May 27, 2007

The Day of Pentecost

Acts 2.1-21

The Reverend Jennifer K. Morrow

 

 

 Good morning, friends.  It’s wonderful to see all of you here this holiday weekend.  Thankfully, the weather has cooperated and given us a grand setting for celebration.  So let me be the first to say to all of you, “Happy Pentecost!”  By a show of hands, how many of you have Pentecost barbecues planned?  Any of you hit the stores for some Pentecost Day Weekend sales?  Of course, I’m being a bit sarcastic.  Because I feel pretty certain that the holiday on most everyone’s mind this weekend is civic, not religious.  But don’t feel singled out by me.  I’m the same way.  I remarked just the other day, “Oh, Pentecost is on Memorial Day weekend this year.”  I did not say, “Oh, Memorial Day is the day after Pentecost weekend.”   And tomorrow, I’m not having a Pentecost picnic.

 

My point in saying all of this is not to pit Pentecost vs. Memorial Day, suggesting that one cancel out the other.  They need not be mutually exclusive.  What I am interested in doing today is to spend just these few minutes thinking about Pentecost.  And while I do wonder whether picnics and great deals on sandals are the best expressions of remembrance, Memorial Day is holding its own.   So, to Pentecost…

 

It’s a day we expect few Christians to remember, or even know what it means.  With the possible exception of current confirmation students:  know it now, and then a few months down the road file it away with Snapple cap facts and other less-important information.  But ironically, for centuries in the church’s history Pentecost was the second-most significant and holy day of the year, rivaled only by Easter.  Christmas was hardly on the map, but Pentecost?  Now that’s a celebration!

 

Why the shift then?  What happened to change the tide?  It could be simply that Pentecost doesn’t market well.  It’s too close to Easter; it’s hard to go caroling when it’s hot out; and the story itself strikes many of us as rather odd.  Jesus has ascended back into heaven.  Friends and followers of his are gathered together to celebrate a Jewish holiday in Jerusalem, and then out of nowhere comes a thunderous wind and chaos breaks out.  Everyone began speaking in different languages, enabled by God’s Spirit the story says.  There was no order to it.  This was no pristine manger scene.  It was loud, confusing, and fantastic.  Some onlookers dismissed the whole thing as little more than a frat party.  Pay no attention.  They’re just drunk.  Anyway you slice it, it’s not a pretty picture—can you imagine having our Sunday school children act out this as a pageant every year?

 

But Pentecost didn’t fall out of fashion because of its marketability or lack thereof.  There’s something much deeper going on than that, just like there’s much more to that first Pentecost than the wind and the flames and the languages.  But we—many of us—get hung up on all that.  Because we—many of us—are like those David Brooks describes in a recent Op-ed piece: we are the “quasi-religious.”  Listen to his description: “Quasi-religious people attend services, but they’re bored much of the time.  They read the Bible, but find large parts of it odd and irrelevant.  They find themselves inextricably bound to their faith, but think some of the people who define it are nuts.”[1]  It fits, right?  Not all of it all of the time, but all of it sometimes.  You can work at convincing me otherwise, but if “quasi-religious” is what Brooks is describing then we are quasi-religious.  We attend services (on Memorial Day weekend, no less), but we all grow bored with thoughts ready to wander anywhere else but here; we read the Bible, but there are parts of it that offend our sensibilities or just plain freak us out (tongues of fire and ecstatic experiences?); and yet, we are all of us bound somehow to this faith of ours even though some of Christianity’s more vocal spokespeople occasionally make us want to arrive at church incognito.  And this, quite simply, is the first thing I want to say.  We are the quasi-religious.  We are.

 

And this is the second thing that I want to say:  being quasi-religious is a good thing.  In fact, it’s what Pentecost is all about.  You see, as David Brooks’ column continues, he goes on to describe these quasi-religious in further, and favorable detail.  He suggests, “If you really wanted to supercharge the nation, you’d fill it with college students who constantly attend church, but who are skeptical of everything they hear there.  For there are at least two things we know about flourishing in a modern society.”

 

He goes on, “First, college students who attend religious services [fare differently] than those that don’t.  As Margarita Mooney, a Princeton sociologist has demonstrated in her research, they work harder and are more engaged with campus life.  Second, students who come from denominations that encourage dissent [make a more significant impact on the world] than students from denominations that don’t.  This embodies [one part of the] ‘quasi-religious creed’:  Always try to be the least believing member of one of the more observant sects.  Participate in organized religion, but be a friendly dissident inside.  Ensconce yourself in traditional moral practice, but champion piecemeal modernization.  Submit to the wisdom of the ages, but with one eye open.”[2]

 

What Brooks doesn’t realize—or at least doesn’t say in his article—is that these so-called quasi-religious dissenters have been around for millennia, and not just on college campuses.  They’ve gone by another name for most of that time: they are the prophets.  The Bible is crawling with them.  Faithful people, believers through and through who love God, but who from time to time grew bored and impatient with their religion’s piety.  They are the ones who found parts of their tradition completely untenable and confounding in light of the God they knew, so they wrestled with that tradition and

 

spoke up.  They are the ones who, despite their commitment to their faith, knew when enough was enough.  When their people were known more for brutality than hospitality, defined more by exclusion than by love they simply could not keep quiet anymore.  In Brooks’ words, they are the ones who submitted to the wisdom of the ages with one eye open.

 

One of these prophets was a man named Joel.  The Hebrew Bible includes a book bearing his name.  And it is his writing to which Peter turns in preaching his first sermon that first Pentecost.  Remember, the story didn’t end with the chaotic conflagration of languages.  All of those voices eventually filter down into one very direct, very clear voice.  It is the voice of the ancient prophet Joel, spoken by the fledgling prophet Peter:

 

“God’s spirit has been poured out upon all flesh...

 

            Sons and daughters prophesy

            young men see visions

            old men dream dreams

           even the oppressed...men and women...they’ll prophesy.”

 

What just happened here?  What was all that wind and fire and crazy talk about?  It’s about God’s spirit poured out on everyone.  Everyone without regard.  Everyone then, everyone now.  And what does that mean?  It means that all those who choose may become prophets.  Prophets:  keepers of their traditions who keep one eye open.  Prophets:  those who are at home in their tradition but not afraid to practice dissent.  Faithful skeptics.  Believing doubters.  Christians embarrassed of judgmental leaders.  Bored kids in worship.  Bored adults in worship.

 

Do you see?  All of our “quasi-religiousness” has prepared us to be prophets.  All our boredom and embarrassment and doubt have been for us a training ground.  We have received God’s spirit.  We have quietly practiced dissent in our pews.  We have remained in our tradition but kept one eye open and it is time to tell out what we have seen.  It is time to say it’s not ok… It is time to make Peter’s Pentecost sermon true again. 

 

In the liturgical calendar, all the seasons and holidays have names.  We know today is the Day of Pentecost.  But do you know the common name for the season that follows Pentecost?  Ordinary time.  Our first task as prophets?  To receive God’s Spirit in such a way that the days that follow will be anything but ordinary.