up, you crazy lady. You’re drunk.”
In our story from Acts today, through a gift of the Holy Spirit, Jews from all over the Mediterranean and Middle East, gathered for an important Jewish festival in Jerusalem, suddenly hear the gospel of Jesus proclaimed in their own languages. Even though the people talking obviously are not native to their homelands and languages. These complete strangers, natives of dozens of lands in which Jews had been scattered during their many exiles, hear about a story of incredible power, filled with wondrous words, words of promise. And just like poor Zeus, when some of them hear this amazing gospel, itself filled with wonders too great to keep in, some of the listeners react in disbelief and suspect, despite the early hour of the morning, that those who are speaking to them in a frenzy of joy, are drunk.
In the reading from Acts 2:1-21, we are reminded of the power of words in the response of the disciples after the power of the Holy Spirit comes over them, giving them the gift of language. In a blink they are outside, in the streets, doing exactly what the disciples were told to do in our gospel reading—they are out in the world, testifying to the power of God as revealed in Christ to the people they encounter there. It’s probably the most excitement you and I have ever heard coming out of a church meeting.
But the disciples’ first new language came as a challenge even earlier, for them as well as us. As soon as those early disciples answered Jesus’s call to follow him, they had to learn the language of Jesus—a strange language, then and now, awash in a grammar of grace rather than a grammar of vengeance.
This language, this grammar of grace, was filled with strange ideas, in which the greatest is the least, the least is the greatest, in which forgiveness and grace are more important than being right or self-righteous. Even after Jesus’s life on Earth was done, we can see that the disciples were still trying to make sense of that language. And we are too. We ourselves as Christians 2000 years later also continually work at acquiring that same language-- and it’s still just as alien and difficult for us as it was for them. The power of the Holy Spirit is here to help us continue learning Jesus’s counter-cultural grammar of grace and reconciliation.
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| The Holy Spirit, Triptych by Filippo Rossi |
The Spirit hovered over the waters at creation, and God spoke goodness into the world. The Spirit breathed the Church to life at Pentecost, and blew those disciples out into the streets with the explosive power of love and truth to proclaim the good news to those who most needed to hear it—and in their own languages. The Spirit hovers over us even now, hoping to reinforce the goodness in our hearts. The Spirit is always trying to speak to the soul, using a language that we understood instinctively in childhood, but often have allowed to slip away as our hearts sometimes harden and we become more “worldly-wise.” That’s why the language of love that God imprinted on us at creation, during Jesus’s ministry and again at our baptism, often seems like a foreign tongue. It’s hard for us to trust in words like “grace,” “mercy,” and “forgiveness” for ourselves as being real, much less for us to speak and live them out to others.
As we were discussing these readings in Bible study this week, we reflected with a sense of wonder what it would be like to have those around us really understand what we are saying. Too much that we say gets lost along the way from one person’s mouth to another person’s ear. And the more people become different from us, the worse that lack of understanding often becomes. And yet here are these followers of Jesus, seized by the Spirit, pouring out into the streets and speaking and being understood by people who come from vastly different cultures from those of the disciples.
But that’s exactly what we are called to do as the Church. We are called to speak to the soul of each precious person we encounter, and hear the echoed whisper of that goodness and love vibrating from them—especially when it’s hard for us to do so, when we allow our differences, our fears, or our suspicions to divide us rather than strengthen us. Words do matter when we are speaking to the soul, and the word is Love.
As I talked about last week, story is one of the most powerful forces in the world—and story is bound up in language—language that can hold nothing back, or language that can attempt to limit access to the good news. And we have to give up the idea that we can domesticate Jesus for our own purposes, or that we should hold the Holy Spirit at arms’ length because we fear being seized by love and sent out into those streets just like those disciples all those years ago.
Language is powerful—just as the wind that is often a symbol for the Spirit is powerful. Language can help span divides, soothe grief,-- and spark conflagrations too. Especially when language is used to divide, to wound, to taunt, or to assault the very basis of the truth, as we have experienced these last few years.
We are called, and empowered by the Holy Spirit, just like those disciples, to the proclamation of the power of love.
Willie James Jennings, in his commentary on the Book of Acts, call this moment, “The beginning of the miracle of Pentecost, the revolution of the intimate. This is the beginning of a community broken open by the sheer act of God, and we are yet to comprehend the extent to which God acts and is acting to break us open. Indeed it will be a community created by the spirit precisely in the breaking open.”(1) The gospel launches a revolution of the intimate, because in speaking of the love of God, we are called to be vulnerable and unguarded in sharing the story of God’s unifying love in a world that only profits by division and turning us against each other in competition or downright hatred.
The story we hear today is the story of the first great promotion of the gospel of Jesus since his execution and resurrection. These last 50 days, they had been an insular little community, locked behind doors, afraid even though the assurance that Jesus most often gave were assurances to not be afraid and instead be at peace. He said those two things—don’t be afraid and peace be with you—so that the disciples would be able to share in Jesus’s work, and he offers us the Spirit to help us now.
Sharing in Jesus’s work of redemption, reconciliation, healing, and salvation in the here and now is, after all, the entire point of being a follower of Jesus. It’s not just to hoard away the gospel or cut off people from its promises. Our work, just like those disciples, is to go out and speak the good news to all we meet in language that they understand. It’s to let the Spirit lead us without fear.
Let’s face it—we are very much like those disciples locked away in that upper room. We too have been locked away out of fear for a very long time—it seems like forever—as this pandemic has come in waves and surges at us. Yet take a step away from this most recent scenario, and you could say that the institutional church is very much in the same spot.
Too often, we in the big-C Church sit back and wait for seekers to come to us, ignoring the fact that most of those who have turned their backs on religion have heard its practitioners using language that scapegoats others, or that emphasizes selfishness over mission in the world. Too often some who claim the name of Christ try to lock away the gospel. They talk more about who is not allowed in, about who is NOT allowed to be treated as full members of the Body of Christ. They even talk about withholding communion from people. They talk in the language of control and power, rather than in the language of good news about Jesus.
But on this birthday of the Church, we are being asked to take seriously our call to allow the Holy Spirit, as our companion in the Way of Jesus, into our hearts and then send us out into the streets.
To go out into the streets seek out those different from us. We are called to share our story—the story of how Jesus has changed your life and mine through his love, his healing, his transformative welcome of all. We are called not just to use beautiful words, like that poor dog heard from the lips of his owner, but to follow through with fulfilling the promises those words offer. Because the best words always are tied to actions.
We are called to meet people where they are, and speak the truth of love, especially in the face of hatred, paranoid division, and falsehood. We are called to care for the vulnerable—even the vulnerable ones we do not know. We are called to talk about mercy and grace, remembering the mercy and grace we ourselves know have received repeatedly, from God and others. Full stop.
If we talk about forgiveness, and we must, we ourselves must model forgiveness and mercy, bringing it to life in a world too given over to anger, suspicion, and nurturing grievances until they swell and explode like road kill in the summer sun.
If we talk about salvation, and we must, we have to model the kingdom values of Jesus—the grace that doesn’t keep score, but instead gives freely and generously to everyone, whether the world would count them as among the “deserving” or not. We must not look for the least we can do, but the best we can give.
If we talk about love, and we must, we must embody love. This is especially important in this time of division and hate, and in this time when too many openly scorn any idea that we have obligations to each other to act in ways that protect each other, even at our own inconvenience or sacrifice. The church, of all places, should be a place of concern for those we encounter, a place that strives to protect the weakest and most vulnerable, a place where we maintain our parishes not as locked rooms but as launching points to go out and proclaim the gospel in a language all will understand, however long that take.
We may not be perfect at it. We ourselves are still learning Jesus’s language of love, community, and reconciliation today. But it is the language that alone can unify creation as God intended from the beginning. It is the language of salvation, but not salvation for selfish ends. Rather, this language calls all disciples, them as well as us, to find the vocabulary for helping to repair the world and our relationships within it, with each other and ultimately, with God. This idea of responsibility of faithful people to repair the world is what our Jewish brothers and sisters call tikkun olam—the repair of the world.
In a world that focuses on the temporary, we are called to speak of the eternal. In a world that focuses on transaction in all relationships, we are called to transformation and embrace. As disciples, we are called to embrace rather than shun the power of the Holy Spirit, and speak to the soul. Let us dedicate ourselves, this Pentecost Day, to speaking—and embodying-- the miracle of love.
Let’s face it—we are very much like those disciples locked away in that upper room. We too have been locked away out of fear for a very long time—it seems like forever—as this pandemic has come in waves and surges at us. Yet take a step away from this most recent scenario, and you could say that the institutional church is very much in the same spot.
Too often, we in the big-C Church sit back and wait for seekers to come to us, ignoring the fact that most of those who have turned their backs on religion have heard its practitioners using language that scapegoats others, or that emphasizes selfishness over mission in the world. Too often some who claim the name of Christ try to lock away the gospel. They talk more about who is not allowed in, about who is NOT allowed to be treated as full members of the Body of Christ. They even talk about withholding communion from people. They talk in the language of control and power, rather than in the language of good news about Jesus.
But on this birthday of the Church, we are being asked to take seriously our call to allow the Holy Spirit, as our companion in the Way of Jesus, into our hearts and then send us out into the streets.
To go out into the streets seek out those different from us. We are called to share our story—the story of how Jesus has changed your life and mine through his love, his healing, his transformative welcome of all. We are called not just to use beautiful words, like that poor dog heard from the lips of his owner, but to follow through with fulfilling the promises those words offer. Because the best words always are tied to actions.
We are called to meet people where they are, and speak the truth of love, especially in the face of hatred, paranoid division, and falsehood. We are called to care for the vulnerable—even the vulnerable ones we do not know. We are called to talk about mercy and grace, remembering the mercy and grace we ourselves know have received repeatedly, from God and others. Full stop.
If we talk about forgiveness, and we must, we ourselves must model forgiveness and mercy, bringing it to life in a world too given over to anger, suspicion, and nurturing grievances until they swell and explode like road kill in the summer sun.
If we talk about salvation, and we must, we have to model the kingdom values of Jesus—the grace that doesn’t keep score, but instead gives freely and generously to everyone, whether the world would count them as among the “deserving” or not. We must not look for the least we can do, but the best we can give.
If we talk about love, and we must, we must embody love. This is especially important in this time of division and hate, and in this time when too many openly scorn any idea that we have obligations to each other to act in ways that protect each other, even at our own inconvenience or sacrifice. The church, of all places, should be a place of concern for those we encounter, a place that strives to protect the weakest and most vulnerable, a place where we maintain our parishes not as locked rooms but as launching points to go out and proclaim the gospel in a language all will understand, however long that take.
We may not be perfect at it. We ourselves are still learning Jesus’s language of love, community, and reconciliation today. But it is the language that alone can unify creation as God intended from the beginning. It is the language of salvation, but not salvation for selfish ends. Rather, this language calls all disciples, them as well as us, to find the vocabulary for helping to repair the world and our relationships within it, with each other and ultimately, with God. This idea of responsibility of faithful people to repair the world is what our Jewish brothers and sisters call tikkun olam—the repair of the world.
In a world that focuses on the temporary, we are called to speak of the eternal. In a world that focuses on transaction in all relationships, we are called to transformation and embrace. As disciples, we are called to embrace rather than shun the power of the Holy Spirit, and speak to the soul. Let us dedicate ourselves, this Pentecost Day, to speaking—and embodying-- the miracle of love.
Amen.
Preached at the 10:30 am Holy Eucharist at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville, on the Day of Pentecost, May 23, 2021.
Readings:
Citations:
1) Willie James Jennings, Acts: A Theological Commentary on the Bible (Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible), p. 27.
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