Deployed
Acts 2:1-21
Click here to view the sermon, Deployed.
There is this line in the movie Jerry Maguire, just a throw-away really, nothing that makes the highlight reel. The titular character is a sports agent whose life goes into free fall when he is fired for suggesting that the huge agency he works for should carry fewer clients, generating less money. He is left with just one client, a brash, loud talking wide-receiver for the Arizona Cardinals who is looking for a new contract. As Jerry’s life falls apart, he finds respite with the 26-year-old single mom who works as his accountant. One night he is over at her house when his cell phone rings. Her son picks up the phone to hear the football player, Rod Tidwell, already talking to his agent. This goes on for a bit until the little boy gets bored and says, “you talk too much.” To which Rod Tidwell responds, “no, no, no, talking is just a primitive form of communication.” That was the line that popped into my head as I thought about Pentecost and what it means. Talking is just a primitive form of communication. Here is a story about the words we have to say and a form of communication that is about so much more than simply talking.
As we just heard, it was the day of Pentecost. Quick recap, Pentecost was also known as the Feast of Weeks. It was the Jewish festival of first fruits that also celebrated God giving the Law to Moses on Mount Sinai. According to tradition, that happened fifty days after the Passover when the Hebrew slaves were liberated from Egyptian oppression following the final plague that killed every firstborn in Egypt. They fled through the parted waters of the sea into the wilderness, and fifty days later Moses went up the mountain into the cloud to receive the law from God. Pentecost. Got it? Jesus was crucified during Passover week in Jerusalem. That’s why he was there in the first place, to celebrate the feast day with his disciples at the Temple. He was raised and for forty days he made multiple appearances until he ascended. In the ten days after his departure, his disciples were at loose ends. They didn’t know what to do. They were chided not to keep staring at the clouds waiting for Jesus’ return, but it wasn’t at all clear what they were supposed to do now. So, they did what we all tend to do when faced with such a situation, they looked inward. They knew Jesus had set aside twelve of them. That was an important number, twelve, more than a little reminiscent of Israel’s twelve tribes. Only they weren’t twelve anymore. Eleven was conspicuous. Eleven begged the question, “what happened to number twelve?” It was an ugly story. A shameful story. The thing no one really wanted to talk about: Judas and his betrayal, Judas and the despair that led him to take his own life. I’m sure they thought, if we just had twelve again maybe people would stop asking about Judas. The human capacity for denial is never so strong as when we know that things are not as they should be. Eventually, they pick a replacement. It’s not a particularly pious process. Which brings us back to the day of Pentecost. Fifty days after Jesus’ resurrection, ten days after his ascension. They were all together in one place. Sometimes the circumstances of our lives make the seemingly mundane details of scripture suddenly so much more relevant than we realized. They were all together in one place. To be honest, that sounds pretty good right about now. Would that we, this congregation, everyone listening to this right now, would that we could be altogether in one place. That’s the question that keeps getting asked. “When can we come back? When can we worship together again? When will we be open?” First, it has to be said that while the building has been closed to worship for over two months now, the church has remained open. That’s the lesson we learned in the old Sunday School song. The church is not a building. The church is not a steeple. The church is not a resting place, the church is the people. Or as a friend of mine shared on social media, the church hasn’t closed. It has been deployed.
That’s sort of the point of Pentecost, quite honestly. Pentecost is the day that the church got its marching orders. The story may begin with them altogether in one place, but it sure doesn’t stay there. The good news, the story of Christ’s church, its life, its mission, it isn’t about maintaining the comfort and familiarity of being altogether in one place, as much as we might be longing for that right now. No, it’s about what happens when the Holy Spirit of God gets ahold of us. It’s about what happens when the wind of the Spirit blows the doors off our buildings and our lives and drives us- literally- into foreign territory. When that happens, anything we have to say feels like just a primitive form of communication.
Jerusalem during a feast day celebration was a cosmopolitan hub of Jewish pilgrims from around the Mediterranean, a veritable United Nations of the ancient first century. It was a little like New York City back in pre-pandemic days, where the streets bustled with a hodge podge of foreign languages from around the world. In a circumstance like that, whatever words you might have feel useless on your tongue, unable to communicate anything of meaning. Which is, I think, why we often feel so threatened by those from foreign places who do speak our language. They cannot understand us and we cannot understand them, and that lack of mutual understanding creates a kind of barrier to things like trust and cooperation. So much easier to remain altogether in one place, so much easier to take care of our own than to put ourselves in the uncomfortable position of not knowing what to say, or how to say it. Only God will have none of that.
There was a news story that ran a couple of weeks back. Or at least, I think it was a couple of weeks. My sense of time is something of a blur right now. Anyway, the headline was about American believers seeing the coronavirus as a sign from God to change their ways. The source was a poll conducted by the University of Chicago’s divinity school and the Associated Press. Now, on the one hand I have difficulty with any scenario in which God actively does harm as either punishment or a form of instruction. That kind of thing simply runs contrary to the character of God revealed to us in Jesus. On the other hand, this pandemic has driven us out of the buildings where we like to be altogether in one place. Maybe it isn’t so much that God caused the pandemic, but God can and has used it to move us out of the singular place where we like to be altogether.
And here’s the thing that offends my very decent and orderly Presbyterian soul. There doesn’t have to be a plan. I know. I hate it too. You cannot imagine how much I hate not being able to make a plan beyond the next three weeks and the new batch of numbers that inform how and when we can safely gather. But guess what. The very first iteration of the church, the people gathered altogether in one place on that day of Pentecost, they didn’t have a plan either. The best they could do was fill the empty seat, and even how they did that was random at best. Then again, they didn’t necessarily need a plan. God had a plan. God knew what was needed. What was needed was someone to light a fire under them. What was needed was someone to compel them out into the world to be the church, because that is where the church is called. Not into buildings, not altogether in one place. We may start there. And don’t get me wrong I would rather be saying this to all of you in person. But the truth of Pentecost is and always has been for us to be church in the world.
All of our talking just a primitive form of communication. Oftentimes the words that we use about Jesus, and God’s reign, and the new life that comes from love in its purest and final form, which is forgiveness; sometimes those words sound as foreign to the world as the world’s words sound to us. That is why we cannot simply talk about being the church, with all our churchy words. We have to be the church, be Christ’s body, reaching out with love, compassion and forgiveness; opening the eyes of the blind to injustice too long ignored or denied; binding up the brokenhearted of this world. When we do that, when we are the church we communicate the love, mercy and peace of Christ beyond whatever primitive talking that we do. When we do that, we discover that we are communicating on a whole new level because we are caught up in the power of the Holy Spirit that cannot and will never be contained in one place. And neither will we, as Christ’s church by the power of that same Holy Spirit. Alleluia, amen.