Pentecost Sunday
May 31, 2020
Unraveled by Uncertainty
Christine Bordman
May 31, 2020
Unraveled by Uncertainty
Christine Bordman
Acts 2:1-21
Let us pray: Gracious and good God, we thank you for the revelation of scripture that you have knit into our lives as Christians. Sometimes we feel unraveled by uncertainty. Sometimes we stand on a threshold looking into an unknown future.
As one body of Christ, we ask for your blessing as we continue to learn what you would teach us from our past, our current life and for a better future. In the name of Jesus.
Amen.
On Friday evening at my home in Springfield, a storm was brewing. The wind was whipping the trees around in the forest behind my place. Leaves and small branches had fallen to the ground. Then a warning of thunder reminded me to move my car into the garage for safe keeping.
The weather seemed an apt setting as I sat down in front of my computer to begin the writing of this sermon for Pentecost. I was studying first the Acts of the Apostles passage likely written by the author of Luke and second, 1 Corinthians 12, a small portion from the letter of Paul to the home church in Corinth, Greece that describes us as the Body of Christ, the church.
The story of Pentecost, originally a Jewish feast held in the spring time, is a familiar one which we celebrate annually as the birthday of the church. You were asked to wear red the liturgical color of Pentecost that symbolizes the fire, the drama of this Acts passage. Sometimes on the celebration of Pentecost churches offered birthday cake at fellowship time after worship.
But for this morning, May 31, 2020, it doesn’t seem like there is much to celebrate right now, does it?
Chapter 2, from the Acts of the Apostles, it must have felt like creation all over again, with wind and fire, and something new bursting forth. What chaos and confusion!
Imagine if you will the first disciples attempting to remember Jesus without his physical presence. The teachings, the arrest, crucifixion and resurrection felt pretty real to one generation removed from Jesus’ life. A visual and auditory drama of wind, fire and speaking in different languages must have been shocking beyond compare. They must have been full of apprehension and fear, so much emotional turmoil and yet it seemed in the midst of all this they were, like each of us, being called to a new beginning on Pentecost.
There was the amazing linguistic experience of speaking in other languages yet being understood by people of many different languages and lands, the names of which represented the known world at that time and have caused no small anxiety to worship leaders in every time.
No matter: in that moment, all the people were one in their hearing, if not their understanding of the deeper meaning of what they heard. Despite their differences, they could all hear what the disciples were saying, each in their own language.
Perhaps this Sunday we need to be reminded of how God communicates through us in times of uncertainty when it seems so much of what we knew is being unraveled.
We may feel unraveled by uncertainty as we experience the pandemic together and learn again of the brutality of racism and the chaos caused by deep seated injustice and rage. I would encourage us to use our minds to remember the past and use our imagination to hope for a better future. In this present time we are set in place with the discomfort of living in between. There is so much for us to contemplate. I hope and pray we are at the threshold for that better future.
Like every disciple, we sometimes feel we are standing on a cliff ready to fall into nothingness. Is this God’s intention for us? I think not.
I would suggest we are actually on a threshold.
The Latin word for threshold is LIMINA, in the space where you are not in one room or the other, but in between both…LIMINALITY acts as a lens, focusing the mind and the spirit, so that what was forgotten or obfuscated can be seen clearly.” Sacred Soil: A Gardener’s Book of Reflection by Melina Rudman
Fire, wind, and humble Galileans speaking persuasively in many tongues were dramatic signs that God was doing a new thing that would transform the lives of all those present, and far beyond, in time and place. Maybe it was a little frightening, something people would want to explain away, or to contain with cynical comments that blamed it all on drunkenness.
Here, on the threshold of a new normal, on the birthday of a church the early Christians were called to spread to the ends of the earth, the display is for everyone. Not just the disciples, gathered in a room, getting themselves together after Jesus has once again departed. Not just the holiest or the most faithful or the most learned, not just the believers, not just those who were with Jesus on the road or witnesses to his Resurrection.
No, in this case, at this moment, "all flesh," male and female, old and young, slave and free, are invited and included — and not just invited but expected to prophesy and dream, too!
Now for our second reading: 1 Corinthians teaches us that we are alive and given gifts to share. We are not closed off from God and finished with our discipleship. There is no cliff waiting for us. WE are a part of something much larger than ourselves.
Let us celebrate our lives of service using the variety of gifts each of us has within us as one church that lives. Despair has its place but it cannot have the last word. Each one of us can contribute. Howard Thurman in the 20th century wrote, "Don't ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and go do that, because what the world needs is people who have come alive."
May the sweeping wind, an uplifting Spirit guide our days; an uplifting Spirit that drives those early disciples and us out, out into the world beyond their walls, beyond the theoretical but fragile safety those walls can sometimes provide. Out into the world, compelled to spread the Good News of what God is doing in a new day, on this threshold.
The Rev. Mr. Mark Suriano, Pastor of First Congregational United Church of Christ in Park Ridge, New Jersey, writes eloquently about the meaning of today: "The effect of the first Pentecost, then, may not be new birth, but rebirth, not a new covenant but a renewed covenant that would change the hearts and minds of the disciples and renew the face of the earth! This is good news for 21st-century Christians as we approach the feast of Pentecost. The same Spirit of God that warmed the hearts of those disciples on the road to Emmaus and inspired the tongues of those gathered in Jerusalem is looking to inspire a rebirth within us. It is the same Spirit that led Isaiah to envision a holy mountain for all people, or John of Patmos to witness a city with no walls and no temple, that is breaking in to our cloudy consciousness and sending us out as ambassadors of a renewed earth."
Today we are called to follow Peter's example, interpreting the present moment in our lives through the lens of Scripture, rather than the other way around. As the effects of a global pandemic go on and on into the summer (for the southern hemisphere, into the winter), it's ironic that we are unexpectedly united across our national, cultural and linguistic boundaries and barriers by the suffering and death caused by the Covid-19 virus, as well as the fear and the creativity it has generated in response.
Are we not amazed by the generosity of spirit, even the nobility of spirit, we have witnessed in health-care workers, essential workers, neighbors, friends and families who tend to the most vulnerable in our midst? Many of us have close family and friends engaged in this effort. Celebrate the variety of gifts!
The Scriptures, the stories in the Bible, come alive for us at such moments and in such places, in ways that are unexpected and life-giving. Do we feel the Spirit at work in our midst?
1 Corinthians 12 could be an inspiration for what is happening all around us. For every terrible statistic and terrifying projection, there are stories of the sharing of gifts; of courage and compassion and consolation that bring us hope in the midst of our anxiety and grief. Unraveled and uncertain, we are immersed in loss and longing and loneliness, AND we still feel God's presence with us. Perhaps this Sunday we need to be reminded of how God communicates through us in times of uncertainty.
We pray then that that Spirit will indeed renew the face of the earth, that the Spirit will inspire the scientists who search for treatments to ease the suffering and for a vaccine to prevent even more. We pray that that Spirit will sustain and strengthen the nurses and doctors and respiratory therapists and EMTs and every single hospital worker who supports them in providing tender compassion and skillful care.
God's works are manifold, indeed, and the gifts of scientists and health care workers are among the very finest of such gifts. We pray, too, that that Spirit will touch the hearts and embolden the thinking and the actions of every person with the power to shape our collective response to the epidemic, protecting the vulnerable and supporting those in need of our help, those whose lives have been thrown into upheaval, whose work has been abruptly halted, whose livelihood is threatened.
We pray that that Spirit will shift our thinking from our customary competitiveness to biblical norms of "the last shall be first," the norms of communal sharing practiced by the early disciples in Acts. There are changes that must be made in our communities and country.
What are the amazing but confounding things God is doing in the midst of the life of our church, our community, this nation, and the world? Looking back on your life, when have you turned your minds to past experiences and to the tradition of scripture to interpret what God is doing now? When have we looked beyond this threshold using imagination and our lives to imagine a better future?
The same Spirit that drew the little band of disciples out into the world also shaped them into a community. In our church, how do we balance, or integrate, reaching out in service with prophetic witness, and nurturing within the congregation a vibrant spiritual life? How do these two impulses relate to each other?
The Spirit of God has rushed in to empower many different kinds of people to do something astounding: communicate effectively with one another. (Can you imagine such a thing?) Bridges were built and crossed in a moment, and the differences among them, instead of dividing, provided startling illustration of just how great the power of God is.
Underneath the differences of nationality and language, there was a fundamental unity that was not only touched but enlivened and experienced, profoundly, by many who were there. Others scoffed and interpreted even the most amazing of events through the eyes and ears of cynicism, but those with hearts and minds that were open to the movement of the Spirit knew that a new day had come.
Mark Suriano closes our reflections with a blessing and a charge: "On Pentecost, may you find your heart singing with the spirit of God, your ears humming with the voice of the Spirit speaking in a language that reaches deep into your soul and wisdom dawning on your mind so that the shackles that have hardened around your mind may be broken, and God's voice and language set free. May your communities and churches experience the coming of God's Spirit, anticipate it with joy and hope, give in to it with love, so that when the day is done all the world may know the love of God because of you.”
May it be so. Amen.
Acts 2:1-21
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, appeared among them, and a tongue 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.
Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. Amazed and astonished, they asked, "Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs - in our own languages we hear them speaking about God's deeds of power." All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, "What does this mean?" But others sneered and said, "They are filled with new wine."
But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them: "Men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to what I say. Indeed, these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o'clock in the morning. No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel:
'In the last days it will be, God declares,
that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh,
and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
and your young men shall see visions,
and your old men shall dream dreams.
Even upon my slaves, both men and women,
in those days I will pour out my Spirit;
and they shall prophesy.
And I will show portents in the heaven above
and signs on the earth below,
blood, and fire, and smoky mist.
The sun shall be turned to darkness
and the moon to blood,
before the coming of the Lord's great and glorious day.
Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.'
1 Corinthians 12:3b-13
No one can say "Jesus is Lord" except by the Holy Spirit.
Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of services, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. To one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the discernment of spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues. All these are activated by one and the same Spirit, who allots to each one individually just as the Spirit chooses.
For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body —Jews or Greeks, slaves or free — and we were all made to drink of one Spirit.
Let us pray: Gracious and good God, we thank you for the revelation of scripture that you have knit into our lives as Christians. Sometimes we feel unraveled by uncertainty. Sometimes we stand on a threshold looking into an unknown future.
As one body of Christ, we ask for your blessing as we continue to learn what you would teach us from our past, our current life and for a better future. In the name of Jesus.
Amen.
On Friday evening at my home in Springfield, a storm was brewing. The wind was whipping the trees around in the forest behind my place. Leaves and small branches had fallen to the ground. Then a warning of thunder reminded me to move my car into the garage for safe keeping.
The weather seemed an apt setting as I sat down in front of my computer to begin the writing of this sermon for Pentecost. I was studying first the Acts of the Apostles passage likely written by the author of Luke and second, 1 Corinthians 12, a small portion from the letter of Paul to the home church in Corinth, Greece that describes us as the Body of Christ, the church.
The story of Pentecost, originally a Jewish feast held in the spring time, is a familiar one which we celebrate annually as the birthday of the church. You were asked to wear red the liturgical color of Pentecost that symbolizes the fire, the drama of this Acts passage. Sometimes on the celebration of Pentecost churches offered birthday cake at fellowship time after worship.
But for this morning, May 31, 2020, it doesn’t seem like there is much to celebrate right now, does it?
Chapter 2, from the Acts of the Apostles, it must have felt like creation all over again, with wind and fire, and something new bursting forth. What chaos and confusion!
Imagine if you will the first disciples attempting to remember Jesus without his physical presence. The teachings, the arrest, crucifixion and resurrection felt pretty real to one generation removed from Jesus’ life. A visual and auditory drama of wind, fire and speaking in different languages must have been shocking beyond compare. They must have been full of apprehension and fear, so much emotional turmoil and yet it seemed in the midst of all this they were, like each of us, being called to a new beginning on Pentecost.
There was the amazing linguistic experience of speaking in other languages yet being understood by people of many different languages and lands, the names of which represented the known world at that time and have caused no small anxiety to worship leaders in every time.
No matter: in that moment, all the people were one in their hearing, if not their understanding of the deeper meaning of what they heard. Despite their differences, they could all hear what the disciples were saying, each in their own language.
Perhaps this Sunday we need to be reminded of how God communicates through us in times of uncertainty when it seems so much of what we knew is being unraveled.
We may feel unraveled by uncertainty as we experience the pandemic together and learn again of the brutality of racism and the chaos caused by deep seated injustice and rage. I would encourage us to use our minds to remember the past and use our imagination to hope for a better future. In this present time we are set in place with the discomfort of living in between. There is so much for us to contemplate. I hope and pray we are at the threshold for that better future.
Like every disciple, we sometimes feel we are standing on a cliff ready to fall into nothingness. Is this God’s intention for us? I think not.
I would suggest we are actually on a threshold.
The Latin word for threshold is LIMINA, in the space where you are not in one room or the other, but in between both…LIMINALITY acts as a lens, focusing the mind and the spirit, so that what was forgotten or obfuscated can be seen clearly.” Sacred Soil: A Gardener’s Book of Reflection by Melina Rudman
Fire, wind, and humble Galileans speaking persuasively in many tongues were dramatic signs that God was doing a new thing that would transform the lives of all those present, and far beyond, in time and place. Maybe it was a little frightening, something people would want to explain away, or to contain with cynical comments that blamed it all on drunkenness.
Here, on the threshold of a new normal, on the birthday of a church the early Christians were called to spread to the ends of the earth, the display is for everyone. Not just the disciples, gathered in a room, getting themselves together after Jesus has once again departed. Not just the holiest or the most faithful or the most learned, not just the believers, not just those who were with Jesus on the road or witnesses to his Resurrection.
No, in this case, at this moment, "all flesh," male and female, old and young, slave and free, are invited and included — and not just invited but expected to prophesy and dream, too!
Now for our second reading: 1 Corinthians teaches us that we are alive and given gifts to share. We are not closed off from God and finished with our discipleship. There is no cliff waiting for us. WE are a part of something much larger than ourselves.
Let us celebrate our lives of service using the variety of gifts each of us has within us as one church that lives. Despair has its place but it cannot have the last word. Each one of us can contribute. Howard Thurman in the 20th century wrote, "Don't ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and go do that, because what the world needs is people who have come alive."
May the sweeping wind, an uplifting Spirit guide our days; an uplifting Spirit that drives those early disciples and us out, out into the world beyond their walls, beyond the theoretical but fragile safety those walls can sometimes provide. Out into the world, compelled to spread the Good News of what God is doing in a new day, on this threshold.
The Rev. Mr. Mark Suriano, Pastor of First Congregational United Church of Christ in Park Ridge, New Jersey, writes eloquently about the meaning of today: "The effect of the first Pentecost, then, may not be new birth, but rebirth, not a new covenant but a renewed covenant that would change the hearts and minds of the disciples and renew the face of the earth! This is good news for 21st-century Christians as we approach the feast of Pentecost. The same Spirit of God that warmed the hearts of those disciples on the road to Emmaus and inspired the tongues of those gathered in Jerusalem is looking to inspire a rebirth within us. It is the same Spirit that led Isaiah to envision a holy mountain for all people, or John of Patmos to witness a city with no walls and no temple, that is breaking in to our cloudy consciousness and sending us out as ambassadors of a renewed earth."
Today we are called to follow Peter's example, interpreting the present moment in our lives through the lens of Scripture, rather than the other way around. As the effects of a global pandemic go on and on into the summer (for the southern hemisphere, into the winter), it's ironic that we are unexpectedly united across our national, cultural and linguistic boundaries and barriers by the suffering and death caused by the Covid-19 virus, as well as the fear and the creativity it has generated in response.
Are we not amazed by the generosity of spirit, even the nobility of spirit, we have witnessed in health-care workers, essential workers, neighbors, friends and families who tend to the most vulnerable in our midst? Many of us have close family and friends engaged in this effort. Celebrate the variety of gifts!
The Scriptures, the stories in the Bible, come alive for us at such moments and in such places, in ways that are unexpected and life-giving. Do we feel the Spirit at work in our midst?
1 Corinthians 12 could be an inspiration for what is happening all around us. For every terrible statistic and terrifying projection, there are stories of the sharing of gifts; of courage and compassion and consolation that bring us hope in the midst of our anxiety and grief. Unraveled and uncertain, we are immersed in loss and longing and loneliness, AND we still feel God's presence with us. Perhaps this Sunday we need to be reminded of how God communicates through us in times of uncertainty.
We pray then that that Spirit will indeed renew the face of the earth, that the Spirit will inspire the scientists who search for treatments to ease the suffering and for a vaccine to prevent even more. We pray that that Spirit will sustain and strengthen the nurses and doctors and respiratory therapists and EMTs and every single hospital worker who supports them in providing tender compassion and skillful care.
God's works are manifold, indeed, and the gifts of scientists and health care workers are among the very finest of such gifts. We pray, too, that that Spirit will touch the hearts and embolden the thinking and the actions of every person with the power to shape our collective response to the epidemic, protecting the vulnerable and supporting those in need of our help, those whose lives have been thrown into upheaval, whose work has been abruptly halted, whose livelihood is threatened.
We pray that that Spirit will shift our thinking from our customary competitiveness to biblical norms of "the last shall be first," the norms of communal sharing practiced by the early disciples in Acts. There are changes that must be made in our communities and country.
What are the amazing but confounding things God is doing in the midst of the life of our church, our community, this nation, and the world? Looking back on your life, when have you turned your minds to past experiences and to the tradition of scripture to interpret what God is doing now? When have we looked beyond this threshold using imagination and our lives to imagine a better future?
The same Spirit that drew the little band of disciples out into the world also shaped them into a community. In our church, how do we balance, or integrate, reaching out in service with prophetic witness, and nurturing within the congregation a vibrant spiritual life? How do these two impulses relate to each other?
The Spirit of God has rushed in to empower many different kinds of people to do something astounding: communicate effectively with one another. (Can you imagine such a thing?) Bridges were built and crossed in a moment, and the differences among them, instead of dividing, provided startling illustration of just how great the power of God is.
Underneath the differences of nationality and language, there was a fundamental unity that was not only touched but enlivened and experienced, profoundly, by many who were there. Others scoffed and interpreted even the most amazing of events through the eyes and ears of cynicism, but those with hearts and minds that were open to the movement of the Spirit knew that a new day had come.
Mark Suriano closes our reflections with a blessing and a charge: "On Pentecost, may you find your heart singing with the spirit of God, your ears humming with the voice of the Spirit speaking in a language that reaches deep into your soul and wisdom dawning on your mind so that the shackles that have hardened around your mind may be broken, and God's voice and language set free. May your communities and churches experience the coming of God's Spirit, anticipate it with joy and hope, give in to it with love, so that when the day is done all the world may know the love of God because of you.”
May it be so. Amen.
Acts 2:1-21
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, appeared among them, and a tongue 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.
Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. Amazed and astonished, they asked, "Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs - in our own languages we hear them speaking about God's deeds of power." All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, "What does this mean?" But others sneered and said, "They are filled with new wine."
But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them: "Men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to what I say. Indeed, these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o'clock in the morning. No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel:
'In the last days it will be, God declares,
that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh,
and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
and your young men shall see visions,
and your old men shall dream dreams.
Even upon my slaves, both men and women,
in those days I will pour out my Spirit;
and they shall prophesy.
And I will show portents in the heaven above
and signs on the earth below,
blood, and fire, and smoky mist.
The sun shall be turned to darkness
and the moon to blood,
before the coming of the Lord's great and glorious day.
Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.'
1 Corinthians 12:3b-13
No one can say "Jesus is Lord" except by the Holy Spirit.
Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of services, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. To one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the discernment of spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues. All these are activated by one and the same Spirit, who allots to each one individually just as the Spirit chooses.
For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body —Jews or Greeks, slaves or free — and we were all made to drink of one Spirit.