Sunday, May 19, 2013

This Week's Sermon: "I Live the Resurrection"

Acts 2:1-15

When Pentecost Day arrived, they were all together in one place. 2 Suddenly a sound from heaven like the howling of a fierce wind filled the entire house where they were sitting. 3 They saw what seemed to be individual flames of fire alighting on each one of them. 4 They were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages as the Spirit enabled them to speak. 5 There were pious Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. 6 When they heard this sound, a crowd gathered. They were mystified because everyone heard them speaking in their native languages. 7 They were surprised and amazed, saying, “Look, aren’t all the people who are speaking Galileans, every one of them? 8 How then can each of us hear them speaking in our native language? 9 Parthians, Medes, and Elamites; as well as residents of Mesopotamia, Judea, and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, 10 Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the regions of Libya bordering Cyrene; and visitors from Rome (both Jews and converts to Judaism), 11 Cretans and Arabs—we hear them declaring the mighty works of God in our own languages!” 12 They were all surprised and bewildered. Some asked each other, “What does this mean?” 13 Others jeered at them, saying, “They’re full of new wine!” 14 Peter stood with the other eleven apostles. He raised his voice and declared, “Judeans and everyone living in Jerusalem! Know this! Listen carefully to my words! 15 These people aren’t drunk, as you suspect; after all, it’s only nine o’clock in the morning! (CEB)


Pentecost Sunday 2013

The Canadian, jazz-trained singer stood poised with a microphone in her hand at center circle of the ice rink, prepared to sing the national anthem before a game between Portland’s hockey team, the Winterhawks, and some team from Canada that I frankly could care less about because it’s Canada.  So she’s traveled here to on the hook for both the Star Spangled Banner and O Canada.  And her rendition of the Star Spangled Banner starts out beautifully—she has a truly wonderful voice—but it begins to go off the rails after she makes a small lyrical mix-up: “the twilight’s last gleaming” became “the twilight’s first gleaming.”  Like I said, a small mistake.  But you could see the effect that one error had on her confidence, because she just completely blanked on the lyrics going forward—and I mean that in every possible sense: there was a moment of silence right in the middle where the crowd actually began to chuckle.

It was brutal.  Speaking as someone who gets up every week in front of a group of people—albeit hopefully a more forgiving crowd—I cringed as I saw it unfold.  Despite my pet peeve of how some performers will drag on a national anthem performance longer than one of my sermons, I felt terrible for her.

But the crowd redeemed itself in a big way—after the umpteenth stumble by their performer, they began singing the Star Spangled banner in unison, allowing her to regain her composure and return to the original lyrics…and then accompanied her all the way to the grand finish and gave her an extended standing ovation.  And because I have to think this singer probably felt mortified on the inside for having choked up on such a public stage, it was a touching gesture.

But there’s a kicker to this story, as there so often is—this jazz singer tapped to perform the national anthems?  Well…she’s also primarily French-speaking.  And when I read that about her, whatever else I thought about her performance, I had to give her props for wanting to sing out of her element for something important—two national anthems.  It’s a type of courage that lots of us, if we are truly honest with ourselves, probably do not have.  I’m not about to get up here and just break out a completely different style of preaching on a Sunday.  You might not be about to go sing anywhere, except the shower.

Allowing ourselves to be put under the microscope outside of our comfort zones is remarkable.

And it is precisely what happens in the Pentecost story that Luke conveys to us in Acts 2.

The book of Acts of the Apostles is the second of a two-volume set composed by Luke—the first volume being, of course, the Gospel that bears his name.  Now I’d like to think that this was Luke’s follow-up sequel to the immense popularity of his debut work.  You know, his Gospel is A New Hope, and Acts is The Empire Strikes Back.  Or his Gospel is X-Men, and Acts is X2.  Or his Gospel is Caddyshack, and Acts is…no, even I won’t go there.

But the truth is that Luke-Acts was actually written as a singular cohesive story broken into parts, so the more apt comparison might be the Narnia series or the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

And we see this cohesiveness at work with the Pentecost story itself.  Fifty days ago, Jesus was crucified, and ten days ago, He ascended to heaven, and the disciples cast lots to replace Judas Iscariot with Matthias in order to keep their number at an even twelve.  Luke keeps us going at a neat, tidy pace up to this fiftieth day after the Passover, when the Festival of Weeks is celebrated.

What is the Festival of Weeks?  In the grand scheme of things, it was not the biggest holiday on the calendar, certainly not being so close after the big to-do of Passover.  It was originally a harvest festival of sorts, a gathering of the first fruits and a thanksgiving to God, but over time, the Festival of Weeks turned into a celebration of God’s giving the law to Moses upon Sinai.  Don’t ask me how a day devoted to celebrating squashes and radishes turned into a day celebrating the laws and rules, I don’t know how they pulled that one off, although one commentator told me that traditionally, the time between escape from Egypt and arrival at Sinai for Moses and the Israelites was, in fact, fifty days.  So we’ll go with that.

Anyways, so this festival celebrating the giving of the law is taking place.  And by this time, the disciples maybe are a little worried and a little antsy.  Jesus has promised them the coming of the paraklesis—the paraclete, which we translate as the Holy Spirit—except that Jesus has beat it back to heaven without leaving behind said Holy Spirit.

However, the Festival of Weeks provides a great chance for the Holy Spirit’s arrival—not only does it give a reason for all the disciples (and not just the Twelve—Luke says devout Jews from every direction were here to celebrate the festival) to all be in one place, but it is also spiritually appropriate.  After the Passover—the liberation of God’s children from the bondage of slavery—comes the law.  And after the Resurrection—the liberation of God’s children from death and evil—comes the Spirit.  If it felt like God had maybe missed the first deadline with Jesus’ ascension, His timing was in fact sublime.  As one Bible professor, Paul Walaskay, put it:

It stands as proof to all the world that God Almighty, the God of the patriarchs and matriarchs of Israel, the God of the kings and prophets of Judah, the one who created all that is, is at work among this small band of people.  This same God, who breathed the creative breath of life over the face of the deep, has again breathed the divine breath of creation into these Galilean Jews.  This is a major theological theme for Luke (one is tempted to say THE major theme).

In other words, the coming of the Spirit doesn’t just mirror the fifty days between liberation and law-giving, between escape from Egypt and arrival at Sinai.  It mirrors the creation itself, the manner in which God gathered Adam out of dust, and in Genesis 2, breathed life into him.  Just as God breathed physical life into Adam, the Spirit breathes spiritual life into not just the Twelve, but all the people who had gathered far from their homes…people who were here, outside of their comfort zones, simply because God called them to do so.

And this includes the Twelve.  After all, the Twelve are outside of their comfort zone because they had just elected a new member and have been trying to go about their work without the presence of Jesus.  And the travelers are outside of their comfort zone because…well, they are far from their physical homes, even as they gather near their spiritual home.

And so outside of these comfort zones, they utilize one comfort zone they still have—language.  Except, instead of speaking the lingua franca of the day, Greek—which was most peoples’ second language, like how English is today in many parts of the world—they are speaking each their own native, first languages.

And yet they understand each other perfectly.  Even though they are in the same situation as this jazz singer—far from home, and expected to communicate in a language NOT their own.  And yet they understand each other.  Like how the crowd eventually understood, and began singing alongside their singer to complete the Star Spangled Banner.

And here in Acts, they understand each other though it does not look like it on the outside.  The passersby sneer, “They are drunk on new wine,” and don’t you just love Peter’s retort to that accusation?  “Of course we are not drunk, it’s only nine in the morning!”  It’s almost like Peter is implying, “But hey, once it gets to be noon, all bets are off.  After all, it’s 5 o’clock somewhere.”

Despite being outside his comfort zone, Peter is able to laugh off the insult.  And it is what I hope for all of us when we fall into the same circumstances as Peter, or the Twelve, or the poor jazz singer whose performance is likely going viral on Youtube as I speak.

We are supposed to bounce back.  Even if we are walking on terra incognita.  Even if we are traversing the great unknown.  That uncertainty doesn’t automatically take away our resilience.

And that is so, so important for us to remember, because when and how we bounce back…well, that is today’s way—or one small way, at least—of how we live the Resurrection.

The Twelve lived the Resurrection by bouncing back after hitting rock bottom during Maundy Thursday and Good Friday, and the promise Jesus made to them—that He would send the Spirit to them—is all part of this.  The Twelve are living the promise Jesus made to them.

And the promise that Jesus makes to us is that we, too, can be resurrected—we, too, can transcend the petty deaths of the world, of mocking and scorn and rejection and hatred.  We, too, can be reborn from the nickel-and-dime evils of the world that should not cause us to cringe, should not cause us to lose sleep at night, should not have such power over us, and yet they do.

We are supposed to be focusing ourselves on big, incredible, soul-sized things, but yet we let ourselves get taken down so easily that we can never get to the big stuff.  We never actually end up living the Resurrection ourselves, even if we hear it preached every Sunday in church.

The story of Pentecost tells us different.  We can live the Resurrection.  We can venture outside the bubble, outside the safety blanket, without being torn down by one another.  All we have to do is live what Pentecost depicts—understanding one another, understanding their language, when they say, “I live the Resurrection,” even outside our usual ways of doing so.  

May it be so.  Amen.

Rev. Eric Atcheson
Longview, Washington
May 19, 2013

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