Today is Sunday, May 31. It is Pentecost Sunday, one of the holiest days of the Christian calendar. It is a day on which we wear red to symbolize fire and the Spirit. It is a day on which we hear again what happened on that first Pentecost following the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus.
Acts 2:1-21: When Pentecost Day arrived, they were all together in one place. Suddenly a sound from heaven like the howling of a fierce wind filled the entire house where they were sitting. They saw what seemed to be individual flames of fire alighting on each one of them. They were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages as the Spirit enabled them to speak.
There were pious Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. When they heard this sound, a crowd gathered. They were mystified because everyone heard them speaking in their native languages. They were surprised and amazed, saying, “Look, aren’t all the people who are speaking Galileans, every one of them? How then can each of us hear them speaking in our native language? Parthians, Medes, and Elamites; as well as residents of Mesopotamia, Judea, and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the regions of Libya bordering Cyrene; and visitors from Rome (both Jews and converts to Judaism), Cretans and Arabs—we hear them declaring the mighty works of God in our own languages!” They were all surprised and bewildered. Some asked each other, “What does this mean?” Others jeered at them, saying, “They’re full of new wine!”
Peter stood with the other eleven apostles. He raised his voice and declared, “Judeans and everyone living in Jerusalem! Know this! Listen carefully to my words! These people aren’t drunk, as you suspect; after all, it’s only nine o’clock in the morning! Rather, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel:
In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy. Your young will see visions. Your elders will dream dreams. Even upon my servants, men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days, and they will prophesy. I will cause wonders to occur in the heavens above and signs on the earth below, blood and fire and a cloud of smoke. The sun will be changed into darkness, and the moon will be changed into blood, before the great and spectacular day of the Lord comes. And everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.
Well, church: there’s a lot going on in the world right now. Stuff we cannot ignore. Stuff I will be talking about later in the sermon. Stuff that relates directly to the Pentecost story.
Pentecost is about the arrival of a new day for God’s church: when the young see visions and the elders dream dreams. It’s a new day for God’s church, when the Spirit is poured out on men and women - on people of every gender -, on servants and masters, on people from every race and every nation, speaking every language on earth. It’s a new day for God’s church when our differences no longer divide us, but instead, we are all united in God’s Spirit.
It’s a new day.
But I wonder if Peter and the others ever longed for old days. I wonder if they ever longed for their days fishing on the Sea of Galilee, back before they ever met Jesus of Nazareth. Life seemed normal then. There’s nothing normal about a rushing wind and flames of fire and speaking in tongues!
Did they ever wish they could go back to that normal life, before all that?
Of course, there was no going back. The world would never be the same. The Spirit led them forward, into a new world, a new way of living, where everything would be different.
I think of the people Moses led out of Egypt, and how - when the going got tough - they wanted to go back, to return to Egypt, even though their lives in Egypt were lives of slavery. Yet it was a life that was familiar - it was normal - not like the wilderness road to the Promised Land. The road to the Promised Land led them to a new world, a new way of living, where everything would be different.
I’m starting to feel like this time of pandemic is a journey through our own wilderness. When it started, we thought it would soon be over, and we figured it wouldn’t be long until we could return back home, return everything back to normal.
But now, we know: going back is not an option. Things will never get back to the way they were. There’s no going back; the only way is forward.
My clergy colleague Vickie Firch wrote something on facebook this week that speaks to this. She wrote: “Did you know that the Australian coat of arms pictures two creatures--the emu, which is a flightless bird, and the kangaroo. The animals were chosen because both the emu and kangaroo can move only forward, not backward. The emu’s three-toed foot causes it to fall if it tries to go backwards, and the kangaroo is prevented from moving in reverse by its large tail.”
Like the emu and the kangaroo - like the Hebrews in the wilderness - and like the disciples - we can’t go backwards. We can only go forward.
And the way forward leads to a Pentecost future.
That Pentecost future is a future in which the young see visions and the elders dream dreams - dreams of how things can be, when we come together - people of every race, every nationality, and every sexual orientation; rich and poor, young and old, male and female, and nonbinary folks - all working together with God’s Spirit, to create a better world.
Because if things aren’t ever going to be the same as they were, then we’re left with two options. If the future isn’t going to be the same, then the future is either going to be worse, or it’s going to be better.
Let’s choose “better!”
When we come back together, all of us, able to worship in our sanctuary, it won’t be the same. We will need to continue our commitment to making sure our church is a safe space - in every way possible - for all people.
So we will need to be very careful about how we maintain hygiene. Which means communion will be different. How we greet each other will be different. How we collect offering will be different. How we praise God in song will be different. How - and where - we sit, will be different.
Everything will be different.
And to many of us, different sounds worse. Not better.
But if we are able to envision creative ways of doing worship - if we are able to dream dreams of how it all can be done - perhaps we can find a way to actually make it better! Especially if we remain open to the Spirit’s leading.
This is what I ask of you, church: that you keep your heart and your mind open. This is a time for casting visions and dreaming dreams, and in order to do that, we need to be open. Open to imagination. Open to possibility. Open to the leading of God’s Spirit.
Because what we are being called to do is re-imagine church. As Pastor Lenny Duncan said at the Festival of Homiletics week before last: “Everything is up for grabs. The whole concept of church has become more malleable than it has been in a long, long time. Maybe ever.”
The good news is that we, at Bixby Knolls Christian Church, already have a head start. Our New Beginnings process has prepared us for this. We didn’t know that this is what it was preparing us for… but God did. Because we’ve already been re-imagining church! We’ve already re-imagined a new future story for our church! We know how to do this!
Now, because of COVID-19, we get to do it again...
Who knew that that’s what God was preparing us for, as we worked through our New Beginnings process!
...
But it’s not just how we do worship and how we do church that we are being called to reimagine. The Spirit is also calling us to reimagine society. The world. Because for a long time, society hasn’t been working. Not for most of us. Not for most of the world.
For most of us and for most of the world, society is broken. What’s become normal… is broken. So why would we want to go back to normal, if normal is broken?
The killing of George Floyd is an example of the brokenness of the world. We live in a society, a nation, that has been torn apart by racism and white supremacy. Our current president has said repeatedly and publicly that he approves of police using aggressive & excessive violence and brutality against black and brown people… and too many of our police do just that. Not all of them. But too many. And we end up with yet another unarmed black man on the ground, crying out "I can't breathe" as his last words, because the knee pressed against his neck remains.
Now, "It’s natural to wish for life 'to just get back to normal,'" as Barack Obama said on Friday. "But we have to remember [he said] that for millions of Americans, being treated differently on account of race is tragically, painfully, maddeningly 'normal' – whether it’s while dealing with the health care system, or interacting with the criminal justice system, or jogging down the street, or just watching birds in a park.
"This shouldn’t be 'normal' in 2020 America. It can’t be 'normal.' If we want our children to grow up in a nation that lives up to its highest ideals, we can and must be better."
Another example of how society is broken is seen in recent news reports of how billionaires have actually added to their wealth during the pandemic, while record numbers are unemployed, and while public schools face unprecedented budget shortfalls. How is it that we as a society tolerate this? Billionaires should not be profiting off a pandemic when schools are suffering, when people are suffering. Yet this is 'normal,' in America. We must do better. We need to reimagine an economy that is good for everyone.
Our world is also being broken by climate change. We already have the solutions to climate change, and they aren’t even that expensive. We just need to implement them. Climate change is aggravating and intensifying so many of the problems we face - problems which disproportionately affect poor and vulnerable people. This is clearly another example of the brokenness of the world, and another example of our failure to love our neighbor as we love ourselves.
All that brokenness is what’s become normal. So why do we keep hoping for things to go back to normal? We don’t need a future that takes us back to normal.
We need a Pentecost future - a future of new visions and new dreams, put into place by people working with one another and with God’s Spirit to make those visions and dreams a reality.
We need a new future of men and women and nonbinary folks, rich and poor, young and old, people of every nation and race, speaking every language, united in creating this new future.
The Pentecost vision for the future is radically inclusive. It is a vision built on justice and equality. In the Pentecost vision for the future, Black lives matter. In the Pentecost vision for the future, there is justice and equality for all. In the Pentecost vision for the future, the poor receive good news, and the oppressed find freedom.
And this future starts right now.
So instead of going backward, let’s go forward, like the emus and the kangaroos. Let’s go forward into a Pentecost future. Let’s go forward and build a world of hope, unity, and love - a world filled with abundant life for every person. Let’s go forward to a world that is made whole!
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