The Rev. Neale L. Miller

Sermon for May 11, 2008

Texts: Numbers 11:24-30/Acts 2:1-21

Title: “Pentecost”

              Parthians, Medes, Elamites, residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus, and Asia, Phrygia, Pamphylia, Egypt, and not a Presbyterian in the bunch.  The Spirit was turned to high heat in the Jerusalem square on that Pentecost day, but there was nary a Presbyterian to be singed. 

                  Ecstatic displays are so not us.  We Presbyterians are inclined to look suspiciously upon the outwardly demonstrative forms of religious expression.  Located nearer the “buttoned down” end of the religious spectrum, emotionalism is not part of our heritage.  The inner convictions of the heart are seldom enacted in an outward display.  Opportunities to make public profession of faith through such means as altar call are seldom, if ever, offered.

              We Presbyterians are the folks who do things “decently and in order.” Nothing against the Spirit, mind you, but we look to the Bible as our principle means of connecting with God.  We Presbyterians maintain the belief that the Bible is the written testament to God’s self-revelation. John Calvin, to whom we look as the founder of our tradition, did not waiver in his determination to assert the centrality of scripture in the life of the church. “Scripture [he writes] gathering up the otherwise confused knowledge of God in our minds, having dispersed our dullness, clearly shows us the true God. [continuing] ‘This, therefore, is a special gift, where God, to instruct the church, not merely uses mute teachers [the scriptures] but also opens his own most hallowed lips.  Not only does he teach the elect to look upon a god, but also shows himself as the God upon whom they are to look.” Scripture for Calvin represented more than mere words on a page, Scripture was the vehicle through which God revealed God’s self.

              Scripture was the beating pulse of the churches Calvin established and preached in.  Every word spoken in God’s name, or anything the Calvin’s congregations did in God’s name, was established on biblical precedent. All persons associating with the church were expected to live a Bible based life, the non-conformist found himself subjected to ostracism and shunned.

              In an era when the priests and hierarchy in the Catholic Church regarded Scripture as their exclusive franchise, Calvin and the other Reformers insisted that the Bible was the people’s book. Shunning the ostentation and ritual of the Catholic mass, the Reformers, dressed in simply gowns like the one I am wearing, preached directly from the Bible expounding on the Word line by line, chapter by chapter, book by book, Genesis through Revelation, shunning choral music and instrumentation, and any other practice, that might divert the churchgoer’s mind away from the Word.

              Keep in mind worship was not an activity in which the churchgoer engaged in once a week for an hour, worship was a full Sunday  commitment, with week night serves as well, two or three hours in length. The consequences of missing worship, or in any other way bringing offense to God and the church, were severe, arrest and jail time not uncommon.      

              Calvin and the other Reformers took seriously their guardianship of the Word, and were committed to defending it against anyone who misused it or diminished it.  In his “Institutes of the Christian Religion,” his personal testament to the faith, Calvin has a section he labeled “Fanatics, abandoning scripture and flying over to revelation, cast down all the principles of godliness.”  Calvin had in his sights a group of people who were caught up in a religious frenzy.  He writes, “For of late, certain giddy men have arisen who, with great haughtiness exalting the teaching office of the Spirit, despise all reading and laugh at the simplicity of those who, as they express it, still follow the dead and killing letter.  But I should like to know from them what this spirit is by whose inspiration they are borne up so high that they dare despise the Scriptural doctrine as childish and mean.”         

              Calvin was attacking those who believed that the Holy Spirit was all-sufficient in yielding knowledge of God, that scripture could effectively add nothing to that which the Holy Spirit had already delivered. Calvin believed that the Holy Spirit was not merely a gift to select individuals; it was God’s gift to the church, a gift mediated through the Word and sacraments.

              All that crowd gathered in Jerusalem on Pentecost and not a Presbyterian in the bunch.  Decently and in order is how we do.  We are given to the cerebral over the emotional, more restrained than expressive. Yet though we may be less given to outward displays than others, we are no less a Pentecost people. We believe that God revealed his holy purposes in the Pentecost event, reaching across boundaries to unite people of all faith persuasions into one family, the church.

              The people in the Jerusalem square were flat out amazed, “In our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.”  Fast forward to today. We have denominated ourselves into religious traditions, with histories, rituals, beliefs, and languages that establish our unique identities as Presbyterians, Lutherans, Catholics, and Pentecostalists.  Most within these separate traditions, however, recognize that God’s gift of the Spirit was not conferred as an exclusive right to the Presbyterian, the Lutheran, or the Catholic.  We Christians collectively believe in one God revealed to us in three persons whose will is revealed, not through Spirit or Word, but present in the Spirit illumined written word.

                 Pentecost was not a showcase for a spiritual elite to demonstrate their possession of special gifts from God; rather it demonstrated God’s commitment to people of all humanity. “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans?  And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language.”

                The great challenge of the church of every age has been to help people who may have never heard, or who may have misheard the message Jesus Christ brought to earth, become acquainted with their spiritual giftedness as children of God. We know that the Apostle Paul in particular understood his call from Christ to be one of crossing boundaries.  He understood that baptism in Christ’s name was a baptism in the Spirit.  “For [he writes]in the one Spirit were all baptized into one body---Jews or Greeks, slaves or free---and we were all made to drink of one Spirit.”

               Unfortunately, however, the elitism against which Calvin took aim continues to infect the body. This denomination, that group within a denomination, those outside denominations, have asserted their particular claims to divine truth. Extracting from scripture validation for their personal beliefs, their particular theological positions, and their preferred agendas, they deem suspicious anyone who might challenge them.

                The great sin of the Church, and those who speak in its name, is that to which the Apostle Paul pointed in criticizing divisions in the Corinthian church: “Indeed [he writes] the body does not consist of one member but of many.  If the foot would say, ‘Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,’ that would not make it any less a part of the body.  And if the ear would say, ‘Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,’ that would not make it any less a part of the body.  If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be?  If the whole body were hearing, where would the sense of smell be? But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them as he chose.” 

                   From the time of the first Pentecost, Christians have given personal agendas preference over those that Christ endorsed. Claiming I have the Spirit, I have no need of you.  Claiming I have God’s Word, I have no need of you. Claiming I know Christ’s priorities, I have no need of you.  Claiming I, or we know, to the exclusion of others, may have no other result than to cut us off from God who is the ultimate source of knowledge.

                  In a recent article, John Buchanan, pastor of Fourth Presbyterian Church in Chicago, and editor of “Christianity Today,” rightly focused the agenda of the Church and did so around the two sacraments Jesus gave the church. Buchanan tells us that not long ago he went west to participate in the baptism of his newly born granddaughter.  A quite conventional Presbyterian baptism in one of the denomination’s small member churches---those small churches proliferate today---Buchanan reflected on the power of baptism and holy communion, which was also celebrated that day, to connect that small church with the whole church of Jesus Christ.  The sacraments are the church’s connective tissue.

                    In these past several months we at Lakeview have been involved in what I believe is a quite significant reappraisal of what church ministry and mission are all about. That reappraisal has challenged me, your session, and other members of the congregation to rethink well established assumptions and practices. Those of us who have been involved in those efforts recognize we have a great deal of work to do.  Even as I am happy to acknowledge that in recent days a number of people have demonstrated their readiness to do that work, I am concerned, as many of you are, about the future here at Lakeview.  

                  When on this Pentecost Sunday we celebrate the anointing of the Spirit that signaled a new beginning for the people of God, effectively giving birth to the church, we may be wondering just how the Spirit might be active in the church today, or even if the Spirit has fled our churches.

                  John Buchanan candidly confesses his concerns about the church, but he does so with an important observation that gives this pastor hope.  Buchanan writes, “When I worry, as I often do, about the future of mainline churches, I will remember that Third Sunday in Easter [the Sunday his granddaughter was baptized] [I will remember that Sunday] and a small congregation of faithful men, women and children----and the thousands, upon thousands of others like them---keeping the faith, holding on to one another, baptizing infants, being the church.”

                With our reappraisal of our ministry I, and others who care about this church and its future, have been forced to acknowledge where we have missed opportunities in ministry, where we could have done better in this initiative or that, and it is important that those thing be acknowledged. It is also important, and perhaps we haven’t stressed this enough in recent days, we are succeeding where it counts “keeping faith, holding on to one another baptizing infants, being the church.”

              Pray with me that our faith as individuals and congregation may deepen, and yes, that we have more people to hold on to around here, more infants to baptize, and that we may become a church willing to cross whatever boundaries it might take in becoming the new creation God in Christ is calling us to be. AMEN.   

PRAYER

             Have your own way, Lord.  Have your own way. You, O God, are the potter and we are the clay.  Mold us into something beautiful, O Lord, that your glory may shine forth through us.  Mold us into something beautiful, O Lord, beautiful after the example of Christ, beautiful after the example of those who perpetuate his name on earth. Mold us, O Lord, and don’t stop molding us until that day when your holy purpose for us has been perfected.

             Living God, you hear the cries of the suffering in Myanmar, and sharing a common humanity we hear the cries, cries that must not be ignored. In your mercy, O God, remove barriers that prevent much needed aid from reaching victims. Soften the hearts of those who are deaf to the cries of their people, villains we are preventing recovery work from moving forward.  We pray for victims, but we also pray for aid workers and governments who are poised to offer relief. Be with those who are delivering aid and supplies, and those who in this very hour are preparing relief shipments, O God, that the wounded and bereft may be healed.

                 O God, abide with those who live under the curse of war.  Strengthen those whose days are lived in fear and uncertainty, never knowing when the next terrorist bomb will detonate, when the next family member will be kidnapped or go missing. Be with the people of Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Israel, and the occupied territories surrounding Israel, who must endure continuing flux and uncertainty, the knowledge that their travail may not end in their lifetimes. Be, O God, with those men and women who have the faith to dream dreams and envision a future where men and women may live in peace.

            Strengthen, O God, those whom the recent economic downturn has victimized. We pray for those who have lost a job, lost a home, lost health insurance, lost savings as invest income has eroded. We pray for those whom rising oil prices have victimized, particularly those who must make their living on the road. We pray for those who set economic policy and those who maintain the support networks that provide relief to the vulnerable.

               Abide, O God, with those who are campaigning for the presidency.  The rigors of the campaign continue to test Obama, McCain, and Clinton, even as weeks and months of more strain lie ahead.  May the three be endowed with stamina and courage as they continue their efforts, and may they enjoy the respect and gratitude their efforts merit.

                   We acknowledge our mothers with special gratitude today.  With what can we compare the constancy of a mother’s love, O God, but with the very love you have shown for us. Enrich, this day, O God, and make it a blessing for each mother.

                 O God, on this day of Pentecost we pray that your Spirit will continue to move across the church, forming us into the creation you intended us to be. Even as we acknowledge the divisions that continue to separate us, we know, O God, that Christ remains alive in the church to heal the breech our divisions create. We pray, O God, for the day when the church may become the one body Christ would have it to be, celebrating the efforts of those in the ecumenical committee who strive for unity.

Lord, we pray for this church as we seek to do your will.  We acknowledge with gratitude the many gifts we have been given, praying that you will grant us discernment and vision that we may use them wisely.  Grant us the gift of patience that we may be willing to accommodate uncertainty and setback, faith to labor on in all circumstances.

              Lord, we pray as is our custom for those who have special needs, praying for …