The Day of Pentecost – May 27, 2007

Acts 2:1-11; John 14:8-27

St. Giles Church, Northbrook IL – The Rev. Cynthia J. Hallas

United Methodist pastor Roy Terry tells a story[1] about his adventures with a marketing consultant when he and his wife set out to ‘plant’ a new church, Cornerstone UMC, in Naples, FL. Terry and his wife (who is, alas, unnamed in this story!) had drafted a simple brochure about the proposed congregation, which they shared with the consultant, who promptly went to work ‘editing’ their efforts. “Don’t use the word ‘church’,” she advised. “Instead, try ‘community’ or ‘family’. Take out any reference to Jesus Christ…we don’t want anyone to be turned off.” The consultant had other suggestions, and finally summed up her thinking about the brochure the Terrys had put together by saying, “This stuff is way too churchy!”

If there is a single day on the Christian calendar when we celebrate “churchiness”, it is today – the Day of Pentecost. This is the day when we hear that the disciples, having witnessed Jesus’ ascension ten days earlier, “were all together in one place”. The Holy Spirit comes upon them extravagantly, accompanied by sound reminiscent of a violent wind, and tongues resembling fire. Suddenly, they are able to speak in foreign languages, so that “devout Jews from every nation under heaven” can receive the Good News. It’s a wonderful scene that fuels the imagination. It’s what most of us think that Pentecost is all about: the Spirit descended, and the Church was born. But was that really the intention? I think we sometimes take it for granted that it was. But has the whole thing maybe gotten just a little out of hand? Did those twelve, did any of those “devout Jews from every nation” who received the Good News, have any idea of what was to come? Theologian Alfred Loisy once famously said, “Jesus preached the coming Kingdom of God, and what came was the Church.” I sometimes wonder if Jesus isn’t sitting there at the right hand of God, scratching his head and saying, “No, no, this isn’t what we meant at all!”

I’m not doubting the coming of the Holy Spirit on the disciples on that occasion when, being Jews themselves, they had gathered together to observe Pentecost, a Jewish festival that had been celebrated among their people for generations. After all, Jesus had said that after his ascension the disciples would ‘be clothed with power from on high’; would ‘receive power when the Holy Spirit [had] come upon them’; that he would ask God to send them ‘the Holy Spirit, the Advocate’; that they would ‘be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days [after his ascension]’. It’s not like they shouldn’t, or wouldn’t, have been expecting it. There was surely a purpose in God’s plan but is the Church that has come down to us through the ages really it?

Those first followers of ‘the Way’, as the burgeoning Jesus movement was known initially, didn’t get an instruction manual or a how-to guide – no one sat them down in a classroom or gave them a textbook and said “Here’s how to be Church!” It certainly isn’t like that today. Today there are books that tell congregations how to be more theologically centered, more spiritual, more biblical, more missional, more inviting, more ‘relevant’ (gotta be careful with that one!). There are volumes about how to ‘grow’ the church, and about what to do if your church is shrinking. There are titles that suggest ways to avoid conflict, ways to resolve conflict, ways to recover from conflict; how to call a pastor, how to say good-bye to a pastor; how to be better at Christian education, at stewardship, at worship, at marketing ourselves (gotta be careful with that one, too, as the Terrys could attest!) They offer list after list, program after program, all geared to making the local church succeed, whatever that means (and I’m not sure the church really understands what success means in our unique context - but that’s a subject for a ‘whole nother’ homily!) All these topics and so many more, but you get the picture. I’ve got a shelf in my office that’s becoming filled with them and I’ve actually read some of them. All of them offer something, and some of them are, in fact, very good.

But again, none of these informative and helpful volumes was available to Peter, James and John; to Barnabbas, Silas, and Paul; to Mary Magdalene, Tabitha, Priscilla and Lydia. They were empowered, not by scholarship or leadership studies or marketing surveys, but by the very simple truth that God had raised his Son Jesus Christ from the dead, that Jesus had instructed, commanded, commissioned his first followers to spread that Good News to the ends of the earth (admittedly, not as far then as it is now!), and that God’s spirit would be among them to enliven, to cajole, to instruct, to hold accountable, to accompany them in all they did. These early followers of The Way would understand that by continuing in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in the prayers (phrases lifted right out of the book of Acts and directly into our baptismal covenant) and by listening for and trusting in the Holy Spirit, that they could forge community, be sustained by Christ and thus sustain one another, and by those means be strengthened for the spreading of the Gospel outside their own environment and usually, outside their own particular comfort zones as well. That’s what it meant to them to be ‘churchy’. It was that simple, and that complex. I keep wondering what the Church has lost in the intervening centuries, and what we might learn by revisiting those simple and yet world-changing beginnings of that singularity we have come to call ‘Church’.

In her book The Dream of God, the late Verna Dozier makes the point that as the church has become more and more institutionalized, it has abandoned over and over what God calls us to be as the community of the baptized – something new, “the kingdom of God in the midst of the kingdoms of this world.”[2] We have rejected following Jesus, she claims, in favor of merely worshipping him – that’s a powerful statement; think about that. We have allowed the organized, efficient, institutional church to “harness” the “frighteningly free gift of God to be the new thing in the world.”[3] Rather than accept that frightening freedom, the church chose to organize itself. Dozier’s observation causes me to look at the exchange between Philip and Jesus in this morning’s gospel in a new way: “Lord, show us the Father,” Philip says, “and we will be satisfied.” “Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me?” I read considerable frustration into Jesus’ response, and I wonder if maybe these disciples for whom Philip speaks had, in fact, glimpsed the Father through Jesus in a fuller and more complete way than they cared to admit and weren’t entirely sure they were up for whatever that might mean for them. In time the disciples would, indeed, receive that spirit of truth, but they would receive it with the caveat that the world would neither understand nor accept that Spirit; no one said it was going to be easy then to be an authentic follower of Jesus. No one says it’s any easier these days.

But that doesn’t stop us from trying to make it easier. It’s much easier to try and fit church into our lives rather than shaping our lives according to Christ. It’s much easier to create programs and opportunities the suit our own sense of belonging, rather than responding, truly responding, to the needs of the world that God so loves. It’s much easier to teach our children about the Church, than it is to share the Church with them. We’ve even convinced ourselves that the true challenges of being a Christian in 21^st century America have more to do with squeezing in an extra hour on Sunday morning to attend church, or cutting ministries to balance a budget, or arguing over how best to pray together. If that’s what it means for us to be ‘churchy’, then God help us!

Of course, God has helped and continues to help us, which is why the Holy Spirit was sent in the first place, and why we are here to celebrate this day. Because for all her faults, her missteps, for all her sins, the Church still is and still must be the body of Christ on earth – the only vehicle, institutional or otherwise, entrusted with the stewardship – and by that I mean the proclamation and the living out, not the hoarding - of the Good News. It’s still that simple, and that complex, and we still cannot do it by ourselves and needn’t do it by ourselves. Dozier speaks of the church in two forms, ‘the church gathered’ and ‘the church scattered’.[4] We gather so that we are able to scatter. We gather for the sustenance of God’s word, Christ’s holy sacraments, the Spirit’s inspiration, and Christian fellowship; we scatter to witness to God’s saving love and to minister in his name. Over the course of two thousand years, that mandate hasn’t changed. And that’s the true essence of what is means to be ‘churchy’.

[2] Seabury Classics/Church Publishing, Inc., New York, 2006; p. 3