May 31, 2020
Pentecost A 2020: Acts 2:1-21 & John 20:19-23
Those of you who have participated in our Zoom Sunday fellowship or committee meetings have discovered that the blessing of video conferencing comes with the curse of a brief satellite delay, such that it’s impossible for anything to truly happen in perfect unison. However, that has not stopped us from trying. After weeks in both congregational and synodical meetings, we have finally, mostly, given up closing these gatherings with the Lord’s Prayer with multiple active microphones, because it becomes a holy but humorous noise as we attempt to adjust our timing to one another and only get further and further from our goal of praying “together.” I wonder if that cacophony is just a little like Pentecost morning so many years ago, when the pilgrims all heard in their own languages the testimony of the disciples, who heard themselves and each other speaking the same story but in languages they didn’t know. Whether our digital babel sounds anything like that or not, this is still probably the Pentecostiest Pentecost any of us have ever experienced. Because although we often focus on welcoming people into the church, Pentecost is really about the Spirit getting disciples out of the church to spread the good news of God to the world.
In Acts, Luke tells us this story of Jews from many different countries who therefore speak many different languages converging on Jerusalem to celebrate Pentecost, the Jewish feast commemorating God gifting Israel with the Law. The Spirit enables the disciples, who are all from Galilee, to speak the native languages of this multicultural group so that everyone can understand the story of Jesus and take that story back with them when they return to their homes. This begin fulfilling last week’s Acts reading, when Jesus promises the disciples “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” This is how the testimony of the disciples makes its way to all the known world.
Luke tells us that the Spirit appeared as tongues of fire above each of the disciples, but to use our own idiom, we might say that the Spirit lit a fire under the disciples to inspire them to action. After all, this is 50 days after Jesus’ death and resurrection, and the disciples still seem to still be keeping the story of Jesus to themselves. Had the Spirit not come and blown the doors of their house open, forcing the disciples out among others, they might never have fulfilled the purpose to which they were called, to spread the gospel beyond their own community. And that is why I say that, in the many different locations we inhabit today, we may be living more in the spirit of Pentecost than ever. It’s not particularly difficult to share the story of Jesus inside the church—whether we use that word “church” to mean our building or our congregation. Yet our real calling in gathering as the church is to grow as disciples so we can then go out and make more disciples, speaking and living the story of Jesus in our homes and neighborhoods and schools and businesses. So although we are eager and anxious to return to being church together in person, even then, it will always be for the purpose of preparing us to scatter again, because that’s how God’s love becomes active in the world.
It’s worth noting that John tells a different story of how the disciples receive the Spirit. In John’s gospel, it’s not 50 days later through the drama of wind and fire, but Easter night when Jesus himself breathes the Spirit into the disciples, sending them out to forgive or retain sin. He doesn’t give them an invitation or an option but a responsibility, and he does the same with us. By rushing wind and burning fire, or by the still, calm voice of Jesus, God calls us out into the world to speak and act in love where too many sins have been too easily forgiven and too many oppressive systems have been too long retained. Our world is full of violence, greed, injustice, and racism; these sins claim victim after victim and yet continue. We are not faithful disciples if we gather together as the church to hear the message that God so loves the world if we do not then go out into that world to teach that to others—by our words and our actions—to live like we believe that each person is made in the image of God and precious in God’s sight.
We need only to glance at the world around us to see that the message of God’s love for all people, the belief that the Divine Spirit lives in every person, must still be news that some have not yet heard. Otherwise people wouldn’t carelessly forget or even callously refuse to wear masks to protect others, or argue that this pandemic is not really a crisis because it mostly affects the weak and the elderly. Armed white terrorists wouldn’t be allowed to surround government buildings with impunity while peaceful protestors are assaulted and arrested. Religious minorities wouldn’t report feeling less safe than they did a decade ago. Police officers who swear to protect and serve wouldn’t murder people, overwhelmingly people of color. And bystanders and those in positions of privilege wouldn’t excuse and perpetuate this violence and discrimination by remaining silent or arguing false equivalencies.
There is so much work to be done in this world, to overcome hate, to cast out fear, to restore dignity and relocate our humanity. Yet we, too, have received the Spirit, empowering us to keep speaking God’s story of love in many and various ways, until we discover the language that is understood in each heart. It’s not an invitation, an offer, or suggestion but a command, a commission, and lives depend on us doing it. Having already been scattered into the world, may we remember what God taught us when we were still together, and may we not gather together again without having made a difference in this world where we have been sent.