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Sunday, June 8, 2014

Monday, June 2, 2014 Posted by Shiowei

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Sunday, June 8, 2014

Sunday, June 8, 2014

Pentecost Sunday

Sermon Audio

Allyson Robinson

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Could it have only been six weeks? So much had happened in that short time.

Their beloved leader had been taken away from them, not once, but twice. It was hard to believe, but barely a month had passed since the awful realization of Judas’ treachery, since they saw Jesus dragged away at the hands of Roman soldiers, shuffled from the High Priest to Pontus Pilate and, finally, to Golgotha. Barely a month since the night they spent huddled in fear for their own lives in the very room where they’d dined with him; barely a month since his friend John and his mother Mary had watched Jesus die at the hands of his torturers. That was the day everything changed for Jesus’ followers – or so they thought.

Three days later, a miracle: an earthquake, an empty tomb, a vision of angels. And a confusing, confounding, impossible message: “He is not here. He is risen.” Could such things be? Why yes, as a matter of fact, they could. That was truly the day everything changed for them, and I mean everything – right down to their most basic assumptions about death, life, and the meaning of it all. Jesus appeared to them behind locked doors, walked with them on the road to Emmaus and beside the Sea of Galilee. He opened their minds to the Scriptures and their hearts to belief. He taught them, broke bread with them, helped them to process all the amazing things they were experiencing – kind of like the old times, actually, except for all this disappearing and reappearing business. He offered them peace in the midst of turmoil, forgiveness to ease their guilt, and in a moment that was weird even by Jesus’ standards, he breathed on them and called it the Spirit of Holiness. For a few weeks it really seemed like things were getting back to normal – or if not exactly normal, then a new normal that they felt they could probably get used to in time.

And then he did it again. They’d just finished their breakfast and were following him out to the Mount of Olives, as they’d so often done before; they were talking about one of their favorite subjects: the Kingdom of God, the restoration of Israel, and the extension of God’s reign over the whole earth.  And, as usual, they were all about the “when” of it: “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?” It actually seemed like a pretty good time to them – having conquered death, there was certainly nothing standing in Jesus’ way. They were beginning to wonder, in fact, what he was waiting for.

And Jesus said unto them, “Would you please stop asking me that? Can’t you see that the ‘when’ is now, and always has been? What’s really important here is the ‘how,’ and the ‘how’ is you. You will be my witnesses. My Spirit of Holiness will empower you, and you’ll be my testimony here in Jerusalem, and in Judea, and in Samaria, and everywhere.”

And no sooner had he spoken the words than Jesus began to rise up out of their midst and into the sky. They must have stood in awe for just a moment, watching, as the realization slowly dawned on them that it was all coming to an end, and everything was changing again. As if to punctuate the moment, two angels appeared: “Well, what are you waiting for? You don’t have forever. He’s coming back some day, you know.”

But when? And How? And what were they supposed to do in the meantime? Frankly, this just made no sense whatsoever. They were to be witnesses, he said. To the whole city, the whole country, the whole earth, he said. But how could they do that? How could they even begin? And why did they have to do it alone? With their beloved leader gone, what were they supposed to do?

And then someone remembered something he’d told them over breakfast that day, “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.’”

And so they found themselves waiting. Again. I imagine them like that, gathering each day in the very room where they had shared their final meal with Jesus, the very room where he’d appeared to them the night of his resurrection: praying, eating together, trying to prepare themselves for him to come back, and saying to one another, “Has it really only been six weeks? So much has changed.”

I imagine at this point that Peter, Mary, John, James, and the others had had quite enough change, God, thank you very much.

If you’re a member or a friend of this community, I’ve just got to believe you can relate to this story. Has it really only been a month since our beloved Pastor Amy stood here with us and shared the news? Only a month since she invited us to lunch after worship to share some important news? Only a month since we heard hear say, “This morning the Senior Minister Search Committee of The Riverside Church in Manhattan will announce that I am the candidate they are presenting to become the next Senior Minister of that church.”

It really has. And this morning, she’s there – with her family, with some from our family, preaching in that historic pulpit, before a congregation that desperately needs her, just like we did 11 years ago. Right now, in fact.

And perhaps in the last month you’ve found yourself feeling a little like the disciples: confused, afraid, unsure, as if your whole world has been upended. Perhaps, like them, you’ve had some of your own fundamental assumptions challenged. Perhaps, like them, you’ve felt overwhelmed by it all. Perhaps, you’re wondering what it all means, and what it all means for you.

Well, hold on, because everything just might be about to change.Again.

Six weeks later, “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.”

Life just gets weirder and weirder for these folks, doesn’t it?

And yet, in the midst of all this weirdness, all this upheaval, all the fear and excitement and confusion and loss and astonishment, I wonder if something clicked for them in this moment. I wonder if in some small way they began to see the bigger picture in all this change. I wonder if they heard themselves speaking in foreign languages they’d never learned and remembered Jesus’ words: “You will witness for me, not just here, but to the very ends of the earth,” and the inadequacy they’d felt to that task just days before. I wonder, as the crowds gathered and the street outside their rooms became a microcosm of the entire known world – as they heard people from a dozen countries express their amazement; as they watched one of their own stand up to preach a new message of hope – I wonder if they got a glimpse of the plan and their role in it. And if perhaps change wasn’t quite so scary anymore.

I think they must have. I think they began to realize that they were the ones they’d been waiting for – that they themselves were the answer to all the questions they’d been asking about they kingdom of God, and that the arrival in power of this “Spirit of Holiness” Jesus talked so much about meant all their concerns about adequacy were moot. They must have, because just a few years later Paul would take that realization and codify it the way only he could: “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 [one of us] is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.”

Paul wrote those words to a church of the gospel of Jesus in the Greek city of Corinth – a multi-cultural, multi-ethnic congregation in a thriving city that was a hub of international commerce a thousand miles from Jerusalem. That church didn’t exist just a few years earlier when Peter preached for the first time at Pentecost – the very idea of Christians in Corinth would have boggled the disciples’ minds. None of them had ever even seen the city; it’s likely they’d never heard of it. And had they not seized their moment, rolled with the changes and accepted responsibility for the work God had entrusted to them, there never would have been believers or a church in Corinth. Their willingness to live out their gifts in community together helped ensure there would be, making possible a future they never could have dreamed.

And that’s exactly what Paul is trying to tell those Corinthian believers: “The way we keep this thing moving and growing is for each of us to do the same – to receive not just the Spirit, but thegifts of the Spirit, whatever they may be, and to use them together to live out justice and mercy and forgiveness and love on the earth.” And that’s what he’s trying to tell us, I think, as well.

We’ve been talking since Easter about belief and the act of believing – but believing is not a static thing. It’s not like a deadlift, struggling and straining to keep a great burden held aloft in the space between our heads and heaven.

No, I like to think of belief as more like the lap bar on a roller coaster: it’s the thing that holds us safe and secure from the beginning of the ride to the end, through whatever changes it brings, whether we’re holding onto it or not.

And that’s important every day, but it’s especially important right now, as we approach the first peak of the roller coaster ride the months ahead are going to be for us. That’s what our future holds, Calvary: dizzying, joyful highs, like the welcoming of Erica and Elijah, two new ministers into our midst this summer, or the celebration of Pastor Edgar’s 40th year in ministry this fall; and also weighty, often difficult lows, like saying goodbye to Jason and Myra and, perhaps, to Pastor Amy.

And what’s in between? Well, hold on! As the changes ahead play out for us, you may discover new gifts and talents, or may find new ways to put them to work for the common good. You may find yourself stepping out or pitching in, in ways you never imagined before. We may see new possibilities emerge, new vistas that give you butterflies when you think about them. And we’ll experience God in a new way, God’s work in a new way, God’s call in a new way, God’s love in a new way.

To many who see it, it will be amazing. To others, perplexing. A few will respond with bewilderment and others with cynicism. But for some, seeing what God does among us in the months ahead will be the thing that finally draws them through the doors or that finally draws them into community, or that finally makes them ask the question of you, “How is it that such things are possible?”

Days like this – when everything changes – are the stuff faith ismade of. They are the stuff belief is made of.

Bulletin