It’s Our Birthday!

A sermon preached at St. Francis by the Lake Episcopal Church, Canyon Lake, TX.
The readings for the Day of Pentecost are here.

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Happy Birthday! No, I’m not moving the birthday blessing portion of our time to the beginning of the sermon, but wishing all of us – the Church – Happy Birthday as we celebrate the coming of the Holy Spirit.

John and Luke tell the coming of the Holy Spirit differently. John says that the Holy Spirit came upon the disciples as they were locked in the upper room on the day of the Resurrection – “when it was evening on that day.” And if John’s telling sounds recently familiar, we read this same passage the Sunday after Easter. John describes the Holy Spirit as the very breath of Jesus. Just as at Creation God’s breath brought order to the chaotic waters and gave life to human beings, John tells us that Jesus breathes on them and tells the disciples to receive the Holy Spirit, a new beginning for God’s people.

Luke, in the Acts of the Apostles, tells us a much more dramatic version and is what we commonly refer to as the Pentecost story. Fifty days, Pentecost simply means the 50th day, 50 days after the Resurrection, the disciples were all together in one place when a great noise like a rushing wind fills the house. Luke says it came ‘from heaven’ but he wouldn’t have meant “that place we go when we die” as is our common 21st century understanding of the word but from the sky, the visible place where clouds and stars are and where storms come from.

And bits of fire rested on them but didn’t cause them harm, much like the fire Moses saw in the bush. This wind and fire enables each of them to speak in another language that they couldn’t before so that all who were gathering in Jerusalem for Shavuot, or Festival of Weeks, a Jewish festival celebrated 50 days after Passover, everyone could hear the Good News.

The disciples were given the ability to proclaim the Good News of God’s Love so that everyone could hear it. With Luke’s telling of this dramatic story of wind and fire and languages, all the peoples of the earth are brought back together. Luke’s version is the redemption of the story of the Tower of Babel – that story in which we humans decided we could build our way to God to make a name for ourselves and God caused confusion with multiple human languages to save us from trying to save ourselves.

The language and the words we use matter. God spoke the world into being. God has given human languages first to separate us and save us from ourselves and then to unite us as one diverse people. We can try to use language to build our own tower to God, in other words, to make ourselves appear more holy than others and exclude others, or we can use God’s language to tell the Good News of God’s Love and make room at the table for everyone.

Luke and John give us different versions of the same thing – the people of God receiving the gift to proclaim and welcome all people to follow Jesus together. Just as we share our family stories with different emphasis and details, this doesn’t mean Uncle Fred’s version is right and Aunt Mary’s is wrong because the point of the stories is to tell us where we’ve come from and and who we are. The stories we have in our holy scriptures are our identity stories as the Church. We tell them over and over again to help us remember what God has done, to keep us connected to our faith ancestors, and to remind us that we are still, here and now, a part of God’s Story. We are God’s beloved children.

These stories show us Whose and who we are as God’s people, the Body of Christ, and followers of Jesus. The Pentecost story, especially, reminds us that Humans have never had to figure out how to get to God, God has always been with us, in the garden, in Egypt, in the wilderness, in Jerusalem, in exile, God comes to us because God’s greatest desire is to be in relationship with us, each of us and all of us. Our Loving Creator doesn’t make us earn love or forgiveness. God gives to us freely so that we can share this Good News with all the world. This is our mission as God’s people, the Church.

Today also marks in the church calendar the beginning of this long stretch we call Ordinary time. The Church calendar year is split between a long season of High Holy Days – Advent leading to the Christmas season leading to Epiphany leading to Lent leading to Holy Week and the Easter Season which culminates at Pentecost, and then the long six month stretch of Ordinary time. Not ordinary meaning common or boring, but Ordinary meaning ordered and arranged. We are created to live in the Order of Creation – the rhythm of years and seasons and weeks and days. Ordinary time is about our every day life in rhythm with the Holy Spirit of God.

Pentecost is the pivot point between the festival celebrations in which we find our identity as God’s people and the ongoing work of our mission in this world as we participate with God in the restoring of all people, including those different from us and those we don’t really want to include, to unity with God and each other in Jesus the Christ.

Pentecost reminds us that we are all image bearers of the Loving God of Creation and it is in our diversity that we look the most like God. I cannot be fully who God created me to be without you and your uniqueness and you can’t be fully who God created you to be without my uniqueness. Our mission as The big ‘C’ Church is to reveal God to everyone by speaking God’s invitational Love language. It is a lifelong journey and mission, ordered by the seasons of the church calendar and by our weekly gathering together and daily going out to do what it ours to do – using the talents and skills that God has gifted us with to share the Good News of God’s Love with everyone.

In our current cultural atmosphere of division and polarization and fear, the Pentecost message of unity and inclusion has never been more urgent. As we come together in this place week to week, we are reminded that we are not only united together as the good folks of St. Francis by the Lake but that we are also part of larger wholes – our diocese, the Episcopal Church, the Anglican Communion, the Body of Christ of all who follow Jesus, AND all the peoples of the earth who even if they don’t know it yet are beloved children of God.

William Temple, an early 20th century theologian and the Archbishop of Canterbury said, “The Church exists primarily for the sake of those who are still outside it.” As Paul says in the letter to the church in Corinth, we are given the Holy Spirit for the common good, not for our own private benefit. We celebrate our collective birthday today so that we remember Whose and who we are; we receive the gift of the Holy Spirit so that we can share it with everyone outside this place in all of the ordinary moments of our days.

In two weeks, our small group Bible studies will begin the book What if Jesus was Serious about the Church. Even if you haven’t been participating with us yet, come and join us for this one; if you started and didn’t finish the others; come and join us for this one; if you can only make one or two or three of the weeks come and join us; if you can’t make it to any of the small group times, get it and read it and talk about it during deck time, before or after practical exercise, crafternoon, ECW & DOK meetings, FEASTs, or whenever we gather together, or start your own small group time.

We are the Church. We’ve been given the most valuable gift of our life – life as God created us to live it, in relationship with God and with each other. Feel the breath of God in you, hear the rush of God’s spirit among us, shine the light of God’s fire to our community. Live the Good News our hurting world so desperately needs.

Happy Birthday!