Saturday, May 27, 2023

From Fragility to Power


It is very tempting to domesticate Pentecost. In fact, people have been trying to do this for at least two millennia. We like to boil down God to our size, so that the vastness and glory of God can fit comfortably inside something approximately the size of a baseball cap.

But God is not so easily domesticated.

Today, in our lesson from Acts, we heard diverse languages being read together at once from all over the church… it sounded to us chaotic, incomprehensible, confused. And yet… it the middle of all that, there was something there for all of us. If you listen closely, there was the Holy Spirit, speaking your language.

This is the sound of Good News. It is the language of purpose and of power. But like so much in God’s economy, we misunderstand what it meant by power. God’s power is not to rule, but to become the people God made us to be.

But even that language can get us into trouble. So often we want to reduce Pentecost to nothing more than a kind of spiritual self-help. Yes, the Holy Spirit transforms us and changes our living and our way of being—ask any addicted person who is successfully working their recovery—but it is much more than simple self-improvement.

God’s gifts are available to everyone! The whole point of God’s salvation project is to reunite humanity and creation with God. But all too often, we want to restrict Pentecost to a special few.

And way, way, too often, we limit Pentecost to the very holy, or the people we think are worthy enough or religious enough to deserve the gift. In fact God’s power falls on those we least expect and often at the very fringes of comfortable society.

In the Book of Acts, Luke describes the Holy Spirit as coming like wind and descending like tongues of flame. It is like the wind that moved over the void before creation shouted into existence like a big bang. It is like the fire of the sun that radiates out and gives life to our world.

We think of life as a fragile thing, and it very often is, and as the Holy Spirit moves over creation and over us in the Church, we find our very fragility can be the key to our deepest strength.

I believe that just as the church moves in oscillation from rest to action, the church also moves in rhythm from reformation to institutionalizing, from charisma to order. I also believe that the Holy Spirit lives precisely on the fulcrum, in the tension, in the LaGrange point, between those poles. And, right now, we are in the middle of such a transforming period. It is not comfortable nor is it new. In every generation of the Church is called to re-claim that power and transforming grace for their own time. 500 years ago, Martin Luther himself said that if we don’t do this, then we can’t be called "the Church."

So what does that mean? It means that we baptized Christians, we who are marked as Christ’s own forever, and sealed with the Holy Spirit in Baptism, are being called to move from fragility to power!

God is calling us to speak clearly the transforming power of Christ and the love of God for all people in all situations, whatever their race, gender, class, or whom they love. God's love, grace, and power is for anyone who seeks purpose, hope, healing and strength. 

It is not, and has never been, easy. We live in an age when politicians, pundits, and preachers, are advocating the limiting of books, films, and don’t want classrooms or even college students to talk about racism, injustice, gender, or our complicated history as a nation. We live in a time when ambitious officials do battle with amusement parks and other straw men in order to score points with their “base” (whatever that means!), and who use language of fear, rage, and images of a fantasy past to whip up their support. Here's the thing: if we limit the rights of others to discuss these things, then how long will it be before someone comes and limits our right to gather as we do here today, or who will tell how and when to do it?

It is exactly at moments like this when caring for the environment, seeking racial reconciliation, caring for the poor and outcast, and acknowledging both the accomplishments and the injustices of our past is both an honorable and holy thing.

And this reminds us that the Holy Spirit cannot be domesticated! The Holy Spirit cannot be locked in a strong box but instead breaks down barriers and hands out the power of God to all kinds of people in all kinds of places.

And you know what? This scares some folks! It scares people who are ashamed of their pasts. It is frightened people who hurl epithets like ‘woke’ around like insults. Why? Because they want to shut off conversation and make people as afraid as they are! This is not the work of faith; it is the work of fear! And fear (and the rage that grows out of fear) would have us domesticate Pentecost into mere entertainment and the Holy Spirit into a balm.

This is not new. We’ve been here before. Sixty years ago, in 1963, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King wrote to mainly white, mainline clergy (like me) a Letter from a Birmingham Jail. He said, “Wherever the early Christians entered a town the power structure got disturbed and immediately sought to convict them for being 'disturbers of the peace' and 'outside agitators.' But they went on with the conviction that they were a 'colony of heaven' and had to obey God rather than man. They were small in number but big in commitment. They were too God-intoxicated to be 'astronomically intimidated.' They brought an end to such ancient evils as infanticide and [the] gladiatorial contest.”

Alas, he also said: “Things are different now. The contemporary Church is so often a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. It is so often the arch-supporter of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the Church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the Church’s silent and often vocal sanction of things as they are.”

But just look at how Pentecost changed everything!

It was the Holy Spirit who led Philip to baptize the Ethiopian Eunuch (Acts 8:26-40), who was at once a slave, a Gentile from a far-away culture, and was by definition a sexual minority.

It was the Holy Spirit who empowered the women who followed Jesus and who also witnessed to his resurrection, like Mary, Martha, Susanna, and Mary Magdalene.

And it was the same Holy Spirit that inspired and empowered the women of the early church like Priscilla, Junia, Lydia, Phoebe, and Dorcas, to support the early church with their hospitality, leadership, and wealth.

I believe it was the Holy Spirit that led the people of South Africa under Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and others, to avoid violent revolution and seek transformation from a racially divided to a more racially diverse nation, using tools like the Truth and Reconciliation Commissions that allowed former oppressors and formerly oppressed people meet each other to tell and hear hard truths.

It took a generation of truth telling, undergirded by the Nuremburg Trials, for the German people to come to terms with the horrors of nationalism, war, and genocide and to turn away from their shameful past in the post-war era.

This is why I believe that telling the truth and learning from the past, however difficult, is the work of the Holy Spirit. It’s why we need dialogue, libraries, and learning and why the Church, at its best, has always supported scholarship and academic freedom.

It’s no wonder that the arrival of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost came with the followers of Jesus speaking Good News in every known language (Acts 2:1-21) for all the people to hear, understand, and believe.

When the Holy Spirit arrived, the fears of Jesus’ followers are burned away, and they are given strength, power, and vision to move into places that previously shamed them or frightened them. Rather than reserving power to a select few, God’s Holy Spirit distributed power, hope, generosity, and love to all God’s people, in a way that people from every corner of the known world both heard and understand.

On Pentecost we recall again how “perfect love casts out fear” (1 John 4:18). The Holy Spirit does not keep us locked up in safe deposit boxes, or preserved like bugs in amber, but reaches into the vulnerable places, the places where Christ walked, and died, and rose again.

The Holy Spirit burns away our fears, and gives us the strength, power, and vision to move into places that previously shamed us or frightened us. Rather than hang on to power, at Pentecost God distributes power, hope, generosity, and love to all God’s people.

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Here are the Scripture Lessons for Pentecost Sunday, May 28, 2023.

Here is a video of the Sermon at St. John's, Clearwater, Florida on May 28, 2023.

Here is a video of the Liturgy at St. John's, Clearwater, Florida on May 28, 2023.

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