Sermon for Pentecost Sunday 2017

Preached at Grace and Canadochly on June 4, 2017
Scripture: Acts 2:1-21

Pastor's Note: Life has been wondrous chaos this past week. My daughter, wife, and I have moved into a new townhouse and we're still unpacking boxes galore. It was also Synod Assembly weekend, and attendance at that event is mandated for us ELCA pastors. Suffice to say, there was little time this week to prepare a sermon.

Thankfully, as he has for the past several years, Bishop James Dunlop released a sermon for his pastors to use on Synod Assembly weekend. I have taken his manuscript and modified it somewhat for my context, but most of the thoughts below are his and not mine (although I agree wholeheartedly with his points.) I wanted to give proper credit to the origin of this sermon.

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I’ve enjoyed, for much of my life, being a dog owner. It’s a source of great joy and fun, but sometimes it can be frustrating. Dogs, of course, cannot speak outside of a few yips, barks, and the occasional growl. So when they want something, they look at you with a bit of longing in their eyes and that’s all the clue you get. Do they want outside? A treat? Some attention? Play a game? Who knows?

At times you wish there was a translator, a dog whisperer, someone fluent in “canine” who could speak on their behalf, telling you want they need or want. Paging Caesar Milan.

But language – the lack of words – is the problem only some of the time. Sometimes the problem is that they don’t really know what they want. They don’t know what to want, let alone how to ask for it. How frustrating is that!? Frustrating for them AND us!

Not knowing what we want -- that is what Paul is talking about in Romans. “When we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’ it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God” (Romans 8:15-16). And again: “Likewise, the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words” (Romans 8:26).

This is not a new problem. We live in a broken world, a world marred by sin and death. And we are a rebellious people, living in bondage to sin, and we can’t free ourselves. I wonder if we even know what to want, let alone whether we have the words to describe it. We in the Christian church try to align ourselves with God’s mission in the world. In many ways, that is what Pentecost is about. A re-dedication of ourselves to the mission God has set before us. Trying to make what we want into the same thing that God wants. Our mission, our purpose, our lives, in alignment with God’s will.

It’s not always easy to perform that mission. As I’ve mentioned numerous times before, Christianity is under threat. It can be a dangerous thing to be Christian. In some places we see threats from those who persecute, injure, or kill Christians.

But I continue to be concerned about the threats to Christianity within our own culture. Threats even by some who profess the faith! When preachers talk about how our culture undermines Christian values, many of them often speak of sexual immorality and how prayer has been taken out of schools. But I am not concerned about those things.

My concerns are more with our fundamental principles of the Christian faith and the attack on those very principles within and by our society. An insidious assault on the core of our faith. Attacks and assaults that we, too, sometimes enable and promote.

As Christians, we are meant to hold that all people are children of God. As Paul reminds us, there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male or female for all are one in Christ (Galatians 3:28). Yet even in our Christian nation, the sins of racism, sexism, and xenophobia pervade. And rather than being shocked, we gloss over it. Or maybe we even make excuses for it.

We dismiss vulgar, demeaning sexual comments as harmless “locker room talk.” When people complain they are insulted or offended by boorish language, we say they are being overly sensitive. 

Faced with legitimate complaints of prejudice, persecution or violence, we blame the victim. A woman is sexually assaulted, and we say, “She was asking for it. Look how she was dressed.” No one asks, “Who asks to be assaulted?” 

When a person of color is hassled, harmed, or even killed in an upscale part of town, we say, “What did they expect, walking through a white neighborhood?” And nobody asks the question, “Why is there such a thing as a white neighborhood?”

There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male or female for all are one in Christ 

Christ calls us to care for the poor, the sick, the hungry, the naked, those imprisoned, and yet the narrative our culture puts forth is that we should NOT help them. They don’t deserve help. Poverty is their own fault. It is their state of mind. And that’s just not true.

I have worked in rural and urban congregations for pretty much the entirety of my ministry. I have worked in soup kitchens and food pantries. I have met hungry people who are struggling. I’ve seen physically disabled people who can’t work, parents who can’t feed their families despite working multiple part-time minimum-wage jobs with no benefits.

The last thing they want is to be given handout, but they have no other choice. They are desperate. They are needy. They are God’s children. They are our brothers and sisters. 

Throughout our nation, the wealthiest the world has ever seen, 1 in 5 children is at risk for hunger every day. It shows the injustice of our economic system that does not reward everyone equally, or even sufficiently. No one asks the question, “Why do we live with inequity?”

We’re often too afraid to ask those critical questions because they are divisive. In these polarized times, the answer to them often splits along partisan lines. But we are the Church, the body of Christ in this world and we are called to make this a better world. That should be our priority beyond whether we are Democrat or Republican. At the risk of “meddlin’,” for many Christians, their political allegiance trumps their identity as a disciple of Jesus. Culture matters more than faith.

But that culture tells us that a person’s value is based on what they contribute to society, which is measured by how much wealth they have. Thus, the rich are more valuable than the poor. In other words, just being human, despite being created imago dei, has no value. One’s value is based solely on the economic. And that is as far from a Christian perspective as one can get.

Instead we believe that every human being is a gift from God and has intrinsic value. Jesus tells us that God cares so deeply about each one of us, loves and knows us so intimately that Jesus came to live, die, and rise again for our sakes. God loves us, and Jesus commands us to spread that love to our neighbors. And not just love from afar, but hands-on love, by taking care of our neighbors. In the 25th chapter of Matthew, Jesus calls us to care for the poor, the sick, the hungry, the naked, those imprisoned. For in so doing we will encounter Christ.

We are to be the voice for the voiceless, the strength of the powerless.

Martin Luther said, “Know that to serve God is nothing else than to serve your neighbor and do good to him in love, be it child, wife, servant, enemy, friend. … If you do not find yourself among the needy and the poor, where the Gospel shows us Christ, then you may know that your faith is not right, and that you have not yet tasted of Christ’s benevolence and work for you.”

Brother Martin speaks a lot more harshly than I probably would. But his point stands. This is who we are and who we are meant to be. This is what we are called to do. It trumps all else. It is no time to slack. We look about and see systematic hate, poverty, destruction of the climate, and so many other forms of sin. The world NEEDS us, perhaps now more than ever.

This is God’s mission. This is his plan. And we are called to participate in this plan, just as the first apostles were called to participate in it on that first Pentecost.

So here we are on this Pentecost in 2017. Called anew to God’s mission. We, like my two dogs, may not always know what to do or what we want or what we need or even how to express it, but we trust in God’s spirit as our ancestors in the faith did. We know he has a plan. We know we are a part of that plan, a plan to make a better world, a better life, an eternal and abundant life. For us and for all the world. Go! We have work to do. That better world awaits. Amen.