All This Time: A Sudden Pentecost 2022 Sermon
[Note: the heft of this sermon is what I preached last year for the Southwest California Synod Assembly’s closing worship service. I didn’t realize how much of that sermon would translate to the 2022 Sierra Pacific Synod Assembly. I rewrote this sermon as an offering to my Sierra Pacific Synod siblings who were on the assembly floor doing amazingly hard work.]
Breath is so deeply connected to life, and for so many moments in recent history, I feel like not just the world, but this synod, has held a collective breath and is still waiting to exhale. So many of us do not know how to be in the midst of reckonings of the long list of injustices that continue to plague us. Our synod assembly was deeply painful with so much hurt and trauma. Our synod assembly was also held by rules that felt complicated in communicating with our siblings in the faith. And. The more things change, like rules and regulations about how we’re to be in the church and the world, the more things stay the same… like holding our collective breath.
God calls us to breathe. Ever since God breathed life into that first human formed from the mud, the Spirit also breathes life into us, both individually and collectively. We are fearfully and wonderfully made, each in our own way as God saw to form and shape us. And. Together we are the body of Christ, the hands and the feet. The heart and the voice. God calls us to life abundant in the face of so much death. God calls us not into the wages of sin and death, not back into what St. Paul calls a “spirit of fear.” We’re called into life abundant, and that abundance doesn’t just look one sole certain way.
We are called to practices of life abundant for our neighbors and ourselves, not for self-serving purposes where we neglect the orphan, the widow, the sojourner, and those around us in need. That neglect causes ripples of harm and sorrow. Instead, we are called to places where the fire of the Holy Spirit clears a path for us, not to burn down everything in sight; to places where the Spirit’s flames light the way, having our collective sparks come together for something holy and illuminating. Powers and principalities will seek to tear us from the love of God and one another. Siblings of color, LGBTQ siblings are still living and dying in the midst of unjust situations, while those in power and privilege and work within those rules and regulations can no longer pay attention when it’s inconvenient. Siblings, we have much work to do. And. Know that we are together in this work, that we do not illumine our paths alone, but the Holy Spirit lights up the way for each and every one of us.
It is a leap of faith when we are launched into the unknown. To travel upon paths that have never been trod upon. To breathe in deeply, remembering as the Holy Spirit breathes into us, and to sometimes rely on that faith which God has so generously gifted to us. I feel like we’re at this moment, where as a denomination, we are at a crossroads. We’re standing at the point of intersections, wondering which path (or paths, let us not limit ourselves) the Spirit is leading us at this time; let us not forget that “for all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God.” We must also realize that we may not all be led in the same way and on the same manner, but we are led to the destination where God’s abundant love resides. Let us focus not on ourselves; let us focus on the destination. But what happens when the destination feels so far and the path seems so treacherous?
Lord, I believe, help my unbelief. That’s been my answer in these days of not knowing what’s going to happen in the next day, the next hour, and the next minute. Part of that is just the enormity of what’s happening in the world today, a broken world filled with so much conflict. Our own denomination is mired in it. Yet… I continue to be surprised.
The kingdom of God is surprising. It has already broken into our world in bizarre, surprising, and perplexing ways. Like Jesus, Son of God, the Word made flesh. Like Pentecost, the Holy Spirit breaking into a diverse group of people, helping us understand one another across our differences. Like the Holy Spirit working through us and with us today, 2,000 years after Jesus’ ministry… even with the church and world falling apart all around us. It is bizarre, surprising, perplexing… and beautiful and holy that we still gather as the body of Christ to this day, somehow and someway.
Jesus is in his appointed time and place, being with the disciples “all this time.” It’s no coincidence he’s a poor Brown Palestinian Jewish man living amid the brutal powers of Empire. As a poor Brown Palestinian Jewish man, Jesus is proclaiming what must take place for what has been happening “all this time.” And wow, it seems like it isn’t going so well for Jesus. He is telling his disciples what’s up; he’s trying to tell the disciples he’s leaving them and in not a pleasant way.
The disciples are not nodding their heads… You know those head nods, what we see when we’re physically together for a synod assembly, the heads nods of agreement when someone has said something stunning and profound? But there’s something about those head nods, y’all. It may be a nod of agreement, but what would it be to actually embody that agreement, to be present alongside our sibling in the faith who have lived “all this time” in oppressive systems and structures that have been so ingrained? It is one thing to talk a good game. But to actually put yourself into the game? Embodying your words, your head nods? That is something so entirely, radically, and terrifyingly different. It is what we’ve been called to do “all this time.”
Yet we’re past the head nods. What has been deemed as regular, usual, and normal is being rewritten with the Living Word, the Word made flesh. In today’s Gospel, Philip wants to know he’s right. Philip wants there to be certainty, for there to be rules. Who gets to make and enforce the rules? Do the rules bring life abundant for everyone, or are they being used as a marker to determine who has “control”… and who does not? And what about those who don’t play by the rules?
I’ve wondered a lot about rules as of late. Not just the laws of the land and how those laws have done harm to communities forced to the margins, but how the ELCA’s own rules, its polity, has forcefully created “insiders” and “outsiders.” Rules that have been enforced by those in religious authority has revealed across synods that how the ELCA’s polity is enacted is not aligned with the Gospel. The ELCA’s rules are aligned with a system that continues to take and take and take from us; these are rules of a non-profit operating in a capitalist system. And y’all. That is NOT what Jesus wanted for us. We are not called to bleed out on one another.
What the powers of sin and death try to do is to not just limit our faith, but to find ways to weaken it. To break it apart, tear it asunder. What the powers of sin and death try to do is to disguise themselves as what is supposed to be right and good; but instead of being right and good when it finds an entry point, the powers of sin and death attempt to do what they do best — to maim, kill, and destroy.
Revelation after revelation is occurring within our communities, within our synods, within our denomination of those new places we are called to be, the paths that have yet to be traveled. We cry out, “Abba! Father!” because this is hard. These revelations are also showing us that what has worked for “many” has not worked for “all.” So many have been disenfranchised, violently forced to the margins of this church…. And that’s where Jesus is. Jesus isn’t in the synod office. I’m sure he’d visit, but Jesus’s ministry, as he reveals to us throughout the Gospels, is not with those in authority. Philip is asking, “Show us the Father?” and Jesus is responding, “Don’t you get it? It’s more than just a sole certainty. The Father’s been with you all this time.”
We’re so used to playing into oppressive systems and structures that we ask, “Where do we obey?” We’re being told that while we think we know, we don’t. God comes to surprise us. God shows us the way we think is God’s way… not our distorted way. Jesus is with those the ELCA’s polity ignores and has deemed as “other.” Jesus has been with them “all this time.” He’s just waiting for everyone to catch up. All this time. And there are moments where we do get it. But before we go patting ourselves on the back and priding ourselves on what we’ve done, we must come together and ponder critically, what was it about the Spirit that has called us to this time, to this place, to this moment?
An Advocate has been given to us; the power of the Holy Spirit girds and supports us. The Spirit of fire that lights us up to go and do likewise and lights up our path and sets our hearts aflame. The Spirit that meets us in the water, to clean and bathe and soothe. It is the time to challenge those with power and privilege. For those with power and privilege, it’s time to ask, what do I need to do to ensure the valleys are made high and the mountains made low… to have an active and engaged part in making this church just and equitable and not simply diverse? We say a good game, but our words are not made flesh. This is the time to recognize, especially on Pentecost, that the realm of God cannot be contained. It cannot be held back. Those among us, our own siblings, may attempt to restrain us in how the Spirit moves us to proclaim and incarnate the Gospel.
Ask yourselves, in Jesus’ name, that we challenge systems and structures that separate us from one another, that cause us to harm one another. May we be open to the moves of the Spirit to help us, to guide us, to do God’s will, to live out the words that many of us say often, “thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”
With whom will we engage in this holy, radical, terrifying, exciting, work to ensure life abundant not just for some, but for all? When will we realize that we are the inheritors of Pentecost, people of different locations, different tongues, yet forming Christ’s body here and now? Anyone baptized into the death and resurrection of Christ is our sibling in the faith. We are woven into God’s family, all of us. We are not alone in proclaiming and incarnating the Gospel.
We’ve got work to do, y’all. We have the guidance of the Spirit. We are a people of Pentecost. Remember that we are not alone as part of Christ’s body. Remember that the Holy Spirit shows us the way and has been able to do that “all this time.”
