Sermon:(Re)CreatingChurch: Happy Birthday, Church!
May 31st, 2020 Rev. Betsy Perkins
Scripture passage: Acts 2:1-21 First Baptist Church, Delavan WI
Happy Birthday!
For the last 6 weeks, we have been focusing on the essential characteristics of the church, of the community of Christ-followers – those things that define the church, that must be must be reaffirmed, reimagined, recreated, renewed, reenergized for this particular together-apart time.We reaffirmed that being witnesses for Jesus was our most basic calling. We reimagined how healing power in the name of Jesus might flow through us, and started recreating how the work of faith, the work of mission can be done. We are creating a symbol of our unity in the One Church – One Heart project, and unifying around the value of life and guarding lives. We reenergized around the command to love one another, and reaffirmed our hope in the resurrection of the dead – Jesus’ resurrection and the coming resurrection of all who put their faith in him. These characteristics confirm that the church is absolutely an essential business (but if you notice they have almost nothing to do with thebuilding)!
Today is Pentecost, a day that is nicknamed ‘the birthday of the church.’ But why Pentecost, rather than Easter or Christmas? After all, Christmas was Jesus’ birthday. Well, sort of – Jesus is, in fact, the Word that was with God in the beginning. So what about Easter, Jesus’ birthday into resurrection life? If the church is Jesus’ body, why do we celebrate its birth on a day when Jesus is conspicuously absent? It’s not like Pentecost is the Holy Spirit’s birthday either. The Holy Spirit is as old as God, as old as Jesus – there in the beginning, God’s breath moving over the waters of the deep. Yet this is the day we celebrate how the church came into being, how it was formed and created.
It may give you some encouragement, as we continue to stay out of our church building, to know that the church was not born in a cathedral or within the walls of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem, it started in the upstairs room of someone’s house and then spilled out into the streets and into public spaces.
The city of Jerusalem was crowded on that day. People had come from far and wide for a festival, a religious celebration of the first crop of the season coming in from fields, the first sheaf of the harvest, the first produce from the garden. They came to give thanks to God and pray that the rest of the crop would be safely gathered in. They came to also celebrate the events that took place 50 days after that first Passover – Pentecost means fiftieth. Fifty days after God rescued the Israelites from slavery in Egypt, they met God at Mount Sinai and were given the commandments as a guide for living in God’s ways.
After his death and resurrection during a commemoration of Passover, Jesus had told his disciples to wait: “wait for the gift my Father promised,… wait for the power you will receive.” (Acts 1:4,8) Waiting, like an expectant mother awaits the birth. Jesus himself had likened it to a birth – telling Nicodemus the new life of faith would mean being born of water and the Spirit (Jn.3:5). John the Baptist said Jesus would baptize with the Holy Spirit and with fire (Mt.3:11). Baptism, that symbol of submerging in water as dying to your old self, and being born again to rise up to new life. Jesus told the disciples they would then be pushed out as his witnesses to Jerusalem, to Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth. Being pushed out, as out of the womb, into a new life of witness and a new life as the body of Jesus Christ in the world. Happy Birthday, Church!
Breath of New Life
I’ve gathered some party things for abirthday celebration this morning. Here are balloons, which add a wonderful festive air to any celebration. However, as you can see, these balloons are flat and lifeless. They need to be filled. They need to have someone breathe life into them. (blow up a balloon)
The Bible tells us that the disciples were hiding upstairs in a house in Jerusalem, trying to keep a low profile from the authorities that had just killed Jesus. They were stunned when Jesus rose back to life and appeared to them multiple times, even appearing to a large group of people. They are convinced he is truly alive; their doubts are answered, but fear and confusion persists. They are praying and studying scripture to understand the implications of it all. They are waiting for the gift Jesus promised.
And then the wind starts to blow. A mighty wind, a violent wind, pushing its way into the house, filling the disciples with the breath they need to speak the words of witness to Jesus and to the life-giving power of God. This community of faith is filled with new understanding, just as Jesus had told them when he said, “When the Spirit of Truth comes, she will guide you into all truth.”(Jn.16:13) They begin speaking that Truth, proclaiming it in a multitude of foreign languages. Not their own language of Aramaic, but in all the languages of the world. And the church, whose mission it is to announce that God so loved the world that He sent His one and only Son so the world might not perish but have eternal life, the church whose mission it is to witness to the world, is born and takes its first breath.
How is the Holy Spirit filling you in these days? How is the Spirit breathing new life into our church and blowing us out into the world to proclaim the Good News of God’s love? Sometimes the Spirit is a quiet breath, but at other times it is a mighty wind, surprising, unpredictable, blowing where God wills. The disciples, all 120 of them at that point, are blown out into the streets, into the places where people are gathering to marvel at the sound of speech and Spirit-life. The disciples’ cover is blown! But gone is the trembling Thomas and the bumbling Peter.
Fire of Courage
Which brings me to this cupcake and the candle on it. As Luke tried to describe what was happening, he said that something that looked like tongues of fire appeared and split apart to alight on each of them. And suddenly they were on fire with a love for God and a love for others that was so strong it overcame any fear. It filled them with courage and confidence, despite the unchanged opposition and threat.
When God fills us and moves us do the work of the church, we’d like to believe that God will always save us from harm. But we know that is not what happens with those first disciples. In a short time, Peter will be arrested. Stephen is stoned. Thomas loses his life while preaching in India. Later, Peter will be executed and so will Paul. Rather than removing fear, the Spirit grants the courage to move forward. Rather than promising safety, the Spirit promises God’s presence. Rather than removing us from a turbulent world, or calming the storm, the Spirit enables us to keep our footing as the earth shakes. Rather than helping us avoid challenges, the Spirit helps us overcome them. The Spirit puts wind in our sails, and a fire in the engine.
What new passions are burning within us? Within our church and our community? Will we have the courage to face down the evil of racism, to sacrifice to protect the poor and provide health care for them, to speak out against abuse of power, to speak the name of George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery, to pay attention to refugees and asylum seekers, to pay attention to the needs of our neighbors? Will we trust God to allow the Spirit to work in and through us to heal and let the world know that our God is a God who saves?
Gifts for the Common Good
Good thing there is one more thing here – what is a birthday celebration without gifts? As the church is born, the Holy Spirit gave out gifts. Paul tells the church in Corinth that he is thanking God and celebrating that they do not lack any spiritual gifts. He affirms that each one, each believer, has been given a gift as evidence of the Spirit for the common good, to build up the church.
For a while it was a cool thing to have everyone in a church take a spiritual gift inventory. While there is some merit in that, we need to be careful how we use those tests. A spiritual gift is not necessarily the same as those things we are naturally good at. We are called to use those gifts to glorify God, but often spiritual gifts are a little different. Often they arethe ability to do the things that God calls us to do even when we aren’t naturally good at them, through the power of the Holy Spirit. Who would of thought that brash Peter, who so often said the wrong thing, who bragged of his courage only to cower in the crisis, would be given the gift of wise words to explain the events of Pentecost, to inspire new faith, and be a rock on which the newborn church would get its footing. Who would have thought that the girl who blushed so badly every time she had talk in class that her classmates would be embarrassed for her, would be the called to be the pastor of the First Baptist Church in Delavan.
What new gifts is the Spirit giving us in this new time? How can we discover and share those gifts of the Spirit now? I’d like to close with the words of another preacher: “When you were born of the water and the Spirit, you were given a candle, and told to let your light shine before others, so that others may see your good works and glorify your Father in Heaven. You were born to burn brightly with the light of the Holy Spirit, topping the birthday cake of this marvelous community of saints and sinners. Happy Birthday, Church! Happy Birthday to you! Amen.” (Victoria, lutheranmoxie.wordpress.com)
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