Three Birthday Presents

May 31, 2009

Acts 2:1-21, 37-41

Pentecost is the birthday of the Church (not just this church, but every church). In true birthday fashion, it is a day when gifts are given, by the Spirit to God’s people everywhere.

Some congregations, serve cake and ice cream after worship. But we’ll talk about other gifts today. So don’t start salivating yet (or running for the doors of the nearest church).

When I say it’s the Church’s birthday, I mean it more as a metaphor than as a literal fact.

The Church (or something like it) existed long before Pentecost.

When Adam and Eve stood in the Garden in the cool of the day and recognized that they were “two or more people gathered in God’s name,” a rough draft of the Church came into being.

So too when Abraham and Sarah left from their homeland to receive God’s promises and be a blessing to the nations. In that instant, a mission was instilled that corresponds with our mission today. Ditto for the times Israel entered into covenants with God, or found deliverance from evil by the mercy of the Almighty. And every sabbath, as the Jewish people read scripture, retold stories about God’s mighty deeds, and sang psalms in grateful response, they set a pattern that defines us to this very day.

In New Testament times, when men dropped their nets, left the tax booth, let go of the plow, or abandoned their swords and became followers of Jesus, they were the Church – though Pentecost was still a ways off. So too when women left their homes and traditional roles to serve Jesus out of their personal means. (Luke talks about that.) In that moment, women became full and equal partners in this movement called Church.

One of the creeds in our Book of Confessions helps describe the timeless nature of the Church. Using a Question and Answer style, the Heidelberg Catechism asks: “What do you believe concerning ‘the Holy Catholic Church’?

Then it answers itself:

I believe that, from the beginning to the end of the world, and from among the whole human race, the Son of God, by his Spirit and his Word, gathers, protects, and preserves … a congregation chosen for eternal life. Moreover, I believe that I am and forever will remain a living member of it.

“From the beginning to the end of the world …”

The Church is not bound by time. It is not subject to a particular birthday. Its origins are not tied to a single long-ago occasion. Whenever we gather in worship, God grants us a second birth. Whenever we proclaim and embody resurrection, we become the NEW people of God.

I guess that means we never age or grow old! (For some of us that will be especially good news.) Every week, we are gifted with new life!

Our birthday is not fixed to any one date.

In that regard, we’re a lot like many migrants. I don’t know if you know this, but refugees (like the ones we sponsored a few years ago from Somalia) often have no record of their birth date. So a date is arbitrarily assigned. Usually at the start of a year. It’s amazing how many refugees have a birthday on January 1!

It’s kind of like that for us too, in the Church. Not being able to pinpoint a single day or moment when we came into being, we claim Pentecost as a day for throwing a party and receiving God’s gifts.

* *

Through the Holy Spirit.

Among the gifts the Spirit brings to the Church, today’s reading includes …

• Leaders

• Boundary crossings, and

• The biblical text.

First – and perhaps foremost – among the Spirit’s gifts is leadership.

Mark Fraley and Common Ground constantly remind us that the definition of a leader is having people who follow. A leader is not a do-it-yourselfer. Leadership is the gift of getting others to share a vision and act on an agreed-upon purpose. Somebody who can get things done with help from others? That’s a leader.

Jesus Christ had followers. But Hitler did too. Which means our definition of leadership needs further revision.

So we also must say that a leader is never in it for him- or herself alone. A leader acts on personal convictions, but not for personal glory or gain. Leaders seek a greater good. They recognize and accept differing views and opinions … for the sake of shared outcomes. They aren’t myopic or egotistical or ideologically driven.

Leaders – like Abraham and Sarah – are called to be a blessing, not only to their own offspring, but to all the nations.

At Pentecost, Peter becomes that kind of leader too. He offers a bold sermon that “cuts to the heart” without cutting anyone off. His goal is not to divide, but to unite people in the midst of chaotic events. As a result of Peter’s leadership, 3000 people are baptized that day (not counting little Miss Georgia Grace) and they are initiated into a joyous and purposeful way of life.

And he’s not alone. Over time Peter has been joined in leadership for God’s people by countless others – men and women, promoting and propelling God’s work in the world.

• St. Paul, St. Augustine, and St. Francis come to mind; and others, forgotten by us … yet remembered by God.

• What about Martin Luther, John Calvin, and Martin Luther King, Jr.?

• Or Mrs. George Reich, who identified a need for a church in Wauwatosa; and Richard Evans who became the founding pastor here 82 years ago.

• Miss Sarah Dickson, who joined Evans here and became the first female elder in the Presbyterian Church in the whole United States. Don Parkinson. Bob Anderson. And all the elders and deacons and laypeople in this congregation who have never been afraid to do the right thing at the right time – though I’m afraid to name them by name for fear that I’d miss even one.

The question, of course, isn’t just who God called in the past, but whether or not God continues to extend the gift of leadership to the Church after Pentecost. Even as I speak, our congregation’s Nominating Committee is preparing to meet this week. They’re already sending letters and making phone calls asking people like you to hear and respond to Christ’s call.

The gift of leadership was given to the Church at Pentecost long ago. And it is still crucial. We still need men and women who will guide the Church in mission and ministry in the world, for the sake of Jesus Christ.

* *

Boundary crossing. That’s another gift given by the Spirit today.

I recently went to the border between Mexico and the U.S. with other members of this church; and we saw a specific example of how barriers get put up between the people of God – barriers that are real and imagined, mental and man-made.

Other barriers are less visible. But they still manage to separate, segregate, categorize, and stereotype. The world is full of them. Young versus old. English-speaking or not. Dark-skinned, light-skinned. Yellow or brown. Rich versus poor.

But Pentecost in general, and Peter’s sermon in particular, reverse those divisions and tilt in the direction of inclusiveness for all. Pentecost crosses boundaries to bring people together.

Where else, but in church these days do you see intergenerational events? Only in church are Peter’s words true: “the young shall see visions and the elderly dream dreams.” God’s Church crosses boundaries to make room for all ages.

Parthians, Medes, Elamites and residents of Mesopotamia. From all parts of the known world, racial and ethnic boundaries are crossed too. In Christ, a shared vocabulary and language is spoken. People find and use words they all understand. Like the crowd said, “We hear, each of us, in our own native language.”

Leaders in the Church help people cross boundaries to meet one another.

* *

And finally, gift number three from God to the Church at Pentecost: The biblical text.

Leaders and boundary crossers don’t make it up on their own as they go. They draw on the resources at hand – which is how Peter used scripture at Pentecost, when he quoted the prophet Joel.

For some, that implies that the Bible is a road map. A “how-to” book. A set of rules. A sure-fire guide, with only one right answer.

Plenty of folks imagine that the Bible is an endless list of do’s and don’ts. (Some folks in the church think that, and even more view it that way who’ve left the church feeling scolded and judged.)

But that’s not the Bible I read or that I’m talking about. And it’s not the one Peter quoted. The Bible that teaches us about the life and ways of Jesus Christ is much more gracious and open than that.

It is less a road map or how-to book, and more of an invitation. It is an open invitation for us to live, knowing that God is in the world and cares about the world.

Even more, it is an invitation to take imaginative and creative leaps, to join God in loving and caring about the world.

* *

If you are like me, you probably wish that Pentecost, and the whole work of being Christian was easier. That the answers were clearer. That things were more settled.

But the truth is Pentecost settles nothing. It unsettles.

Yet it also offers gifts for our unsettled times. Gifts that assure us that God won’t leave us lacking.

Gifts given by the Holy Spirit.

Gifts that make possible the communion of saints, forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and life everlasting … year after year.

To the glory of God.