May 28, 2023 - Pentecost
Acts 2:1-21 & Leviticus 23:33-43
Deborah Laforet
Preacher Pilgrimage
Let us pray. May the words from my lips and the meditations of my heart be guided by your Spirit and be words of wisdom for this day. Amen.
This morning I want to share two stories with you, a personal story and a historical one. I’ll start with the historical one.
Did you know Pentecost is not just a Christian holiday? In the greek, Pente means fifty. We celebrate Pentecost 50 days after Easter or seven weeks after Easter. We recognize it as the birthday of the church, when the disciples of Jesus became more than just followers, but apostles, meaning they began to preach the good news, continue the work of Jesus, and inspire new followers and apostles. And it just so happens that there was a crowd of people in Jerusalem that day, a multitude of Jewish people from all over, speaking multiple languages. Why were they there?
Most of us are familiar with Passover, an important day for the Jewish people, honouring and remembering the release of the Hebrew people who were enslaved by the Egyptians. It’s a day of praising God, giving thanks for their salvation, and remembering their responsibility as a people who were freed. The passage that Judith read from us is from the the third book in the bible, and it’s a series of instructions from God, including the holy days they were to honour. Yahweh passed on the following instruction to Moses, “On the fifteenth day of this seventh month and lasting seven days, there shall be the Festival of Booths to the Lord. Yahweh continues to give them instructions as to how they will honour this day.
This is one of those holy pilgrimage days, that required all Jewish men to travel to Jerusalem. So 50 days after Passover, they brought their offerings to the temple in Jerusalem to be burnt in celebration of the harvest. Now, imagine this city of Jerusalem, packed with Jewish people from all over, speaking many languages. There were parades, rituals, burnt offerings. Imagine the sights, the sounds, the smells, the push and pull of people, the reunions, the conflicts, the overcrowded inns and roads. It was a time to which I’m sure many looked forward and others dreaded. I’m not sure what I would compare it to today except the pilgrimages that still occur in Jerusalem of Jews, Christians, and Muslims.
This was the time the Holy Spirit chose to descend upon these disciples of Jesus. It would have had to be a violent wind or no one would have noticed. It would have had to be tongues of fire upon each disciples to be unusual enough to look twice. And think of the cacophony of different languages and the utter surprise when everyone - everyone from all over their known world - realized they were able to understand these Galileans in their own language. It’s quite astonishing if you truly try to imagine the scene.
Now for my second story. Last week, I went to Minneapolis for an event called the Festival of Homiletics. Homiletics is basically a fancy theological word for preaching. The event was held at two churches and on the first day, we were all crowded, over 1000 of us, into a very large church for worship and to hear our first preacher, which was the current presiding bishop and primate of the Episcopalian church in the US. Now at a preaching festival, you can imagine that most of the people, almost all of the people present, were preachers - clergy, ministers, pastors, worship leaders, however they might identify. Imagine this vast space filled up with over a thousand of us, making this ‘pilgrimage’ from all over the US and Canada, sometimes further, to hear amazing preachers, to gather with colleagues, to worship and sing together (the singing was amazing!), and absorbing thoughts and ideas to bring home to whatever context in which we preach ourselves. On this first evening, we sang “We Shall Overcome” together. It was powerful.
Was the Spirit in this place? I want to share two moments with you. The first one is with a video. The Rev. Otis Moss III is a pastor at Trinity United Church in South Chicago. He preached about the body, the glorified body and the problematic image we, especially we in the church, have of the body. It was a long sermon and I have pared it down to three and half minutes. Hopefully you’ll get the gist.
Play Video
The second moment that stands out to me was a workshop in which Luke Power led us all in the singing of “There is a Balm in Gilead.” (Play sound). We sang all the verses, we sang the chorus a few times, we then just hummed. Again, you get hundreds of people in one space, singing harmonies, you feel the Spirit.
Now as far as I know, everyone there spoke English, BUT that doesn’t mean everyone there spoke the same language. There were people there from the episcopal church, the United Church of Christ, Presbyterian, United Methodist, and of course the United Church of Canada. I met people from Texas, California, Illinois, Florida, Massachusetts, Ontario, Alberta, and online, there were people from all over the world. There were white people, black people, indigenous people, asian people, queer people, people of different abilities, different ages, some who had been to several preaching festivals and some were there for the first time. All gathered together in one place, at one time, and for the same purpose - to hear the word of God, to be inspired, and hopefully to experience the Spirit, which I certainly did.
The Festival of Booths is a Jewish festival that has been celebrated for thousands of years. Pentecost is a Christian festival that has been celebrated and remembered for over 2000 years. The experiences of the Spirit though can happen anywhere and in anyplace. We take time on Pentecost, every year, seven weeks after Easter, to honour the Holy Spirit as a gift to us, a gift that inspires, a gift that fires us up, a gift that provides the passion and energy we need to do the work of God in this world.
We must remember though that the Spirit is not restricted to holy days and festivals. The whole point, and one of the reasons we compare the Spirit to fire, is that it is unpredictable, unexpected, dangerous, sometimes unwanted, devastating, and scary. The Spirit is sent by God with a holy plan, and that may not fit our plans. That may not fit where we want to go. We may try to turn away or run away, but another aspect of fire is that it is mesmerizing. It draws our attention and holds our attention. It’s beautiful and it’s powerful.
We need to remember that many of these apostles, the original followers of Jesus, who were there on this day, the birthday of the church, inspired by the Spirit to talk about God and spread the message of Jesus, were later killed, just as Jesus was, for daring to speak of a different kind of kingdom, and a different way of living in peace and with justice. Living at the direction of the Spirit is not for the faint of heart.
But we’re not meant to do it alone. It’s why we evangelize. It’s not about ‘saving’ people, to make people believe in Jesus as Christ so they can enter the heavenly hereafter when they die. Evangelizing, preaching the good news, sharing the Spirit with others, is about coming together and working towards the vision of God’s kingdom, never on our own, always in community. It’s why preachers from all over gather once a year for a festival, to be inspired and to be in community with others who are doing the same work. It’s why we come together all year round, to inspire each other and to be in community with others who care for each other and the community in which we live. So, happy birthday church, and thank god, we are never alone. Amen.