ROME IMPROVEMENT 5/23/2021

MORE POWER!  MORE GLORY!!  MORE SPIRIT!!!

SURVEYING THE SITE—Acts 2:1-21

If any day of the church year epitomizes “more power, more glory, more spirit” it is this Sunday, the Day of Pentecost. The reading for this day and the previous event of the Ascension are covered by the author of Luke and Acts. As Luke ends, Jesus tells the disciples to remain in Jerusalem until they are “clothed with power from on high” shortly before he ascends to heaven. As the book of Acts begins, we revisit the Ascension where Jesus tells his disciples that this is the power of the Holy Spirit and that they will be Jesus’ witnesses “in Jerusalem, in all Judea, and Samaria and to all the ends of the earth.”

Two angels come and challenge the disciples to pay attention to what is in front of them and stop looking up to heaven. So, the disciples return to the place of waiting and devote themselves, with certain women, to prayer and choosing a disciple to take Judas’ place. This says that the “waiting” they were doing is pretty active, and the “gathered togetherness” in the one room is less likely due to idleness than to prayer. This gathering together also includes women, so it is a larger group than just the twelve. It may even include Joseph, called Barsabas, also known as Justus.

READING THE BLUEPRINT

And in the fulfilling the day of the Pentecost, all were together at the same. And there began from the heaven a sound like a windy violence and filled all the house where they were seating themselves. And there appeared to them dividing tongues as of fire and sat on each one of them. And they were all filled with a Spirit of Holiness and began to speak other languages as the Spirit was giving proper speaking to them.

There were now living in Jerusalem Judeans, devout men from every nation which is under the heaven. The sound of this having come into being, the crowd came together and was bewildered because each one heard their speaking in their own idiomatic dialect. Then they were astounded, and they were amazed, saying, “See here, are not all of these who are speaking Galileans? And how do we hear each in our own idiomatic language in which we are born? Parthians…Arabs [people from everywhere], we hear their speaking in our own tongues the mighty acts of God.” And all were astounded and perplexed, saying one to another, “What does this wish, this hope, intend to be?” Others, jeering said, “They have been filled with sweet wine.”

[Then] having stood up, Peter with the eleven, he raised his voice and began to pontificate: “Men of Judea, and all those dwelling in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen up to what I have to say. For these are not overly imbibing as you suppose for it is the third hour of the day; but this is what is said through the prophet Joel,

‘And it will be in the last days, says God, I will pour out from my spirit/breath upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters will prophesy; and your young shall see visions, and your elders shall dream dreams; and even upon my slaves, male and female, in those days I will pour out from my spirit/breath, and they will prophesy. And I will give portents in the heaven and signs on the earth below, blood and fire and vaporous smoke. The sun shall be turned into darkness and the moon into blood before the coming day of the great and glorious (becoming visible) Lord. And it will be that all who call upon the name of the Lord will be made whole.’ “

 

ROUGHING IN THE HOUSE

“This train is bound for glory, is this train. This train is bound for glory, is this train. This train is bound for glory. If you want to get to heaven, then you got to get holy. This train is bound for glory, is this train.” Or so the old spiritual says.

 

Like a train leaving the station, Pentecost provides an engine for us to ride the rails of ministry. Coupled to our engine are many cars with people of every nation and the baggage that they carry. This train is bound for glory, is this train. And the glory we are bound for is the glory of witnessing to the resurrection of Jesus. The glory we are bound to is the glory of God among us. The glory we are bound to is the glory of relationship, coupled together with all of the people of the world.

 

This last week I attended virtually some of the Festival of Homiletics. There, the Rev. Dr. Luke Powery presented a sermon on this passage entitled, “And”. He noted that the word “and” describes the relationship of the people involved in this amazing moment in time. Like the couplers that connect the engine to the first car and that to the next, and on and on, this word “and” binds the train together: Parthians, Medes, Elamites, coupled together with the residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs; essentially, the whole world is being pulled by the Pentecost train.

 

Each person and every nation are all coupled onto this train by the conjunction “and”. And with this glorious train comes the Holy Wind, the Holy Spirit—God’s holy/sanctified breath—that breath that enlivens, and vivifies, and gives verve to our lives. This breath is the source of our passion and compassion. It is the sound of God’s wind squeezed through our vocal cords shaped by God’s gift of mouth to create the very words we need to describe the wondrous works and love of God.

 

In the old spiritual, the jokers, the cigar smokers, the liars, the prostitutes, even our mothers, sisters, brothers, and fathers may be restricted from the train. But, on this day, on this train, it is all about everyone who can get on board. It is all about coupling up for the ride to glory and being fully involved with all of God’s people, bearing and sharing the good news of Jesus Christ.

 

Now if our context for this song is the underground railroad of the nineteenth century, then glory is going to be freedom. But in the context of Pentecost, this train may be for…, well, it’s still for freedom—freedom from the racism and prejudice of our world, freedom from the pandemic that has imprisoned us this past year in fear and isolation, freedom from polarization and the biases of conservative vs liberal, freedom from all things that get in the way of our relationship with God.

 

Still, it is not that we are just freed from these powerful divisions, we are freed to something. We are freed to live with one another in new relationships. We are freed to hold on to one another, to get into one another’s cars, to see and listen to each other’s stories of our lives, and then find new ways of faithfully relating to one another. We are freed to know the wholeness that only God can give because this train is bound for glory, is this train.

 

And the glory ride is a ride that involves us in looking for the places of pain and need in our world, to witness the living body of Christ among the unseen people of our world. If we want to get wholly holy, then we are going to have to get down into the reality dirt of the world and witness the violent wind of the Spirit, the violent wind of dusty change. The Spirit is blowing us, breathing us, into new ways of living, new ways of thinking, new ways of being in dusty relationship with God and one another.

 

PUTTING UP THE WALLS

A year ago, our nation was locked down. We were determining who were the essential workers in our society. We discovered that the essential workers were not just the doctors and the nurses. Some of the most important people in our world were the garbage collectors, and meat cutters, and farm workers, and those who stocked the shelves in our grocery stores; and the housekeeping people that make spaces for healing in the hospitals safe; and bus drivers, and truckers, and taxi drivers, and car mechanics; and even tire salespeople who help us know where the rubber meets the road.

 

We discovered that there were ways other than in-person to be together. Many of the “new” ways were already in use by people who live with disabilities—people who were not ever able to meet easily in-person with others because of physical restriction—to be connected/coupled to one another for mutual support.

 

We learned to use our telephones and computers in new ways. We recorded worship services and posted them on YouTube. Connecting with one another in new ways we now thought of ourselves as both the people who had always been around us every day ‘and’ others who now joined us from afar.

 

The wind of the Holy Spirit blew us into new ways of thinking. As the violent rush of wind spoke to each person in their own language, so it is that the Holy Spirit continues to speak in ways that we can hear. This message is not limited to us in our comfortable and safe, lock-down homes. It is heard by all of those who dwell in God’s city of peace—Jerusalem: Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and the residents of Mesopotamia, liberals and conservatives, white and black and red and yellow and brown, queer and straight, male and female, slave and free, abled and disabled, joyful and grieving, young and old.

 

This train is not either-or where you are worthy or you’re not. This train is the train of the world for whom Jesus came, not to condemn, but to save. This train is bound for glory, is this train, and it pulls the lives of the gambler, the smoker, the tobacco chewer, the midnight toker, the prostitutes and tax collectors—all who call on the name of the Lord—to know wholeness.

 

The wind of Pentecost is blowing still. The question is, “How is this new way of thinking empowering us for the holy ride ahead of us? And what will glory look like when we get there? How will we talk about it?”

 

HANGING THE TRIM

Many claim Pentecost is the birthday of the Church, but, in fact, that accolade belongs to the period of time the disciples stayed in the room while they waited for the Holy Spirit to come upon them. This day—Pentecost—is the birthday of the Church’s mission. On this day Peter and the eleven and those others in the room that was filled with that violent breath of God, the same breath that causes all disciples to stand and speak in ways that others could hear, the same breath that will continue to give life to our witness to the wholeness we know in the love and mercy of God revealed to us in the person of Jesus Christ.