Dr. Stephen V. Sprinkle
Sermon for the Day of Pentecost – Whitsunday Year B 5/23/21
Ezekiel 37: 1 – 14
Psalm 104: 25 – 35, 37b
Acts 2: 1 – 21
John 15: 26 – 27, 16: 4b – 15
Shook Up and Shook Loose
Acts 2:1-21; John 15: 26-27; 16:4b-15
Preaching texts:
“‘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’” [Acts 2:19-21 NRSV].
Stephen V. Sprinkle
Theologian-in-Residence
The Episcopal Church of St. Thomas the Apostle
Dallas, Texas
Brite Divinity School
Fort Worth, Texas
Pentecost Sunday
Movement or monument? At the core of these Pentecost lessons from Acts 2 and John 16 is a storm-born reply to the question of what it means to be a true community of faith in the 21st century. “Are we are the Church of Jesus Christ today?” is the question. What, then, is our answer? Is the Christian community a faith movement, or is it a monument, a shrine? Or shall we try to straddle the difference, and attempt to be both a movement and a monument at the same time? Were we to put a form of this question to Jesus the Resurrected Messiah of God, how do you believe the Resurrected Jesus would answer—or perhaps better put, since this post-Easter season of Pentecost testifies that the One Raised From the Dead is alive forevermore, how do you believe the Resurrected Jesus is answering it?
The answer comes from the empty tomb, the rolled-away stone, the testimony of the myrrh-bearing women on Easter morning who are the first preachers of this new faith to the world, and it hits us like the straight-line wind of a storm, like a mighty rushing wind laced with fire! It hit Peter, James, and John, Doubting Thomas, IRS tax collector Matthew, and the women at the tomb of Jesus with the same kinetic energy with which it hits us today. Its power is the power of a tsunami! Are we or are we not the Church of Jesus Christ today? And, if in our heart of hearts we know we miss the mark more times than not, then what must we do to become so—for God’s sake, for the sake of the world, and for us, for our children, and for our children’s children?
You see, for the Christian community of faith, you have to get the question right. That is what your 16th Century forebears were obsessed with—“what,” they debated, “is the right question to ask of Christian faith?” The question facing the Church has never been first and foremost, “Am I saved or am I not saved?” The early Christians trusted in the saving message of the Gospel as much as anyone, but that was too private and hyper-individualized to be the right question. Episcopalians know instinctively that the right question posed to Scripture and the resources of faith had to be collective, not hyper-individual, for we are all in this journey of faith together, are we not? Protestant theologian William Barnett Blakemore, University of Chicago powerhouse, framed this majestic question as I paraphrase it for you today: “Are we the Church of Christ today, and if not, what must we do to become so?” The voice of Barney Blakemore’s question is collective and framed in the worshipful language of the community of faith at prayer, “We pray you, O God, we worship you (not I alone!), we magnify you, for you are the Lord Our God!” The Church in the New Testament is not a string of individuals, like pearls on a silver chain, no matter how lovely. The Church is an organic whole—a Body—the Body of Christ. Because, you see, the thrust of the question we must ask of our faith today is not “what would make us relevant,” or “what’s in it for me?” or even “what’s in it for us?”, but must rather be “what is in it for the world God loves so much?”
Episcopalians in the 21st century have an odd relationship to the story of the Day of Pentecost, much like some of us have with rhubarb pie. Though rhubarb pie mostly attracts us, there is something very strange about it, and, frankly, it’s off-putting. You pucker up, just thinking about it!
In the first American generations, and the most often quoted biblical text used in sermons was not John 3:16 (“For God so loved the world…”), or the Psalm 23 (“The Lord is my shepherd…”), but Acts 2:38-39, extracted from the sermon of the Apostle Peter on the Day of Pentecost: “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ so that your sins may be forgiven; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you, for your children, and for all who are far away, everyone whom the Lord our God calls.”
The narrative of Acts 2 is so foundational and powerful for us that we read it every Pentecost Sunday. We cannot seem to help ourselves…tongues of fire, great preaching, three thousand added to the rolls of the Jerusalem Church in one day—there is much to attract us to this story. But there is the other side, too, a stormy north side—fire, and smoky mist and a bloody moon, something divine and undomesticated and wild that disturbs the rational mind—something utterly out of our control!
Bishop Yvette Flunder, pastor of City of Refuge United Church of Christ in San Francisco says that citizens of the City by the Bay know the difference between a movement and a monument. Oh, yes, monuments are beautiful—and some of them are downright majestic. In every age, churches and religions tend to turn spiritual movements into monuments—putting everything away in neat boxes, listing everyone in neat stereotypes, making all this God-stuff domesticated, reliably dull, and dependably fossilized. But the Christians of San Francisco know that every monument, no matter how chiseled in granite it is, will fall, if a strong movement shakes it hard enough. Bishop Flunder doesn’t have to refer only to the Great San Francisco earthquake of 1906 to make her point, either.
Thirty-two years ago, just moments before game three of the 1989 World Series between the Oakland Athletics and the San Francisco Giants, the fans who filled Candlestick Park were thrown from their seats as the Loma Prieta earthquake brought the Bay area to its knees. Huffington Post remembers that ball players rushed to get their families out of the stands, cradling their children in their arms. The earth quivered and shook for 15 seconds. The Marina exploded into flames, the Bay Bridge collapsed, and besides 63 dead and 3757 injured, thousands were left homeless.
When movements shake, foundations crack, monuments crumble and fall! The Spirit is the Advocate of a New Heaven and a New Earth, who like the winds of a storm, moves out the tired and outworn, and ushers in the powerful brand new Day!
I am not suggesting that it is better to be in the midst of an earthquake than not. Far from it. But I am saying that the nature of human beings to set up all manner of roadblocks to fellowship with each other and with God needs to be shaken up and shaken loose. The cobwebs of old thinking need to be swept clean from our eyes and ears. Every presupposition that stands between ourselves and the love of God, and every obstacle we may erect between ourselves and the encounter with the Spirit of Christ found in the people who are uncomfortably different from us must be swept away! For the coming of the Advocate Jesus promised just before his crucifixion is unlike the advent of anything else in our experience.
When the Spirit comes, the storm rises! When gale begins to blow through our hearts and minds, the old passes away! Behold, the New is come! This is how God acts, and it is a wonder to our eyes!
The Church of Jesus Christ is born in the storm. It is like the bush that manifested God Almighty to Moses, a bush that burns fiercely, but is not consumed by the flames! There is no mistake that water and fire are the elemental powers that attend Pentecost. For the fires of the Spirit purify. The waters of the flood, as dangerous and chaotic as they are, wash the world clean, and our very souls along with it. On the Day of Pentecost, 3,000 came to faith and sought baptism in the waters of hope. Jerusalem was filled with the roar of a mighty, rushing wind!
Old monuments are grand, but the movement of the Spirit shakes until the monuments themselves move! This is the genius of Pentecost. For the Church that we know today must become new, touched by fire and renewed by water—carried on journeys of faith by the mighty rushing wind of a new hope that is not for the few who think they have it made, but for the whole world whom God loves so much that God gave everything to make it new!
The Church of Pentecost is a Great Coming Church, one that is both familiar to us, and at one and the same time, brand new. There is a great coming Church that survives the quakes of culture and error and greed because it is born in the wind and the fire. It is a Church where there is no such thing as a center any more.
The old centers of power are disbursed, and woman and men hold leadership equally. It is a Church where love means justice, and the old, privatized concerns will pass away in favor of a new day of equal justice for all the people. It is a Church where the quality of a person’s character means more than the purity of one’s pedigree. Where Resurrection is practiced in business and finance, and rich and poor stand on even ground before the Cross of Jesus Christ.
Where black, white, brown, red, yellow, and white are the colors of love. Where gay, straight, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender are not only welcome in the House of God, but are celebrated—because the image and likeness of Jesus Christ are seen in them all alike.
I repeat, then: Are we the Church of Jesus Christ today? Shall we be a movement or a monument? I don’t know about you—but, O Lord, I want to be in that number when the Saints Go Marching in!
