Together

Scripture: Acts 2:1-21

They were all together in one place, planning to celebrate a holiday that had held the same meaning for a thousand years – since the days of Moses. As faithful Jews, the disciples had all celebrated Pentecost all their lives long. Every year, fifty days after the Passover, they would rejoice and thank God for the first fruits of the harvest. They were all together in one place, after seeing Jesus ascend into heaven, after being left behind. They were all together in one place, and perhaps they were thinking about the times they’d celebrated Pentecost before – when they were growing up, when Jesus was with them. Perhaps they were thinking back on how things used to be.

"Pentecost" by He Qi

The word ‘nostalgia’ has its origin in the Greek verb ‘nostos,’ meaning ‘return home,’ and the noun ‘algos,’ meaning ‘pain.’ Holidays are often an occasion for nostalgia – a painful longing for the past, the golden era, the good old days. The danger and temptation, whenever we celebrate an annual festival, is that we will get stuck in times gone by. The interesting thing about holidays throughout the Christian year is that their primary purpose is not to keep us looking back at the past, but to help illuminate our present so that we might be guided into the future.

Take Christmas, for example. It’s the day we remember Jesus’ birth all those years ago. We recount all the parts of the story that were unexpected: that the God of all creation chose to be born in a backwater town rather than a capital city; that the child had his first nap in the manger of a stable rather than a sturdy crib in a nursery; that the first people to hear about it were lowly shepherds rather than priests or kings. But if we stop there, if we simply commemorate an event that is over-and-done, we’ll miss the point completely. The purpose of celebrating Christmas year after year is to remind us that God does not remain ensconced in the heavens, but chooses to enter into our world – not just two thousand years ago, but every day. Christmas teaches us to look for the moments in our lives when God is breaking into the world in new and unexpected ways.

Or think about Easter – the day we remember Jesus’ resurrection from the dead. We remember his betrayal, desertion, torture, and death. We remember the hopelessness of it all, followed by the pure, ecstatic joy. But if we stop there, if we only commemorate a turning point in history, we won’t fully understand what the resurrection means. It means that God is stronger than death itself. It means that anything that tries to kill our hope, our joy, our faith – is inferior to the love of God, which persists even beyond the grave. It means that even when we turn our backs on Christ, he doesn’t turn his back on us. Easter teaches us to look for the ways that God brings life out of death, making and remaking our lives again and again.

Today, we celebrate Pentecost, and commentator David Lose notes that “few holidays [are] as ripe for [commemoration and] nostalgia as Pentecost. After all, weren’t these the glory days of the church – spirit-filled preaching; [astonishing, multilingual worship]; attentive, even miraculous listening; [later in Acts we read that] three thousand [were] converted in a single day! … And what have most of us seen or done since that could possibly compare?”[1]

It would be easy to look back on Pentecost and say, nostalgically, “Wasn’t it neat when the Spirit showed up that one time?” But that would miss the point completely, because the Spirit continues to show up for us, even today.

Pentecost actually began as a Jewish celebration known as Shavuot, or the Festival of Weeks. In the Old Testament, God commands the people to celebrate the first fruits of the harvest fifty days after the Passover – that’s where the “pente” part of “Pentecost” comes from (Numbers 16:10). In linking this celebration to the harvest, which recurs year after year, God teaches the people that this celebration isn’t stuck in the past, but renewed again and again. Every year, we are to look and see the ways that God is providing, the harvest that we’re just beginning to reap.

In our reading from Acts, the disciples are all gathered in one place when the Jewish festival of Pentecost is being celebrated. Suddenly, a rushing wind comes upon them, filling them with the Holy Spirit and giving them the miraculous ability to speak in different languages. Often, this event is described as “the birthday of the church,” but commentator Matt Skinner hates that shorthand explanation.

“It’s not just that God gave the Spirit once, and then went off to have a smoke somewhere while we do our own thing,” he says. “There’s an ongoing, organic connection between [the events of Pentecost] and everything that Jesus did, which itself is connected to everything God did throughout the Old Testament.”[2]

And so we can see the Biblical narrative as a great chain, connecting God’s act of creation to the calling of Abraham, the Exodus from Egypt to the arrival in the Promised Land, the prophets of the Old Testament to the preachers of the early church.

But the chain doesn’t end there.

The early church martyrs are linked to the teachers who established church doctrine; who are linked to the reformers who tried to recapture the heart of Christ’s message; who are linked to the missionaries who spread that message across the globe; who are linked to the civil rights leaders who worked for justice; who are linked to us, today, sitting in this little church in Covesville.

In the story from Acts, people ask, “Aren’t these all Galileans? How is it that we hear them all speaking our various languages?” What the people see and hear that day is far outside their expectations.

I wonder if outsiders looking at Cove might ask, “Isn’t this a small, rural church? How is it that they can bring in a full-time pastor to work in their community?”

Or, “Doesn’t this church have a part-time, interim pastor right now? How is it that they have grown in numbers over the past year-and-a-half?”

Or, “Isn’t this a tiny congregation? How is it that they routinely send six or more volunteers to Habitat for Humanity when larger churches send two or three?”

Or, “Isn’t this an aging congregation? How is it that they have children in worship on a regular basis?”

In the story from Acts, the people conclude their questions with: “What is the meaning of this??” As we celebrate Pentecost, poised to enter a new chapter in the life of this church, we might ask similar questions:

What is the meaning of Cove’s existence in 2016?

What are we called to do with the gifts we’ve been given – this church building, our financial resources, the people who are part of our congregation?

What is the Spirit calling us to do or to be in our community?

How can we best respond to that calling?

What might we need to risk in order to do so?

Over the next few months, a small team plans to focus on these kinds of questions, engaging in conversations with the members of the Cove community. In all honesty, finances and giving will be a part of those conversations, because that’s a particular challenge that’s facing us. But the more pressing challenge is, what’s our church going look like in the future? Our new pastor, Gary Charles, will take us into the 250th anniversary of Cove, which will be a momentous commemoration.

But it can’t simply be a commemoration; it can’t be driven by nostalgia. We don’t want to get stuck on how things used to be. Cove looks very different today than it did 250 years ago. My guess is that Cove will look very different ten, maybe even just five years from now. The purpose of celebrating Pentecost is to remind us that the church looks different because the Spirit is still at work!

And there’s one more thing that Pentecost can teach us: “When the day of Pentecost came,” the story begins, “they were all together in one place.”

The disciples were united. They were a community. The Spirit didn’t show up just to one special person. When Jesus sent the Spirit to them he sent her to ALL of them. They were all together in one place, but they weren’t all the same. There were young and old, men and women, slaves and free, Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and many others. No doubt they had different ideas about how the world worked – about how God worked. But they were all together in one place, united in their diversity.

That’s when the Spirit showed up. Perhaps that’s how the Spirit shows up – when we join our voices together, when we listen together, when we dream together. “I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh,” God declares. “Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”

May it be so. Amen.

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[1] David Lose, “Preaching a Present-Tense Pentecost”

[2] Sermon Brainwave podcast for May 19, 2013.