Tag: Pentecost

The Light is Yours | Sermon for Pentecost

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For the citizens of Charlottesville, Virginia, the hot months of 2017 are better known as the “Summer of Hate.”

The previous year’s election had emboldened white supremacist groups to step out of their anonymous chat rooms into the public square. And they had chosen Charlottesville for their debut. On the evening of August 11, I was locked inside my church with 500 other people, among them Katie Couric and Cornell West.

As the interfaith prayer service began to wind down, the worship leader suddenly walked to the back of the church. He spoke quietly with someone, then headed back up to the front. That’s when he told us: “The Nazis are outside.”

The next few moments are hazy in my memory. But, someone must have told us we were in lockdown. It wasn’t safe to leave. Then the worship leader spoke again: “So, we’re going to sing loud enough to drown out their hate.”

We started to sing: This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine…

Time seemed to stand still. As we drummed on the backs of the hardwood pews and stomped our feet to the rhythm, the candle flames danced on the altar.

Meanwhile, back in the narthex, unarmed priests, pastors, rabbis, and imams were guarding the doors. The Nazis had called in dozens of false emergencies to deploy the Charlottesville Police away from their tiki torches and hateful chanting, as they marched through the University of Virginia’s campus across the street from the church.

The only things separating us from terror that night was our clergy, the big red doors of the church, and “This Little Light of Mine.” In spite of it all, it felt like the Kingdom of God.

–

Last Friday, I led chapel at the day school, as I do every month.

The theme this month was Pentecost. We talked about the connection between God’s love for each one of us, and the love we share with others, as a response to that love.

Pentecost makes rich use of metaphors of wind and fire, and here in the sanctuary, candles are one of the best tools we have to talk about those things. So, I asked the kids to watch carefully as I lit the candlelighter, and then walked to each candle and lit a new flame. We counted the flames together: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6!

I asked them to notice how each time a new flame was lit, it didn’t take away the light from the first one. Every time light was shared, all it did was make even more light. At the cusp of having abstract reasoning skills, maybe the kids didn’t totally understand the metaphor.

But they understood this: We are loved by the God of the universe, and we can share that love with others. And when we share it, it doesn’t take anything away from us. All it does is make even more love.

Then we got to the good part…

We sang This Little Light of Mine, and the kids waved their hands in the air and stomped their feet. A group of girls joined hands and twirled around in a circle like contra dancers. And at the end of the song, a raucous cheer rang up to the rafters.

I am not exaggerating when I say it felt like a revival. It felt like the Holy Spirit had blown through the place and filled us with so much light, we couldn’t hold it in any longer.

We were safe and loved here in the sanctuary. And it felt like the Kingdom of God.

–

There’s just something about that song…

I asked the Head of School why the kids like it so much, and she thinks it’s because it offers rare permission for little ones to claim their own humanity, in a world that doesn’t give them much power. They get to move and shout, and they are encouraged to claim that something is “mine, and I have the power to share it.”

In the candlelight of that locked-down prayer vigil and the morning light of chapel, we sang This Little Light of Mine, and we became the church: the people of God, together in God’s kingdom.

Because we understood that we had been found by God, and made into light by God, we just had to let it shine.

–

It should be said that This Little Light of Mine isn’t a children’s song. It is an African American spiritual.

It was composed in the context of brutality and indignity worse than most of us can imagine. It was first sung in a place where hope had no business showing up, where God could have easily been mistaken as dead.

But, as God often does, and as hope often does, it did show up… and it wasn’t just a pining or passive kind of hope.

It was defiant hope – a refusal to take the oppressor at their word. To claim that something is “mine” and I have the power to share it is to reclaim your own humanity, to claim your own belovedness in the eyes of God, and to claim, further, that only the God who created you has a right to make those judgments about your worth.

With a clarity that pierces the heart and stirs the soul, the song captures the truth of the Gospel, and reveals the ultimate power of Pentecost.

–

When the Holy Spirit rushed in like wind and fire on that first Pentecost, the faithful began to speak in the languages of the world. And when they poured into the streets, it was the same as Christ reaching out his hand to diverse humanity and saying, “you all are mine and I love you.” And when they prophesied and announced the good news, it was the same as God calling every race, nation, and tongue “good.”

The Spirit of Truth announced that day: “all are welcome, no exceptions.”

In the presence of the Spirit, the Divine Advocate, every dichotomy by which the powerful retain control was made meaningless. And everyone – every class, age, gender, culture, language, and identity – was boldly affirmed as beloved by God. And everyone, hearing the good news in their own language, was welcomed into the Kingdom of God.

Those who heard the good news couldn’t help but share it. They were empowered to become advocates themselves: they cared for people in such a way that they could reclaim their God-given dignity. They cared for people without suggesting that something about them was too far gone.

There was light enough for everyone. And nothing was lost in sharing it.

If, for any reason, you have never been sure that you were deserving of light; and if, for any reason, you were told you were wrong to want it…

The church, on Pentecost, says otherwise. The good news is good news for everyone. The Spirit of God advocates for you. The Kingdom of God is here, and you’re a part of it.

On this Pentecost, Christ reaches out and hands you a candle.

This light is yours. And you have the power to share it. You’re already shining. Amen.

An Act of God: Pentecost Sermon

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Today is the day of Pentecost.  

The story we just read in Acts reveals a chaotic scene:  

Jesus has ascended into Heaven, and the disciples are hunkered in a house, not sure what to do next. Suddenly, violent wind and flames of fire invade every room. 

Down below, in the streets, Jews from all over the Greco-Roman world are gathered in the capital city for the Feast of Weeks,  This is a time to bless the wheat harvest, and remember God’s gift of the Ten Commandments given to Moses on Mount Sanai. 

The ruckus in the house seems to have compelled the disciples over the threshold and out into the street. There, the crowd meets them with alarm.  

Something strange is happening.  The disciples, who should be speaking their native Aramaic, are somehow understood by festival goers from all over the Greco-Roman world.  The chosen people of God – torn apart by centuries of displacement and war – are brought back together in this moment, united in common understanding. 

United, also, in confusion. Desperate to make meaning of the event, many in the crowd dismiss the disciples, as we might have done:  

“They are filled with new wine,” they said.  

In other words, they’re drunk. 

And then, perhaps the biggest surprise of all:  The timid, bumbling Peter, who denied Christ three times at the crucifixion, steps forward, without fear, and begins proclaiming the Gospel. 

Wind and fire, and wild chaos in the street. Pentecost had the trappings of a natural disaster.  But instead, it was an act of God.

orange flames of fire go out into dark night
Photo by Francesco Paggiaro on Pexels.com

The after-effects of this spiritual storm were like nothing the world had seen before. Within months, Christian communities started cropping up everywhere.  And they certainly weren’t drunk, but they were acting pretty strange.  

They were caring for rich and poor, tending to the sick, sharing in communion, giving their money away, and even dying for the Truth. And they were spreading infectious joy along the way. 

These first Christians were changing people’s lives, because their own lives had changed. They had become fearless. 

That day, the church was born. And the Holy Spirit has been keeping us on our toes ever since. 

— 

A funny thing about preaching is that you start to mentally file away stories in case you need to use them in a sermon someday. 

As I was going through my mental files this week for a story about Pentecost, various natural disasters kept coming to mind. 

Here’s one: In 1997, my little Indiana town was readying itself for a tornado. My parents tucked my sister and me into sleeping bags, and lowered us into the crawl space through an opening in the coat closet.  The tornado hit a street over, and we were spared. 

Here’s another one: In 2005, my coastal Florida town was supposed to get hit with five hurricanes, but all of them diverted at the last minute.  The high school senior t-shirt that year read: “I survived 2005.” 

Then, last week, my friend’s daughter was driving home when a tornado ripped through her apartment complex in Houston. She said that the wind came like a solid wall, going 80 miles per hour. My friend’s daughter and granddaughter escaped, unscathed. 

I’m thankful for my brain for trying to help. But none of these stories even come close to paralleling the after-effects of Pentecost. 

These aren’t the kinds of cataclysms that set new things into motion. They are simply natural disasters. A bad thing you try to avoid. 

It seems that, when I try to think of moments of profound disruption in my life, my head doesn’t jump to positive transformation.  Instead, it jumps to stories of survival.  These stories are about safety, near-misses,  and that final, heaving sigh of relief.  

The best thing I can say for them is that they hint at “the calm after the storm,” which is maybe something like “peace.”  But, given the liveliness of Pentecost, it doesn’t seem like the Holy Spirit came to bring us peace… 

In the musical, Rent, which takes place in the context of the AIDS epidemic, one line that has always stuck with me is:  “The opposite of war isn’t peace; it’s creation.” 

I think Pentecost reveals the Truth of that statement. While there is an alternative to the brokenness and discord we see all around us, it isn’t the temporary relief of “the calm after the storm” – it’s the new creation.  It’s new life, bubbling over, spreading out, and unstoppable. 

In the Pentecost story, we finally see how the saving love of Christ is not only available to all, but actively growing and putting its tendrils out into the world. 

  • The Spirit of God calls to each of us in our own language, and from our own experience. We are known. 
  • The Advocate calls us home to Jesus, and to one another. We are loved. 
  • The Divine Wind burns away the chaff in our hearts. We are becoming fearless. 

Like Peter, once afraid to speak, we are emboldened to rush out into the world and proclaim the Good News: Love is here, for everyone! Love, trivialized in pop songs and scorned by politicians, is not a trivial thing after all.  Like wildfire, if given a chance to spark, it will cover the world.  

It’s not a natural disaster, but a creative act of God. 

As theologian Will Willimon puts it, Pentecost reminds us that the Spirit is not “an exotic phenomenon of mainly interior and purely personal significance…the Spirit is the power which enables the church to ‘go public’ with its good news, to attract a crowd and…to have something to say worth hearing” (Interpretation Commentary on Acts, 33). 

In all this, Pentecost offers us revolutionary hope.  

But hope is hard to hold onto.  

  • It is more sensible to decide that survival is all we can hope for. 
  • It is more expedient to resign ourselves to “good enough.” 
  • In the face of the world’s grief, and our own, it is more comforting to stay hunkered down inside that house in Jerusalem. 

But, our Scriptures testify that we are Pentecost People. We are possessed with the Holy Spirit, who calls us to be sober, but strange: caring for rich and poor, tending to the sick, sharing in communion, giving our money away, dying, and living, in the Truth.  

The Spirit calls us to defy the status quo, by living as though hope is our birthright. 

And, we can live in hope, because we know that Pentecost is True. Because, 2,000 years later, 7,000 miles from Jerusalem, living on a continent the disciples didn’t even know existed,  we are worshipping God and sharing in Christ’s communion. 

The Holy Spirit set the world on fire. 

And we, Christ’s disciples, are the still here, carrying – within us and among us – the flame of love that lights up the world. 

(The Paschal Candle is blown out.) 

Amen. 

A Sermon for Pentecost: Fire

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We Carry the Flame

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“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.” 

When I shared this story with the day school kids on Wednesday, the first question out of their mouth was,  

  • “Why is there fire on the disciples’ heads?” 
  • And in that moment, I realized I didn’t actually know. 

The only answer I could come up with was that fire is a symbol for the Holy Spirit. 

  • It’s, presumably, related to other stories about the presence of God, like when God speaks to Moses through the burning bush. 

But that doesn’t really answer the question, does it? 

  • The question still remains, “Why fire?” 

— 

To answer the question, I really needed to know more about fire. So I got to researching… 

Here are a few things I learned: 

First, fire is more than its visible flame.  

Fire occurs when something is ignited by intense heat and combines with oxygen.   This creates combustion, which produces heat and light.  

The visible effect of this chemical process is the flame.  But beyond our sight, fire emits the same kind of radiation as the human body. 

In other words, the transformation of elements that we call fire is both a visible and invisible process. 

Second, though fire is often associated with destruction, it is vital to the flourishing of ecosystems. 

Fire actually creates micro-habitats within the same landscape, as different life forms adapt to different stages of wildfire life-cycle.

One really cool example of this is the fire chaser beetle,  which can detect infrared radiation from forest fires more than 80 miles away.  It lays its eggs on charred wood, which makes nutritious food for its larvae. 

Because different plants and animals are adapted to phases of fire, recovery, or re-growth,  fire actually makes room for a greater diversity of creatures to thrive within the same landscape. 

And third, fire is an extremely powerful tool. 

On the positive side, fire’s ability to cook our food, keep us warm, and stave off predators, makes it responsible for human civilization as we know it.  On the negative side, fire has been used to commit horrific violence. 

Whether used for good or for ill, fire gives humans access to power beyond ourselves. 

— 

With all of that in our minds, maybe we can get back to that question:  

Why is there fire on the disciples’ heads? 

Well, our scripture readings for today show us that fire and the Holy Spirit share some common traits: 

  • They spur both invisible and visible transformation. 
  • They make room for greater diversity. 
  • They give humans access to power beyond ourselves. 

The Holy Spirit truly is the FIRE of the incarnate God, a living flame that never stops burning. It touches people and ignites a spark – we can’t help but be changed. 

When we are attuned to the Spirit, everything feels like it could combust at any moment.  There is palpable energy in the room. 

When we feel the Spirit moving, we sense the possibility for peace and harmony among people who have nothing in common. 

When we look for the Spirit, we are swept up in the beauty and pain of life as God sees it. We see the truth of things so that we can be transformed. 

And when we call on the Spirit, we receive the power of Christ that is now let loose in the world and coursing through our bodies. 

No, I’m not a Pentecostal. But I believe the Spirit moves.  

I believe this, because I have seen, heard, felt, and sobbed the Holy Spirit.  

In this last month of baptisms, I have witnessed the Spirit spur us to clapping and dancing and laughter. 

In moments of sadness and anxiety, I have connected heart-to-heart with the Spirit of God in you. 

I have gotten the goosebumps of the Spirit when I have suddenly noticed beauty in the cracked and broken things. 

— 

The Holy Spirit landed like fire on those first disciples. And the combustion still hasn’t stopped. 

One thousand, nine hundred, and ninety years ago, the Holy Spirit came in like a wildfire and cast the anxious disciples out into the busy streets, where they suddenly stood up straight and started preaching! 

And we stand here today, in 2023, in Houston, Texas, because that wildfire of the Holy Spirit could not be contained. 

Church, you are the evidence that the Spirit moves in our midst. 

  • Because you are the descendants of those who left the upper room, and started testifying in the street.  
  • You are here today because the Spirit of the Living God caught the world on fire.  
  • You have been empowered by Christ to transform, welcome, and empower all of creation to live for the joy and peace of His kingdom! 

— 

Ok, I have one last story: 

A few weeks ago, the altar party noticed that the top of the Paschal Candle had burnt to a crisp.  

The fire, normally contained in the wick, had attempted to spread.  It managed to scorch the top of the plastic pillar.  It is lit today only by the grace of God, and the persistence of our sexton, Mario. 

I keep thinking that maybe the paschal candle was trying to remind us that the fire of Christ can no longer be contained. 

On the day of Pentecost, when the fire of Christ engulfed the world, the church became the church. We no longer need the paschal candle to remind us that Christ is in the world.  

(Extinguish candle.) 

Because we are in the world. And the Spirit of Christ is in us. In other words, we are the fire. 

What would it be like if we really acted like people with fire on our heads? 

I think we would run toward the darkness of this world knowing: 

  • We carry the flame.  
  • We enlighten the truth.  
  • We radiate good news. 
  • We ignite the movement.  
  • We love with the all-consuming love of God. 

The church is alive! The Kingdom of God is here! Combustion and transformation keep happening! 

Church, it’s time to set the world on fire. Amen.