Study Format:
1. Read passage aloud. What did you notice in the reading? What words or phrase caught your attention?
2. Read passage aloud a second time. What questions would you ask the text?
3. Read passage aloud a third time. What do you hear God calling you to do or be in response to this text?
Interesting Ideas to Consider:
• The passage begins with Jesus making “a way” (Gk hodos) through the field. The disciples were gleaning leftover grain, as is permitted in Deuteronomy 23:25, “If you go into your neighbor’s standing grain, you may pluck the ears with your hand, but you shall not put a sickle to your neighbor’s standing grain.” The problem for the Pharisees was the disciples were traveling and harvesting grain on the Sabbath. By the Pharisitic read of scripture, the disciples should have been eating food they had prepared ahead of time so they would not have to work on the Sabbath.
• Jesus referenced 1 Samuel 21:1-6, a story where David approached a temple priest requesting food for his soldiers. The priest only had loaves of bread that had been blessed, and thus were only to be eaten by a priest. But the priest gave the bread to David anyway, because his men needed it. So while breaking the letter of that law, the priest kept another law, the one which required him to show hospitality to travelers in need.
• Frequently in the Gospels we see Jesus acting as rabbi and interpreting texts for the disciples and others (here the Pharisees). Jesus was not interested in the law as an abstract set of rules, but rather how the law was to be lived out in the world.
• The law Jesus interpreted was from Deuteronomy 5:12-15 (the first reading for Sunday). In it, God established the first labor law, creating the weekend. The reason for Sabbath was to rest, and to allow everyone to rest. It was a way to live out the freedom from slavery.
Works Sourced:
Jacobson, Rolf, Karoline Lewis, and Matt Skinner. “#608 – Second Sunday after Pentecost.” Audio blog post. Sermon Brainwave. Working Preacher, 26 May 2018.
Perkins, Pheme. “The Gospel of Mark.” The New Interpreter’s Bible Volume VIII. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1995.
Skinner, Matt. “Commentary on Mark 2:23-3:6.” Working Preacher. http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=3667. Accessed: 30 May 2018.
The extraordinary can look so ordinary
Thursday, May 31, 2018
Sunday, May 27, 2018
Here Am I: A Sermon on Psalm 29 and Isaiah 6:1-8
In seminary, I had the opportunity to travel to Iceland to learn about the Lutheran Church in Iceland and to experience, per the course description, “a profound experience of darkness in the land of fire and ice.” I have to say, I didn’t find the darkness all that profound, more weird that the sun didn’t rise until 11 every day, and then set again at 4. But the fire part, the geologic activity that creates power and heat, was profound. One particular day still stands out to me as an having shaped my understanding of God as creator.
Quick geology lesson: Iceland sits along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, where the North American and the Eurasian plate are moving apart from each other a rate of nearly two and a half centimeters a year. What that means is that Iceland, an island in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, is growing. In Genesis, we read about how God separated dry land from the waters, Iceland is a place where that separation is still happening. One day we went to the epicenter of that divergence, and as I stood looking across the moon-like expanse of volcanic rock, the stark, stillness of the place filled me with awe. In the silence, I felt the wind from God sweeping over the face of the earth, literally bringing new earth into being. I cannot explain it to you other than this deep profound knowing that God did not form creation into being long ago and leave it, but God is still creating, still moving, still forming, still bringing the cosmos into being. Standing in this vast barren landscape, on an island in the middle of the North Atlantic, looking out into an open sky, I had a sense like I have never had before, of the nearness of God, a presence and a power active in our world.
What I did not know in that moment was as I was standing on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, contemplating the glory of God’s creation in the stillness, some six thousand miles south of me, on another island in the middle of the ocean, the same Mid-Atlantic Ridge was creating conditions much more like the description from our Psalm this morning, “The God of glory thunders…The voice of the Lord is powerful…The voice of the Lord shakes the wilderness, the Lord shakes the wilderness of Kadesh.” The day I stood on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge in Iceland, was the day of the 2010 Haiti earthquake, where one-hundred and sixty thousand people lost their lives.
As humans, we are dualistic thinkers. We like everything in very specific, clearly spelled out categories. You're short or tall. You're fast or slow. You’re an introvert or an extrovert, a thinker or a feeler, a Republican or a Democrat. We like categories, and we like to know where we and others fit in those categories. Those categories are fairly benign, but they can get messy quickly. Something, someone is good or evil, you are saved or you are damned. You are human or you are an animal. Our need for duality at its best, which is still not very good, creates barriers that keep us separated from each other. At its worst it justifies horrendous acts of violence, because if you are evil, if you are not human, then not only do I not have to care about you, but I have almost an obligation to destroy you.
This need for duality is as old as humanity itself, but older than humanity is God. And God is not dualistic, God is much to vast for such simplistic categorizations. God is the air around, the space between all the categories we seek to create. In the beginning, the voice of God moved over the deep. God separated land from sea, light from darkness, and called all of it good. God made plants and animals for the lands, of complexity beyond number, and fish for the sea, to numerous to count, and called all of that good as well. God made humanity, of every different type and style. Not one of us the same, yet God made all of us imago dei, in the image of God, and God called us good. Categories of in and out, one or the other, they are too small to contain the God who created and is still creating the universe.
That’s not to say there is not evil and brokenness in the world, that’s just to say that the lines are not as clear as we’d like. I talked about standing on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge marveling at God’s creative power, while that same creative power was seemingly causing the death of thousands of people. But the earthquake in Haiti was not the cause of destruction, it was a revealer of it. It was apocalypse in its truest meaning, an unveiling of truths already present.
I grew up in southern California. I know earthquakes. I’ve been through earthquakes not quite the size of the one that shook Haiti, but close. And you know what damage my family sustained when a similar earthquake was epic entered in my hometown? One cut-glass punchbowl. No lives lost, no homes destroyed. Just one cut glass punch bowl that fell off a shelf in my grandmother's house.
What made the Haiti earthquake so devastating wasn’t the size of the quake. It was decades upon decades of corruption, mismanagement, and poverty that left the country with crumbling infrastructure, substandard housing conditions, and a crippled economy unable to provide for even the basic needs of its citizens. Conditions that can be traced back the racism and fear of slave revolt that kept other countries from recognizing Haiti as a nation when it declared independence in the 1800s, the colonialism and the slave trade that predated that, and on. What happened to the Haitian people in 2010 was horrible, and it was evil, but it is not accurate to say that the earthquake, an act of God, caused that devastation. Sin, human sin, our sin, created the conditions that led to all that suffering.
We, you and I, are complicit in this. Not all of it, certainly, but let us claim our part. Let us claim our own internalized racism, our own desire to take more than we need at the expense of others, our own fear or unwillingness to stand up to the imperialist tendencies of the world we live in. Let us claim, as the old confession and forgiveness reads, "the things we have done and the things we have left undone." Let us admit that we are sinners, let us admit that we are broken because, in the upending good news of the Gospel, it is in admitting that we are broken that we become restored.
If earthquakes and fires, famines and war, are acts of God, then there is nothing we can do. We are blameless, but we are also powerless. To quote the great fire and brimstone preacher Jonathan Edwards, we are "sinners in the hands of an angry God." A God who is vengeful and powerful, playing with us the way a cat plays with a mouse.
But when we recognize our own complicity in the the brokenness of the world, then we get our power back. Because if we, not God, have caused suffering, then we are not stuck waiting for some outside intervention that never seems to come fast enough. If we, not God, have caused suffering, then we can also undo it. Recognizing our sin lets us stop seeing ourselves as helpless beings in the hands of an all-powerful deity and puts us back into the relationship God created for us, stewards of the kingdom, co-workers with God in the world. The point of the confession and forgiveness at the beginning of the service is not about making us feel sufficiently bad about ourselves so that God can revel in our suffering, it is about God giving us our power back, about God reminding us of our rightful place as children of God, as heirs of God's kingdom. Because if we caused it, then we can fix it as well.
We cannot lay on God the conditions that humanity created. But we can look to God to find the solution. The powerful, hopeful, world-changing good news that comes from having a God who is too big for our dualistic mindsets is that God created us to be free from them too. God did not create us good or evil, saint or sinner. Instead we are, as our Lutheran theology reminds us, one-hundred percent of both, all of the time. And when we are able to recognize that. When we are able to not look to the mistakes of others, but to see ourselves for who we truly are, capable of tremendous acts of evil but also incredible acts of goodness, that is when we find ourselves empowered to do amazing things.
In our first reading today, Isaiah found himself, in the year that King Uzziah died, standing before the throne of God. Under Uzziah, the kingdom of Judah reached heights of economic prosperity it hadn’t seen before. But that wealth was not evenly distributed, cracks began to form in the society, and eventually Uzziah’s arrogance led to Judah’s decline and destruction at the hands of the Assyrians. Isaiah’s prophetic call was to point out these cracks to the Judean leadership, to make them aware of their failings in hopes that they might turn from their wicked ways and be different. But before Isaiah could prophesy—could bear witness—to this sin, he first had to see it.
So Isaiah found himself standing in the throne room of God, with the whole of God’s goodness and majesty stretched out before him, serenaded by seraphs singing God’s praises, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of God’s glory.” When Isaiah looked upon the glory of God, he knew. “Woe is me,” Isaiah proclaimed. “I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips.” Isaiah recognized and confessed his own brokenness and the brokenness of his people. And with that, one of the seraphs touched a burning coal to his lips and he was forgiven. Then the voice of God said to Isaiah, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” A rhetorical question if there ever was one, who will be the one to go out to Judah to offer the same revelation of truth that Isaiah himself just had, so that the rulers of the nation could know their need for healing and be healed? Who will be the one to bring God’s promised redemption to the world, to help a nation turn from their wicked ways and be set free? And Isaiah said, if it were me with a bit of a quaver in his voice, “Here am I; send me.”
It is not comfortable, it is not easy, to look around a broken world and see the ways in which we are culpable in that brokenness. To see how our sin, our greed, our pride or self-absorption, or even misguided ignorance, has caused the suffering of others. But here’s the thing, there is power and hope and healing in the recognizing. Because when we know, when we are made aware, then we too, like Isaiah, get to be prophets of redemption. We get to be the ones who get to make changes, who get to be God’s messengers, who get to lift up the lowly, bring down the mighty, and bring God’s kingdom into being. What a privilege, what a gift, what an incredible honor we have, to be the ones who get to say, “Here am I; send me.” Amen.
Quick geology lesson: Iceland sits along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, where the North American and the Eurasian plate are moving apart from each other a rate of nearly two and a half centimeters a year. What that means is that Iceland, an island in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, is growing. In Genesis, we read about how God separated dry land from the waters, Iceland is a place where that separation is still happening. One day we went to the epicenter of that divergence, and as I stood looking across the moon-like expanse of volcanic rock, the stark, stillness of the place filled me with awe. In the silence, I felt the wind from God sweeping over the face of the earth, literally bringing new earth into being. I cannot explain it to you other than this deep profound knowing that God did not form creation into being long ago and leave it, but God is still creating, still moving, still forming, still bringing the cosmos into being. Standing in this vast barren landscape, on an island in the middle of the North Atlantic, looking out into an open sky, I had a sense like I have never had before, of the nearness of God, a presence and a power active in our world.
What I did not know in that moment was as I was standing on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, contemplating the glory of God’s creation in the stillness, some six thousand miles south of me, on another island in the middle of the ocean, the same Mid-Atlantic Ridge was creating conditions much more like the description from our Psalm this morning, “The God of glory thunders…The voice of the Lord is powerful…The voice of the Lord shakes the wilderness, the Lord shakes the wilderness of Kadesh.” The day I stood on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge in Iceland, was the day of the 2010 Haiti earthquake, where one-hundred and sixty thousand people lost their lives.
As humans, we are dualistic thinkers. We like everything in very specific, clearly spelled out categories. You're short or tall. You're fast or slow. You’re an introvert or an extrovert, a thinker or a feeler, a Republican or a Democrat. We like categories, and we like to know where we and others fit in those categories. Those categories are fairly benign, but they can get messy quickly. Something, someone is good or evil, you are saved or you are damned. You are human or you are an animal. Our need for duality at its best, which is still not very good, creates barriers that keep us separated from each other. At its worst it justifies horrendous acts of violence, because if you are evil, if you are not human, then not only do I not have to care about you, but I have almost an obligation to destroy you.
This need for duality is as old as humanity itself, but older than humanity is God. And God is not dualistic, God is much to vast for such simplistic categorizations. God is the air around, the space between all the categories we seek to create. In the beginning, the voice of God moved over the deep. God separated land from sea, light from darkness, and called all of it good. God made plants and animals for the lands, of complexity beyond number, and fish for the sea, to numerous to count, and called all of that good as well. God made humanity, of every different type and style. Not one of us the same, yet God made all of us imago dei, in the image of God, and God called us good. Categories of in and out, one or the other, they are too small to contain the God who created and is still creating the universe.
That’s not to say there is not evil and brokenness in the world, that’s just to say that the lines are not as clear as we’d like. I talked about standing on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge marveling at God’s creative power, while that same creative power was seemingly causing the death of thousands of people. But the earthquake in Haiti was not the cause of destruction, it was a revealer of it. It was apocalypse in its truest meaning, an unveiling of truths already present.
I grew up in southern California. I know earthquakes. I’ve been through earthquakes not quite the size of the one that shook Haiti, but close. And you know what damage my family sustained when a similar earthquake was epic entered in my hometown? One cut-glass punchbowl. No lives lost, no homes destroyed. Just one cut glass punch bowl that fell off a shelf in my grandmother's house.
What made the Haiti earthquake so devastating wasn’t the size of the quake. It was decades upon decades of corruption, mismanagement, and poverty that left the country with crumbling infrastructure, substandard housing conditions, and a crippled economy unable to provide for even the basic needs of its citizens. Conditions that can be traced back the racism and fear of slave revolt that kept other countries from recognizing Haiti as a nation when it declared independence in the 1800s, the colonialism and the slave trade that predated that, and on. What happened to the Haitian people in 2010 was horrible, and it was evil, but it is not accurate to say that the earthquake, an act of God, caused that devastation. Sin, human sin, our sin, created the conditions that led to all that suffering.
We, you and I, are complicit in this. Not all of it, certainly, but let us claim our part. Let us claim our own internalized racism, our own desire to take more than we need at the expense of others, our own fear or unwillingness to stand up to the imperialist tendencies of the world we live in. Let us claim, as the old confession and forgiveness reads, "the things we have done and the things we have left undone." Let us admit that we are sinners, let us admit that we are broken because, in the upending good news of the Gospel, it is in admitting that we are broken that we become restored.
If earthquakes and fires, famines and war, are acts of God, then there is nothing we can do. We are blameless, but we are also powerless. To quote the great fire and brimstone preacher Jonathan Edwards, we are "sinners in the hands of an angry God." A God who is vengeful and powerful, playing with us the way a cat plays with a mouse.
But when we recognize our own complicity in the the brokenness of the world, then we get our power back. Because if we, not God, have caused suffering, then we are not stuck waiting for some outside intervention that never seems to come fast enough. If we, not God, have caused suffering, then we can also undo it. Recognizing our sin lets us stop seeing ourselves as helpless beings in the hands of an all-powerful deity and puts us back into the relationship God created for us, stewards of the kingdom, co-workers with God in the world. The point of the confession and forgiveness at the beginning of the service is not about making us feel sufficiently bad about ourselves so that God can revel in our suffering, it is about God giving us our power back, about God reminding us of our rightful place as children of God, as heirs of God's kingdom. Because if we caused it, then we can fix it as well.
We cannot lay on God the conditions that humanity created. But we can look to God to find the solution. The powerful, hopeful, world-changing good news that comes from having a God who is too big for our dualistic mindsets is that God created us to be free from them too. God did not create us good or evil, saint or sinner. Instead we are, as our Lutheran theology reminds us, one-hundred percent of both, all of the time. And when we are able to recognize that. When we are able to not look to the mistakes of others, but to see ourselves for who we truly are, capable of tremendous acts of evil but also incredible acts of goodness, that is when we find ourselves empowered to do amazing things.
In our first reading today, Isaiah found himself, in the year that King Uzziah died, standing before the throne of God. Under Uzziah, the kingdom of Judah reached heights of economic prosperity it hadn’t seen before. But that wealth was not evenly distributed, cracks began to form in the society, and eventually Uzziah’s arrogance led to Judah’s decline and destruction at the hands of the Assyrians. Isaiah’s prophetic call was to point out these cracks to the Judean leadership, to make them aware of their failings in hopes that they might turn from their wicked ways and be different. But before Isaiah could prophesy—could bear witness—to this sin, he first had to see it.
So Isaiah found himself standing in the throne room of God, with the whole of God’s goodness and majesty stretched out before him, serenaded by seraphs singing God’s praises, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of God’s glory.” When Isaiah looked upon the glory of God, he knew. “Woe is me,” Isaiah proclaimed. “I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips.” Isaiah recognized and confessed his own brokenness and the brokenness of his people. And with that, one of the seraphs touched a burning coal to his lips and he was forgiven. Then the voice of God said to Isaiah, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” A rhetorical question if there ever was one, who will be the one to go out to Judah to offer the same revelation of truth that Isaiah himself just had, so that the rulers of the nation could know their need for healing and be healed? Who will be the one to bring God’s promised redemption to the world, to help a nation turn from their wicked ways and be set free? And Isaiah said, if it were me with a bit of a quaver in his voice, “Here am I; send me.”
It is not comfortable, it is not easy, to look around a broken world and see the ways in which we are culpable in that brokenness. To see how our sin, our greed, our pride or self-absorption, or even misguided ignorance, has caused the suffering of others. But here’s the thing, there is power and hope and healing in the recognizing. Because when we know, when we are made aware, then we too, like Isaiah, get to be prophets of redemption. We get to be the ones who get to make changes, who get to be God’s messengers, who get to lift up the lowly, bring down the mighty, and bring God’s kingdom into being. What a privilege, what a gift, what an incredible honor we have, to be the ones who get to say, “Here am I; send me.” Amen.
Sunday, May 20, 2018
"And They Began to Speak in Other Languages": A Sermon on Acts 2:1-21 and Ezekiel 37:1-14
During the Woman’s Co-op board meetings, Teresa has been running the board through a brief course on Dr. Ruby Payne’s work on hidden rules in economic structure. I first became acquainted with Dr. Payne’s work on internship, and it was incredibly helpful to me in understanding the families I was working with. So it was great to come to Trinity and discover that Co-op also bases its work in Dr. Payne’s ideas.
If you’re unfamiliar with her work, Dr. Payne posits that the three major economic classes, poverty class, middle class, and the wealthy, each operate under their own hidden rules. Most of us, and most institutions, function under the rules of middle class, so we may not be aware of the barriers that the rules create. Teresa uses the example of food. For the poverty class, the question is quantity, is there enough food? For the middle class, the question is quality, am I getting what I’m paying for? For the wealthy class, the question is presentation, how is this food being served to me? For me, the experience that most drilled in the existence of these rules was working with the kids on my internship. One of the hidden rules is the relationship to noise. Middle class needs and expects quiet to process information, while the poverty class actually functions better when things are louder. Atonement was a very diverse congregation, and by a funny fluke of ages I had an entirely middle class confirmation group and an entirely poverty class senior high youth group. So on Sunday mornings in confirmation, if the kids were screwing around and making noise, I knew they weren’t listening. But on Sunday evenings in youth group, the opposite was true. If the kids were quiet and seemed to be paying attention, they probably weren’t listening. The groups weren’t better or worse, they just learned and processed information differently.
This may just be fun facts for church youth groups, but think of the implications on a broader spectrum. Like, think of what these rules mean for kids in the education system. Our schools are set up mostly on middle class rules, you sit in your seat, you raise your hand, you are quiet and don’t bother your neighbor. That’s great if you think best when things are quiet. But what if you are the kid from my internship youth group, who thought best when she was upside-down under the couch cushion with her headphones on? That kid was super smart. Seriously, she was a science wizard; I think she ended up with a full-ride scholarship to Syracuse University to study chemistry. But if the church hadn’t recognized she learned differently, stepped in and really advocated for her at her school, she more than likely would have been passed over as another screw-up kid who couldn’t stay in her seat.
That kind of boundary crossing and translation work are why I became a pastor and why I do the work I do. It was watching how the pastor at Luther Place Memorial Church in Washington, DC ministered to the women of N Street Village. And how the presence of that congregation changed not just the lives of those women, but literally changed the face of the whole neighborhood. It was worshiping at a different DC church, First Trinity Lutheran, which boasted a bell choir that included both a retired senior diplomat from the state department and a woman who wore a tin foil covered bicycle helmet to protect her from the Pope trying to read her thoughts. And I have to say, the woman with the tin foil hat had a way better sense of rhythm than the retired diplomat. It was the youth group at Atonement in Syracuse, and the guy from the AFC home who actually thought my name was Victor, and the weird little church in Chicago whose membership was a really diverse mix of gay men and old Swedish people, united in their love of organ music and high church liturgy. All these are the places where I’ve gotten to see the church at its best, this place where diverse people and ideas come together to hear the promise of God spoken to them in their own language, learn a bit of someone else’s language, and in the process create a community where no one is in need.
I see it here at Trinity too. In the prayground and the worship kits, and the way no one blinks an eye, and in fact people smile, when a kid ribbon dances their way through the sanctuary during a hymn. In the joyful chaos of the Under One Roof fellowship meal, and the way the Co-op clothing closet tends to spill out into the hallway, and my very favorite picture from the Christmas Pageant a few years ago, where Michelle looks like the grumpiest angel, there is a “come as you are” spirit to this place, where anything, literally anything, goes. [Pause]
“When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire… rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages as the Spirit gave them ability.”
In the Pentecost story, the apostles were given the ability to be understood in different languages. If you’re familiar with The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series, it’s like the little fish that they stick in their ear that translates for them. Devout Jews from various nations heard them speaking in the person’s own native tongue; Partians heard Parthian, Medes heard Mede, and so on. The Holy Spirit gave the apostles the ability to transcend the limitations of language, to cross barriers of understanding, so that the good news of God’s deeds of power could be proclaimed, just as Jesus had commanded. This is a pretty incredible miracle. And I’m not really good with foreign languages, so this is not one that I’m likely to accomplish anytime soon. But we know from Dr. Payne’s work that spoken language and dialect differences are not the only language barrier that needs to be crossed in order to effectively proclaim the good news of God. There is the language of culture, of experience, of age or gender or sexual identity. There is the language of mental or physical ability. And of course, Dr. Payne’s extensive work on the language of socio-economic backgrounds. If we believe this Pentecost story, if we believe that the Holy Spirit has been poured out on us, like Peter said it has been, then we have been given the ability to speak in these various tongues, to proclaim God’s forgiveness, love, and salvation, in all variety of languages. That’s not to say this will be easy. Speaking in these foreign tongues will be uncomfortable; it will take us out of our comfort zone. And it will mean people will look at us funny. Think about the Pentecost story again, the crowds heard the apostles speaking and said, “they are filled with new wine.” But the risk of a few side-eyed glances from people whom, let’s face it, may think a bit more highly of themselves than they ought, is nothing compared to the reward of getting to see what the Spirit might be about in this place.
And, fun fact—you know I can’t get through a sermon without a fun fact—the word translated “fire” is the Greek word pyr, like pyrotechnic. Theologian J. Levison says pyr was often used as a metaphor for prophetic inspiration. Prophetic, remember, does not mean to predict the future, it’s not fortune-telling. It means to speak truth in the present, to see a new way forward based on an honest assessment of now. Levison believes that Luke’s tongues of fire meant that the apostles were given both the power to speak the word of God effectively and to think and teach about God in new ways. It meant the apostles were no longer bound to old ways of being; they were free to interpret scripture, to teach, and to live in new ways. On Ascension they asked Jesus when he would restore the kingdom to Israel; on Pentecost they received the ability not to restore the past, but to create the future.
So what does this mean? I think of the reading from Ezekiel. Ezekiel looked upon a field of dry bones and was asked, “can these bones live?” A field of dry, brittle bones, any logical person, upon looking at this scene would say no. These bones glory was in their past, there is nothing new here for them now. But instead Ezekiel replied, “O Lord God, you know.” Then the Lord told Ezekiel, “Prophesy to these bones.” Speak truth to these bones. Tell these bones who they are, and who they could be. Tell them of the good news of God’s deeds of power, in their own native language, in words they can understand. So Ezekiel prophesied to the bones, and flesh came upon them, and “breath came into them, and they lived, and stood on their own feet, a vast multitude.” Not the flesh they had before, not the breath they had before, but new flesh, new breath, new life, a new promise for this new moment in time. There are plenty who look around Post Addition and see nothing but a field of dry bones, a glorious past now laid waste in a dusty future. But we know the truth, we have a leg up on Ezekiel even, the bones of this place are great bones, strong and solid, filled with promise, just waiting for breath to come upon them again. And we are the ones called to prophesy, the ones on whom the tongues of fire have rested. The ones called to say, as God has commanded, “O my people. I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you on your own soil; then you shall know that I, the Lord, have spoken and will act.” Thanks be to God. Amen.
If you’re unfamiliar with her work, Dr. Payne posits that the three major economic classes, poverty class, middle class, and the wealthy, each operate under their own hidden rules. Most of us, and most institutions, function under the rules of middle class, so we may not be aware of the barriers that the rules create. Teresa uses the example of food. For the poverty class, the question is quantity, is there enough food? For the middle class, the question is quality, am I getting what I’m paying for? For the wealthy class, the question is presentation, how is this food being served to me? For me, the experience that most drilled in the existence of these rules was working with the kids on my internship. One of the hidden rules is the relationship to noise. Middle class needs and expects quiet to process information, while the poverty class actually functions better when things are louder. Atonement was a very diverse congregation, and by a funny fluke of ages I had an entirely middle class confirmation group and an entirely poverty class senior high youth group. So on Sunday mornings in confirmation, if the kids were screwing around and making noise, I knew they weren’t listening. But on Sunday evenings in youth group, the opposite was true. If the kids were quiet and seemed to be paying attention, they probably weren’t listening. The groups weren’t better or worse, they just learned and processed information differently.
This may just be fun facts for church youth groups, but think of the implications on a broader spectrum. Like, think of what these rules mean for kids in the education system. Our schools are set up mostly on middle class rules, you sit in your seat, you raise your hand, you are quiet and don’t bother your neighbor. That’s great if you think best when things are quiet. But what if you are the kid from my internship youth group, who thought best when she was upside-down under the couch cushion with her headphones on? That kid was super smart. Seriously, she was a science wizard; I think she ended up with a full-ride scholarship to Syracuse University to study chemistry. But if the church hadn’t recognized she learned differently, stepped in and really advocated for her at her school, she more than likely would have been passed over as another screw-up kid who couldn’t stay in her seat.
That kind of boundary crossing and translation work are why I became a pastor and why I do the work I do. It was watching how the pastor at Luther Place Memorial Church in Washington, DC ministered to the women of N Street Village. And how the presence of that congregation changed not just the lives of those women, but literally changed the face of the whole neighborhood. It was worshiping at a different DC church, First Trinity Lutheran, which boasted a bell choir that included both a retired senior diplomat from the state department and a woman who wore a tin foil covered bicycle helmet to protect her from the Pope trying to read her thoughts. And I have to say, the woman with the tin foil hat had a way better sense of rhythm than the retired diplomat. It was the youth group at Atonement in Syracuse, and the guy from the AFC home who actually thought my name was Victor, and the weird little church in Chicago whose membership was a really diverse mix of gay men and old Swedish people, united in their love of organ music and high church liturgy. All these are the places where I’ve gotten to see the church at its best, this place where diverse people and ideas come together to hear the promise of God spoken to them in their own language, learn a bit of someone else’s language, and in the process create a community where no one is in need.
I see it here at Trinity too. In the prayground and the worship kits, and the way no one blinks an eye, and in fact people smile, when a kid ribbon dances their way through the sanctuary during a hymn. In the joyful chaos of the Under One Roof fellowship meal, and the way the Co-op clothing closet tends to spill out into the hallway, and my very favorite picture from the Christmas Pageant a few years ago, where Michelle looks like the grumpiest angel, there is a “come as you are” spirit to this place, where anything, literally anything, goes. [Pause]
“When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire… rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages as the Spirit gave them ability.”
In the Pentecost story, the apostles were given the ability to be understood in different languages. If you’re familiar with The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series, it’s like the little fish that they stick in their ear that translates for them. Devout Jews from various nations heard them speaking in the person’s own native tongue; Partians heard Parthian, Medes heard Mede, and so on. The Holy Spirit gave the apostles the ability to transcend the limitations of language, to cross barriers of understanding, so that the good news of God’s deeds of power could be proclaimed, just as Jesus had commanded. This is a pretty incredible miracle. And I’m not really good with foreign languages, so this is not one that I’m likely to accomplish anytime soon. But we know from Dr. Payne’s work that spoken language and dialect differences are not the only language barrier that needs to be crossed in order to effectively proclaim the good news of God. There is the language of culture, of experience, of age or gender or sexual identity. There is the language of mental or physical ability. And of course, Dr. Payne’s extensive work on the language of socio-economic backgrounds. If we believe this Pentecost story, if we believe that the Holy Spirit has been poured out on us, like Peter said it has been, then we have been given the ability to speak in these various tongues, to proclaim God’s forgiveness, love, and salvation, in all variety of languages. That’s not to say this will be easy. Speaking in these foreign tongues will be uncomfortable; it will take us out of our comfort zone. And it will mean people will look at us funny. Think about the Pentecost story again, the crowds heard the apostles speaking and said, “they are filled with new wine.” But the risk of a few side-eyed glances from people whom, let’s face it, may think a bit more highly of themselves than they ought, is nothing compared to the reward of getting to see what the Spirit might be about in this place.
And, fun fact—you know I can’t get through a sermon without a fun fact—the word translated “fire” is the Greek word pyr, like pyrotechnic. Theologian J. Levison says pyr was often used as a metaphor for prophetic inspiration. Prophetic, remember, does not mean to predict the future, it’s not fortune-telling. It means to speak truth in the present, to see a new way forward based on an honest assessment of now. Levison believes that Luke’s tongues of fire meant that the apostles were given both the power to speak the word of God effectively and to think and teach about God in new ways. It meant the apostles were no longer bound to old ways of being; they were free to interpret scripture, to teach, and to live in new ways. On Ascension they asked Jesus when he would restore the kingdom to Israel; on Pentecost they received the ability not to restore the past, but to create the future.
So what does this mean? I think of the reading from Ezekiel. Ezekiel looked upon a field of dry bones and was asked, “can these bones live?” A field of dry, brittle bones, any logical person, upon looking at this scene would say no. These bones glory was in their past, there is nothing new here for them now. But instead Ezekiel replied, “O Lord God, you know.” Then the Lord told Ezekiel, “Prophesy to these bones.” Speak truth to these bones. Tell these bones who they are, and who they could be. Tell them of the good news of God’s deeds of power, in their own native language, in words they can understand. So Ezekiel prophesied to the bones, and flesh came upon them, and “breath came into them, and they lived, and stood on their own feet, a vast multitude.” Not the flesh they had before, not the breath they had before, but new flesh, new breath, new life, a new promise for this new moment in time. There are plenty who look around Post Addition and see nothing but a field of dry bones, a glorious past now laid waste in a dusty future. But we know the truth, we have a leg up on Ezekiel even, the bones of this place are great bones, strong and solid, filled with promise, just waiting for breath to come upon them again. And we are the ones called to prophesy, the ones on whom the tongues of fire have rested. The ones called to say, as God has commanded, “O my people. I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you on your own soil; then you shall know that I, the Lord, have spoken and will act.” Thanks be to God. Amen.
Thursday, May 17, 2018
Conversation Points for Acts 2:1-21
Study Format:
1. Read passage aloud. What did you notice in the reading? What words or phrase caught your attention?
2. Read passage aloud a second time. What questions would you ask the text?
3. Read passage aloud a third time. What do you hear God calling you to do or be in response to this text?
Interesting Ideas to Consider:
• In this passage, what was first predicted by John the Baptist (Luke 3:16, “John answered all of them by saying, ‘I baptize you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire”) and by the risen Christ (Acts 1:4-5, “While staying with them, he ordered them not to leave Jerusalem, but to wait there for the promise of the Father. ‘This,’ he said, ‘is what you have heard from me; for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now’”) finally comes to fruition, baptism by the Holy Spirit.
• The story of the Spirit coming at Pentecost is unique to Luke/Acts. While the Gospel of John has Jesus giving the disciples the Spirit immediately after his resurrection (John 20:22, “Then he breathed on them and said, ‘receive the Holy Spirit’”) and Paul spoke of Jesus’ appearance to a crowd of five-hundred (1 Corinthians 15:6) possible as “a life-giving spirit” (1 Corinthians 15:45), only Luke/Acts has the Spirit coming in tongues of fire at Pentecost. Given the centrality of the story for Luke/Acts, its brevity (only four verses) seems strange. Commentaries posit this is to move the reader quickly from the coming of the Spirit to the Spirit’s effect on moving the community’s mission forward.
• “Pentecost” (literally “fiftieth day”) was a word used by Diaspora Jews for the harvest festival more commonly called the “Feast of Weeks” (Shavuot) that took place fifty days after Passover (Exodus 23:16; 34:22; Leviticus 23:15-21; Numbers 28:26; Deuteronomy 16:9-12). It was one of the three pilgrimage feasts, where Diaspora Jews would travel to Jerusalem to celebrate, which could account for the list of nations in v. 9-10.
• “They were all together in one place” (v. 1). The coming of the Spirit is not an individual event, it happens in community.
• Some commentators saw connections between the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost and Moses giving the Law to the Israelites at Mt. Sinai, as both events took place fifty days after Passover. Jewish interpreters saw Pentecost as having importance in line with the Torah, Christian saw it as the new covenant to renew the old, failed one. Modern scholarship questions this connection, because the commemoration of the coming of Torah at Pentecost may have been a later rabbinic tradition. While Luke does use symbolism from Moses’ time on Sinai (fire, sound, speech), the dating of the Spirit to Pentecost may have been Luke’s own staging.
• Important to Luke is the idea of the inbreaking of heaven into the world. The Holy Spirit is described as like wind (a nod to Genesis 1:2b, “…while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters,” “wind” here can also be translated “spirit” or “mighty wind”) and like fire (a nod to Exodus 3:2, “Then an angel of the Lord appeared to [Moses] in a flame of fire out of a bush…” and to Psalm 104:4, “you make the winds your messengers, fire and flame your ministers.”) The Spirit’s presence among the community was not subtle, it could not be missed.
• “Tongues of fire” (glossai hosei pyros) rested on each of the apostles, empowering them to be able to speak and be understood by a wide audience. Dr. Wall says that at this point it was not yet as much about the message as it was about the bold proclamation of that message. J. Levison argues that “fire” (pyr) was a frequent image as a metaphor for prophetic inspiration. Luke’s use of tongues of fire implied both the power to speak the word of God effectively and to think about God in new ways. By this, to be “filled with the Holy Spirit” is not just to preach persuasively. It also means to be able to interpret scripture in new and inspired ways.
• While the Spirit is concentrated here on the apostles, it belongs not to an enlightened few but to the whole people of God (as we will see develop throughout Acts).
• A crowd of “devout Jews” (v. 5) was amazed to see Galileans (who apparently were not known for their linguistic talents) speaking of God’s deeds of power. This is the first of over fifty references to “Jews” in Acts. The church’s proclamation of the power of God began with faithful Jews.
• Speeches make up almost a third of the book of Acts. The speeches are “missionary speeches,” they are the response to Jesus’ commission in Acts 1:8 to be Jesus’ “witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” While the speeches reflect Luke’s use of reliable sources, they are his own compositions. Readers then should not assume they are transcribed verbatim, but that the speeches function as an element in the narrative and serve a purpose.
• The word used for “listen” in v. 14 is an interesting one. It is enotizomai, which literally translates “let me place it [the word of God] into your ears.” It echoes Luke 4:21, when Jesus told an audience in Nazareth that “today” the words from Isaiah about bringing good news to the poor would “be fulfilled in your hearing,” literally among those “with ears” (en osin).
• Peter quoted the Greek translation of Joel 3:1-5. In the Greek translation, the Hebrew word for God was translated as kyrios, “Lord,” allowing Peter to say that this “Lord” is the risen Jesus.
• Peter made other adjustments to Joel. “After these things” (Joel 3:1) becomes “in the last days” (Acts 2:17). With this change, Peter is locating the outpouring of the Spirit as bringing in a new era of salvation history, that of the “last days.” Peter also added “God declares,” which gives the words added intensity and emphasis.
• Typically in this time, the last phrase heard was the most important. So is it in Peter’s quoting of Joel. “Everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved” (Acts 2:21) is a summary of the purpose of the first half of Acts.
Works Sourced:
Wall, Robert W. “The Acts of the Apostles.” The New Interpreter’s Bible Volume X. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 2002.
1. Read passage aloud. What did you notice in the reading? What words or phrase caught your attention?
2. Read passage aloud a second time. What questions would you ask the text?
3. Read passage aloud a third time. What do you hear God calling you to do or be in response to this text?
Interesting Ideas to Consider:
• In this passage, what was first predicted by John the Baptist (Luke 3:16, “John answered all of them by saying, ‘I baptize you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire”) and by the risen Christ (Acts 1:4-5, “While staying with them, he ordered them not to leave Jerusalem, but to wait there for the promise of the Father. ‘This,’ he said, ‘is what you have heard from me; for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now’”) finally comes to fruition, baptism by the Holy Spirit.
• The story of the Spirit coming at Pentecost is unique to Luke/Acts. While the Gospel of John has Jesus giving the disciples the Spirit immediately after his resurrection (John 20:22, “Then he breathed on them and said, ‘receive the Holy Spirit’”) and Paul spoke of Jesus’ appearance to a crowd of five-hundred (1 Corinthians 15:6) possible as “a life-giving spirit” (1 Corinthians 15:45), only Luke/Acts has the Spirit coming in tongues of fire at Pentecost. Given the centrality of the story for Luke/Acts, its brevity (only four verses) seems strange. Commentaries posit this is to move the reader quickly from the coming of the Spirit to the Spirit’s effect on moving the community’s mission forward.
• “Pentecost” (literally “fiftieth day”) was a word used by Diaspora Jews for the harvest festival more commonly called the “Feast of Weeks” (Shavuot) that took place fifty days after Passover (Exodus 23:16; 34:22; Leviticus 23:15-21; Numbers 28:26; Deuteronomy 16:9-12). It was one of the three pilgrimage feasts, where Diaspora Jews would travel to Jerusalem to celebrate, which could account for the list of nations in v. 9-10.
• “They were all together in one place” (v. 1). The coming of the Spirit is not an individual event, it happens in community.
• Some commentators saw connections between the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost and Moses giving the Law to the Israelites at Mt. Sinai, as both events took place fifty days after Passover. Jewish interpreters saw Pentecost as having importance in line with the Torah, Christian saw it as the new covenant to renew the old, failed one. Modern scholarship questions this connection, because the commemoration of the coming of Torah at Pentecost may have been a later rabbinic tradition. While Luke does use symbolism from Moses’ time on Sinai (fire, sound, speech), the dating of the Spirit to Pentecost may have been Luke’s own staging.
• Important to Luke is the idea of the inbreaking of heaven into the world. The Holy Spirit is described as like wind (a nod to Genesis 1:2b, “…while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters,” “wind” here can also be translated “spirit” or “mighty wind”) and like fire (a nod to Exodus 3:2, “Then an angel of the Lord appeared to [Moses] in a flame of fire out of a bush…” and to Psalm 104:4, “you make the winds your messengers, fire and flame your ministers.”) The Spirit’s presence among the community was not subtle, it could not be missed.
• “Tongues of fire” (glossai hosei pyros) rested on each of the apostles, empowering them to be able to speak and be understood by a wide audience. Dr. Wall says that at this point it was not yet as much about the message as it was about the bold proclamation of that message. J. Levison argues that “fire” (pyr) was a frequent image as a metaphor for prophetic inspiration. Luke’s use of tongues of fire implied both the power to speak the word of God effectively and to think about God in new ways. By this, to be “filled with the Holy Spirit” is not just to preach persuasively. It also means to be able to interpret scripture in new and inspired ways.
• While the Spirit is concentrated here on the apostles, it belongs not to an enlightened few but to the whole people of God (as we will see develop throughout Acts).
• A crowd of “devout Jews” (v. 5) was amazed to see Galileans (who apparently were not known for their linguistic talents) speaking of God’s deeds of power. This is the first of over fifty references to “Jews” in Acts. The church’s proclamation of the power of God began with faithful Jews.
• Speeches make up almost a third of the book of Acts. The speeches are “missionary speeches,” they are the response to Jesus’ commission in Acts 1:8 to be Jesus’ “witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” While the speeches reflect Luke’s use of reliable sources, they are his own compositions. Readers then should not assume they are transcribed verbatim, but that the speeches function as an element in the narrative and serve a purpose.
• The word used for “listen” in v. 14 is an interesting one. It is enotizomai, which literally translates “let me place it [the word of God] into your ears.” It echoes Luke 4:21, when Jesus told an audience in Nazareth that “today” the words from Isaiah about bringing good news to the poor would “be fulfilled in your hearing,” literally among those “with ears” (en osin).
• Peter quoted the Greek translation of Joel 3:1-5. In the Greek translation, the Hebrew word for God was translated as kyrios, “Lord,” allowing Peter to say that this “Lord” is the risen Jesus.
• Peter made other adjustments to Joel. “After these things” (Joel 3:1) becomes “in the last days” (Acts 2:17). With this change, Peter is locating the outpouring of the Spirit as bringing in a new era of salvation history, that of the “last days.” Peter also added “God declares,” which gives the words added intensity and emphasis.
• Typically in this time, the last phrase heard was the most important. So is it in Peter’s quoting of Joel. “Everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved” (Acts 2:21) is a summary of the purpose of the first half of Acts.
Works Sourced:
Wall, Robert W. “The Acts of the Apostles.” The New Interpreter’s Bible Volume X. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 2002.
Monday, May 14, 2018
The Holy Spirit is Sending Us: An Ascension Day Sermon on Acts 1:1-11
Its synod assembly season in the ELCA again. As you are probably already well aware, I am totally a synod assembly geek. Our’s is coming up and I am super excited. A week from today, Kim and Kwame Robinson, Laurie Swanson, and I will head to Lansing to reflect on three resolutions and to choose new synod council members. We don’t have a bishop election this year, but several synods do. ELCA bishop elections rarely make the news, but you may have heard about two that did last weekend, because last weekend for the first time in the history of our denomination, an African American woman was elected to the role of bishop in the ELCA. Actually two African American women were elected last weekend. The Reverend Patricia Davenport was elected by the southeastern Pennsylvania synod on Saturday, and then on Sunday, the South-Central Synod of Wisconsin elected the Reverend Viviane Thomas-Breitfeld.
Watching all the media hype coming out of what are usually totally ignored events to anyone not as geeky into church bureaucracy as myself, I found myself reflecting back on the barrier-breaking synod assembly I was a part of a few years ago, when the Southwest California Synod elected the Rev. Guy Eriwn, the first Native American and the openly gay person to be elected bishop. As the Acts text this week has us reflecting on the ascension of Jesus and the promised coming of the Holy Spirit, I want to tell you about what that felt like, because it was one of the most spirit-filled experiences I have ever been a part of.
The assembly started out normally enough, with a lot of inane bickering over the rules of procedure. A small group had been working for eighteen months to come up with the process we would follow to elect the new bishop. They had worked tirelessly to try and create the most fair and equitable system possible. So of course some rando from who knows where opened up his assembly booklet for the very first time that afternoon, decided he knew a better way to do it, and forced all of us into a long-drawn out discussion to rewrite one very small, completely unimportant portion. Fine, whatever, glad you felt heard, but this set us back two hours. Then we took the nominating ballot. The way bishop elections work is there are generally a few candidates identified ahead of time, but the first ballot is a nominating ballot where you can literally nominate anyone you want to. Those nominated then have a set amount of time to agree to the nomination, after which the actual process of voting begins. Because arguing over procedure took so long, we didn’t get to the nominating ballot until late in the day. And then, because the credential count had been taken at the beginning of the session, and we’d argued over procedure for two hours, more people had checked in, so there were more votes taken than there were reported at the credentials report. So we had to scrap the whole thing and start over again. Not the most auspicious beginning to what was supposed to be the work of the Spirit.
I came back the next day to the first electing ballot. Fourteen people had agreed to nomination. The process from here is the first person to get fifty percent of the vote wins. The fourteen were cut to ten, and then to six, and then five, then four, and so on, until someone gets over the fifty percent mark. And from that first electing vote, a different spirit started growing in the room. It was subtle at first, this sense that even as we were the ones doing the voting, the results were somehow out of our hands. The list cut from fourteen to ten, and then from ten to six, and then each of the six gave brief remarks. Then we went from six to five, answering a set of questions. Five to four, an open Q and A, four to three. A stillness started to fall over the room, the contention of the day before slipping away. We voted on the remaining names, but the result was already clear. The Reverend Guy Erwin broke the fifty-percent threshold, becoming the new bishop-elect of the Southwest California synod. For a moment, the entire assembly hall was silent. And then, like a rush of wind, it broke into raucous applause. The woman sitting next to me, whom I’d never met, hugged me, “I can’t believe that just happened.” The LA Times had a field day with the story, “ELCA elects first Native American, Openly Gay bishop in church’s history,” but anyone sitting in the room that day will tell you that was not the real story. The real story of that synod assembly was the way the Holy Spirit intervened in a fractious and chaotic group of individuals to bring to the forefront the person whom the Spirit had chosen to be the leader for that moment in the church’s history. Somehow, despite ourselves, the Spirit showed up and moved us beyond ourselves. I am always surprised by these in-breakings of the Spirit. But I shouldn’t be, showing up and moving us beyond ourselves is what the Spirit does.
In our Acts text for this morning, the writer described how “after his suffering [Jesus] presented himself alive to [the apostles] by many convincing proofs.” He then commanded them to stay in Jerusalem, where they would “be baptized with the Holy Spirit,” just as John the Baptist had said.
In verse six, the apostles asked Jesus, “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?” The apostles have been convinced by all that has happened that Jesus was in fact who he said he was; that God had indeed triumphed. But this question indicates they still did not understand what that meant. They were still expecting Jesus to come back in political and military power to restore the kingdom of Israel to its former glory. But Jesus wasn’t interested in restoring Israel to worldly power; Jesus knew the kingdom of God was much larger than that. Jesus answered them, “It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority.” Basically, don’t get caught up in the process or timeline, because you don’t get to know those things. That is super important for us to keep in mind especially today, when we are once again in a period of history where it has become trendy to predict the end times. If someone tells you they’ve decoded Revelation or Daniel, or whatever, I don’t have much time for that. Jesus himself said it is not for us to know. I prefer to focus on what I do know, what Jesus said I can and should know, the work set before me.
“It is not for you to know the times… but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses.” You will receive power. This word “power” is an interesting one. It means a powerful and robust force that is obvious and at work. The power the apostles receive, that we receive in the Spirit, is not authority, it is not a title, rather it is a new set of skills, new competencies and abilities we did not have before that empower us to do the task Jesus set before us, to be his “witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”
What this means, dear friends in Christ, is that the coming kingdom of God is not something we wait for, it is something we are being sent to bring about. The followers of Jesus are no longer disciples, they are no longer students, they are now apostles, from the Greek apostello meaning to send. The restoration of Israel that the soon-to-be-minted apostles were asking about was in fact in the process of coming, not by some outside force like they had been expecting, but through them, in them. In their work, in their words and actions, in their preaching and teaching, healing and sharing, in their witnessing to their experience of the risen Christ, they would bring about the restoration for which they longed. That restoration spread across space and time “beginning from Jerusalem… to the ends of the earth,” from then and until today, that same Spirit now resides in us. We are the descendents of those apostles; we are the next generation of recipients of that power. We are the ones who are being sent to restore the kingdom of God from this place to the ends of the earth. We are the ones sent to continue “all that Jesus began to do and teach.” We are sent “to bring good news to the poor…to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” That power now rests on us!
“When Jesus had said this, as they were watching, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. While he was going and they were gazing up toward heaven, suddenly two men in white robes stood by them. They said, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken up from heaven, will come in the same way you saw him go into heaven.”
When we read that part of the first reading, we released a bunch of balloons up into the sanctuary. The balloons are white, because white is the color the church uses to symbolize the risen Christ alive and in our presence. That’s why white is the color of Easter, because it reminds us of Christ alive with us. We released balloons upward as a visual symbol of the risen Christ ascending into heaven. But guess what, the balloons are not going to do anything else interesting this morning. They’re just going to sit up there, being balloons on our ceiling. Now that the balloons have ascended, now that they are no longer sitting in front of us, blocking our entrance to the table, now the real work begins. Because now that the balloons have gone away, now that the colors are changing from white to red, now we are free to ask ourselves, People of Trinity, why are we standing looking up toward heaven? This Jesus who has been taken away from us will return, the kingdom of God will be, and in fact is being, reestablished. Not by some cosmic force from heaven, but by us, through us. We, us, our work, our vocation, our mission in the world is the force God is using to bring about the kingdom. This seems a daunting task, but as one who has sat through the inane unimportant procedural yammering of a bishop’s election only to experience the violent rush of the Spirit moving us forward, let me assure you dear people of God, the Spirit will not let our fears, our insecurities, our love of control, or even our inane need for detail keep us from the work which we have been empowered to do. Dear people of God, let us stop looking upward, and head out. Amen.
Watching all the media hype coming out of what are usually totally ignored events to anyone not as geeky into church bureaucracy as myself, I found myself reflecting back on the barrier-breaking synod assembly I was a part of a few years ago, when the Southwest California Synod elected the Rev. Guy Eriwn, the first Native American and the openly gay person to be elected bishop. As the Acts text this week has us reflecting on the ascension of Jesus and the promised coming of the Holy Spirit, I want to tell you about what that felt like, because it was one of the most spirit-filled experiences I have ever been a part of.
The assembly started out normally enough, with a lot of inane bickering over the rules of procedure. A small group had been working for eighteen months to come up with the process we would follow to elect the new bishop. They had worked tirelessly to try and create the most fair and equitable system possible. So of course some rando from who knows where opened up his assembly booklet for the very first time that afternoon, decided he knew a better way to do it, and forced all of us into a long-drawn out discussion to rewrite one very small, completely unimportant portion. Fine, whatever, glad you felt heard, but this set us back two hours. Then we took the nominating ballot. The way bishop elections work is there are generally a few candidates identified ahead of time, but the first ballot is a nominating ballot where you can literally nominate anyone you want to. Those nominated then have a set amount of time to agree to the nomination, after which the actual process of voting begins. Because arguing over procedure took so long, we didn’t get to the nominating ballot until late in the day. And then, because the credential count had been taken at the beginning of the session, and we’d argued over procedure for two hours, more people had checked in, so there were more votes taken than there were reported at the credentials report. So we had to scrap the whole thing and start over again. Not the most auspicious beginning to what was supposed to be the work of the Spirit.
I came back the next day to the first electing ballot. Fourteen people had agreed to nomination. The process from here is the first person to get fifty percent of the vote wins. The fourteen were cut to ten, and then to six, and then five, then four, and so on, until someone gets over the fifty percent mark. And from that first electing vote, a different spirit started growing in the room. It was subtle at first, this sense that even as we were the ones doing the voting, the results were somehow out of our hands. The list cut from fourteen to ten, and then from ten to six, and then each of the six gave brief remarks. Then we went from six to five, answering a set of questions. Five to four, an open Q and A, four to three. A stillness started to fall over the room, the contention of the day before slipping away. We voted on the remaining names, but the result was already clear. The Reverend Guy Erwin broke the fifty-percent threshold, becoming the new bishop-elect of the Southwest California synod. For a moment, the entire assembly hall was silent. And then, like a rush of wind, it broke into raucous applause. The woman sitting next to me, whom I’d never met, hugged me, “I can’t believe that just happened.” The LA Times had a field day with the story, “ELCA elects first Native American, Openly Gay bishop in church’s history,” but anyone sitting in the room that day will tell you that was not the real story. The real story of that synod assembly was the way the Holy Spirit intervened in a fractious and chaotic group of individuals to bring to the forefront the person whom the Spirit had chosen to be the leader for that moment in the church’s history. Somehow, despite ourselves, the Spirit showed up and moved us beyond ourselves. I am always surprised by these in-breakings of the Spirit. But I shouldn’t be, showing up and moving us beyond ourselves is what the Spirit does.
In our Acts text for this morning, the writer described how “after his suffering [Jesus] presented himself alive to [the apostles] by many convincing proofs.” He then commanded them to stay in Jerusalem, where they would “be baptized with the Holy Spirit,” just as John the Baptist had said.
In verse six, the apostles asked Jesus, “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?” The apostles have been convinced by all that has happened that Jesus was in fact who he said he was; that God had indeed triumphed. But this question indicates they still did not understand what that meant. They were still expecting Jesus to come back in political and military power to restore the kingdom of Israel to its former glory. But Jesus wasn’t interested in restoring Israel to worldly power; Jesus knew the kingdom of God was much larger than that. Jesus answered them, “It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority.” Basically, don’t get caught up in the process or timeline, because you don’t get to know those things. That is super important for us to keep in mind especially today, when we are once again in a period of history where it has become trendy to predict the end times. If someone tells you they’ve decoded Revelation or Daniel, or whatever, I don’t have much time for that. Jesus himself said it is not for us to know. I prefer to focus on what I do know, what Jesus said I can and should know, the work set before me.
“It is not for you to know the times… but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses.” You will receive power. This word “power” is an interesting one. It means a powerful and robust force that is obvious and at work. The power the apostles receive, that we receive in the Spirit, is not authority, it is not a title, rather it is a new set of skills, new competencies and abilities we did not have before that empower us to do the task Jesus set before us, to be his “witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”
What this means, dear friends in Christ, is that the coming kingdom of God is not something we wait for, it is something we are being sent to bring about. The followers of Jesus are no longer disciples, they are no longer students, they are now apostles, from the Greek apostello meaning to send. The restoration of Israel that the soon-to-be-minted apostles were asking about was in fact in the process of coming, not by some outside force like they had been expecting, but through them, in them. In their work, in their words and actions, in their preaching and teaching, healing and sharing, in their witnessing to their experience of the risen Christ, they would bring about the restoration for which they longed. That restoration spread across space and time “beginning from Jerusalem… to the ends of the earth,” from then and until today, that same Spirit now resides in us. We are the descendents of those apostles; we are the next generation of recipients of that power. We are the ones who are being sent to restore the kingdom of God from this place to the ends of the earth. We are the ones sent to continue “all that Jesus began to do and teach.” We are sent “to bring good news to the poor…to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” That power now rests on us!
“When Jesus had said this, as they were watching, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. While he was going and they were gazing up toward heaven, suddenly two men in white robes stood by them. They said, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken up from heaven, will come in the same way you saw him go into heaven.”
When we read that part of the first reading, we released a bunch of balloons up into the sanctuary. The balloons are white, because white is the color the church uses to symbolize the risen Christ alive and in our presence. That’s why white is the color of Easter, because it reminds us of Christ alive with us. We released balloons upward as a visual symbol of the risen Christ ascending into heaven. But guess what, the balloons are not going to do anything else interesting this morning. They’re just going to sit up there, being balloons on our ceiling. Now that the balloons have ascended, now that they are no longer sitting in front of us, blocking our entrance to the table, now the real work begins. Because now that the balloons have gone away, now that the colors are changing from white to red, now we are free to ask ourselves, People of Trinity, why are we standing looking up toward heaven? This Jesus who has been taken away from us will return, the kingdom of God will be, and in fact is being, reestablished. Not by some cosmic force from heaven, but by us, through us. We, us, our work, our vocation, our mission in the world is the force God is using to bring about the kingdom. This seems a daunting task, but as one who has sat through the inane unimportant procedural yammering of a bishop’s election only to experience the violent rush of the Spirit moving us forward, let me assure you dear people of God, the Spirit will not let our fears, our insecurities, our love of control, or even our inane need for detail keep us from the work which we have been empowered to do. Dear people of God, let us stop looking upward, and head out. Amen.
Conversation Points for Acts 1:1-11
Study Format:
1. Read passage aloud. What did you notice in the reading? What words or phrase caught your attention?
2. Read passage aloud a second time. What questions would you ask the text?
3. Read passage aloud a third time. What do you hear God calling you to do or be in response to this text?
Interesting Ideas to Consider:
• Luke and Acts begin the same way, with an address to Theophilus about the author’s intentions behind the writing. Luke addresses the need for “an orderly account.” Acts continues that account with first a summary of Luke. The beginning of Acts makes clear that it cannot be read and understood without first reading Luke.
• It is unknown who Theophilus was. The name comes from the Greek noun theo (God) and verb phileo (to love), so translated the name is “Lover of God.” He could have been the patron who financed the writing, or an invented character to stand in for the reader who would no doubt also be a “lover of God.”
• In Acts, the disciples from Luke become apostles. In Luke, they were mathetes (disciple, student, pupil). Now in Acts, they are apostolos, from the Greek verb apostello which means “to send.” This shift indicates how they are now sent out by the Spirit into the world.
• The summary of the forty days between Jesus’ resurrection and ascension in v. 3 is very short, assuming the reader’s prior knowledge of Luke. One part of the sentence is interesting. The word translated “many convincing proofs” (tekmerion) is only found here in the whole New Testament. It is the same word used in other ancient texts to refer to hard evidence for convincing skeptics.
• “Forty days” echoes Jesus in the wilderness with the Spirit for forty days, the years the Israelites were in the wilderness, the flood, etc. It is a number that marks a period of preparation where God is fully preparing people for their future work.
• The apostles are instructed “not to leave Jerusalem” (1:4a) because according to Luke’s narrative, the path to salvation is through Jerusalem. This is different from Matthew and Mark, where the disciples are instructed to go to Galilee to meet Jesus.
• The third instruction, to “wait for the promise of the Father” for “you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit,” echoes John the Baptist’s prophesy of the Messiah’s Spirit-filling in Luke 3:16.
• The role of the Holy Spirit is functional rather than soteriological. Meaning, the Holy Spirit gives abilities, not salvation (soteriology is the fancy theological word for the study of salvation). Baptism by the Spirit enables people to witness to the risen Jesus.
• In v. 6-7, the apostles asked if this was the time Israel would be restored. Jesus responded it was not for them to know. There are varying theories to this response. Possibly a comfort to the disappointment of the early church who did not see the restoration of Israel they thought they had been promised. Or a criticism of so-called “prophets” who claimed personal insight to when Christ would return, and in doing so created cult-like and divisive congregations. Dr. Wall thinks the reason is to keep the apostles focus on the “now” rather than the future. They are not to wait for some saving event from the future, but are to begin moving toward that future right now.
• V. 8, “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you.” The apostles will receive power from outside, but it will change them not the world. God’s reign will be reestablished through their mission among God’s people, not by some apocalypse from heaven.
• The word used in v. 8 for “power” is dynamis, which means a robust force at work that all can see and feel. The Spirit doesn’t give the apostles political authority, it gives them skills they didn’t have before in order to accomplish the task in front of them.
• While there were witnesses to the resurrected Jesus, there were no witnesses to the resurrection itself. For the ascension, the author makes it very clear the apostles saw the whole event. That the apostles witnessed Jesus ascension gives them credibility when they speak of how he is alive.
• The “two men in white robes” in v. 10 move the apostles’ attention from the past of Jesus to the future of their work.
• The two men may relate to the Torah requirement that two witnesses are required to confirm the veracity of an event (Deuteronomy 19:15).
Works Sourced:
Smith, Mitzi J. “Commentary on Acts 1:1-11.” Working Preacher.. Accessed: 30 April 2018.
Wall, Robert W. “The Acts of the Apostles.” The New Interpreter’s Bible Volume X. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 2002.
1. Read passage aloud. What did you notice in the reading? What words or phrase caught your attention?
2. Read passage aloud a second time. What questions would you ask the text?
3. Read passage aloud a third time. What do you hear God calling you to do or be in response to this text?
Interesting Ideas to Consider:
• Luke and Acts begin the same way, with an address to Theophilus about the author’s intentions behind the writing. Luke addresses the need for “an orderly account.” Acts continues that account with first a summary of Luke. The beginning of Acts makes clear that it cannot be read and understood without first reading Luke.
• It is unknown who Theophilus was. The name comes from the Greek noun theo (God) and verb phileo (to love), so translated the name is “Lover of God.” He could have been the patron who financed the writing, or an invented character to stand in for the reader who would no doubt also be a “lover of God.”
• In Acts, the disciples from Luke become apostles. In Luke, they were mathetes (disciple, student, pupil). Now in Acts, they are apostolos, from the Greek verb apostello which means “to send.” This shift indicates how they are now sent out by the Spirit into the world.
• The summary of the forty days between Jesus’ resurrection and ascension in v. 3 is very short, assuming the reader’s prior knowledge of Luke. One part of the sentence is interesting. The word translated “many convincing proofs” (tekmerion) is only found here in the whole New Testament. It is the same word used in other ancient texts to refer to hard evidence for convincing skeptics.
• “Forty days” echoes Jesus in the wilderness with the Spirit for forty days, the years the Israelites were in the wilderness, the flood, etc. It is a number that marks a period of preparation where God is fully preparing people for their future work.
• The apostles are instructed “not to leave Jerusalem” (1:4a) because according to Luke’s narrative, the path to salvation is through Jerusalem. This is different from Matthew and Mark, where the disciples are instructed to go to Galilee to meet Jesus.
• The third instruction, to “wait for the promise of the Father” for “you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit,” echoes John the Baptist’s prophesy of the Messiah’s Spirit-filling in Luke 3:16.
• The role of the Holy Spirit is functional rather than soteriological. Meaning, the Holy Spirit gives abilities, not salvation (soteriology is the fancy theological word for the study of salvation). Baptism by the Spirit enables people to witness to the risen Jesus.
• In v. 6-7, the apostles asked if this was the time Israel would be restored. Jesus responded it was not for them to know. There are varying theories to this response. Possibly a comfort to the disappointment of the early church who did not see the restoration of Israel they thought they had been promised. Or a criticism of so-called “prophets” who claimed personal insight to when Christ would return, and in doing so created cult-like and divisive congregations. Dr. Wall thinks the reason is to keep the apostles focus on the “now” rather than the future. They are not to wait for some saving event from the future, but are to begin moving toward that future right now.
• V. 8, “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you.” The apostles will receive power from outside, but it will change them not the world. God’s reign will be reestablished through their mission among God’s people, not by some apocalypse from heaven.
• The word used in v. 8 for “power” is dynamis, which means a robust force at work that all can see and feel. The Spirit doesn’t give the apostles political authority, it gives them skills they didn’t have before in order to accomplish the task in front of them.
• While there were witnesses to the resurrected Jesus, there were no witnesses to the resurrection itself. For the ascension, the author makes it very clear the apostles saw the whole event. That the apostles witnessed Jesus ascension gives them credibility when they speak of how he is alive.
• The “two men in white robes” in v. 10 move the apostles’ attention from the past of Jesus to the future of their work.
• The two men may relate to the Torah requirement that two witnesses are required to confirm the veracity of an event (Deuteronomy 19:15).
Works Sourced:
Smith, Mitzi J. “Commentary on Acts 1:1-11.” Working Preacher.
Wall, Robert W. “The Acts of the Apostles.” The New Interpreter’s Bible Volume X. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 2002.
Sunday, May 6, 2018
Good News: A Sermon on Acts 10:44-48
As has become a bit of a theme this season, the Acts reading today drops us in the end of a larger narrative. So once again before we get into the sermon part, I’m going to set a little bit of groundwork around it.
Chapter ten begins by introducing us to a new character. Cornelius was an Italian centurion who lived in the coastal city of Caesarea, a “devout man who feared God with all his household; he gave alms to the people and prayed constantly to God.” If you were here last week, some things about Cornelius might sound familiar. He was an outsider, a foreigner, and not just a foreigner but one who was close to the Roman emperor. These characteristics should disqualify him from being part of the people of God, for like we learned last week with the Ethiopian eunuch, per Temple regulation law-abiding Jews were not to associate with Gentiles. But Cornelius was in every other way a model convert. He was devout, he gave alms, he prayed constantly. Were it not for the sticky matter of his heritage, he would be in.
Then one day Cornelius had a vision where an angel of God appeared to him and told him to send men to find Peter and invite him to come visit Cornelius and his household. And I know last week it was confusing with the whole deacon Philip/disciple Philip, this is in fact disciple Peter. As in I will make you fish for people, on this rock I will build my church, denied Jesus three times, leader of the Jerusalem church Peter. That one. So Cornelius, being a devout man, did what he was instructed.
Meanwhile, forty miles south in Joppa, Peter too had a vision. In Peter’s vision, he saw “something like a large sheet being lowered” from heaven. Inside the sheet were “all kinds of four-footed creatures and reptiles and birds of the air.” If you’re not up on your first century food purity laws, this is basically a sheet full of things a good law-abiding Jew was not to eat. So imagine Peter’s surprise when a voice said, “Get up, Peter; kill and eat.” And Peter was like, no way. “By no means, Lord; for I have never eaten anything that is profane and unclean.” The voice called a second time, adding “What God has made clean, you must not call profane.” Then, just to make sure Peter and the audience got the point, the voice called a third time. Three, remember, being the number in scripture to indicate completeness. And after this third time, the sheet of unclean snacks returned to heaven and Peter woke up. While Peter was mulling over this vision and the words the voice had spoken, the men Cornelius had sent to find Peter arrived. And with these words still ringing in his mind, Peter went with them to find Cornelius.
By the time Peter arrived in Caesarea, a whole crowd had gathered at Cornelius’ home in order to hear Peter speak and to learn from him. And after first sharing with them how God had revealed to him that no one was unclean or profane, Peter began to preach to the crowd all about the good news of Jesus. Fun fact: Peter’s sermon to the gentiles in Acts chapter ten is one of my very favorite passages of scripture. I’m not really sure why, except that it was one of the first passages I ever memorized, so I think it sits in the deepest part of my soul.
Anyway, it’s great, I recommend it. But immediately after it, verse forty-four, is where our reading for this morning picks up. And it picks up with the Holy Spirit interrupting Peter in the middle of his speaking to fall “upon all who heard the word.” And the assembled Gentiles began “speaking in tongues and extolling God.” Spoiler alert: two weeks from today is Pentecost Sunday. Which, mark your calendars, Worship and Music met this week and trust me, you’re not going to want to miss it. On Pentecost Sunday we read how the Spirit came upon the disciples and they began to speak in tongues. So the Jewish insiders who had traveled with Peter were amazed to hear this same Spirit coming in the same way to Gentiles! They didn’t eat the right food, or come from the right heritage, or follow any of the right rules, how could the Spirit be coming to them?! But Peter was like, what are we waiting for, get these folk baptized! And they were, and they invited Peter to stay with them several days, and he did, and Peter’s acceptance of their invitation was the final step in breaking down the social barrier between Jewish and Gentile followers of Jesus. From here on out, as Paul wrote in his letter to the Galatians, “all are one in Christ Jesus.” Now, in full transparency, that doesn’t mean that the followers of Jesus always remembered that. One of the main conflicts in the rest of Acts will be Peter forgetting this moment of his conversion with the gentiles and Paul, gently or not so gently, bringing Peter back to a place of inclusion, but it is from the baptism of Cornelius that Jesus’ commission to the apostles to spread the good news from Jerusalem, throughout Samaria and Galilee and to the ends of the world really started to take off.
If you have ever felt like an outsider in the kingdom of God, this passage is good news for you. If you have felt too broken, too hurt, too small. Like you have done something wrong, you do not know enough, you are not enough, this passage is good news for you. Because what Peter’s vision proclaimed is that all those things Jesus did in his ministry, eating with sinners and outcasts, healing the sick and the suffering, preaching good news to the poor, welcoming both the tax collector and the man possessed by demons, the rich young ruler and the woman with five husbands at the well in Samaria into his fold, those things Jesus did were not confined to Jesus, they are the kingdom of God. It means that you are not, never have been, and never will be outside of the kingdom of God, no matter what others have said to you. Those other voices, those voices that tell you that you don’t have the right ideas or follow the right politics or love the right people or live the right life, those voice of exclusion, those voices are not God, and they are the ones who are not right, not you. The Holy Spirit has descended on you and no one can withhold from you the gift that God has bestowed. You are God’s.
That is the good news. But like any good Gospel message, there is also challenge. The challenge is this. For all the ways we feel like outsiders, we must also acknowledge all the ways that we are also insiders. All the ways that we are in fact more like Peter than like Cornelius, that we need to have our minds opened so that we too, like Peter, can proclaim with clarity, “I truly understand that God shows no partiality.” In the ELCA, we are really good at serving our neighbor, but serving our neighbor is not enough. In fact, I’m willing to go out on a limb here and say that the Christian vocation is not to serve. Service is good, don’t get me wrong, but there is still a hierarchy to service. When we serve, we place ourselves in the role of those who have, and we relegate others to those who do not. I am helping you, because I have what you need.
I don’t think that as Christians we are called to service, I think we are called to something much more radical than that. If you think about the readings we’ve had from earlier in Acts, how the believers shared their possessions so that there was not a needy person among them, they weren’t serving their neighbor, they were caring for their community. Following in the model of the early Christians does not mean serving those on the outside, it means breaking down the walls between outside and in, so that there is no longer a neighbor to serve, instead there is a companion to share with.
This shift from service to community is hard because it requires vulnerability. In service, here is nothing you have that I need. But in community, we are forced to reckon with the reality that we are not the great provider, giving to you who have less. Community forces us to see how those we serve are also serving us. In fact, community forces us into the uncomfortable vulnerability of seeing how I need you as much as you need me, and maybe even more.
The mutuality of the community of believers will become clear later. Here in chapter ten, at the very beginning of Paul’s ministry to the gentiles, it was very much a Jerusalem-centered operation. The mother church in Jerusalem, which Peter was the head of, was supporting Paul’s ministry work to the gentiles. They were paying Paul’s salary, so to speak, allowing him to go out and preach the good news to those in need. But as Rome increased the pressure on Jerusalem, eventually that dynamic will flip. In Paul’s letters, he described his gratitude to these small mission communities who were taking up collections to send money back to Jerusalem to support those who had first supported them.
What this means for us is that our vocation in this place is not actually to serve our neighbor; it is to make our neighbor our friend. To get over the idea that we have something to offer the Post Addition, and instead to recognize that our very existence is tied up in them. I’ll be honest with you all, it is not some huge, generous act on our part that we allow the Woman’s Co-op to stay here, even though they just about never actually pay their rent. If Co-op left, we would very possibly be sunk. We get way more out of them in grant-writing and stories we can tell than they ever get out of us. We are not serving Co-op, rather our existence is tied up in theirs, we are community together in this place, sharing of what we have, us a building, them an opportunity for service, so that, as we read a few weeks ago in Acts chapter four, “great grace was upon them all, [and] there was not a needy person among them.”
So that’s the challenge, and it’s no small challenge. It is way easier to serve than it is to recognize our own vulnerability and really create community. But like any huge challenge scripture presents, it too is followed up with good news. And that good news is this: “While Peter was still speaking, the Holy Spirit fell upon all who heard the word.” Notice what the Holy Spirit did there. It cut Peter off. Peter was in the middle of this great speech about how God accepts everyone, and the Holy Spirit went ahead and put Peter’s words into action before Peter himself even had a chance to. Peter didn’t have to live out these words, he only had to follow along where the Holy Spirit had already gone. The normal order of baptism involves water being poured over a person and then the Holy Spirit descending. But in this story, the Holy Spirit came first, and Peter coming after with the water. After all, “Can anyone withhold the water for baptizing these people who HAVE RECEIVED the Holy Spirit?”
The good news for us, dear people of God, is that the Holy Spirit is not waiting for us to figure out where we are supposed to go. The Holy Spirit is already out in the world, falling upon those who are supposed to be a part of our community. Our job is not to go and find those people, the Holy Spirit has already identified them. Our job is to, follow along with the water, so to speak, to find the places the Holy Spirit already is. Now, to be fair, Peter had it a little easier than we do, if you know where the people with the tongues of fire resting on their heads are, let me know. But like Peter, getting to the right place is more about listening to the messengers God is sending. Fourteen years ago, the Holy Spirit knocked on this door when Co-op wandered into this building. And I have every confidence that the Holy Spirit is already out there working on our next great project. We need only to find where she’s gone. Amen.
Chapter ten begins by introducing us to a new character. Cornelius was an Italian centurion who lived in the coastal city of Caesarea, a “devout man who feared God with all his household; he gave alms to the people and prayed constantly to God.” If you were here last week, some things about Cornelius might sound familiar. He was an outsider, a foreigner, and not just a foreigner but one who was close to the Roman emperor. These characteristics should disqualify him from being part of the people of God, for like we learned last week with the Ethiopian eunuch, per Temple regulation law-abiding Jews were not to associate with Gentiles. But Cornelius was in every other way a model convert. He was devout, he gave alms, he prayed constantly. Were it not for the sticky matter of his heritage, he would be in.
Then one day Cornelius had a vision where an angel of God appeared to him and told him to send men to find Peter and invite him to come visit Cornelius and his household. And I know last week it was confusing with the whole deacon Philip/disciple Philip, this is in fact disciple Peter. As in I will make you fish for people, on this rock I will build my church, denied Jesus three times, leader of the Jerusalem church Peter. That one. So Cornelius, being a devout man, did what he was instructed.
Meanwhile, forty miles south in Joppa, Peter too had a vision. In Peter’s vision, he saw “something like a large sheet being lowered” from heaven. Inside the sheet were “all kinds of four-footed creatures and reptiles and birds of the air.” If you’re not up on your first century food purity laws, this is basically a sheet full of things a good law-abiding Jew was not to eat. So imagine Peter’s surprise when a voice said, “Get up, Peter; kill and eat.” And Peter was like, no way. “By no means, Lord; for I have never eaten anything that is profane and unclean.” The voice called a second time, adding “What God has made clean, you must not call profane.” Then, just to make sure Peter and the audience got the point, the voice called a third time. Three, remember, being the number in scripture to indicate completeness. And after this third time, the sheet of unclean snacks returned to heaven and Peter woke up. While Peter was mulling over this vision and the words the voice had spoken, the men Cornelius had sent to find Peter arrived. And with these words still ringing in his mind, Peter went with them to find Cornelius.
By the time Peter arrived in Caesarea, a whole crowd had gathered at Cornelius’ home in order to hear Peter speak and to learn from him. And after first sharing with them how God had revealed to him that no one was unclean or profane, Peter began to preach to the crowd all about the good news of Jesus. Fun fact: Peter’s sermon to the gentiles in Acts chapter ten is one of my very favorite passages of scripture. I’m not really sure why, except that it was one of the first passages I ever memorized, so I think it sits in the deepest part of my soul.
Anyway, it’s great, I recommend it. But immediately after it, verse forty-four, is where our reading for this morning picks up. And it picks up with the Holy Spirit interrupting Peter in the middle of his speaking to fall “upon all who heard the word.” And the assembled Gentiles began “speaking in tongues and extolling God.” Spoiler alert: two weeks from today is Pentecost Sunday. Which, mark your calendars, Worship and Music met this week and trust me, you’re not going to want to miss it. On Pentecost Sunday we read how the Spirit came upon the disciples and they began to speak in tongues. So the Jewish insiders who had traveled with Peter were amazed to hear this same Spirit coming in the same way to Gentiles! They didn’t eat the right food, or come from the right heritage, or follow any of the right rules, how could the Spirit be coming to them?! But Peter was like, what are we waiting for, get these folk baptized! And they were, and they invited Peter to stay with them several days, and he did, and Peter’s acceptance of their invitation was the final step in breaking down the social barrier between Jewish and Gentile followers of Jesus. From here on out, as Paul wrote in his letter to the Galatians, “all are one in Christ Jesus.” Now, in full transparency, that doesn’t mean that the followers of Jesus always remembered that. One of the main conflicts in the rest of Acts will be Peter forgetting this moment of his conversion with the gentiles and Paul, gently or not so gently, bringing Peter back to a place of inclusion, but it is from the baptism of Cornelius that Jesus’ commission to the apostles to spread the good news from Jerusalem, throughout Samaria and Galilee and to the ends of the world really started to take off.
If you have ever felt like an outsider in the kingdom of God, this passage is good news for you. If you have felt too broken, too hurt, too small. Like you have done something wrong, you do not know enough, you are not enough, this passage is good news for you. Because what Peter’s vision proclaimed is that all those things Jesus did in his ministry, eating with sinners and outcasts, healing the sick and the suffering, preaching good news to the poor, welcoming both the tax collector and the man possessed by demons, the rich young ruler and the woman with five husbands at the well in Samaria into his fold, those things Jesus did were not confined to Jesus, they are the kingdom of God. It means that you are not, never have been, and never will be outside of the kingdom of God, no matter what others have said to you. Those other voices, those voices that tell you that you don’t have the right ideas or follow the right politics or love the right people or live the right life, those voice of exclusion, those voices are not God, and they are the ones who are not right, not you. The Holy Spirit has descended on you and no one can withhold from you the gift that God has bestowed. You are God’s.
That is the good news. But like any good Gospel message, there is also challenge. The challenge is this. For all the ways we feel like outsiders, we must also acknowledge all the ways that we are also insiders. All the ways that we are in fact more like Peter than like Cornelius, that we need to have our minds opened so that we too, like Peter, can proclaim with clarity, “I truly understand that God shows no partiality.” In the ELCA, we are really good at serving our neighbor, but serving our neighbor is not enough. In fact, I’m willing to go out on a limb here and say that the Christian vocation is not to serve. Service is good, don’t get me wrong, but there is still a hierarchy to service. When we serve, we place ourselves in the role of those who have, and we relegate others to those who do not. I am helping you, because I have what you need.
I don’t think that as Christians we are called to service, I think we are called to something much more radical than that. If you think about the readings we’ve had from earlier in Acts, how the believers shared their possessions so that there was not a needy person among them, they weren’t serving their neighbor, they were caring for their community. Following in the model of the early Christians does not mean serving those on the outside, it means breaking down the walls between outside and in, so that there is no longer a neighbor to serve, instead there is a companion to share with.
This shift from service to community is hard because it requires vulnerability. In service, here is nothing you have that I need. But in community, we are forced to reckon with the reality that we are not the great provider, giving to you who have less. Community forces us to see how those we serve are also serving us. In fact, community forces us into the uncomfortable vulnerability of seeing how I need you as much as you need me, and maybe even more.
The mutuality of the community of believers will become clear later. Here in chapter ten, at the very beginning of Paul’s ministry to the gentiles, it was very much a Jerusalem-centered operation. The mother church in Jerusalem, which Peter was the head of, was supporting Paul’s ministry work to the gentiles. They were paying Paul’s salary, so to speak, allowing him to go out and preach the good news to those in need. But as Rome increased the pressure on Jerusalem, eventually that dynamic will flip. In Paul’s letters, he described his gratitude to these small mission communities who were taking up collections to send money back to Jerusalem to support those who had first supported them.
What this means for us is that our vocation in this place is not actually to serve our neighbor; it is to make our neighbor our friend. To get over the idea that we have something to offer the Post Addition, and instead to recognize that our very existence is tied up in them. I’ll be honest with you all, it is not some huge, generous act on our part that we allow the Woman’s Co-op to stay here, even though they just about never actually pay their rent. If Co-op left, we would very possibly be sunk. We get way more out of them in grant-writing and stories we can tell than they ever get out of us. We are not serving Co-op, rather our existence is tied up in theirs, we are community together in this place, sharing of what we have, us a building, them an opportunity for service, so that, as we read a few weeks ago in Acts chapter four, “great grace was upon them all, [and] there was not a needy person among them.”
So that’s the challenge, and it’s no small challenge. It is way easier to serve than it is to recognize our own vulnerability and really create community. But like any huge challenge scripture presents, it too is followed up with good news. And that good news is this: “While Peter was still speaking, the Holy Spirit fell upon all who heard the word.” Notice what the Holy Spirit did there. It cut Peter off. Peter was in the middle of this great speech about how God accepts everyone, and the Holy Spirit went ahead and put Peter’s words into action before Peter himself even had a chance to. Peter didn’t have to live out these words, he only had to follow along where the Holy Spirit had already gone. The normal order of baptism involves water being poured over a person and then the Holy Spirit descending. But in this story, the Holy Spirit came first, and Peter coming after with the water. After all, “Can anyone withhold the water for baptizing these people who HAVE RECEIVED the Holy Spirit?”
The good news for us, dear people of God, is that the Holy Spirit is not waiting for us to figure out where we are supposed to go. The Holy Spirit is already out in the world, falling upon those who are supposed to be a part of our community. Our job is not to go and find those people, the Holy Spirit has already identified them. Our job is to, follow along with the water, so to speak, to find the places the Holy Spirit already is. Now, to be fair, Peter had it a little easier than we do, if you know where the people with the tongues of fire resting on their heads are, let me know. But like Peter, getting to the right place is more about listening to the messengers God is sending. Fourteen years ago, the Holy Spirit knocked on this door when Co-op wandered into this building. And I have every confidence that the Holy Spirit is already out there working on our next great project. We need only to find where she’s gone. Amen.
Thursday, May 3, 2018
Conversation Points for Acts 10:44-48
Study Format:
1. Read passage aloud. What did you notice in the reading? What words or phrase caught your attention?
2. Read passage aloud a second time. What questions would you ask the text?
3. Read passage aloud a third time. What do you hear God calling you to do or be in response to this text?
Interesting Ideas to Consider:
• This passage comes as part of a long passage about Peter’s missionary work among the Gentiles. The section starts in 9:32 with Peter traveling among members of the community in Lydda and Joppa. While he is there he heals a paralyzed man and brings a woman back from the dead. While Peter is in Joppa, the narrative switches to a God-fearing gentile named Cornelius in Caesarea. Cornelius had a vision of an angel who told him to send for Peter, so Cornelius did. The next day, Peter had a vision of a sheet full of unclean food descending, and a voice inviting him to eat. Peter refused to eat anything unclean, but the voice replied, “Do not call anything impure that God has made clean.” After this vision, the men Cornelius had sent arrived and invited Peter to come with them. So Peter went with them. When he reached Cornelius, he told him about the vision and said that even though it was unlawful for a Jew to associate with a Gentile, he knew from this vision that God’s mission was also to the Gentiles. Peter then began to speak about how “God shows no partiality…” (Acts 10:34). It is in the middle of this speech that Peter was interrupted by the Holy Spirit descending on the crowd.
• V. 44 says Peter was interrupted, but nothing important is left out of Peter’s speech. Instead, the interruption demonstrates the Holy Spirit taking the lead in fulfilling the plan of salvation, intruding upon Peter’s ministry to illustrate Peter’s point.
• This interruption becomes Peter’s justification for the Gentile mission. Throughout the rest of Acts, when Peter is asked why the uncircumcised gentile can be included, he will reference the gift of the Holy Spirit to Cornelius.
• There are several parallels between the “Gentile Pentecost” and the coming of the Spirit to the disciples on Pentecost. This connection guarantees the right response to Peter’s question of if the gentiles should be baptized. Of course they should, they are recipients of the same Spirit.
Works Sourced:
Allen, Amy Lindeman. “Commentary on Acts 10:44-48.” Working Preacher.. Accessed: 30 April 2018.
Wall, Robert W. “The Acts of the Apostles.” The New Interpreter’s Bible Volume X. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 2002.
1. Read passage aloud. What did you notice in the reading? What words or phrase caught your attention?
2. Read passage aloud a second time. What questions would you ask the text?
3. Read passage aloud a third time. What do you hear God calling you to do or be in response to this text?
Interesting Ideas to Consider:
• This passage comes as part of a long passage about Peter’s missionary work among the Gentiles. The section starts in 9:32 with Peter traveling among members of the community in Lydda and Joppa. While he is there he heals a paralyzed man and brings a woman back from the dead. While Peter is in Joppa, the narrative switches to a God-fearing gentile named Cornelius in Caesarea. Cornelius had a vision of an angel who told him to send for Peter, so Cornelius did. The next day, Peter had a vision of a sheet full of unclean food descending, and a voice inviting him to eat. Peter refused to eat anything unclean, but the voice replied, “Do not call anything impure that God has made clean.” After this vision, the men Cornelius had sent arrived and invited Peter to come with them. So Peter went with them. When he reached Cornelius, he told him about the vision and said that even though it was unlawful for a Jew to associate with a Gentile, he knew from this vision that God’s mission was also to the Gentiles. Peter then began to speak about how “God shows no partiality…” (Acts 10:34). It is in the middle of this speech that Peter was interrupted by the Holy Spirit descending on the crowd.
• V. 44 says Peter was interrupted, but nothing important is left out of Peter’s speech. Instead, the interruption demonstrates the Holy Spirit taking the lead in fulfilling the plan of salvation, intruding upon Peter’s ministry to illustrate Peter’s point.
• This interruption becomes Peter’s justification for the Gentile mission. Throughout the rest of Acts, when Peter is asked why the uncircumcised gentile can be included, he will reference the gift of the Holy Spirit to Cornelius.
• There are several parallels between the “Gentile Pentecost” and the coming of the Spirit to the disciples on Pentecost. This connection guarantees the right response to Peter’s question of if the gentiles should be baptized. Of course they should, they are recipients of the same Spirit.
Works Sourced:
Allen, Amy Lindeman. “Commentary on Acts 10:44-48.” Working Preacher.
Wall, Robert W. “The Acts of the Apostles.” The New Interpreter’s Bible Volume X. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 2002.
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