Sermon for the Day of Pentecost

May 23, 2010

Growing up in the deep South, I pretty much got used to hearing people ask me if I’d been saved. I took some comfort in the fact that it wasn’t just me. The saved would ask anyone they thought might still need redeeming, and they would ask pretty boldly. I heard the question in all kinds of settings, and even though the question always made me a bit uncomfortable, I had to admire the tactics of some of those weekday preachers who seemed able to slip an inquiry as to the condition of one’s soul into any conversation.

Part of my problem with the question about being saved had to do with my being an Episcopalian. Episcopalians, at least the ones I knew, didn’t go around asking such questions. And, to complicate maters, some of the signs of un-savedness cited by those concerned preachers, drinking, cussing, dancing and lusting, just to name a few, were all practiced by good upstanding Episcopalians I knew and liked and trusted. I was an accepted member of one Christian community being preached at by members of another Christian community who seemed to be trying to pull me over to their side. Those preachers seemed a bit scary. But my friends, the Christians I was familiar with, never expressed any concern about my soul so I wondered. I was, for a time, pulled in two directions. I was caught in the kind of tension that can only be understood through theological reflection, so in my teenage years, before I had any idea what theology was I became a theologian. That is to say, I came to understand that there were differing ideas about God and church and I was going to have to think about it all for a while.

One of the notions that helped me remain an Episcopalian, aside from that list of Episcopalian benefits I mentioned earlier, was a question that began to explain my discomfort with those soul-saving zealots. I wondered, isn’t there more to all this than saving souls? If you get everyone to accept Jesus, then what? What would it all be about if everyone said, “ok. I’m in.” It just seemed to me that the focus for a lot of those other folks was so much on who’s in and who’s out that there wasn’t much discussion of what it would mean to be in, what life would be about, what difference one would make in the world after they were saved. Except, of course, going out and asking other folks if they were saved, and I didn’t feel cut out for that work so I stayed with what I had.

And through these last forty or so years since that time, I have come to believe more and more that the faith we claim, the faith Jesus commended to us isn’t about who’s in with God and who’s out. It isn’t about being saved. It is about what kind of difference we will make in the world because we are a part of God , a part of God’s creative work in the world. I think that is what Jesus came to tell us, but we miss it so easily because we humans just seem to be hard wired for “us versus them.” Jesus showed up in the midst of a people who had, as one of the central organizing principals of their faith, the idea that they were special. That they were different from everyone else around them. In story after story, Jesus tried to break open that idea and break down the strong sense of “us and them” that ran through the faith of his people, but it was a hard message and we are still struggling with it. If we hear it and grapple with it this message of inclusion will make theologians out of all of us and that’s not a bad thing.

Jesus came when he did because the time was right for this new message of inclusion. We hear that in the stories for this Day of Pentecost.

First we have a story from Israel’s mythology explaining why God might have created diversity. That story is followed by one about God deciding that the time was right for us to know our common relationship with the creator.

The story of the Church after Pentecost is not about salvation, about who is in and who is out, but about community and about growing into a new understanding and a new role in the universe. After all those years of seeing themselves set apart, the only ones privileged enough to hear the voice of God, the time now comes when everyone hears the same voice in their own language. Being saved, being part of the inside group, is no longer the agenda. The agenda now has something to do with living in community with people whose ways and languages and understandings are different from our own. “In the last days,” says God, “I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh.” All flesh. The who’s in and who’s out question has been settled. We’re all in. Everybody.

That question being settled, we are ready, or at least Jesus seems to think we are ready for the real question. The real question, the one for our time, can be summed up in two words. Now what? We never again have to worry about being separated from God. God is as close as our breath, our flesh, our thoughts. Now what? What difference will the knowledge that God is with us make in our lives? What difference will it make in the world in which we live and work and make choices every day that affect the people around us?

From very early in the Christian story, the message turned back from what Jesus taught about inclusion and acceptance and began to focus once again on who’s in and who’s out. We Christians have struggled with the pull of that simpler, more comfortable message since the beginning. It is easy to be in. We have rituals, our names go on lists, and if who’s in and who’s out is the question we are finished when we cross the line. We Christians have always been tempted to focus our attention there.

What is harder and what we have to keep coming back to is the work for which we were empowered in that Pentecost story, the work of being God’s hands and hearts in the world. This way of understanding what it means to be a Christian is more difficult because we can never finish its work. We can never reach a place where we can say, we’ve arrived.

This week you may go out and work in the local soup kitchen. Eventually you realize that the soup kitchen exists because of other problems that require your attention. Soon you are attending the local town hall meeting, and maybe in another year or two or twenty, you have the names and contact information for all your elected representatives stuck on the refrigerator. This year you buy a Prius because you begin to see that even though you can afford a gas guzzeling car you have an obligation to future generations to protect the environment they will inherit. In a few years you may be riding a bicycle. Living out the “what now” question involves an ever deepening understanding that we must let go of some of what we might claim as “our rights” so that others can have better lives.

As we approach this Pentecost life of giving and sacrifice and growing concern for the welfare of others--the life Jesus taught--it looks hard. There is much I am not ready to give up. Much I hope I will never have to give up, but I know there is still much I could give up, and that doing so would make a difference to others. The Pentecost life involves treating everyone as neighbor--everyone as someone who is in--a part of the group we are so glad to be a part of. It involves living our lives with their best interests at heart. That life doesn’t come easily to us, but it is the life to which the new church was called, the life to which we are still called.

The call is not easy, so thank God for the rest of today’s message. The part about how that new fledgling little group, people trying, hoping to be faithful, found within them on that day resources they had not expected. We will go out into the world today--we will leave this place in a little while-- reminded, trusting, I hope, maybe even rejoicing in the power of the Spirit that draws us all together and empowers us for the work of community. Amen