6-9-19 Readings & Sermon

A reading from Acts.

When the day of Pentecost had come, the disciples were all together in one place, and suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting.

Divided tongues as of fire appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them.

All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages as the Spirit gave them ability.

Now there were divoute Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem, and at this time the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each.

Amazed and astonished, they asked, are not all these who are speaking Galileans?

And how is it that we hear each of us in our own native language?

Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamplia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs.

In our own languages, we hear them speaking about God's deeds of power.

All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, What does this mean?

But others sneered and said, They are filled with new wine.

But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them.

Men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you and listen to what I say.

Indeed, these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o'clock in the morning.

So this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel.

In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophecy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams.

Even upon my slaves, both men and women, in those days I will pour out my spirit, and they shall prophecy, and I will show portance in the heaven above, and signs on the earth below, blood and fire and smoky mist.

The sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood before the coming of the Lord's great and glorious day.

Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.

The word of the Lord.

We will read responsibly by the half verse, Psalm 104.

O Lord, how manifold are your works.

Yonder is the great and wide sea with its living things too many to number.

All of them look to you.

You give it to them, they gather it.

You hide your face, and they are terrified.

May your glory, O Lord, endure forever.

You look at the earth and it trembles.

I will sing to the Lord as long as I live.

May these words of mine please you.

Bless the Lord, O my soul.

A reading from Romans.

All who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God.

For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption.

When we cry, Abba, Father, it is that very spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God.

And if children, then heirs, heirs of God, and joint heirs with Christ, if in fact we suffer with him, so that we may also be glorified with him.

The word of the Lord.

Philip said to Jesus, Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied.

Jesus said to him, Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me?

Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.

How can you say, Show us the Father?

Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me?

The words that I say to you, I do not speak on my own, but the Father who dwells in me does his works.

Believe me that I am in the Father, and the Father is in me.

But if you do not, then believe in me because of the works themselves.

Very truly I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do, and in fact will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father, and I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son.

If in my name you ask me for anything, I will do it.

If you love me, you will keep my commandments.

And I will ask the Father, and the Father will give you another advocate to be with you forever.

This is the Spirit of truth, and the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him.

You know him because he abides with you, and he will be in you.

I have said these things to you while I am still with you, but the advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I've said to you.

Peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you.

I don't give to you as the world gives.

Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.

The Gospel of the Lord.

Lord Jesus, she's sick, and Jesus, we ask you to heal.

Jesus, heal her.

I don't want to say that it's wrong, friend.

I because it's not wrong.

But I don't think that's what the Lord had in mind today.

Um, because to be honest with you, my experience was that using the name Jesus was almost like a little bit of a magic word, and if I just used it, God would give me what I wanted.

And I wanted decent things, you know, like to get all A's, and that's a good thing.

And and I wanted people who were sick to me, well, those are good things, right?

So, so I was often confused why I didn't get them, because I I used the name.

And and again, I want to suggest to you that um while it's not wrong and it's not bad, I do think it's what the Lord had in mind.

Um I think what we hear is that Jesus asked us to ask and to advocate and work in his name, which is not a literal idea here.

It's a figurative idea that we're meant to ask things he would ask.

That we're meant to be with one another in ways he was with other people.

That we're not called to say, God, my will be done on earth and also in heaven.

Uh when we pray in the name of Jesus, we're supposed to say, God, your will be done on earth, in my life, in my relationships, as it is in heaven.

And when we do that, of course, we'll find Jesus beside us.

And that's the miracle, I think, of Pentecost.

See, we celebrate this thing today that's really quite extraordinary.

Um, just to keep in mind, Pentecost, sure enough, Penta, it means 50, 50 days after Easter.

It was a major Jewish holiday.

Lots of people had gathered in Jerusalem, not as many as for Passover, but there was quite a crowd.

Forty days, Jesus was with them physically.

They saw him from time to time.

We were invited to think about resurrection.

Ten days ago he ascended to heaven.

And that's a glorious feast day, and since then the disciples have been in a room locking the door because, well, they're kind of afraid of other folks and what might happen to them.

And maybe honestly, they're just tired.

I mean, they've suffered a catastrophic loss.

And today is the day when bidden or unbidden, God shows up.

Shows up in, I think uh what we call as athletes, if you've done this before, as a second wind.

I didn't really consider myself a great athlete, but I've had a second wind before.

It's when I'm tired after, well, five miles into 20, and then I'm not as tired anymore.

I don't know if you've ever had that happen to you, a second wind.

It doesn't mean magical, it just means a sort of, I found a new way of breathing that allowed me to not be so opposed, frankly, to life.

I was able to get into running, not fight it.

And so the disciples get a second win, and it's loud and it shows up symbolically.

And again, I think we always have these opportunities to take scripture so literally that we forget to take it seriously.

So we could imagine on the flannel boards of our youth that this is all about tongues of fire, like well, like Mick Jagger's long tongue coming down on top of the disciples' heads.

Maybe it happened.

That miracle has never been reduplicated in my life.

I don't know if it's happened in yours.

I think another way we could focus on this is to imagine, aha, the miracle is that the disciples spoke in their language, and then really it was all about sort of international communication.

So they spoke English, and you know, people who only speak French heard French, and people who only speak Arabic heard Arabic.

And that is miraculous, right?

It's miraculous.

Not been reduplicated in my life.

Is that okay to say?

I don't know if it's reduplicated in yours, where you've been an envoy and spoke words in your native language and everybody heard them in their native language.

I want to ask us to consider this story seriously enough that we move past the literal, because I want to say I think this story invites us to a kind of Pentecost today, not where we just celebrate something happened a long time ago, but we live into it today.

And I don't know, I've really thought about language a lot today.

And um, to be honest with you, uh, language can create some barriers, not just among communication, but quite honestly, um, language can create barriers even among folks that speak English.

I don't know if this has happened to you before.

I'll just give you an example because I'm a pretty petty person this way.

Uh, when I was in seminary, uh, we took a class called pastoral care.

Pastoral care.

Now there were folks that called it pastorial care.

Pastorial, it turns out, is not a real word.

If it were, it would refer to like taking care of pastures, you know, like bunnies and cattle and growing crops.

We did not learn that in seminary at all.

I want you to know there was no class on animal husbandry.

And so um, when I found myself disagreeing on certain theological points, I would say, well, you think it's pastorial care, so you're wrong.

And what I would do is use language with a with a fellow English speaker to lock a door between us.

To lock a door.

Now, pastorial is probably not your word.

Um it's possible you have other words.

It's possible you're bigger people than I am, and you don't do this.

Use language as a weapon against fellow English speakers so that you can create boundaries between you.

Um there's other words they may be like the word frustrated.

I'm gonna tell you, I like to be right.

I really like to be right.

And for the longest time I couldn't figure out why people pronounced the word indictment wrong.

Um why were they saying indictment?

It's clearly an indictment.

Oh man, about 10 years ago when I realized that word is pronounced indictment, I felt like such a dummy.

This is this interesting thing.

We sometimes use language, even just the way we say it, as a way of distancing ourselves from other people.

Consider the way you pronounce the word S-Y-R-U-P.

Now we joked about this in college.

What's the right way to pronounce the word syrup?

You may be saying that's not how you say that word.

Funny little thing, but what I want to say is that the funny differences so often become not moments of appreciation or difference, they become locks in the doors between our common humanity.

At least in my life, that's the case.

Today is a day in which those barriers are unlocked.

Now think about linguistic differences also represent cultural differences, ways of carrying yourself and practicing and dressing, ways that could be, could be, moments in which we appreciate our diversity, but could be moments when we close ourselves off.

So there's an Episcopalian preacher called Barbara Brown Taylor, and she says salvation happens anytime someone with a key uses it to unlock a door, they could just as well have locked.

Salvation happens when we unlock a door, when we open a door, we just as well could have locked.

I don't know that the Lord needs me to speak to people in Botswana today.

Maybe, but I do know there are people in my life right now that I've created artificial boundaries to, and I'm positive the Lord would like me to unlock those doors.

And what does that look like a little bit?

Well, we all have our own things.

And this is where I think Brene Brown is so interesting.

We're we're sort of reading this together as a parish when we're having these conversations.

Is uh she really invites us to consider whether or not we're operating from a place of worthiness and openness or whether we're operating from a place of scarcity, in which we say, hey, there's not a lot to go around.

I doubt I'll win, but if I can finish ahead of you, at least that's something.

And I love to finish ahead of people with my diction.

I like to be better speaker than people, because then I don't feel so bad about everything else that I feel bad about.

I like to be a better parent than other parents.

Because to be honest with you, parenting is like the most vulnerable thing in the entire world.

None of us are perfect, but if I could just be a little better than you, then I wouldn't be at the bottom of the pile.

And the interesting thing is we're so used to doors being slammed and locked in us that um we kind of have lived into this church experience that says we're really all supposed to be the same and know the right answer.

I want you to consider Pentecost, we say, is the birth of the church.

That's fine, but what church did God give birth to, and what church do we choose to live into?

The story says the church God gave birth to was the one in which people who had different culture and language came together around the saving work of God instead of around the doctrine of the preacher.

The church God gave birth to was not it was not uniform in belief.

It was united in the mission.

Very often I live into the church that is not of God's birth, but is of my own making.

The church in which we close doors and we say, your vulnerability doesn't belong here because I did it better.

I don't know if you've ever had these moments.

This is actually a really humbling, positive.

I didn't mean like degrading, I mean humbling, like being no more than God made you to be and no less.

That's what humility means.

A really humbling part about being a priest is people invite me into their personal lives without me having earned it.

Because I'm wearing one of these.

I get to do it in hospitals, I get to do it in my office, I get to do it in funerals and weddings and all over the place.

People will trust me with things I didn't earn.

And I have these moments where people say, you know, I'm just really struggling.

I decided to take my mother off life support.

I have these moments.

You have these moments where we could say should have kept her on.

Bless your heart.

Well, if it were my kid, here's what I would do.

I can't believe you didn't set that boundary.

We have moments where we can lock the door.

Me of all people in God's name.

But you are full of the Father as well, and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

That's the message today.

We have moments where we can lock those doors and say, I'd have done better than you.

Just take my advice.

Bless your heart.

I mean in the not good way, the kind of way you do in the Costco parking lot.

Um if y'all don't know this, go to the Richmond Costco.

I don't mean this one here.

Go up to Richmond, and you will have opportunity after opportunity to bless people's heart.

I promise you.

Or today at Pentecost, we have the opportunity when confronted with, frankly, somebody suffering to open our heart to them.

To open our heart and to get off the judgment and to actually say, in the real certain way, God bless your heart.

Bless your heart.

Even if maybe we figured something out, God bless your heart.

Or we could just use his name and say Jesus as we lock the doors to people.

Which church did God give birth to on Pentecost?

This one.

Which one are we gonna worship at?

That's why we come back to the story.

We worship the story of God who locks doors and locks people out.

We worship around a Story in which God says Cretans and Arabs and English speakers and Egyptians and people who wear different clothes are invited to accept the fact that God has adopted all of them as God's own children.

And we're meant to do that too.

That's what we read in Romans today.

God has adopted us all as God's children.

And we're invited, I think, this is not a petty thing.

We're invited to live into that by unlocking doors that we often lock.

We lock them because God, it's uncomfortable.

It's painful to go there with somebody else.

It's so much easier to be self-righteous and validated, because at least we're not as bad as you.

And I suggest to you, we've got a lot of ordinary time before us.

That's what we call the season because it's so long.

We've got a lot of ordinary time, frankly, to live into an extraordinary way of being as a church and worshiping, which is unlocking those doors instead.

Now, please don't confuse me.

I'm not saying there's no accountability.

And I'm not saying I'm okay, you're okay.

I'm saying God wills us to be together and disagreeing, we'll work that out.

But whether we agree or not, the Lord's table is open to you.

God's adoption as children and daughters has already happened.

We just aren't living into it.

Pentecost is about us taking it seriously enough to go there with one another.

Pentecost is us taking a second and saying, I could give you advice, or I could actually stop and listen to what you're saying and go there with you, even if we disagree.

Pentecost is doing what the churches I grew up in with no ill intent here, but I couldn't do.

If you ask the wrong question, I mean to even ask that means you're probably not a Christian and going to hell.

God loves you, but God doesn't like you, and you just made that very clear.

But we're invited, and I think this is important more so now than ever, to be a place, the safest place to be different.

Because the reality is, whether we recognize it or not, God has adopted us as God's children.

That's a scripture we just read.

And we have a lot of time, like the rest of our lives, to hopefully live into the church God has in mind.

And that's my prayer and my hope, this Pentecost.

Now, you weren't here at 8 o'clock when we did a baptism.

Usually we don't do baptisms at 8 o'clock because it's early.

And I want to tell you something really interesting.

I'm just going to name this.

I've been a priest now six years.

This was the second black child I baptized in six years.

I don't know if that's sad, actually.

I think it was a beautiful thing to do on Pentecost.

It was a beautiful and wonderful thing.

And one of the things we realize in baptism, I didn't do this in the church I grew up in.

I'm glad we do it here.

We baptize babies because, God, aren't they wonderful?

I mean, our brains are hardwired to take care of babies.

And we look there at that shell and we say, yep, God's got you.

And we say these vows like, hey, we got you too.

We'll do all in our power to make sure you live into God's hope for your life.

We say that in baptism, and it's so easy to say for babies because we're hardwired to take care of them.

And then the next step in Pentecost, don't you see, is to say it to that little baby sitting on your right.

That's my spouse for 50 years! She's not a baby.

In fact, she's God's child, who God has adopted, and we just don't see it because we're used to locking doors instead of unlocking them.

That's why we baptize babies, because it's easy, we can do it.

And now the work of ordinary time is to see the father in your spouse in your baby, and then let's make it a little harder to see the father in your teenager, to see the father in your contrary parent or brother or sister, to see your father in that person at work.

You've given them boundaries, they just don't listen.

But to see the Holy Spirit there.

It's going to take some energy to live into extraordinary time, and I hope you'll come back frequently to be refreshed in this journey that calls God calls us to receive that energy in your spirit.

Let's live into God's imagination a little bit more together this year.