Sermon
For those of us who grew into the age of technology instead of growing up in the age of technology, we sometimes ask ourselves how is technology helpful? Certainly with regards to safety, medical needs, speed of information, it is great. I am of the age where I find it mostly helpful in my personal life, but sometimes I find it leads to much more confusion and disconnect than I am willing to try to navigate.
But here are two ways that I have found it helpful most recently.
First, I discovered that I can find out exactly where the Mr. Softee truck is in my neighborhood – by looking at an app. The out of tune jingle that comes from a Mr. Softee ice cream truck sends me back to my childhood when all the kids on the block would stop whatever game they were playing in the street upon hearing that sound, and run back home to ask for money for ice cream from our parents. Our parents usually came out for the ice cream too, and it made for a great impromptu block party on a warm summer evening. An app for ice cream. I think that is precisely what technology is for, don't you?
Here's another way it is useful. I had a flute student who was 10 years old and something of a prodigy. He came to me after playing the flute for about 4 years in China. He didn't speak any English, and I am not able to speak any Chinese. So we used Google Translate for everything. Also a great use of technology in my life.
I was using technology this week naturally, looking for interesting information about Pentecost. I found it a bit ironic to look up an article about Pentecost, the text about understanding despite differing languages, and the first thing I see on the page is a button that says, “Select language.”
“Wait,” I think to myself, “I thought Pentecost took care of that.”
There are conflicting ideas about language in this text from Acts. Some say the apostles were given the ability to speak languages different from their own so that they could speak the gospel to those around them from other countries. Others say that all of the people who were there who spoke so many different languages were given the ability to hear languages that they could not previously understand. What is not in doubt is that the Holy Spirit made the proclamation of the gospel possible and available to all nations, completing the instructions from Jesus in Matthew 28:19, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” What's not in doubt is that the Holy Spirit took differences and made them an asset, not a barrier.
This text is not the first mention of God's spirit. The word for breath, spirit, “ru'ah” is the same word used for what God breathed on the void to create the earth. It's the same word for when God breathed life into “adam'ah” the one created from the earth, from the dust, the “ad'am.” King David speaks of the Spirit of the Lord throughout the psalms. Mary, the mother of Jesus is told in Luke 1:35, after she asks Gabriel how it is that she will bear a son when she has not yet been with a man. “The angel said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you;” And of course, in Joel, which Peter quotes in his statement explaining the amazing event they have all just witnessed, the promise is that God's spirit will be poured out on all flesh.
This makes me wonder why this text from Acts that we read on Pentecost leads us to call Pentecost the birthday of the Church. Why wasn't the birth of the church at creation, or at any of the covenants since we are all children of Abraham? Or maybe at the birth of Christ, or at Easter?
There is a website called Quora.com that calls itself “a place to share knowledge and better understand the world.” The information on the site comes from users so it's crazy to think of it as a place of authority. If you look up Pentecost there you hear from self-described authorities such as Ben Gordon Burns, As I am generally house bound I spend most of my time researching the Bible; and, Bill Hughes, former Division Chief - Retired at Missile Defense Agency (2009-2016); and Ian MacKinnell, Neuro-untypical postgraduate in philosophy, who tells us that the word birthday never appears in the bible and we shouldn't waste our time on these questions. He says Pentecost was when Jesus said, “over to you.” (https://www.quora.com/Why-is-Pentecost-the-birthday-of-the-Church)
Hey, it's on the internet, so it must be true, right? These are examples of the frustrations of technology. Accessible does not necessarily mean useful or truthful.
The answer to how we define church, and how we define the mission of the church depends on how we define church. Once we have a definition, we can decide with more certainty when it began.
For us, we are talking about the Christian Church. We know that the Christian Church didn't become an entity until Emperor Constantine converted to Christianity and made it the religion of the land, and that wasn't until 312 years after Jesus' death. “One God, one Lord, one faith, one church, one empire, one emperor” became his motto. By 381 CE a Council affirmed what was called the Nicene Creed, that primarily answered the question of the place of the Holy Spirit in the trinity.
That Nicene Creed is the first confession in our denomination's Book of Confessions. The Book of Confessions now has 11 Confessions, the latest Confession being added in 2016, The Belhar Confession of Faith.
The Book of Confessions is a central part of the constitution of our denomination. We don't hear of it much, but it is really a fascinating book. The motto of our denomination is “Reformed and always Reforming under the authority of Scripture.” The Book of Confessions is like a map of how and why the church has taken the turns that it has and tells us a lot about why our denomination believes and acts on the world the way it does.
In that light, it is fascinating to see that the Holy Spirit is not a new term, not a modern day “touchy feely” phrase, not something easily explained away by anything. Since it's inception the Church has included the Holy Spirit in all of its statements about what is important. If the Holy Spirit is so important, and it has been around since the beginning of creation, why would a day 40 days after Jesus' resurrection be the Birth-day of the church? What exactly was born that day?
The answer has to do with the mission of the church. For that we can look to our own baptism.
The formula used for baptism in our church includes a liturgy filled with promises we make and promises Jesus made to us, and includes the reason why baptism is a sacrament for us. In Matthew 28:13 we read, “And Jesus came and said to them, 'All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
Our baptism is an outward sign of the gift of God that has already been granted to us, a sign that we are a part of this covenant that Jesus promised for us. After that baptism we have all heard or maybe our parents heard words to the effect of “N., child of the covenant, you have been sealed by the Holy Spirit in baptism and marked as Christ's own forever.”
After the gift of the Holy Spirit on this day of Pentecost, a pilgrim's holiday at the time celebrating the harvest, about 3,000 were baptized. Pentecost represents the coming of the one thing, the source, that we need in order to proclaim all that we proclaim. Pentecost, “is a story of how, through the power of the Holy Spirit, the church is gifted with an identity and an authority centered in the proclamation of the gospel.” (Kristine Emery Saldine, Feasting on the Word Series, Vol. 3, p. 2)
The most recent confession in our map of how the church has responded to the world it finds itself in, is The Belhar Confession. The one before that was The Brief Statement of Faith.
Each confession has been a response by our national church to serious issues of its time. The Brief Statement of Faith was created as a response to two denominations of the Presbyterian Church division from one another over the subject of slavery. It wasn't until 1991 that these two denominational parts joined one another and became our denomination, the PC(USA). The confession adopted before that was from 1967. There are only 12 confessions between the year 300 and today. Each time there was a world/church issue. A road map of the church in the world. A road map of the church fulfilling the mission from Matthew 28 initiated with Pentecost and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit to the apostles and disciples. 1967, 1991 and 2016 were the most recent.
In 2016 we added another confession. On our path as a denomination we have never been silent about social justice issues. Racism in the world and the church was rising and in 2004 the national denomination asked our churches to look into issues of racism and reparations. We came across the Belhar Confession, written in 1986.1 Written in response to the circumstances of apartheid in South Africa, this confession dealt with racism in that country that began in the church there and became the law of the land later. While “clearly, Belhar is a specific act of confession that emerged out of a specific context – a context that is non-European and non-North American”2 the PC(USA) felt that it held particular points of interest that would be useful to our work against racism in our country and in our churches. From 2004 onward we undertook to study the confession and in 2016 The Belhar Confession was added.
The work that our national church asked the denomination to study began in 2004, culminated in a new addition to our book of confessions in 2016. And today, we have come through some of the harshest discrimination and violence against black and brown and AAPI communities. What will be the next point on our map of the church in the world? The denomination's efforts to become a Matthew 25 denomination is a continuation of that work.
I point all this out not so that you can take notes and have a history lesson. But rather, to know, and to notice, that the Holy Spirit has never stopped working to help the people of God proclaim the good news of God. You and I today are in the same struggle and the same circumstances as the apostles and disciples and early Christians, and the Roman Emperor, and civilizations and peoples of God have always been in. We have been given the Holy Spirit in order to do the work of God's mission in the world. The mission of feeding the hungry and clothing the naked like we do with the shelter and through our help with the Brazilian church; by visiting the sick and comforting them like we do through our deacons, our newsletter, our notes and calls; by welcoming strangers when we are able to keep our doors open soon, and invite our neighbors to come to our advent luminaries star; I'm sure you could think of so many more that were before my time.
Today, we celebrate the Holy Spirit that has blown through these doors and windows and through our garden and over our hill and been the life breath of so many. We give thanks for the gift of the Holy Spirit to fill our individual hearts and to become manifest in our community over so many years. And we pray that the Holy Spirit continue to breath in us, blow through us, lift our spirits and show us how to be the community of Christ, come to spread the good news of the gospel!
With the power of the spirit let's pray,
______________________________
1 This is a translation of the original Afrikaans text of the confession as it was adopted by the synod of the Dutch Reformed Mission Church in South Africa in 1986. In 1994 the Dutch Reformed Mission Church and the Dutch Reformed Church in Africa united to form the Uniting Reformed Church in Southern Africa (URCSA). This inclusive language text was prepared by the Office of Theology and Worship, Presbyterian Church (USA).
2 From the study guide to the Belhar Confession for study in PCUSA churches, p. 13
In 1829, “some rural Dutch churches specifically asked for separate facilities and services. Properly understanding a theology of the Lord's Supper, the synod said no. There was to be no distinction among the baptized, all of whom are welcome at the Lord's Table. By the mid-19th century, however, church officials reversed their earlier, clear decision. They allowed for the “weakness” of others (1 Corinthians 10:28) who did not understand or could not accept that the unity of the church meant very concretely racial unity. Thus, the church now permitted division – separation – along racial lines. But, ominously, what started as permission eventually became a legally enforced policy, not only in the church, but in society as well.