5/28/23 Sermon
Pentecost
When Pentecost Day arrived, they were all together in one place. Suddenly a sound from heaven like the howling of a fierce wind filled the entire house where they were sitting. They saw what seemed to be individual flames of fire alighting on each one of them. They were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages as the Spirit enabled them to speak.
There were pious Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. When they heard this sound, a crowd gathered. They were mystified because everyone heard them speaking in their native languages. They were surprised and amazed, saying, “Look, aren’t all the people who are speaking Galileans, every one of them? How then can each of us hear them speaking in our native language? Parthians, Medes, and Elamites; as well as residents of Mesopotamia, Judea, and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the regions of Libya bordering Cyrene; and visitors from Rome (both Jews and converts to Judaism), Cretans and Arabs—we hear them declaring the mighty works of God in our own languages!” They were all surprised and bewildered. Some asked each other, “What does this mean?” Others jeered at them, saying, “They’re full of new wine!”
Peter stood with the other eleven apostles. He raised his voice and declared, “Judeans and everyone living in Jerusalem! Know this! Listen carefully to my words! These people aren’t drunk, as you suspect; after all, it’s only nine o’clock in the morning! Rather, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel:
In the last days, God says,
I will pour out my Spirit on all people.
Your sons and daughters will prophesy.
Your young will see visions.
Your elders will dream dreams.
Even upon my servants, men and women,
I will pour out my Spirit in those days,
and they will prophesy.
I will cause wonders to occur in the heavens above
and signs on the earth below,
blood and fire and a cloud of smoke.
The sun will be changed into darkness,
and the moon will be changed into blood,
before the great and spectacular day of the Lord comes.
And everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.
WORD OF LORD
The college I went to in Vermont had a reputation of being a “Godless” college. Some college review book said that the students there generally didn’t believe in God which is weird because out of the 35 people I graduated with there, 4 of us became ministers, one became a rabbi, and another was a buddhist monk. That strikes me as a pretty good track record for a place with that kind of reputation.
It seemed that rather than not believing in God, the students there, maybe myself included, didn’t hold traditional views on God. Their beliefs weren't easily summed up or fit nicely in well-defined, well-established boxes. There were deep beliefs there and strongly held convictions by most of the students. And so one night after the attacks on September 11th, 2001 a few of my classmates and I spent hours in the campus coffee shop arguing, discussing, and generally agreeing about what it all could mean and what it said about God. And we thought that it’d be interesting if we held a group that would meet once a week to discuss these things. We’d get together and discuss faith. And so we did. And we called it “Issues of Faith.”
It started small. A few of us would gather, they asked me to moderate it, and we’d pick a topic and discuss it from our various points of view. One week would be love, or hope, or a current situation, and we’d have great conversations around these topics. And word got out about our group and more people started coming, it grew and it grew which was great. We had so many different views represented. Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Pagan, Atheist, even religions I hadn’t even heard of. We went from about 6 people to about 46 people in a very short period of time. And what happened was that we moved from discussing a topic to arguing and then fighting about them. Fights started breaking out. Not physical fights but verbal fights and people would bash one another and end up leaving angry.
And Somehow, this group ended up becoming my responsibility. I somehow became in charge of Issues of Faith. It seemed like no matter what I did or how well we started, the moment the conversation started turning negative, you couldn’t turn the ship around. It just would spiral out of control. And it seemed like every week I’d go back to my cottage frustrated after these discussions.
At one point during all this, I found myself in New York City with some friends on a class field trip. It was a religion class and on the field trip we went to a Mosque for a service. Interestingly enough, I had met the Imam or Muslim pastor several times in the Chautauqua institution and had ice cream with him on several different occasions. He had worked deeply in inter-faith dialogue and so I was excited to see and talk to Imam Feisal about what was happening in our group back at college to see if he had any suggestions.
When we got to his mosque, I was shocked. We didn’t hear about stories like Feisal’s and his mosque’s in the news. We didn’t hear that his mosque was a few blocks from ground zero and that the front of it looked like it had been blasted over and over again by shrapnel from when the buildings fell. We didn’t hear that a big chunk of his congregation - all muslims- died or were seriously injured in the attacks. I want you to just stop and think about that. Imagine if even just a handful of the people in this room were killed or seriously injured one day. And then imagine if Christianity were blamed for it and you by being Christian were accused of killing your friends. We didn’t hear Feisal’s or his mosque’s story. What I found when I got there was a tired, old Feisal whose face and body looked almost as worn as the front of the building, but who’s eyes still had hope and some shine left in them.
He was a little surprised to see me and he apologized that we couldn’t go have ice cream like we generally did together in Chautauqua. But after the service, he and I sat down to talk. It feels so petty now. Here I am sitting with this man who had just lost so much, who was so deeply wounded in so many different ways with the shock of 9/11 and here I was to complain about my friends who kept fighting. But we talked. We talked about September 11th, we talked about my frustrations and his frustrations that people of faith couldn’t come together and respect legitimate differences while still embracing something that we all hold as true - that there is a God who loves us.
And I told him that to me the problem seems to be that we all have this same notion, this same idea inside of us, but we use different words and then fight about the words we use to describe the same thing. That it isn’t the words that really mattered. It’s what we’re experiencing. But we keep getting caught up in the language. So, I asked my friend Feisal how do we bridge the gap of language in order to speak to what’s true. And there, in that battered mosque, among people we’re told to fear and hate for what they believe, people who’d lost more than I care to ever imagine losing myself, there in that foreign place among Korans and prayer rugs and arabic writing, there looking into a tired, bearded arab muslim’s face - a face many would prefer to hate, there among all those strange things, I had my first Pentecost moment.
Feisal looked at me deeply in my eyes. He placed my hands in his. And he told me that there is only one true religion - just one true faith. He said, You either love God or you do not. The only faith that matters is one where you love God. And the language of that faith is the language of the heart. And the language of the heart isn’t one that uses words. the language of the heart is found in actions. The language of love is action. For Feisal, this man who had just seen unbelievable pain and suffering caused by men who claimed to be of the same religion he is and who caused such pain in the name of that Religion, for Feisal nothing could be further from the truth than the idea that these terrorists were religious men. For Feisal the terrorists on 9/11 weren’t Muslim. For Feisal they were men of no faith in any God. Because, for Feisal The way we speak to our faith is by loving God and the only way to speak it is to live it. We live our love of God in the world. And to Feisal, any action not done in love, is a denial of faith. That day utterly and totally changed my life.
People have called me a Christ denier because I went and worshipped in that Mosque. And people have called me unAmerican when I told them that I hugged and cried with a Muslim cleric that close to ground zero. People have suggested to me that I’ll probably go to hell for having Jewish relatives too and they’ve flat out told me I was going to hell for praying with muslims. But I can’t help but think of the Pentecost story and the movement of the Holy Spirit who brought so many people from so many different backgrounds together. And that when the crowd saw this group together, they thought that they were either drunk or crazy. Because none of it made any sense to them.
But if there’s one thing, only one thing that I’ve learned in my journey of faith up to this point is that the Holy Spirit really isn’t in the business of making sense to us. The Holy Spirit seems to be far more concerned with our love of God and love of one another, and bringing all three together. Bringing You and me and God together. And it doesn’t seem to matter to God, the Holy Spirit or Jesus the Christ who exactly you are, where’ve you been, or what you’ve done in your life. The only thing that seems to matter is if you love God or not. And that the love you have for God is enacted and made real in this world.
Pentecost is called the birth of the Church. This is when people say it happened. Which I’m all for, but what everyone has to realize is that the church then was founded by people who no one thought could be brought together - Jews and gentiles, men and women, Judeans and Samaritans, Monotheists and Polytheists, slaves and slave owners. Greeks and romans and arabs oh my! They were brought together by the holy spirit because they All LOVED God. And the people who saw it thought they were drunk at best and literally insane at worst. Because the church decided from that moment on to live in this world not contained by the labels and divisions that we give to one another in order separate us, but the church decided to live by their love of God that brings us all together despite those labels and divisions.
And You see, like most things in the Bible, I don’t think that Pentecost is a one shot deal. I think it’s still happening today. I think that the spirit is still moving among us seeking out people like Feisal and people like you and people like me - people who are drawn together somehow by their love of God. And it’s true that most of the world tells us that its crazy but I really do believe that the church of Jesus Christ has room for everyone, for poor people to sit next to the rich, and republicans and democrats can pass the peace to each other and mean it, where black people and white people can both hold the same hymnal and gay people can give straight people communion. And where those of us with only a little faith can be just as forgiven as those of us with a lot of faith.
And because I believe that the church can be all of that, I believe in a world where Muslims can hug Christians and respect our legitimate differences without either one wanting to kill the other. Where Jews and Hindus can build houses for those who need them. Where a mother from Israel can cry with a mother from Palestine when both their children are killed. Where politicians can finally come together and represent our best interest.
And I believe in a world where the selfish can put aside their wants for the needs of others and in a world where people can change. I believe in a world Where there isn’t any more need for drug addiction or food banks and where everyone’s rights are equally respected. Where guns are tools and not weapons for murder and every child can eat like I do. I believe in a world with clean water and breathable air and in a world where your only limits are your imagination and your drive to get there. I believe in a world where you aren’t defined by what you look like, or who you love, or how much money you make, or which church you go to, or what name you call God, or which party you vote for, but I believe in a world where the worth of a person is taken by who they are and that each and every life, each and every life is sacred.
I believe in a world that we christians call the Kingdom of God. But it’ll only exist if the church lives up to the vision that was presented to us at Pentecost. The church has to model it for the rest of the world. The spirit needs to bring us together.
My hope and dream is that by you sitting here this Pentecost morning, is that you share in the same dream that I do, the dream that the church is founded on, the dream that what this world is right now isn’t the only way for this world to be. That we can make the same decision Christians did on the first Pentecost. We can decide to build God’s Kingdom here on earth. We don’t have to let the news media or the advertising agencies or the political parties or the social groups define for us our worth or the worth of any other person in this world. We can let God do that and we can let Christ do that.
But if we make that decision, then we must live into it. We must live into God’s Kingdom knowing that there are people who will ridicule and judge us and who will try to deny the very fact that we are Christian. History has shown that for some reason people get cut down and destroyed for living out radical notions of love. It even happened on the first pentecost. But I believe that nothing happens until something moves and right now, the Spirit is calling her church to move once again.
I believe that at least in this church community there is a call and a movement back to Pentecost and it’s radical motion of inclusive love. I believe that we don’t have to accept this world as it is; that with the Spirit and with Christ we can make it better. We can begin to make it God’s Kingdom where everyone is welcome, where everyone is accepted, where everyone is valued, where everyone is saved. We, you and I, stand in the Pentecost moment every day of our lives where we’re asked to be people of FAITH. Where we’re asked to put our love of God into action, where we’re asked to put the radical church back into motion again.
So may you hear the Holy Spirit rush in to your life like a violent wind.
May you know that true faith is loving God.
May you live into Christ’s radical notion of love.
and May you act on that love, making your own part in this world as holy and sacred and blessed as God’s Kingdom is meant to be.