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“Pentecost,” Rev. Melissa St. Clair, 5/24/15

While Pentecost celebrates the birth of the church, it’s not a festival that originated with Christianity.  Like so many of our traditions, it has its roots in Judaism.  Pentecost was first a Jewish festival commemorating the giving of the Law – in other words, the receiving of the Ten Commandments by Moses.  It was celebrated fifty days after the Passover, which reflected the tradition that Moses was given the Ten Commandments 50 days after the Exodus.[1]

The first Pentecost in what we claim as the Christian tradition doesn’t cast a familiar face in the starring role, though.  It’s not Moses.  It’s not the one who gave the Law, God.  It’s not Jesus.  And although Peter tries harder than we’re used to seeing him do, it’s not even him.  It’s the Spirit whose presence defines the day.

Jesus explains the Spirit to his disciples as part of his final teaching before his crucifixion.

READ JOHN 15:26-16:15

This hurts me more than it hurts you.

It’s for your own good.

It’ll be better before your married.

(Okay, that last one might have been unique to our family.)

Things parents say that kids roll their eyes at; I may not have kids, but I do have parents.

It’s after dinner that Jesus levels this heavy duty stuff on his disciples.  If he’d asked me, I’d say that wasn’t really the best timing.  He already talked all through the meal, and I don’t know how it is in your house, but in ours growing up, everyone tends to go their own separate ways after the dishes were cleared.  But Jesus…Jesus just keeps going on: the vine and branches; I have called you friends; love one another…and now this.  I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away.

Lest you think the disciples have suddenly increased their capacity for comprehension, it’s not long after Jesus says all this that they’re asking amongst themselves, “What does he mean?   We don’t know what he’s talking about.”  My hunch is, they understood the words Jesus was saying.  But believing them and figuring out what they would mean for them; that was another story all together.

It would be easy to feel the same way about the Pew Research Center’s most recent study, the results of which came out last week.

It reported that between 2007 and 2014, “the Christian share of the population (in the U.S.) fell from 78.4 percent to 70.6 percent, driven mainly by declines among mainline Protestants and Catholics.” Evangelicals are in decline too, just at a slower pace. All the while, the religiously unaffiliated grew from 16.1 percent to 22.8 percent.

On Pentecost Sunday, “we celebrate the first century birth of a chaotic Christian movement” while sitting in our 21st-century churches that are, statistically speaking, in a spiral of decline.  In the words of a colleague: “Couldn’t Pew have waited a few weeks to release their dismal findings? You know — just let us throw our birthday party before we have to plan our funeral.”

As we read accounts from John and Acts, we do so with a fair amount of context.  Historians have helped paint a picture of the earliest days of the Christian movement: the social conditions, the early church gatherings, the rituals.

And yet that’s not the whole picture.

People had to tell stories to convey how it felt to be there. 

When the Feast of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. Without warning there was a sound like a strong wind, gale force — no one could tell where it came from. It filled the whole building. Then, like a wildfire, the Holy Spirit spread through their ranks, and they started speaking in a number of different languages as the Spirit prompted them ….Their heads were spinning; they couldn’t make head or tail of any of it. They talked back and forth, confused: “What’s going on here?” Others joked, “They’re drunk on cheap wine.”

 Acts 2:1-4; 12-13, The Message

These Pew studies matter because the statistics they report have a lot to say about the social trends of church attendance in our current context. And yet it’s hard for statistics to convey what it’s like to get caught up in the movement of a congregation’s life — even in a precarious era like ours.  Stories do a better job of that.[2]

In the aftermath of a nationally broadcast school shooting, churches in a nearby town worked together to establish a presence in local schools, not to proselytize children but to show support for teachers and students alike.  To let them know that there were people in the community who cared about them.

A family going through the foster-adopt process didn’t go unnoticed by their church family.  A member of the congregation took it upon herself to not only take care of the kids for an evening; she also gave the parents a gift card to go out and enjoy a meal together.  That simple act evolved into a congregationally-supported county-wide respite program for foster, adoptive, and kinship families.

There’s the congregation that saw the children in their community in need of a wide network of social services that would be easy to access.  They had plenty of land that they knew could serve this purpose.  They worked with community partners and agencies that shared the same dreams for kids and families, even creating a separate non-profit to help steward the mission and vision of that concept.  While the project didn’t take off initially, a few years down the road they found themselves with a second chance at doing something big in and for and with their community.

Churches that open the doors of their historic buildings for creative partnerships with nonprofits and community groups that are desperate for affordable space in which to conduct their good work, refusing to allow the brick and mortar and stone they own to become protected shrines to their past.

The congregation who did a study of their neighborhood and surrounding communities, their spending habits, and their commitment to mission and didn’t like what they found. They discovered that most of the money people had given to their ministry was being used to maintain their building.  They prayed.  They studied.  And they determined that the mission of serving the world in love was more important than a particular building or location.  So they sold their building and changed their name to reflect their mission, not their location.  Today is their last day worshipping together there before they move into space that they could afford to renovate with plenty of resources left over to support local ministries and to minister to more people who are looking for a seat at Christ’s table.[3]

These are all churches I know. You know some of them, too.  You’re part of some of those stories.

God is more interested in how we’re getting caught up in her Spirit than how much anxiety we can produce over the latest stats.

Because here’s the deal.  (This is not easy to say on Pentecost Sunday, of all days.)  We, as a congregation, really aren’t guaranteed a future. Every now and then, we need to put the security of our institutional life on the line for something we really believe in.

As a colleague suggests, at least once every decade or so, churches need to do something so audacious and risky that it can still be said, “Folks in the community talked back and forth about that church, confused, saying, ‘What’s going on here?’ And others joked, ‘They must be drunk on cheap wine.”’

Oh, and the thing about this “Pentecost lifestyle”?  All were gathered in one place.  We’re in it together.  Our future belongs to God and we belong to God and one another.  One congregation sharing the mission and vision of Loving God. Serving others. Changing lives.

To borrow from a preacher far more well-known than myself:

There is no longer founding member or first-timer,

there is no longer 8:30 or 11:00er;

there is no longer this ministry or that ministry;

there is no longer yay vote or nay vote;

for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.

(Galatians 3:28, adapted)

[1] Crouch, Frank L., Commentary of Acts 2:1-21.  Retrieved from www.workingpreacher.org.

[2] Preceding paragraphs adapted from Cody Sanders, A birthday party on our deathbed: Pentecost and the Pew study. Published in Perspectives: Baptist Global News. Posted May 22, 2015. Read full article here: https://baptistnews.com/perspectives/a-birthday-party-on-our-deathbed-pentecost-and-the-pew-study/

[3] From Shawnee Community Christian Church’s website: http://shawneepark.org.