The Rev. Neale L. Miller

Sermon:  “It’s All About Context”

June 4, 2006

Genesis 11:1-9/Acts 2:1-21

              Sixty-six years ago today, English Prime Minister Winston Churchill, in office less than a month, rose to speak before the House of Commons after a colossal setback that saw thousands of beleaguered English troops, the Germans hard on their heels, abandon Dunkirk, France.  England’s extreme vulnerability exposed in the Dunkirk retreat, the citizens of England were forced to contemplate the unthinkable.  The German offensive, picking up momentum on its relentless march through Western Europe, was poised to move on England, with but a narrow channel no more than twenty miles in width to slow its progress.

             Assessing the circumstances surrounding the German invasion and its aftermath, many believe that a special providence embraced England in her fateful hour, raising up a rare and gifted leader to see her through her trials.

              Though no less flawed than the rest of us, God conferred special gifts on Winston Churchill.  He was courageous, absolutely committed to the cause of freedom, tenacious in defending his convictions, and to top it all, stated his convictions with eloquence unmatched by peers of his generation or by world leaders of any subsequent generation. His words spoken over a half century ago, in a context quite different from ours, retain an extraordinary capacity to inspire and move us. 

               While mere words on the page cannot begin to translate the power those speeches must have had as they were delivered, I believe that as I read a short section of the House of Commons speech of June 4th, 1940, you will agree with me that his words still deliver an extraordinary impact.

                And so, Churchill rose to speak, the leaden weight of the Dunkirk disaster bearing down with incredible force on the members of the House of Commons as they gathered that June day.  Having briefed the assembly on the details of Dunkirk, Churchill concluded his speech with these immortal words: “We shall not flag or fail.  We shall go on to the end.  We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the hills we shall never surrender.”

                 Though it has been over a half century since Churchill delivered that oration, the words continue to resonate with all people who, loving freedom, are willing to expend their last life’s breath to preserve it.  As powerful as those words are, however, you and I a half-century removed and separated by an ocean from Churchill’s England, do not hear those words as the Englishman of 1940 heard them.  We simply do not share the same context as those who nervously peered across the channel or into the sky, waiting through long, agonizing days and nights for the Nazis to make their move.

                  “We shall not flag or fail.  We shall go on to the end.”  As powerful as they are, the words simply do not convey to our ear the same message they conveyed to our English friends in 1940.  As powerful as they are, the words simply do not convey to our ear what they undoubtedly convey to those World War II veterans gathered in Washington last weekend for Memorial Day observances.

               We all know that the context in which words are spoken have extraordinary bearing on what is heard.  Just ask the politician challenged to defend statements made a week earlier.  “Hey, my words were taken out of context.  You have to look at the entire transcript of my remarks to grasp my point.”

                We need to understand the context if we are to properly evaluate words, reactions, or experience.  Everyone has something to say about the recent spike in gasoline prices.  We shake our heads every time we drive up to the pump.  At nearly three dollars a gallon a fill up is a difficult pill to swallow.  In our context three dollar a gallon gas is a big deal, in a different context, in Europe, for example, you would have lines of traffic stacking up to buy gas at the bargain rate of three dollars a gallon.

               What we have here is a context for worship.  We call this space a sanctuary.  For the number of people who have no worship experience upon which to draw, the word “sanctuary,” conveys other meaning, such as a refuge for wildlife, a place of refuge or protection for those on the run or in danger.

                Our worship context once had some distinctive features that helped us define the purpose for which we gather.  Remember our pews, our pulpit and our lectern?  Remember our communion table and our baptismal font?  Though this worship space is devoid of those objects, most persons familiar with Christian worship would continue to recognize this as a house of God. 

              A stranger entering our context for the first time, however, would have difficulty orienting himself or herself in our space.  The appointments and symbols of the sanctuary communicate little of the substance regarding who we are and what we do here.  We may not simply assume that the visitor off the street could “read” our context.  We certainly may not assume that what we do here is self-evident.

                It is not at all self-evident what we do here.  Literally hundreds of cars make their way up and down Canal Boulevard past our front door everyday.  For many this church simply blends into the background as part of the landscape, one of several churches lining this Canal corridor.  While a majority of motorists who ply this street have a pretty well formed notion of what goes on in a church, add the qualifier “Presbyterian,” however, and many would be lost.

                We maintain a context here that is not replicated at St. Dominic, St. Paul’s, St. Luke’s, or Lakeview Baptist.  You and I know many Roman Catholics.  I venture that most of your Roman Catholic friends are clueless about the traditions and beliefs we uphold.

                We worship within a context, but the mission given us by our Lord Jesus is not merely to dwell in context but to expand it.  Not, I would add, to build up the ranks of Presbyterians, as desirable as that might be, but to introduce the name of Jesus to the entire world.  This is a mission we share with Christians of every stripe.

                 Churchill served his nation within a particular context, the events he and his countrymen confronted imposing very special challenges, making very exacting demands.  The words he uttered on that June day in 1940 reached a people craving for assurance, yearning for hope, a German army on the march supplying context for his remarks.  Yet the words he uttered really transcend that very specific context of June 1940.  They speak across generations to the deep longing for freedom and peace that animate every human heart.

                   It’s all about context.  Even as the words of Churchill live on long after they were uttered, expanding their context to embrace freedom-loving people everywhere, so the words and deeds of Jesus live on in the people who have experienced his power.

                  Pentecost provided a context through which the mighty power of God could be revealed.  There was, however, a quite sharply drawn line separating those who were in the context and those who were out.  Numbering among the insiders were an extremely varied group, Parthians, Medes, Elamites, residents of Mesopotamia, Judea, Cappadocia, Pontus, Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, and Egypt---a very great assortment, however you cut it.  The insiders, of course, enjoyed their particular status for one very good reason.  Though they shared no one common language between them, each heard the Lord speak in his own language.

                   Those who were in the context were swept up in an experience we credit with establishing the church on its first real footing.  Others, however, witnessed the events of Pentecost with a skeptical mind, explaining away the Spirit induced exuberance of the occasion with a sneer, “it’s nothing but a drunken riot.”

                 Peter, in full command of powers not in evidence during the Savior’s life, set out immediately to set the hecklers straight.  And how did he do it?  He resorted to context.  “These are not drunk, as you suppose…no, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel years and years ago.  Joel prophesied about this day.”

                  You and I know the content of the prophesy, Peter recalled: “In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions….”  And so on, and so forth.

                 “It’s all about context,” Peter declared.  And so he continued, “What you are seeing today in this Jerusalem square was in God’s plan from the very beginning.  Not merely to the Jews, God’s activity embraces the world and all God’s people.  Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord, irrespective of race or nationality, or accident of birth, shall be saved.”

                 Pentecost signals a new context for God’s activity in the world.  Not merely to one race, one locale.  Pentecost signals that God in Christ has ambitions for the world that embrace all people, everywhere.

                The Spirit released at Pentecost shatters the narrow contexts into which we in the church are wont to press it.  What we hear in Peter’s speech is a call to redefine the context where God might be sought.  Not domiciled in Jerusalem with the Jews, Peter used Joel to explain the breadth of God’s reach, not merely into the Jewish communities in and around Jerusalem, but also into the gentile communities of Pontus, Asia Mesopotamia and Libya.

No, the Spirit did not reside exclusively in Jerusalem among the Jews.  On that Pentecost day so long ago God made a special effort to disclose the breadth of his reach into the vast corners of the world, where most of those present in Jerusalem would never visit.  If the Spirit needed more room to operate than Jerusalem could provide, it certainly needs much more room than Lakeview Presbyterian Church can provide.

                  This is the context, friends, in which we worship.  It is NOT the context in which we live.  The faith into which we were baptized, is much too big to be lived within this narrow context, it needs space; much more space, and many more people.

Friends, does the faith to which you lay claim translate out of this context?  Or is your faith identity something to which you give little thought except on the Lord’s Day.

                    You know what I know.  The Spirit wasn’t meant to be contained within such narrow spaces as these.  It doesn’t hang out here during the week waiting for us to show up here on Sunday to give it a little exercise.   And how WILL it get out unless you and I make a concerted effort to take it out?

                   Within the space of the hour we will spend here, dozens of people will drive by, many of whom would profit from this experience we are privileged to share.  They are all part of the context in which God’s Spirit is active.  What God is doing in the lives of those anonymous folk we will never know, but we do know that God has planted a particle of himself in us, the substance of his grace in us, not to hoard for Sunday, but to expose to the light everyday.  Those people driving by here this morning, the people with whom you work, those people who live next door, need to see that particle of God, that substance of grace, that you carry.

              “We shall not flag or fail.  We shall go on to the end.”  Words composed by one of the past generation’s greatest statesman to address one of the past generation’s most grave threats.  Words composed to suit a context quite different from the one in which we find ourselves today, but how perfectly suited those words are in describing the Spirit that is posed to use us to accomplish its will.  No, we shall not flag or fail.  We shall go on to the end, so long as we give God’s spirit sanctuary in our hearts.  Amen.

              PRAYER

              Lord, in and through whom we have life, we pray your blessing on all who have gathered here for worship today.  Not the context for worship we would choose, we worship in this space distracted by the heat, impatient to see more visible signs of recovery and restoration.  Even as we experience physical discomfort, we reach out to you who are the source of life for that comfort you alone can give. Come, Lord Jesus, fill this sanctuary with Pentecost fervor and vitality.

              The world is yours and we are yours, called to be what we struggle to be, agents of hope in an age where hopelessness is rampant.  Into our hands you have placed a wonderful opportunity to broadcast hope, a calling for which we often feel ill-equipped.  We strain your patience, O God, even as Jesus’ disciples strained his patience, but entrusting our weakness to your strength, we continue on our way, ever comforted by your nearness.

              In the midst of this broken world we savor your nearness, O God, even as the faithful of generations past savored your nearness in their difficult circumstances.  O God, a monster has been loosed on the world, and we don’t know how to restrain him.  Hatred is emblazoned on his forehead, a murderous rage pent up within him.  He stalks his victims, producing a litany of complaints to justify his actions.  Contemptuous of life, his enemy’s and his own, he cannot be bought off or mollified.  He is bent on destruction, and he can justify any action that will serve his twisted purpose.

              You, O Christ, who disarmed death itself in your resurrection from the tomb, have the power to deliver us from our victimization by death’s allies.  The depths to which we have fallen in our alienation from one another is beyond are ability to scale.  We won’t get out, O Christ, we won’t be reconciled one to another, without your help.  Hasten to help us, to do that which we can’t do for ourselves.  Even as we dehumanize our enemy, and he dehumanizes us, help us reclaim our humanity through earnest reconciliation.

              O Christ, we thank you for the wisdom and courage placed so prominently on display in Winston Churchill and Franklin Delano Roosevelt as those two pillars made their stand against of evil.  What strength and ardor you committed to the two, and to the thousands who served under them.  We praise you for all defenders of liberty, praying a special blessing on the women and men who stand today as bulwarks against tyrants and terrorists.

              Spirit of the Living God, fall afresh on us that we may vigorously live out of the word into the world.  Refresh us daily with the balm of Scripture that by its counsel we might act.  O Christ, divine word incarnate, grant us new words, new vocabulary, to express our faith convictions, but even more importantly, grant us the  will and the courage to speak them.

              Your world, your sanctuary, our lives on loan from thee, all that we have is thine alone, a trust, O Lord, from thee.  As trustees of this world, born in your image, O God, help us to faithfully live, servants eager to fulfill our special calling by doing justice, loving kindness, and walking humbly with our God.

              O God, the fruits of your Spirit are everywhere apparent, and for those fruits we give thanks even as we raise the special needs and concerns of those who are near and dear to our hearts into thy loving presence…