On Pentecost They Gathered

Acts 2:1-21

Pentecost Sunday:  May 19, 2013

“When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place.”  That’s how our passage begins – that’s how the story of Pentecost begins:  They were all together in one place.  And we know who “they” were – the disciples, the earliest followers of Jesus.  These were the folks who had been gathering again and again since Jesus’ death.  These were the folks who knew him, loved him, and had been witnesses to his presence many times since they found the tomb empty.

Jesus made a number of post-resurrection appearances.  In Luke and Acts – both written by the same author – those appearances are always when the disciples and early followers were gathered together.  Now the author doesn’t say much about what he looked like, and the conversations weren’t along the lines of, “What the heck?????  I thought you were dead, man.  This is so cool!”  Instead, I think for the author, the importance of that time between his death and Pentecost was that Jesus showed up to help prepare his followers for what was next.  

When Jesus came to this small band of folks, he spoke of Peace, he called on them to be witnesses, he interpreted the scriptures for them in light of all that had happened, he impressed on them the importance of eating together and sharing what they had.  This was a time of preparation, and, he told them, when he was gone the Holy Spirit would come and give them everything they needed to do as he was asking.

And so, on Pentecost they had gathered again…these same people.  They gathered for a Jewish festival as old as they could imagine.   And we know what happened to those disciples and followers gathered together that day – they were overtaken by the Holy Spirit. 

We often think of Pentecost as the birth of the church because in the book of Acts this incredible event seems to be the kick-off party for the ministry of the apostles.  We think of it as the birth of the Christian church, and we are their descendents.

But was it the birth of the Christian church?  Are we the descendents of what happened that day? Well, kind of.  When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place – and so we, the modern day disciples, gather today.  We come together, hope that Jesus will show up to prepare us for the Holy Spirit coming and blowing us out into the world to continue his ministry. 

But it was not just the disciples who gathered that day.  It may have started with them, but we don’t read far before we find out that there were others:  “There were devout Jews from every nation under heaven – and at the sound of the roaring wind, they gathered.  They gathered together in one place to see what was happening. 

This event was not just for the disciples.  This event was not just for those who had hung out with Jesus when he was alive, like the other gatherings had been.  This was not only for those who had seen him since his death.  This was a gathering of people from every nation under heaven.  The author is so insistent about this that he lists the nations.  I didn’t make Stan read them all – because I’m a nice person – but he lists them:  Parthians, Elamites, residents of Mesopotamia, Judea, Cappadocia, and on and on.  When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place…all the nations!

These were not people who knew one another.  These were not people who shared much in common.  They didn’t speak the same language, they didn’t share the same culture and habits, and sometimes they quite specifically didn’t like one another.  And, maybe most importantly, these were not people who knew, cared about, or followed Jesus. The descendents of what happened that day are not just us – those of us gathered on Sunday mornings for church.  The descendents are all those we don’t know, who don’t speak our religious language, who don’t worship as we do, who don’t share the same experiences of Jesus as we do.  The descendents, in part, are the people who are not us.

Right before the disciples were gathered at Pentecost, they had witnessed another pretty amazing event.  Jesus ascended into heaven.  Jesus had been with them in their gatherings of just the insiders.  He had been preparing them for what was to come.  But then, Jesus took off.  He thought the disciples were prepared – ready for what was next.  He left the stage, and the Holy Spirit came rushing in.  The Holy Spirit speaks a more universal language, I think, then the post-Easter Jesus.  Jesus knew the language of his disciples.  He knew what to say to them so they could understand how to move forward.  The Holy Spirit, it seems, knew the language of anyone and everyone.

Jesus and the disciples shared a language in much the same way we Christians do today:  Communion, Pentecost, justification, only begotten son, fully human/fully divine, salvation, church, confession, doxology.  These are words and phrases that mean things to us – important things – but not so much to people who don’t gather with us every week.  It’s insider language, and that’s okay.  It helps us.  It reminds us what we are doing here, connects us to our faith ancestors, it binds us together as people who seek a common God and mission, and it reminds us that we are, at times, meant to be set apart from the culture and world at large.  Having our own language is not a bad thing.  In fact, I think it’s essential.

But on Pentecost we’re reminded that we also need a more universal language if we’re to join the universal work of God in the world.  When the wind blew through their midst, the languages that had once divided these folks from one another became intelligible – universally.  They understood one another.

We call Pentecost the birthday of the church – but I think we cling too tightly to that.  It’s not about us, really – except as it is about all of us.  We may be the ones gathered at first, but it’s about the gathering of the nations – of those not here in our building, not taking part in our festivals, not speaking our language.

I know this is supposed to be about the Christian church, but for me it’s about something much larger.  I think we need to move beyond even Jesus if we are to connect with our neighbors in moving toward the vision born on that day.  We need at times to let Jesus leave the stage so we can use more universal language.    

We read that after Pentecost, the people started sharing everything in common and giving to everyone according to their need.  People began healing others.  Isn’t that a wonderful vision for the world – not just for us?  Yes, it was about Jesus for the disciples, but not in the sense that he was center stage.  Rather, it was about a movement that continued what he began – that went beyond what he began.

I have to admit I struggle with Peter’s speech to those gathered that day.  After the Spirit had come, and all the nations were gathered in one place, Peter gets us and makes a speech.  Well, it’s not really a speech in the sense that his speechwriters got together and crafted something the likes of which had never been heard.  In fact, the first part of his speech, the part we read today, was simply quoting scripture.  He was helping people understand what was happening that day by reminding them of their scriptures – of the prophet Joel. 

My struggle isn’t so much with Peter and his quoting of Joel.  In fact, I think it was a brilliant move.  It was inspiring, it helped them see how to take who they were and move forward.  It’s a bit like quoting Gandhi or King when you are trying to inspire a new movement that continues the spirit of what they did.

No, my struggle isn’t with Peter, it’s with how we have interpreted what Peter – or rather Joel – said.  The last verse of Joel that Peter quotes is, “Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”  “Saved,” one of those great insider Christian words.  We have taken this to mean that only those who call on the name of Jesus will be saved.  There is no doubt that Peter believed Jesus was the fulfillment of what Joel was talking about.  Peter believed that Jesus was a way to salvation – which, by the way, was about wholeness, healing, peace, new life rather than life in heaven after death.

But that was his context at that time.  The spirit of Pentecost for Peter meant moving beyond the images and words of his own tradition – Judaism – toward something that included so much more…so many more.  For him, Jesus transcended all the breakdowns in Judaism, Jesus showed him how to tear down the walls between everyone.  Jesus was not the key to an exclusive club.  Jesus was the teacher who modeled how we break down barriers between people who were divided by so much. 

But, today, it seems like Jesus doesn’t do this anymore.  Jesus has become a key to an exclusive club.  Instead of hearing Peter say, “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be given new life,” we hear Peter say, “only those who call on the name of Jesus will be given new life.”  There is a world of difference between those two things.  One is expansive, inclusive, hopeful, transcendent, and the other is narrow, exclusive, dead ended, and limiting.

Given the context in which Peter was quoting these words – the coming of the Holy Spirit – I think when we decide what they mean, we need to go with the expansive, inclusive, transcendent interpretation.  And we need to find ways today to move beyond the narrow understanding of how we are saved and what it means to be saved. 

Listen to the words of Joel – it is a vision the prophet is offering the small band of Israelites who feel their own special covenant with Yahweh.  Joel says, “In those days, God declares, I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh.”  It’s a movement from the small band of followers being a part of God’s covenant to the whole world being a part of that.  That is not limited or exclusive.  Joel has a vision of this, and Peter thinks he and all those gathered that day are seeing the fulfillment of this incredible vision.  The spirit is not being poured out on all Jews – or just on those who were friends with Jesus – not on only men or women, old or young.  The spirit is poured out on all flesh.

I know this seems a bit blasphemous, but I think we get tripped up on the name of Jesus.  Obviously Jesus is central to who we are, and why we come together.  Jesus is, for us, a picture of God – a picture that we think fully embodies the God we seek, love, and yearn for.  Jesus is for us a way to understand the scriptures that came before him.  He helps us hear the prophets’ words in a language that compels us to care for the sick, orphaned, poor, and stranger. 

And we get to keep Jesus, but it is not the language we use when we are joining others in the work of the Holy Spirit.  We can use words that connect rather than judge, that build up rather than tear down, that find commonalities rather than differences.

When the disciples gathered after Easter and before Pentecost, Jesus showed up to prepare them for what was next.  But it’s bigger than us.  Maybe each week, Jesus shows up here in worship, prepares us for what’s coming, and then at the end of worship Jesus kind of ascends up to heaven, and then the wild wind blows us into the world to join everyone who participates in bringing new life to those who need it.

It’s okay to speak our language when we gather here.  In fact, I think we need our language.  I think we need Jesus – it’s why we’ve chosen to be here.  It’s the language we know – like English.  At Pentecost, we do not find that all the different languages people spoke went away and everyone spoke the same language.  All the diversity of language remained…it just no longer separated them.  What they learned that day was that something divine unites them in mission while they all keep their own language. 

We need our language of Jesus, communion, baptism, salvation, doxology.  It is what moves us, speaks to us, …  But when we are shoved out into the world by the wild, Holy Spirit, we need to use the universal languages:  words like love, sharing in common, caring for the poor, world peace, non-violence…these words transcend religions.  They are completely a part of our religion, but they are not ours alone. 

On Pentecost we gather, but the true gathering only happens when we leave this place and head out to be with people from every nation under heaven; all of us moved by the Spirit to bring new life to this world.  Amen.

Easter People: Norman Thomas

John 17:20-26

May 12, 2013

I’ve often imagined that Jesus’ life was equal parts anguish and hope.  I certainly see that in this prayer.

Jesus says, “God, the world does not know you.”  Think about what that means.  The world does not know grace, justice, peace, holiness, hope.  All of the characteristics we think of when we think of God – the world does not know them, Jesus claims.  What does the world know?  Well, in Jesus’ experience, the world seemed to know judgment, oppression, violence, injustice, poverty, and despair. 

This is such a pained prayer.  Jesus knew the sufferings in the world.  He had seen them first hand.  He watched as crowds lined up outside of houses where he stayed, and along the road as he walked by; all of them hoping he could heal them – change their lives.  He saw their pain, and he knew the world was not helping.  He also knew that most did not understand that he was showing them a way to a world where God’s character was manifest in each and every person…where all were one with God and with each other.  He knew what was and what was possible…and that knowledge hurt.

Yet, Jesus maintained hope.  He couldn’t heal everyone…not before he died.  But he really did think people could and would choose the life he did.  “God, The world does not know you,” he prays, “BUT I know you; and at least these people know that you have sent me.”  There is hope because at the very least the disciples and others who followed Jesus had decided that he was worth following – that he was a glimpse of God and God’s intention for the world.   In short, he believed in humankind’s ability to change it all, and that gave him hope.

Norman Thomas, I think, lived equal parts anguish and hope.  He knew the suffering of people – he seemed to be the kind of person that felt deeply the world’s pains.  He also knew what was possible, and that knowledge hurt.  But he was convinced there were better ways, and that humans were capable of choosing them…he was a man of hope.

Thomas was born in 1884 and grew up relatively privileged, and right up through graduation from Princeton he had relatively little exposure to the world of suffering.  He graduated a staunch capitalist.  But after he graduated, he got a job as a social worker in a tenement district in NYC.  He came face to face for the first time in his life with the brutality of poverty in the urban slums.  It was anguish…and the systems in place weren’t working.  There had to be a different way, Thomas believed. 

After a couple of years, he decided to follow in his father’s footsteps and become a Presbyterian minister.  He attended Union Theological Seminary in New York City.  At Union he was immersed in what was called “The Social Gospel,” which was just beginning to gain a foothold in liberal, protestant Christianity.  The social gospel movement tried to move beyond looking at the bible for individualistic ethics and guidance to something that addressed the institutional sins of excessive wealth, racial tensions, child labor, the dangers of war, and oppressive governments.  The early thinkers in this movement believed that God was just as concerned with bringing down these institutions as with the individual’s salvation. 

Shortly after he was ordained a minister in 1911, he took a position in Harlem where he was again faced every day with the realities and pains of poverty.  It was, to be sure, a world that did not know God.  While there, he and his wife worked tirelessly to bring a better life to the people in their neighborhood.  They planted inner-city gardens, begged from the rich to feed the poor, and opened workshops to help people train for jobs.  Through all of this, Thomas became completely disillusioned with capitalism, and he knew there was another choice.  He was drawn to the communitarian principles of Socialism, and began a life-long connection with the Socialist Party, believing that somewhere within it lie an alternative to the system that was destroying and dehumanizing people.

He continued to be tortured by the sufferings around him, and it hit full force when our country was in the beginnings of World War I.  War pained him and it was, for him, just an outgrowth of capitalism.  He became convinced war was never the answer – he was “constrained to pacifism,” as he put it.  Not only did it cause pain and death in the present, it ensured violence would be the order of the day in the future.  Violence breeds violence.  Period.

Thomas looked around him and found a world where the ends justified the means; a world that desired peace, but used violence to try to get it.  If we want peace, he argued, we cannot kill, no matter how noble the cause.  He wrote, “The glory of the greatest of our spiritual leaders, of Jesus, of Francis of Assisi, of Tolstoi [sic], is a certain majestic simplicity of ethical teaching and practice.  To hate and to kill are wrong.  The kingdom of heaven is not for men of violence but for little children.  The way of life is the way of love.”

Thomas was a minister, but when he looked at the church all he saw were people who praised Jesus as Lord of the battle.  “Here is a man,” he wrote, “who bade his followers love their enemies, and pray for those who persecute you, who himself died on Calvary opposing wrong by no force save a martyr’s death.  How can the church justify war in any cause?”

Thomas was a pacifist, but he was not naïve.  He experienced anguish in the trade-offs in addition to the violence.  He didn’t back away from the reality in which he was making these claims of nonviolence, nor did he ignore the horrific consequences of what he was saying.  “Wars and bloody revolutions,” he wrote, “have ended ancient oppressions and given freedom room for nobler growth; but is it not the outstanding tragedy of history that the results are so out of proportion to the unselfish idealism of the heroes who have perished sword in hand?”  History, he says, shows us that the wars, though successful in some ways, are never worth the cost of the violence of war and the nurturing of the mentality of war.  He was convinced there was a better way.

In 1918, Thomas wrote a letter to the press endorsing a socialist candidate for mayor of New York.  In that letter he wrote:

“I believe that the hope for the future lies in a new social and economic order which demands the abolition of the capitalistic system.  War itself is only the most horrible and dramatic of the many evil fruits of our present organized system of exploitation and the philosophy of life which exalts competition instead of cooperation.  I am convinced that the hope of peace lies not so much in statesmen, who have already shown themselves bankrupt of ideas, but in people of all countries who demand the cessation of war in which they pay so horrible a price.”

This was when the church left him.  Some say he left the church, and technically he did.  But not because he didn’t believe in God or following Jesus, but because his stance on pacifism caused contributions to his church and its charitable activities to decline sharply.  It became clear to Thomas that the poor his church was helping would not be fed unless he resigned.  So he did, and never returned to serve the church that had lost, he thought, the true meaning of Jesus’ life.

Thomas continued to anguish over the state of the world and war, and with the rise of totalitarian dictatorships in the 1930’s, he became conflicted in thought and action.  He always believed war was wrong – never the solution.  Yet he couldn’t stand to look at what these brutal dictators were doing, and then as the reality of Nazi Germany hit him, he came to believe the U.S. must enter this terrible war.  The pain of this decision is so evident in his writings.  He contemplates the evils of both decisions.  Eventually, he wrote that “it does not make for the triumph of justice or peace to preach a political program of pacifism which practically would mean surrender to brutal totalitarian might.”  People were being slaughtered, and he could not stand that.  I can only imagine the anguish he felt abandoning his pacifist beliefs, which were not arrived at trivially.

Whether one agrees or disagrees with his conclusion, what I think we must learn from him is that these decisions must be pained, and we must painstakingly make them.  He knew these things mattered – were matters of life and death.  He wasn’t just playing at Christianity, or engaged in intellectual exercises for their own sakes.  He knew it was not a simplistic choice between war or not, and he models for us that such decisions should never be without pain and sorrow because both decisions are wrong because both allow violence.  As Thomas said, “I, the hater of war, chose as between circles of hell.”

Though he reluctantly supported the United States entering the war, he never stopped his criticism of the war – namely the way it was waged.  He abhorred the dropping of the atomic bomb.  He was utterly opposed to the internments of Japanese and German Americans.  He spoke out against the attitude of imperialism that he saw in the allied forces. He was appalled by segregation in the army. 

Even his politics were carefully considered, and decisions and positions were never taken lightly.  Thomas may have been a significant member of the socialist party, running as their presidential candidate six times, but he was never one to tow the party line for the sake of politics.  Not about war, not about economics, not about organizational structure and operations.  He stood as much a critic of his own friends and party members as he did of others.  He would not accept things the way they were because there was still suffering and so things needed to change.  He somehow steered clear of letting his identity be formed by ideology, which meant he didn’t cling to ideas  and systems just because they were socialist, or pacifist, or whatever.  What mattered to him was that the world did not know God, and until that changed, he would use his prominence to foster new ideas and challenge current practices that obviously were not working.

In the midst of all of this, Thomas was a man of hope. 

He believed in humanity. “Despite all the difficulties,” one author wrote, “Thomas was confident that human nature could be changed; and he placed his hope in Christianity as the vehicle through which such a change can be accomplished.  He saw in its call for a new social order based on Christ’s teachings the means to abolish violence.  Christian pacifism was the basis of Norman Thomas’ search for peace.”  In other words, he found hope in the way of Jesus, and like Jesus he thought people could and would follow that way.

Thomas lived what he preached – his means did match the ends he so desperately sought.  Though he was critical, he wasn’t angry, and that made a difference.  He was critical, but not angry.  One author mused about how he could be so critical of almost every aspect of American life, be a part of a party that many scorned and disliked, yet rise to such a highly respected and esteemed position in the eyes of his fellow Americans.  It had to do with his hope – his hope that the people he was talking to did not need to be chastised, but rather reminded of what they already knew.

In his 1974 book, James Duram wrote, “He was the conscience of America.  He spoke to the feelings that most Americans have about themselves:  that they are a fair people; that it is somehow wrong for poverty to exist amid plenty; that it is a perversion of justice to be jailed for political reasons; that Constitutional rights should be respected regardless of race and creed.”  He believed in the goodness of people, and while what he saw the world doing pained him, he never stopped appealing to people’s better selves.  He never gave up hope that things could change if people of good will reminded others of the suffering our actions were causing, and if viable alternatives were given.

We, too, should be anguished by the world.  It seems like too often we are casual about things that deserve the kind of tortured thought and wrestling Thomas went through.  It seems like there are times politics gets in the way of taking stands and being out in front of people with unpopular ideas and actions.  This world should anguish us, and our thinking about it should probably be appropriately anguished as well.  Issues of war, violence, poverty, injustice – the answers to these things are not simple, and we should not assume they will take care of themselves.

It’s hard for me to not think of Syria as I read about Thomas.  We do need to face the decision about whether to use violence to stop the actions of a brutal dictator that has caused 70,000 deaths and a million refugees.  But this decision should be excruciating.  The conversation should be of great depth in this country about the suffering, and the futility of using violence to secure peace.  There should be no easy answer – and it most certainly should cause us anguish. Christians should find violent solutions to violent problems an anathema.  Even if we decide that the circle of hell we choose is using military power, we should mourn…deeply.  But, I feel like any conversation about these things lacks a moral center, and is calculated purely in political terms. 

When I look at the conversation taking place about such things as how to respond to the horror of Syria, I don’t see this pain – the anguished decisions.  I see politicians calculating, and then people falling in line behind their party because that’s who they identify with.  Breaking ranks is forbidden, and identity politics takes priority over ethics and faith.  And no one is claiming that any decision is the wrong one because violence is never right.

Things like Syria are impossible – there is no good answer, and people are suffering beyond what we can even take in.  Yet, we also need the hope.  We do have Jesus.  We believe he was something we can look at to see the face and way of God.  We can be one with God, and in that bring hope and oneness to this world.  And the hope is found in the anguished deliberation if we follow the one who suffered for that oneness. 

When we struggle, we remind ourselves that it is up to us – and we can make compassionate choices that bring God into the world.  We do have the capacity for knowing God and God’s intentions, and that alone should bring hope to us and to those places in our world where people suffer.  We are not lost causes, destined to pile suffering upon suffering.  We are not hard wired to ignore people’s pain, and we are not hopeless narcissists.  We are disciples, and we know God sent Jesus – that Jesus shows us the face and intention of God – and in that we can connect to the love that will heal this world of pain.  Jesus thought it was possible.  His prayer – in his prayer of anguish and hope – we see he believed that it was possible that, in his words, “all may be one with God and with each other.”  Amen.