Boxwork of the Church; Sermon for Pentecost, June 4, 2017

Sermon for Pentecost, June 4, 2017

Numbers 11:24-30

Acts 2:1-21

John 20:19-23

So I spent the early part of this week touring northwest Nebraska and camping in the black hills.  We visited Scottsbluff, Windcave, Custer State Park and the Nebraska Sandhills. And we spent a lot of time staring at campfire flames.

The Scripture says,

Suddenly they heard a sound like the rush of a violent wind, God’s Holy Ruach.

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.

Tongues of fire touched each of them and filled them with the holy spirit.

Pentecost is signified with the color red because the holy spirit is likened to flame.  After staring at a campfire for days, it’s easy to visualize the way a flame bends and curves and flashes and flicks, at once capable of engulfing or ignoring an object.

It is the time when God breathed on the disciples and infected them with His holy purpose.  God’s breath, hot and contagious, sparks in each of us our unique gift to help ignite the church, to help electrify the body of Christ, to help drive it out into the world. The holy flame alights on the disciples, and it catches fire.   It is contagious and quick, powerful and elusive.  It touches on the disciples, as they gather as Jesus had instructed, and enables them to tell the story of the power of God in every language.

I don’t know about you, but Pentecost is not a church event that brings back strong memories for me.  I don’t remember there ever being a pageant, or special music, or even a really good children’s message.  If you are like me – Congregationalist, born and bred – you may have not been schooled in Pentecost whatsoever.  Being a bit of a cool, calm and collected tradition; an intellectual, diplomatic, proper and understated tradition… we are pretty far from the Pentecostal, or what ministry folks would call ‘spirit-led’ church traditions.   I’m not sure I ever heard much about the Holy Spirit, and even less about how it moves among us. 

But Pentecost Is a big deal.  In fact, Pentecost could be seen as more important that Christmas, in terms of our history.  Pentecost is considered the birth of the church.  It is the day that ‘church’ became a thing.  It is the birthplace of evangelism, of taking the message of God out of the comfort of the upper room, and into the world.

In our scripture last week, reading from Acts of the Apostles and the book of Luke, Jesus orders the disciples to remain in Jerusalem until they receive the Holy Spirit – not that they necessarily knew what he was talking about.  But they did as told, stayed put until something took hold of them that was so undeniable that they started talking in tongues.  Pentecost is traditionally celebrated 50 days after Easter, perhaps echoing how Moses received the commandments 50 days after leaving Egypt.  But in the book of John, our last reading today, the disciples are actually touched by the holy spirit on the Resurrection Day.  They are gathered in the upper room, on the first day, in a locked room.  The Resurrected Jesus emerges into the room, despite the locked doors and delivers the Holy Spirit upon them – breathing it into them himself.

It is then that the disciples go out into the world inspired with the gifts of the Holy Spirit – the gifts of tongues and impassioned speech, the gifts of courage and determination, the gifts of compassion and service for God’s people, the gifts of preaching and teaching throughout the land. 

When I was touring our land here in Nebraska and South Dakota this week, I learned a lot about Nebraska geology.  I learned that this area was covered with seas 7 times throughout history, giving us the sandy soils of the Northwest.  And I learned that so much of that soil has blown or eroded away that the top of Scottsbluff used to be the level of the land.  I even examined the remains of sea creatures – whales, perhaps – on the top of a bluff at 4000 feet above sea level. 

We went underground too, at Wind Cave, walking through miles and miles of underground channels worn through limestone by acidic groundwater.  All those years of sea and wind, erosion and volcanic eruption, designed a fascinating story that took generations to uncover.

And throughout each of these visits, I kept hearing ‘when the black hills emerged’…  Which was baffling; how does rock and ground that rises 7000 feet in the air, taller than anything except the Rockies and the Swiss Alps, emerge?  The rock was formed underground by the same substance that is called ‘lava’ above ground; magma.  The Magma cooled under the earth’s surface, and then was pushed by later volcanic activity, perhaps as much as 2 billion years ago.  In this ‘uplift,’ they were covered by much more soil and sediment, which wore away under wind and rain, just like with Scottsbluff, resulting in the interesting crevices and pillars and needle eyes that exist today.  

The most fascinating part of this was the way each of these processes impacted each other.  In Wind Cave, most of the rock is craggy or rounded or covered with calcium deposits or hollowed out.  But, amidst all this random bumpiness, there are straight lines of material that resembles a kind of spiderweb or honeycomb design, protruding from the more smooth and rounded stones.  These formations are what cave experts called ‘boxwork’.  When the black hills emerged, erupted, worked their way to the surface, it was such a powerful force that it left cracks in all the other surrounding rock.  And, into those cracks spilled life – water, soil, plant growth and plant death, and began the process of solidifying into earth all over again.  But the remains of what is in these cracks is not yet hardened into stone.  And when the groundwater turned acidic and began to wear away the limestone, the earth filling in those cracks left by the emergence of the black hills remained, straight and unique, leaving a lacework on top of canyon-like cave walls.

Jesus emerged, erupted, into our world 2000 years ago.  His life and death and resurrection disrupted, and broke through our earthly world with a demonstration of God’s power on earth.  It cracked the foundation of the world as we knew it.  The moment he died, the cloth in the temple was torn from top to bottom, creating a tear in the fabric of our existence.  Like the Black hills, God’s power demonstrated through Jesus tore through the earth’s surface and made new things possible.  And in his life, and death, and resurrection, Jesus created ripples – cracks – in the surface of our lives.  Cracks in the world as it is, so that we would know how close God’s power is to our mundane lives.  And into those cracks poured the Holy Spirit, bringing life-giving water for our thirst, nurturing our lives, allowing growth and death and rebirth, and slowly solidifying our strength in this world. The holy spirit is like the boxwork in the caves, filling up what we might think of as broken with solidifying comfort, and growth, and energy.  What filled those cracks in windcave has actually lasted longer than the ground matter that came before it.  Like the church, it carries the mark of that eruption in time, that crack in the space between God and us, and provides strength for God’s purpose. Like the boxwork in the cave, it is the sediment of God that was formed in our lives which has stood the test of time.

The boxwork, the interlaced structure of relationship and proclamation that began with this first touch of the Holy Spirit, this first lick of that flame, is the structure that started the church that we are in today.  Without Jesus, we wouldn’t have the cracks, but without Pentecost we wouldn’t have all the work that came after.  Pentecost is the church’s birthday!  But the festivities of this day pale in comparison to that of Christmas, and Easter, and that’s curious.  Why do you think we neglect Pentecost?

Perhaps it is because, while Christmas puts Jesus at the center, and Easter puts God at the center, Pentecost puts us at the center.  Christmas delights us.  Easter amazes us.  Pentecost makes a demand on us. It requires us to use our gifts to continue building the boxwork of the church.  We are required to go out and proclaim the ways we fulfill God’s kingdom, the ways the Holy Spirit enriches our lives, the gifts that flame bestows upon us.

Whether your gift is preaching the good news or pricing a rummage sale. Whether your gift is caring for the least of these, or caring for the church grounds.  Whether your gift is calling for justice in the structures of society, or shopping for doors to improving the structures of our building. Whether your gift is providing safe space for growing youth, or safe space for seeking hearts.  Whether your gift is managing a budget for the church or communicating a vision for the church. Whether your gift is teaching the story of Jesus, or reaching the community with your sign-making.  Whether your gift is feeding and clothing the multitudes, or finding out where food, and clothing is needed.  Whether your gift is lifting up God with music or lifting up those who need a little light in their lives… these are all gifts of the holy spirit.  They are how we fill in the cracks in our world and grow our boxwork to build God’s kingdom.  It is the way the holy spirit moves, fills us, uses our gifts, that stays behind.

The Holy Spirit touches each of us with our gifts, and electrifies those gifts to fulfill a purpose in God’s kingdom.   Frederick Buechner once said, “The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.”  This is how the Holy Spirit moves within each of us.  The gifts are each as unique as we are.  But those gifts become the boxwork of God’s kingdom when they come together.  Your gifts, those flametips of the Holy Spirit, are needed here in this church, and in this world.  On this Pentecost day, what is the Holy Spirit sparking in your heart?  What demands is God making on you on this day to grow the kingdom?

Writing Things Down; Sermon, May 28, 2017

Sermon, May 28, 2017

Luke 24:44-53

Acts 1:1-11

Today’s scripture is kind of fascinating, in that it’s two books from the same author.  Technically for worship we were supposed to read Acts first, as it is currently in the place of the Old Testament reading, but I reversed it because it’s more accurate.

Luke’s gospel is known as the storyteller in the bible.  He is thought to be Greek, and not a Jew - the only Gentile to write a book of the bible.  And he clearly wrote his gospel with a Gentile audience in mind.  It reads more like a novel in the Greek tradition, so anyone on the street of a Greek city picking up Luke's gospel would have felt at home with it if they were able to read.  Throughout his narrative, he points out things that a Gentile audience would not have assumed, like Jesus’ circumcision on the 8^th day – an expectation when talking to Jewish audiences but something that needed explaining in other contexts.  Luke made sure to give a detailed account of everything he wrote, so that those who were not as familiar with Jewish traditions, customs, places, and Old Testament references would be able to understand the history of Jesus and the plan of salvation.  Scholars also believe that Luke is the author of the book of Acts of the Apostles.  So what we just read, the conclusion of the Gospel narrative of Luke, and the introductory paragraph of his next chapter, the Acts of the Apostles, is how it would have been written.  He addresses it to Theophilus – who may have been a real person, but which in Greek also means, ‘Friend of God’.

Last week I mentioned that I have become a little obsessed with the musical Hamilton… because the sickness has infected my family out East, both in Boston and in Illinois, and they strategically left the CD in my car during my father’s visit, and then forced me to listen to it during my sister’s visit.  It’s a bit like an infection…and now that I’m addicted to it I’m becoming contagious. 

Anyways, the last song in the musical is called, “Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story?”  Hamilton is one of the Founding Fathers, an architect of so much in our country, but often is forgotten or overlooked because he was never President.  After he was shot and killed in a duel, his wife Eliza worked for the next 50 years to publish some accurate story of him.  She started an 18^th Century version of scrapbooking.

Monday is Memorial Day, a day that we make a point to remember the people who have died for our country.  It is the day we remember the people in our history, the people who made that history possible.  Memorial Day became an official federal holiday in 1966, but some historians source it to 1865.  On May 1 of 1865, former slaves in Charleston, South Carolina honored 257 dead Union Soldiers who had been buried in a mass grave in a Confederate prison camp. They uncovered their bodies and for 2 weeks, worked to give them a proper burial as gratitude for fighting for their freedom. They then held a parade of 10,000 people led by 2,800 Black children where they marched, sang and celebrated.  Doubtless, this was just one episode among dozens in cities across our war-torn country where people were mourning the dead and retrieving their loved ones.  This story is just one retelling of the countless sacrifices of brave men and women who have allowed us the freedom to tell our layered American story.

That got me to thinking… When do we begin to write things down?  When is it that we see the need for a written record?  What power is there in telling the story?

My mother has a binder that has a special place in our home, and our hearts. It holds her family’s genealogy going back to those who emigrated from the Netherlands.  It was prepared by a second cousin on her mother’s side - by the only remaining relative who remembers such things.  The binder is special because my mother’s mother, my grandmother, died when my mother was 7 years old.  It holds all the family history she didn’t even know to ask prior to the gift of the binder. 

On my father’s side, my grandmother was a German War Bride, brought here after my grandfather was stationed in Germany in WWII.  One of my great regrets is that I didn’t get more details from my grandmother about her remarkable life, first in Germany and then as an immigrant here, when she was alive – or from my grandfather, for that matter.  There are untold stories there that I’ve lost forever.  The history of our lives, the stories and anecdotes that make our heritage rich, passes with the people who live it.  Sometimes we don’t realize that we want it until after they are gone. 

The need to remember, the motivation to write things down for posterity, often becomes important only once someone has passed away.  We write about the things that made us whole, the things that bind us together, the things that caused pivots in the pathway of life.  We memorialize the important things – unlike the written things we find on the internet today, things designed to provoke outrage, or fear, or anger, or persecution and defensiveness – when we write our histories, we write about wisdom. We write about choices.  We write about suffering and grief and triumph and success.  We write for the legacy. We write to offer guidance to the next generation. 

Luke knew that the story they had to tell was too precious to fade with the passing of the generations.  These incredible things they had experienced were astounding.  They met this man, who seemed to have a connection with God.  He ate and drank with them.  He provided endless bounties of food.  He loved and laughed with them.  He did miracle healings in front of their eyes.  He lamented and cried with them.   He showed no fear at brandishing of deadly power.  He prayed and taught for them.  He walked the earth after dying.  He comforted and guided them.  He withdrew into heaven before their eyes.

They were witnesses, and wow did they have a story to tell.  A story that could change your life.

Looking back in time, it seems obvious to us that the Gospels were written to witness to Jesus’ life.  But historically, they weren’t written down immediately.  People lived Christ’s message and told Christ’s story for decades before anyone put pen to paper – or perhaps feather quill to parchment.  It’s approximately 70 AD, or 70 years after the death of Christ when Luke produces his Gospel.  Why do you think they chose that particular moment to write down all they had witnessed to?

Perhaps it was because some members of the community were ready to leave the nest – to leave their Palestinian-Jewish community and go to farther lands, and the written version would help with translation.  Perhaps it was because they wanted the opportunity to shape what was remembered about Jesus – create the most accurate or understandable version of these powerful events.  Or, maybe it was because they were afraid the stories were about the pass with an aging community.

For the fledgling Christian community, 70 years after the death of Jesus was probably the second generation that has been living in the Christ tradition.  Now the children of the people who knew Jesus were coming of age and someone must have been worried that the story they loved to tell would be weakened by the generations removed, when there were so many more people they needed to reach in the future.

We write things down for the living. 

It’s the living who need our histories, our scrapbooks, our genealogy, and our scriptures.  We write down the things we’ve witnessed to help the living understand their heritage, to find their place in the context of generations.  It’s the living who need to know their family traits that give them character, and their moral foundation to gain wisdom in the choices they will face in life. 

We write things down for the living.

It’s the living who can learn lessons from the past, who can peer inside the circumstances and gain insight from our choices.  It’s the living who can carry forth the legacy, who can live into the Gospel, who can take action to right past wrongs or build on past ‘rights’ to expand the realm of God’s Kingdom.

We write things down for the living.

And God keeps sending angels to remind us about the living.  While the disciples stand around staring into the sky, two messengers appear to them.  “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven?” 

Like the angel that appears at the empty tomb, asking Mary, “Why do to you look for the living among the dead?”  God is always pointing us back toward the living, the people in Jerusalem, the people who need God’s love and service. 

How often does the church get caught up in arguments staring up into heaven?  How much time do we waste stargazing rather than witnessing to Jesus’ life and death is in our lives, in our actions?  Luke’s gospel story intentionally ends with a transition to the church’s ministry rather than a summary of Jesus’ life and death and meaning.  It emphasizes the legacy of Christ that will be presented to, and then present in, the disciples in the coming days - a foreshadowing of Pentecost.  Each time I hear these passages, it reminds me of God saying, “Why do you dillydally?  You know the goal.  Get to Jerusalem, and get to work!”

On this Ascension Sunday, God is pointing us back to the living, where we might witness God, and where we can be God’s witness.  But most importantly, the story points us back to the living so that the world may witness God through us. 

Amen and Amen.