Scripture: Acts 2:1-16
Breathe on us, breath of God, fill us with life anew. Teach us to love as thou wouldst love and do what thou wouldst do.
When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.
As you may know, the Book of Acts is Part Two of the story written by the author of the Gospel of Luke. While Part I (the gospel of Luke) is about the life of Jesus, Part II (the Book of Acts) is the story of the early church. Now, I have to be honest that most scholars are pretty clear that the Book of Acts is an idealized version of the early church, not really a true picture. Instead, Acts portrays the aspirations and the vision of what ought to be. While some folks have dismissed Acts as fantasy, I have to say what our early church forebears BELIEVED the church should be seems an important message for us….
So, the disciples are gathered together in a room and this wind, this fire, this presence blows in and gives the disciples the ability to speak in many different languages.
Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. Amazed and astonished, they asked, ‘Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language?… in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.’
So the disciples are all together, but there’s also this crowd of folks gathered around, too. Now, it’s important to remember that at this point, the Christian community is a sect within Judaism and they are already struggling with who is a “real” Jewish Christian. Do you need to be part of the inner circle? Do you need to live in Jerusalem or have known Jesus? Who’s in and who’s out—the questions have already begun…
So, you have the “insiders,” the folks who knew Jesus and you have the “outsiders,” the crowd gathered around. And, if you miss that this is a group of outsiders, the text explicitly tells us, as Pam read, that they are from all over the world, speaking many different languages, having different customs and different ways of being.
And what does the Holy Spirit do as her first act upon the early church? She pours herself upon those gathered so that each is empowered to remain themselves AND be gathered into one body. Do you see that? Language is one of those things that both shapes and symbolizes us. Our language can indicate our culture, our customs, our community. And the Holy Spirit’s first act, according to Luke, is to pour herself upon those standing around and gather them together—radical equals yet losing none of their particularities. I find this paradox of radical connectedness and liberating particularity worth pondering more deeply.
[pause]
At the end of April, I was in New York to speak about Sacred Reckonings and Lyndale’s work on reparations as part of the Freedom Rising Conference. I am always honored to be able to speak about Lyndale and the work of reparations, but I wasn’t prepared for what I received from the gathering. The very first speaker was Cole Arthur Riley, the author of Black Liturgies.
Cole shared with us that she lives with chronic pain and told us the story of when she and her husband were on vacation in Paris. She had been so excited about being there but had awakened one morning and she couldn’t get out of bed. As her husband went out to get some food, she found herself angrily swearing at her body, “you, [expletive], pathetic, useless…” and the self-abuse went on and on. It was a common experience for her this swearing at her body, except that it was the first time she had done it outloud. And, somehow, hearing herself abusing herself stopped her in her tracks. And then she said, “I found myself responding to my abuse with liturgical practice… I found myself passing the peace with my legs, as I gently touched my legs… and with my arms as I gently caressed my arms… and so on, until I’d passed the peace with my whole body. And, by passing the peace with my body, I was able to reinhabit myself.” And then Cole said, in this world, if we don’t inhabit our own bodies with love, the forces of oppression are all too happy to inhabit our bodies and keep us separate from ourselves and one another.
I have been reflecting on her words every day since hearing her. Particularly as I learn to live in relationship with my body post-accident, her call to fully inhabit our bodies and lives and to respond to any kind of violence with liturgies of peace and love, speak profoundly to me and to this moment in our world when the forces of separation seem to scream loudest.
The other important lesson Cole Arthur Riley taught me is the same that the Holy Spirit blowing through the disciples and the crowd offers—that Cole spoke of God to me and revealed to me a wisdom I had but didn’t know. And she spoke to me out of the specifics of her twenty-something life, her Black body, her straight story and culture. Radical connectedness, liberating particularity.
[pause]
The thing about the Scriptures is that, if we miss the point, they are often right there to remind us—again and again. Such is the case with the writer of Acts. Our Pentecost story is found in Chapter 2 but only a few chapters later, they’re still asking, “now remind me, who’s in and who’s out? I know that it’s not just those Jewish Christians who knew Jesus. But who else is in??” The text gives us a wonderful story about Philip and an Ethiopian eunuch. And then a little while later, there’s the story of Peter’s dream and his encounter with Cornelius.
The Ethiopian eunuch, you might recall was an assistant to the Queen. As was the custom in that day, the men who served the Queen were often castrated, making them eunuchs. The term eunuch was also used to describe men who did not have sex with women or whose gender was somehow different from other men. Some scholars have suggested that eunuchs and the Bible’s treatment of eunuchs ought be analogous to LGBTQ folks.
When Philip encounters the Ethiopian eunuch, both a gentile and a sexual minority, Philip’s response is to recognize the fruits of the Spirit which are so visibly present to him in the Ethiopian eunuch. Likewise, when Peter encounters, experiences, learns from the faith of the gentile, Cornelius, he is transformed.
The arc, the trajectory of the Book of Acts—the vision and dreams of the early Church—is for ever-expanding, ever-widening circles of radical connectedness and liberating particularity. The gentile does not become a Jew. The eunuch does not stop being a eunuch—instead their bodies, their cultures, their languages become part of the way in which God is revealing Godself to the world.
[pause]
So what about us? What about Lyndale UCC?? What about our roles, our ministries?
How can we inhabit our own bodies, bring our particular gifts, our deep authenticities into our life together?
I had a seminary professor, David Bartlett, a great American Baptist preacher, who once told of his love of the hymn “O For a Thousand Tongues to Sing”. He said God is so big and mysterious and wondrous and expansive and extravagant that we simply cannot afford to lose even one voice as we sing of God. We need every one of us, in our blessed particularity, to sing of God’s love and power and justice if we are ever going to approach even a whisper of God’s grandeur.
And how do we move into the world, rooted in this deepest truth of God mysterious and radical connection, woven throughout all of creation?
This morning, I invite us into a short meditation as a concrete practice of Pentecost’s radical connectedness. It comes to us from Thich Nhat Hahn as adapted by the Healing the Roots collective.
Nothing is separate.
I am made up of all life.
My breath, the oxygen which fuels my lifeforce, is the exhale of the trees.
And the life of the trees is sustained by my exhales and those of all other living breathing creatures.
My thoughts and ideas are tapestries woven from stories, landscapes, idioms and customs of my environment, my culture, schools, parents, friends, media and loved ones.
My thoughts and ideas are tapestries.
My gut, womb, skin and mouth, like the soils on which I walk, from which I eat, are microbiomes of bacteria and fungi that sustain me and are sustained by me.
My gut, womb, skin and mouth are made up of communities of bacteria and fungi.
I am made up of billions of living beings.
My flesh and bones are composed of the nutrients from the foods I eat,
which generate my cells anew every day.
The foods, which grow from the soil, were planted and tended by hands, beaks, bodies and hearts, and nourished by rain, clouds and the sunshine, over generations.
The legacy of the soils lives in my food and through my body.
I am the soil
I am changing, growing, shedding and becoming different with each new breath, each bite, each encounter.
I am full of all life, composed of all life
I am not alone.
Nothing is separate.
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