Sermon: Purposeful Chaos

First Presbyterian Church

May 19, 2024, Pentecost B

Ezekiel 37:1-14; Acts 2:1-21; Romans 8:22-27

 

Purposeful Chaos

 

 

It’s a scene out of a Hollywood special-effects dream. A great rushing wind blowing through the room. “Tongues of fire.” A glut of languages – a sound of chaos. Really, the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark has nothing on this.

The Pentecost story is a strange one, in that on one hand its regular return in our liturgy almost guarantees that it suffers from the extreme familiarity that comes with such repetition, the kind that can cause us to tune out unconsciously; on the other hand, it’s rather a strange story, and one that has gained some uncomfortable associations for us mainline types, and therefore we tend to shy away from it. In short, it is both extremely familiar and extremely unfamiliar at the same time. 

Perhaps we can break through both of those roadblocks by breaking the story down a bit, and maybe clear away some of the misconceptions and misunderstandings that have been attached to Pentecost, starting perhaps with those two vivid images from the first four verses; wind and fire.

First of all, these are not literal statements. What came from heaven was “a sound ... like the howling of a fierce wind,” and “what seemed to be individual flames of fire.” In other words, these are examples of that favorite literary device, the simile.

But similes matter. When a biblical author like Luke invokes things like wind or fire, even in this comparison fashion, it is no accident. These images evoke a long history of God’s interaction with the people of Israel.

Think, for example, of the burning bush that set Moses on his path to the Exodus; engulfed in fire, yet not consumed. Think of the pillar of fire proceeding by night before the people of Israel during that Exodus. Think of the fire that consumed Elijah’s thoroughly soaked altar and the altars of the Ba’al prophets in that contest on Mount Carmel.

Think of the strong wind that drove back the Red Sea, so that the people of Israel might cross ahead of the Egyptian army. Think of the whirlwind out of which God spoke to Job. Think of the very breath breathed into humanity at creation. And think of those dry bones.

The Hebrew word ru’ah has a complex of meanings; it can refer to breath, to the wind, or to spirit. When Ezekiel is commanded to prophesy to the winds, to the breath, to breathe life into the lifeless, this whole complex is evoked. Similarly the Greek word pneuma carries both “breath” and “spirit” in its complex of meanings. We see this kind of association played up in hymns like the old hymn “Holy Spirit, breathe on me.”

So is the Spirit a wind, or a fire? No, but something about wind or fire gives us a picture, an idea of how the Spirit is, or how it moves or acts. It’s a useful simile or metaphor, but we should do our best to avoid getting too caught up in the metaphor and confusing it with fact or literal description. In fact, we should probably just steer clear of anything that goads us into thinking we’ve got it down, that we have any kind of firm grasp on the nature and substance of anything about God, Holy Spirit included.

Ezekiel’s vision points us toward another misconception that can be cleared up; this Pentecost story should not be construed as the first-ever appearance of the Holy Spirit in the history of God in humanity. It isn’t “new”; it has been, from the beginning, with God, as also is true of God the Son. What happens here is not a debut, but closer to an unleashing. The Holy Spirit is loose, not bound by any physical form or invocation. Nor, for that matter, is it bound by the rules and regulations of the Temple, or the Torah, or by any decree or proclamation of the nascent church itself.  The Spirit doesn’t follow your script; if anything it’s much more likely to rewrite it.

Something else we might want to think about is what happens in verse 13. The Spirit has driven the disciples out to proclaim, in these languages heretofore unknown to them, but that just happen to be the languages spoken by the crowds who are in Jerusalem for this particular festival (more on that in a moment). These crowds are portrayed by Luke as being from some of the most remote regions known to the people of Jerusalem and basically every direction one could go from Jerusalem – our curious metaphor about “the four corners of the earth” is the effect of the varied regions Luke describes. While they are puzzling over the fact that these people – who didn’t exactly look like linguistic scholars to anybody – were somehow speaking to them, each hearing exactly their own language (and not in the broken fashion of a non-native speaker either), the naysayers make their presence known. While people are wondering just what’s going on, the catcalls begin. “They are filled with new wine.” Go home, apostles, you’re drunk.

Now this just doesn’t make sense. Personally I’m not a wine-drinker, but I’ve never observed anyone for whom drinking wine was a means of speaking a language new to them. I’ve seen plenty of people who had trouble speaking their own language after a few glasses, but not the opposite. But I’m pretty sure that wasn’t really the point. In the face of something inexplicable, beyond any kind of miraculous that they had seen before, and maybe a little threatening, there were those who resorted to belittling, meanness, and spite.

It is not the work of the Holy Spirit to make you more popular. It is not the work of the Holy Spirit to make you respectable, or socially esteemed. It is not the Holy Spirit’s task to make your life easier. To the degree that your life is shaped and moved and motivated by the working of the Holy Spirit within you, there’s a real strong chance your life will sometimes include others deriding you, ridiculing you, belittling you, and even calling you a "freak" or a “heathen” or something similar. And there’s even a real good chance those people belittling or deriding you will be the “good church people.” Go home, 'followers of Christ, you’re drunk'. In the end, these disciples would find their lives being required of them, once they were moved by the work of the Spirit. The Holy Spirit wasn’t there to make their lives easier, not by a long shot.

So, what is the Holy Spirit about? What is it up to?

There are huge crowds in Jerusalem, from all those compass points of the earth. Many if not most of them are Jews, living abroad – expatriates, if you will, returned for the Festival of Weeks, an event on the Jewish calendar timed to occur fifty days after Passover – hence, Greek-speakers called the festival “Pentecost.” (Today the equivalent Jewish feast is called “Shauvot.”)

These visitors would have most likely known nothing of the events that had formed this local group of Christ-followers – the Crucifixion and the Resurrection, not to mention the ascended Christ. Their reason for being in Jerusalem was about Shauvot, marking the event of the reading of the Torah to the people of Israel. Jesus? Who was he, and why would they care?

The Holy Spirit moved among the Christ-followers, placing languages on their lips and on their tongues specifically to reach out to these souls, to proclaim to these people from all over the earth – children of God, all of them – the good news, the gospel of Jesus Christ. And this means that all of these people are welcome, male or female, slave or free, young or old, to be drenched in the Spirit in ways unimaginable before.

The Spirit is not the property of prophets or kings, scribes or priests or elders. The unleashed Spirit will work through anyone to proclaim the good news of the kingdom of God come near. Because this band of Christ-followers waited in prayer (remember last week's reading), they were ready to be messengers of Christ, even in languages they had never known before.

This was no random chaotic event. The Holy Spirit at Pentecost was at work to proclaim gospel to the nations. Not only the miracle of the Christ-followers speaking languages they didn’t know, but the miracle of all those in the crowd hearing the message, each one in his or her own tongue, was all about spreading the Word. Here was a step on the way to fulfilling the promise that Jesus had made back in 1:8, about being witnesses “in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.” 

A quick interjection from the Apostle Paul, writing to the church at Rome, reminds us that not all of the Spirit's work is quite so brash or dramatic. Indeed, the Spirit is at work within us and among us constantly; the Spirit "intercedes for us with wordless groans" as the NIV in your pews puts it, or "unexpressed groans" as found in the CEB. Here is one case where the New Revised Standard Version, where the Spirit intercedes with "sighs too deep for words", gets it so much better.) The Holy Spirit is an agent of purposeful chaos, yes, but also an agent of relief when needed.

Back to the disciples. In the days to come they would be pulling their resources together, supporting one another and lifting one another up. Peter and John would be confronted by the sight of the paralyzed man in the Temple, and responding to the moving of the Spirit, would heal that man and thus be brought to take a stand before the Temple authorities. Before long the followers of Christ would be scattered throughout the region, and the Word would be truly proclaimed “in all Judea and Samaria,” and the Word would find the Spirit moving hearts to hear and receive it, not only of Jews but also of Gentiles eventually. For the moment it may have sounded like chaos, but the Holy Spirit was working for a purpose, and will always be working towards that purpose.

For the purposeful chaos of the Holy Spirit, Thanks be to God. Amen.  

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal); #289, On Pentecost They Gathered; #292, As the Wind Song; #291, Spirit, Spirit of Gentleness

Sermon: The Waiting Is the Hardest Part

First Presbyterian Church

May 12, 2024, Easter 7B

Acts 1:15-17, 20-26

 

The Waiting is the Hardest Part

 

One of my favorite writers of any sort is the science-fiction and fantasy author Ray Bradbury. The author of such renowned works as Fahrenheit 451 (my personal favorite), The Martian Chronicles, and Dandelion Wine had, to me, a knack for finding just the right words to express the particular moment of the story, no matter how expansive or how pithy.  One of the prime examples of this knack is found in Chapter 31 of another of his most popular novels, Something Wicked This Way Comes. Because it is so precisely worded and so particular to its moment in the story, I feel that I must quote the chapter in full:

"Nothing much else happened, all the rest of that night." 

Yes, that’s the whole chapter.

In today’s reading from the Book of Acts, the remaining disciples find themselves in Bradbury's Chapter 31. You may remember that the disciples were instructed by Jesus, just before he ascended and was taken up to the presence of God the Father, that they would soon be “baptized with the Holy Spirit,” but that in the meantime they were to go back into Jerusalem and wait. It’s been a few days now since that ascension and that promise, and…the disciples are still waiting. And nothing much else is happening, all the rest of that day or night.

Shifting from a Ray Bradbury chapter to a Tom Petty lyric, the disciples were finding out that the waiting is the hardest part. 

We learn that their days were occupied with prayer, along with “certain women” and also members of Jesus’s family, who haven’t been part of the story for a while now. We also get a roll call of the disciples, all eleven of them.

Ah, there’s the rub. Eleven. It was the elephant in the room; their number was reduced by one, and the one was about as painful a subject as possible. The traitor. The one who went beyond denying Jesus (like Peter) or running away at the first sign of danger (like the rest of the disciples). The one who collaborated with the ones who wanted Jesus out of the way. Judas Iscariot. One has to feel sorry for the “other Judas,” the disciple listed with the others in verse 13. 

Our lectionary framing skips over a rather gruesome account of Judas Iscariot’s demise, which if nothing else reinforces the fact that the betrayer’s absence was permanent. There would be no chance either for any kind of reconciliation or for holding Judas to account. He was gone, and his crimes would live on well after his death, even to this day. The name “Judas” still works as a shorthand for a betrayer or traitor.

Besides Judas’s act of betrayal, though, there is another factor nagging at the disciples, though. “The Twelve” aren’t twelve anymore. The original disciples, reminiscent of the ancient twelve tribes of Israel, are no longer whole. Eleven just doesn’t have the same impact or historical heft in their context. Already feeling a bit cut off with Jesus departed, the disciples seem to be cognizant of their incompleteness and perhaps of their seeming loss of connection to their heritage.

At least this seems to be part of what motivates Peter when he begins to address the gathering of Jesus’s followers in verse 15.  It’s as if he can’t go any longer with this specter of the traitor hanging over the group. Not surprisingly, he turns to the scripture to back up his idea; verse 20 mostly consists of two different citations from the Psalms, quotes that might seem rather stretched from that context. Still, Peter is moving on, and armed with these conveniently picked verses he moves forward with his agenda item; choosing a new apostle to replace the traitor Judas. 

Aside from his psalm verses Peter doesn’t really get into why he is so eager to get a replacement in place, but for whatever reason Peter makes his proposal and the group, numbering around 120 in all, goes along. Two names are proposed, or at least two individuals – one of them, “Joseph called Barsabbas, who was also known as Justus” was a three-named monster – and one was chosen by casting lots. This no doubt sounds bizarre to us, and is not a recommended course of action for nominating committees, so don’t get any ideas. It did, though, have a fairly extensive place in Hebrew tradition as a way of removing the human element and leaving a choice entirely up to God. The lot fell on the man with a simpler name, Matthias, and he was from then on numbered with the apostles.

If Matthias is of particular interest to you, you’re out of luck; he is never mentioned again in the Bible. But he is hardly alone; most of the other, “original” apostles don’t show up again either. Peter and John make appearances in the early chapters of Acts, some of which have been heard in sermons in recent weeks. Peter in fact manages to maintain some visibility throughout much of Acts. On the other hand, the apostle James is only named one more time, in Acts 12, when he becomes the first of the apostles to be martyred. Otherwise, none of the apostles names in verse 12 appear again in the history of the church recorded in Acts. 

This is not to say that they are somehow “failures” by any means. But it is to point out that the church – such as it was at this point – was not going to stay under the control or leadership of this particular group of twelve. It was going to grow, and expand, and branch out in ways that could not be managed or controlled by this structure that they had known for so many years. 

Instead, the figures who become increasingly important as the book of Acts unfolds are people like Stephen, one of the seven deacons appointed in chapter six and a very early martyr for the faith; Philip, another deacon, whose experience with a high Ethiopian official we encountered a couple of weeks ago; and of course Paul, the unlikely persecutor-turned-apostle. Then individuals like Paul’s missionary partners, first Barnabas and then Silas; James, the brother of Jesus, who eventually becomes the head of the church at Jerusalem; and “foreign-born” missionary partners like Paul's protege Timothy, the wife-and-husband preaching team Priscilla and Aquila, and individual figures like Lydia, the “God-worshiper” who housed the missionaries Paul and Silas in Thyatira.

The point is not to denigrate the “original twelve.” The point is, however, that no matter how much they had devoted themselves to prayer, they hadn’t necessarily caught on to the kind of transformation that was coming to them. While they were busy preserving or recreating the structure in which they had worked and lived for their years in Christ, the Holy Spirit was getting ready to blow through that structure and break down the barriers the little group of believers had unwittingly built up around themselves. They had yet to truly grasp the truth of Jesus’s words in verse eight, about being witnesses “in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

The book of Acts, as we've seen these last few weeks, illustrates this progress remarkably well. The group of believers in Jerusalem remains the focus through the first seven chapters of the book, before the believers begin to be scattered in a wave of persecution after Stephen’s death. Even though the disciples (we’re starting to call them “apostles” now) remained in Jerusalem for the time, the Holy Spirit didn’t remain confined to Jerusalem. As Philip the deacon (not the apostle) found himself in Samaria he began to witness to the resurrected Christ, and they began to believe and be baptized. Then Philip the deacon was sent out by the Lord to witness to that Ethiopian treasurer, sending the faith even further along to an even more distant people. 

In the meantime the newly-converted Paul stirs up trouble with his preaching, and Peter learns a hard lesson about God’s wide-open arms in his encounter with the centurion Cornelius and his family (as we saw last week), having to process the fact that even (shudder!) Gentiles are receiving salvation, something with which the church at Jerusalem never fully makes peace. While Paul and Barnabas are sent out by the Holy Spirit to “the ends of the earth,” the church at Jerusalem, to the very end of the book, still remains deeply uncomfortable the idea that Gentiles can go straight to faith in Christ without becoming 'Judaized' by undergoing circumcision or some other similar rite. And as for the Jerusalem church, which had agreed to Peter’s decree in verse 21 that only a man could fill the role of Apostle #12, it's hard to imagine what they would have made of such preachers and leaders as Priscilla and Lydia.

In short, the little group of believers really didn’t know what was coming. They would be faithful, to be sure, as we may recall from the experiences of Peter and John in the Temple. But the Church just wasn’t going to continue to be what they had known. The Holy Spirit wasn’t going to be contained in the ways they had known or expected. That Jesus had ascended and gone to the right hand of God the Father did not mean “the restoration of the kingdom to Israel,” as they asked in 1:6, nor did it mean the life that they had known with Jesus in person was going to be restored or restarted. 

Yes, this might well be a cautionary warning to us here in this interim place; if we are truly seeking the guidance of the Holy Spirit for the future of this church we had better be prepared for the possibility that it might be something we currently can’t imagine. But it’s also a warning to each of us in much the same way. If you had told me seventeen years ago, when I was accepting a job offer at the University of Kansas, that I would end leaving and then coming back to Kansas as an interim pastor of a church in a town I hadn't heard of, I would have laughed so very hard at the thought. 

And yet as a church this is all we can do. We cannot recreate what was before. We cannot grow this church, in numbers or in faithfulness or in spiritual maturity, only by replicating ourselves. We can keep doing what we do, and simple demographics state we will be gone in five or ten or twenty years – whether we speak of this church by itself, or our denomination, or the church more broadly. 

But if we truly submit to the guidance of the Holy Spirit, there is the threat of change. It might not look familiar to us. It might involve people we don’t like or don’t trust. It’s scary. And yet, if we truly want to be the people of God, the body of Christ, we really have no choice.

Pentecost is coming. The Holy Spirit will come in like a rushing wind. Are we ready?

Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

Hymns (From Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal): #299, Ye Servants of God, Your Master Proclaim; #761, Called as Partners in Christ's Service; #733, We All Are One in Mission

 

 

Sermon: The Last Hurdle

First Presbyterian Church

May 5, 2024, Easter 6B

Acts 10:34-48

 

The Last Hurdle

 

There is a reason I'm frequently drawn to the lectionary readings from Acts in the season following Easter Sunday. In all three years of the Revised Common Lectionary cycle, readings from Acts are included in the lectionary in place of the Old Testament readings found through most of the liturgical year, I can only guess because it fits to insert a "history" of the church post-Resurrection in place of a history of the people of God pre-Nativity. 

That presumption of mine points, somewhat, to why I find it so intriguing to pick up these texts for this season; what can we learn from those followers of Christ in this time, the heady and unpredictable days after the Ascension and then Pentecost, as these followers of Christ in a world varying between indifferent and hostile, a time in which all of their 'sacred assumptions' about life, God, and the way to live were being challenged and broken down.

Today's reading finds us in the middle of an extensive account of an unexpected meeting between the de facto leader of the apostles and a man who could not possibly be a candidate for an encounter with the Holy Spirit, an encounter of the kind that had happened periodically since Pentecost, according to those 'sacred assumptions' they held, almost unthinkingly, about faith. That 'sacred assumption,' the 'last hurdle' if you will, was this:

There are Jews, and there are Gentiles, and never the twain shall meet. 

Not that one was necessarily supposed to be hostile to those Gentiles; all those laws about hospitality still applied, to a degree. You didn't turn down a stranger in need, but you didn't indulge in table fellowship with them. You could provide a meal for such a stranger, but you didn't necessarily share the meal with them at the table. 

This stranger, a Roman centurion named Cornelius, had made an impression on the locals in Caesarea, one described in different places in Acts as a "God-fearer," one who was not a Jew but who prayed and gave to those in need regularly. In today's terms one might call him a "seeker." He probably could not convert fully to Judaism and maintain his role as a centurion.

God puts before Peter some extra preparation for this encounter; a vision, given three times, of an utterly sumptuous feast of rich and savor foods, all of them utterly hunger-inducing and all of them utterly un-kosher. Peter gives the proper (to him) response of refusal to eat what is "impure or unclean," only to be rebuked by God each time with the rebuke "do not call anything impure that God has made clean." While Peter is reeling from this vision, Cornelius's messengers show up to request that Peter come to visit. While his first reaction might have been to politely decline, he had gotten enough from the vision (and another prompt from the Spirit) to know that was not the right answer this time. 

The next day Peter and his traveling companions go to Caesarea (remember, a seat of power for the Roman occupiers) and are greeted by Cornelius, who has apparently invited plenty of friends over for the meeting. Cornelius tells Peter his story, and Peter's response is where today's reading begins. 

First acknowledging the uniqueness of the situation and what he has already learned, Peter moves before long to the same basic content of the impromptu sermons he has delivered over the course of this time since Pentecost. For this occasion, it would seem that verse 43 contains the key acknowledgment: 'All the prophets testify about him that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.'

At this point the Holy Spirit shows up in full force, visiting Cornelius and his household and guests with the same kind of manifestations that showed up at Pentecost and at other occasions in the time since then. 

This was unprecedented. Even the Ethiopian treasurer from last week's reading had some connection to Jewish faith and practice, no matter how uncertain it might have been, but this man - a Gentile, and a Roman soldier at that - was receiving the Holy Spirit. You might get the impression that, to Peter and his fellow travelers, this event was as mind-blowing, as unexpected and unfathomable as Pentecost itself. 

Speaking of that Ethiopian, Peter's response to this event sounds a lot like his response to Philip's proclamation: "Surely no one can stand in the way of their being baptized with water." Especially, he adds, since they're already been baptized with the Spirit. 

The water is brought and Cornelius and his household are baptized, and then in what would have been unthinkable a day before, Peter and his fellow travelers stay for a few days, guests in a Gentile's home.

This isn't quite the end of this story; the circumcised believers back in Jerusalem get into a holy snit when they hear about Peter baptizing and eating with a bunch of uncircumcised Gentiles. Peter tells the whole story, and apparently the witness of the Holy Spirit falling upon those Gentiles managed to convince the body there, although one might imagine that a few souls might have been compelled to 'leave the church' over this terrible breach of 'sacred assumptions.'

This is the last hurdle to this ragtag body of Christ going forward with that full mission statement Jesus had left them just before his ascension, the one that commissions them as witness 'in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.' No one is to be left out; no one is to be called "impure or unclean' whom God has made and named clean. 

The question for us then becomes, Who are the 'Gentiles' today? Who are the ones whom, though we'd never use such language, we still somehow insist in our own minds must be 'unclean'? Who are the ones we can't possibly imagine God making and calling clean? And when are we finally going to get over that last hurdle and bear witness to all who seek God? What will it take? And what's stopping us?

To borrow a pointed conclusion from New Testament scholar and editor F. Scott Spencer:

To attempt to block the saving, embracing, impartial God and dam the freeing, flooding, boundary-busting Spirit is foolish and ultimately futile. Just ask Peter. But unfortunately, in the meantime, 'we' often continue to hunker down in our 'us'-protecting, 'other'-suspecting trenches to fight senseless wars against perceived enemies (foreign and domestic). May God help us, may the Spirit interrupt and overcome our discriminatory ways - and may we diligently preach and practice 'peace by Jesus Christ - he is Lord of all.'

 

Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal): #371, New Songs of Celebration Render; #285, Like the Murmur of the Dove's Song; #288, Spirit of the Living God.