Sermon - Pentecost 2021 - Final Project, Transformative Leadership

 Preached at Congregational Church of Sunnyvale, Pentecost Sunday 2021

Lord Jesus Christ,

your kindly Spirit sets us free

from hastiness and angry tempers,

from harshness and ill-will.

Help us so to live

in the brightness of your presence,

that we may bring your sunshine

into cloudy places.

Take our hands and work with them;

take our lips and speak through them;

take our minds and think with them;

take our hearts and set them on fire

with love for you and all your people;

for your name’s sake. Amen.

So, today is the day of Pentecost, which happens to be my favorite church day. Daniel likes to joke with me and ask “Why do you like the day when everything is five times as expensive so much?” and I just groan a little and tell him that his joke is very funny.

 But honestly - it is my favorite church day for good reasons. Don’t get me wrong, I love Christmas and Easter, they are foundational events in this Christian life, but Pentecost….well, it's just kind of *wild*! 

There is the rushing wind, the tongues of fire, there is the spirit descending on everyone, there are all the disciples understanding the speech of all the people there, even ones speaking in languages that are foreign to them. 

There is a lot going on, and of course, there are those present who just don’t really get it,  who are just rabble-rousers...and who accuse them of simply being drunk. But Peter sets them straight because Pentecost is a wild party...but not that kind of party! It's only 9 am and no one gets drunk that early in the day after all.

I don’t just love it for the excitement though. I love it for some other reasons too. Pentecost is an egalitarian event. The spirit does not just fall on the men, or the priests, or the rich. 

It falls on women too, in a lot of Eastern Orthodox Icons like the one on the bulletin today, you see Mary, the mother of Jesus right at the center of the disciples with the tongues of flame over her head, and if we were Catholics there might be some discussion about how this event made Mary a completely new and unique temple for the spirit, but that would be a digression! 

Most people who are protestants may never see this image unless they go looking for it. They might not even hear Mary’s name spoken in relation to Pentecost at all.  

In Acts 1:14 there is an attendance list given for the Pentecost event, which includes “The women, and Mary, mother of Jesus”. So...not just Mary, but other women are there too, at the birth of the Christian church - which makes sense since the women had been there through all of Jesus’s earthly ministry as well, playing meaningful roles in all that occurred.  

It would be fair to say that the Catholic church has kind of rolled all women into Mary for inclusion in the workings of the church, which in itself is problematic, but at least she has a place at the table. 

For the longest time,  Protestant denominations kind of just rolled all women *out* of the church, including Mary, saying that too much “Mary Worship” was akin to idolatry.. But the thing is...that men, and the powers that be, can try to prevent women, and other marginalized people from having power in society, from having influence, from getting an education, from all kinds of things...but man cannot stop the spirit from doing as it will and going where it goes. 

One of the less acknowledged but truly detrimental effects of the Protestant Reformation was the loss of Mary as an intercessor, as a spiritual guide, and as a truly holy role model. In the Protestant tradition, Mary has been turned into a meek, mild baby vessel, and this has been harmful, not just for women, but for everyone.

 Demoting Mary to a simple vessel allows for all kinds of dismissal of women in the church, but it doesn’t stop there. Whatever the dominant theology in society is, it informs our social world in many ways, and this particular loss of Mary has also helped to perpetuate an awful lot of bad, sexist behavior. 

I don’t want to essentialize women or say that “all women are caring, compassionate, or less materialistic,  but the loss of feminine energy in the organization of the more modern church has led to a church that is quite often inflexible, that is hierarchical, that hordes resources, that is simply another “institution” in our society that has cemented it’s very masculine power and has then held on to it. 

This is The very thing that the spirit descended upon the faithful that day to supplant. It leads not just to the exclusion of women, but the exclusion of all kinds of marginalized people. I mean, Jesus hung out with what was likely considered the dregs of society, the poor, the sick, the lame, the tax collectors, the prostitutes, and he considered them all brothers, sisters, and friends, and yes, even “equals”. 

Today, the church is still stuck in this struggle, and gaining a place at the table, and a position of “power” in the church today, is often exclusive, and more about your social position and social class than anything else, including authority and power to minister to others, and do the work of Christ. 

Access to the power of the church, is often held behind paywalls, that is not insignificant, that can total more than the cost of a home, and many cannot afford this,  but thankfully The Holy Spirit places no such barrier, it didn’t in the time of the apostles, and it still doesn’t today!

 And so the spirit falls on Mary, the other women who were there, but not named, Jesus’s brothers and sisters, and the apostles present, and the spirit has come to bring something new into the world, using these people who are now filled with the presence of God! And they all find that they are poised in that moment to bring forth something new in the world. 

The second reason that I love Pentecost is that much as Easter symbolizes resurrection and rebirth, Pentecost is a time of new growth, and it helps to solidify the means of that newness being brought into the world, through people wholly filled with God’s spirit. Pentecost is a moment of potential, of possibility, of new ideas and new ways of God being in the world are made manifest,  in God’s people.

This is an important point - that this is God’s spirit descending upon normal, average people. Not just special, divine people like Jesus, and Mary, but just average, imperfect people, like the apostles. It is for this reason that it is generally wise to never tell yourself that there are certain people whom God can and cannot speak through because the spirit goes where God wills it! 

Not only that, but Peter then goes on to quote from the book of Joel which states that not only is the spirit coming at that moment on the apostles, but that it will come to “all flesh”. 

What exactly does that mean? And when will that happen? Are we still in a holding pattern, or has this already been happening?  

In The Unvarnished New Testament, which is a translation from the original Greek by a modern scholar,  that particular passage reads as “all living beings”...and the question I ask is, is the pouring out of the spirit bound to a singular, time-bound event?  Is it something that we are waiting for? Did we miss it?

Or is it something that happens to literally all beings as the bible states - is it maybe an ongoing process? 

What if it happens the moment you take your first breath? In the Hebrew bible the translation of Joel’s prophecy says that it is the “ruach” of God that will be breathed into all beings - which translates literally to “breath”, and in Hebrew, the word for “spirit” and “breath” are literally the same word. 

Rev. Rob Bell says that the first thing that a baby has to do, or it won’t survive is to “speak the name of God''. In the Hebrew bible, the abbreviation for the name of God is the letters YHVH - or (pronounced “yod hey vod hey”), and it appears in the scriptures over 7000 times. In English we tend to pronounce it “Yahweh” but really - if you say the letters in Hebrew, - (Say again - Yod, Hey, Vod, Hey) -   it's very much the sound of the drawing of breath. The name of God is the very sound of our breath. 

So I ask you to stop for a moment with me and take a few deep breaths

feel the air in your lungs…

feel how very, very good it feels. 

Take Another. 

That breath right there - the ruach - that feeling of the breath in your lungs

That is the *best* human feeling that exists.  

It is the very locus and process of God in you, giving life in you, filling you with the indwelling spirit. 

It would seem to me, that really...the spirit falls on all living beings all the time - but much like fish don’t notice the water they swim in, we often fail to notice that we are simply bathed in the spirit and that it is in us and around us, and all day long everyone and everything around us is GOD breathing too.

 And once we see this, and once we understand it and feel the truth in it - the world becomes something entirely new for us.

 As Franciscan Priest and theologian Richard Rohr says “Once we know that the entire physical world around us, all of creation, is both the hiding place and the revelation place for God, this world becomes home, safe, enchanted, offering grace to any who look deeply.” 

We simply have a tendency to not look deeply. It’s not your fault, daily life is so filled with distractions and there are so many things that pull us this way and that, leaving us often too tired to really afford much energy to deeply contemplate the world around us. We often get lost in the unfolding of our own personal stories.  But, this past year has been a bit “different”. And perhaps many of us have had the opportunity to slow down a bit

To take a few more intentional breaths, to see the world in a different way. To see the potential for the world to be a safe home for everyone and everything. One thing is certain - the world is probably never going to be the same as it was before the pandemic.

The church will probably never be the same as it was before the pandemic either. We have truly learned that church is *not* a building. It is so much more, it is the gifts and talents of its members, it is the caring and compassion in our hearts for one another, it is the carrying of burdens and the sharing of our troubles, it’s the weaving together of all these things into the Body of Christ. As Father Richard Rohr says:

What has been “unveiled,” especially this past year with the pandemic, is that we really are one. We are one in both suffering and resurrection. Jesus’ final prayer is that we can consciously perceive and live this radical union now (John 17:21‒26). Our job is not to discover or even prove this, but only to retrieve what has already been discovered—and rediscovered—again and again, by the mystics, prophets, and saints of all religions. Until then we are all lost in separation—while grace and necessary suffering gradually “fill in every valley and level every mountain” to make a “straight highway to God” (Isaiah 40:3–4).

And so, the time for Pentecost,  the time for this newness to come into our world, into our lives, into our churches and all our institutions is, and has always been *now*, and so the question that I have for you all is this:

What are we waiting for?