Four years hence, I still know very little of baseball, so I was quite puzzled by a New York Times article a few weeks ago.   When team owner George Steinbrenner died, it was reported that a pre-game memorial would take place at the next Yankees’ home game.  The article also noted that as part of the tributes, a group of fans had agreed not to chant during the game.

Puzzled even further, I tried to figure out why not chanting during a ball game was considered a tribute.  Again, I did not know of the mysterious rituals of certain hardcore Yankees fans.  I learned of the fairly modern tradition (since 1996) of a group of fans sitting in a certain section of Shea Stadium (section 39 in the old Shea stadium and now section 203 in the new one). The fans spend the first inning chanting the names of each Yankees player out on the field.  For them, not chanting and being generally raucous was considered a sign of respect for Steinbrenner.  Not surprising was to learn of their nickname:  the Bleacher Creatures. 

You might be wondering:  where is he going with this?  How a bunch of “super-fans” (often known for their rude habits and rituals) wind up in a Vermont Baptist church service where the strongest concession item we offer is a stout cup of coffee? 

Oddly enough, the Bleacher Creatures’ habits of cheering and shouting and making some noise to see their home team win fits in with the Epistle to the Hebrews.  In this book, the writer of Hebrews talks about the saints/heroes of the faith who have gone on before us, now in glory above, shouting their encouragement to the rest of us (and not with the Bleacher Creatures’ other habits thrown in).  The saints above encourage those of us down here to run the race of faith, with the writer of Hebrews claiming the Christian goes on a long journey, where endurance and determination is needed.  Such support from the saints before us is given to us, though we have to listen for it.

Listening to words of encouragement can be hard.  We tend to hear all of the other voices around in (or in us) that discourage yet the New Testament claims the abiding word for the disciples of Jesus is that certain word that calls us to press onwards.  Elsewhere in Hebrews, the writer claims that disciples can get discouraged and wore down, using this powerful image of a people of “drooping hands and bent knees” (Hebrews 12:12).  Picture this image in your mind, and perhaps you find yourself thinking, “That describes me!” 

The world of the New Testament might seem distant from us, written with the perspectives (and biases) of the emerging Christianity of the first century, yet the scriptures also weave themselves into our twenty-first century life, sometimes encouraging, sometimes chastening us to remember that some tropes about human life have not changed, despite the centuries dividing us from the “early Church”.  We still struggle with discouragement.  We remain puzzled about the way life tends to work: unpredictable and a little chaos thrown in.  Certainly, we hear Hebrews loud and clear when we read of drooping hands and bent knees.  That sounds just like “home”, “work”, “family”, “homework”, and yes, even “church”.  However, can we hear that contrary word of encouragement?  Can you hear that good word lilting above the din of the world and the noise within you?

The writer of Hebrews launches into a roll call of the faithful, those who have lived out their lives in fullness and faithfulness before God.  It’s a veritable “who’s who” of the great people some of you first learned about in Baptist Sunday school.  The roll call starts off with one of the greatest of the greats, Abraham, the one whose covenant with God made him the father of multitudes, generation upon generation of faithful followers.  Abraham lived a very difficult life, even after he was called out by God to do great things. 

            A few years ago, journalist Bill Moyers explored the Book of Genesis alongside Christian, Jewish and Muslim scholars, writers and religious leaders as part of PBS series.  Moyers observes about the call of Abraham:

John Gardner tells us that history never looks like history when you are living through it.  It looks confusing and messy, and always feels uncomfortable.  You can certainly say that about history as we find it in the Book of Genesis.  God is founding a dynasty, the beginnings of Judaism, Christian, and Islam.  One might expect the storyteller to pain the “First Family” ten feet tall with several coats of whitewash.  But the picture we get of these men and women is uncomfortably human.  There is so much marital conflict and sibling intrigue they almost forfeit the call and fumble the promise.  Yet the storyteller refuses to clean up their act.  This is the amazing thing about the people of Genesis.  The more we talk about them, the more they look like people we know—faces in the mirror. 

            In the mid-20^th century, Baptist translator, scholar, and social justice legend Clarence Jordan translated most of the New Testament into Southern vernacular.  He translated Hebrews 11:1:“Now faith is the turning of dreams into deeds; it is betting your life on unseen realities.”   I love that turn of phrase: faith as “betting your life on unseen realities”.  It asks us to make a choice about how we live our lives: is life nothing than the drama between letdowns, or an adventure that has its twists and turns, yet is well worth living? 
            Faith is the glue that holds us together when the world seems to be shaking at the foundations.  Faith is the spark that fans to flame our sense of a future well worth seeking out.  Faith is that belief so deep down within that it is woven into your very being.

            Abraham and many, many others in the Bible were people of faith while still being “uncomfortably human” or just like that face we know in the mirror.  The book of Hebrews aims to see the same faithfulness flower in the midst of the early Christians, struggling as a minority religious community in the midst of the Roman Empire.  The epistle writer sees the weariness etched across the faces of the church members: the challenge to live daily life, the challenge to live that life out with faithfulness to God.  With the knowledge that life was difficult, that faith can wax and wane as life’s travails add up, the epistle writer still put these words down on the page, offering the roll call of the faithful, claiming that somewhere there’s a crowd cheering you (yes, you!) on through life’s journey, providing a counter-claim to the world as we know it from first-hand experience as a hard, unpredictable place to be.

Abraham hands down to us a case study in what it means to be faithful, though he probably did not consider his faith that “great” if you were to ask him what his secrets to a life lived in faith.  He made mistakes.  He faltered.  He had moments that some readers might consider of questionable judgment.  As Moyers said, we should refrain from whitewashing the stories of the Bible in favor of often pale, unrealistic interpretations of the sacred stories.  Pay close attention to the full story of a biblical character, a saint, or a believer you would highlight as a person of admirable faith, and you will find one such as Abraham:  a person who knew life in all its adversity and wonder. 

Despite what you might believe about your own faith journey, faith is not about success or importance.  Really, it’s not even about your ability to “knock one out of the park” each and every day.  Faith is built on day-by-day living, letting your beliefs and your life intertwine, sometimes harmonizing and other times seeming at odds.  Little by little, belief takes root, and faith flowers.

            Reading The Grapes of Wrath, I understood better my Grandmother Hugenot’s stories of the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl.  Steinbeck’s criticism of the plight of struggling farmers connected with the angst felt among farmers and ranchers in my own community, households desperate to hold onto the land they tilled and pastured, trying to make a living.  An old joke passed around typified the anxieties of many farm families: “I used to do business with the Farmer’s Bank in town.  Now it’s the banker’s farm!”

Looking back, I remember the high school literature classes usually groaned when a new book was introduced.  (“Not Shakespeare again!” muttered one classmate.)  In reality, requiring The Grapes of Wrath was a good move, asking high school students to think about the issues raised by Steinbeck.  After all, the Joad family was not a cast of unknown characters.  They felt familiar to those of us who living in a rural county in Kansas where few good paying jobs were to be found and ranked highly on the list of most economically depressed counties in the state.  Steinbeck’s novel touched chords within us that perhaps we did not realize at the time, clues about the ways the world works as Steinbeck saw it back in Depression era America.

I begin with Steinbeck to ask you to “look before you leap” to conclusions when hearing this parable of Jesus.  A twenty-first century American might read “into” the parable some assumptions about twenty-first century life that do not readily correlate to the first century world of Jesus and the parables. 

For example, the parable tells this story of a landowner with great wealth.  For the 21^st-century listener, we look at the financial angle first, missing out on an important clue about this parable.  Today, we presume landownership is fairly commonplace.  If we were to ask for a show of hands, a good number of you would be (or might have once been) landowners or have someone in your family who owns or owned land. 

In the first century, hardly anybody owned land, so this story about a rich man who owns land tells Jesus’ listeners that this fellow is extraordinarily wealthy just by the fact he owned land, and lots of it! (In the Greek text of Luke, the description is even more opulent than our common English translations:  tracts upon tracts of land!).  For Jesus’ listeners, this landowner is not someone the crowd would respect or trust!

            Living in a limited resource society, the people around Jesus had great distrust for someone who was opulently wealthy. Most of the populace lived hard lives, while a select few made up the privileged “elite”. How did such a person not only own land and then amass such an incredible amount of land?  The first question on the first century listener’s mind was fairly straightforward:  “Who lost out while this guy got it all?”

Again, here is a moment when contemporary readers can make assumptions about the text.  Some would argue that wealth of any sort is antithetical to the teachings of Christianity. The New Testament varies in its perspectives. In Luke’s gospel and his sequel we call the Book of Acts, you read of an aversion to possessions, with Jesus encouraging his follower to sell off possessions, support the poor and not seek material gain.  Subsequently, Luke writes of this same ethic governing the early Church after Pentecost when the disciples gather into churches known for sharing possessions in common. 

Elsewhere in Paul’s epistles, people of means, “the wealthy”, are part of the early churches scattered across the Roman Empire.  Paul encourages the Corinthian fellowship, which was comprised of people of great or little wealth to treat one another as equals.  In other writings, Paul claims the Church is made up of many across all manner of boundaries: the Jew, the Gentile, the rich, the poor, the slave, the free, the male, or the female—all are gathered together without exception or exclusion.  In Paul’s writings, no proviso is given that one must give up everything, though an expectation remains that people of any social classification must make a choice to take leave of the habits of exclusive or insular behavior by which the rest of the world tends to run.

The parable of the rich landowner stands alongside the parable of the Good Samaritan, the story of a rich man and the beggar Lazarus, and the Prodigal Son.  The four parables revolve around examples of the right and the wrong ways of behaving.  The rich landowner is understood as a bad example because he has spent all of his time daydreaming about his own gain and needs.  Living in a limited resource society, he has chosen not to “opt in” to the need to share his resources.  At no time does it cross his mind that his “land of plenty” is not for his sole benefit.  He has chosen to live exclusively at the expense of others.

 In this parable, the failings of this landowner revolve around the choices he makes when it becomes evident his “return” on his lands will be unbelievably successful. The landowner realizes that his land will provide an abundant crop.  The bumper crop will be so great that he begins imagining his next steps: rebuilding his storage facilities so that he can take in all of the grain.  The landowner daydreams of the plentiful crop and the long-term return on such good fortune. 

His daydreams are countered by what could be considered a nightmare.  In his sleep, God gives the landowner a stern lecture about his choices.  He is told that all he has planned for is now moot.  He will not awaken in the morning, losing his life and losing out on all of his plans for the future.  The next construction project on his land will be a tomb.

            The parables scholar Bernard Brandon Scott refers to this parable as “how to mismanage a miracle”, when one is given much yet takes it all for granted.  This sort of failing can easily befall any of us.  We do not need to be in a certain tax bracket or of a certain ideological worldview to live for ourselves alone and with a certain disdain or detachment for others.  Despite the summer heat, I find myself recalling the Christmastime story of Dr. Seuss’ Grinch, whose heart shrank down five times too small.

The parable warns against making possessions or worth your only goal.  The parable of the landowner turns from the realization of abundance coming his way to an internal monologue increasingly self-absorbed (what will “I” do with this crop and how can “my” storage facilities hold it all?). The landowner insulates himself from the needs of others, driven by the desire to possess.

            As noted before, Luke’s two writings (the gospel of Luke and the book of Acts) have few good words about those who become ruled by their possessions.  Elsewhere in Luke’s gospel, Jesus instructs, “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also” (Luke 12:34).  In this small subset of four “example” parables, the Prodigal spends his half of the inheritance and learns that you can’t put a price tag on being welcomed home, Lazarus the beggar is lifted up to heaven above as God’s beloved, even though he is ignored and maltreated in his life on earth, and the Samaritan loads up a complete stranger left for dead in the ditch, laying out significant personal funds to ensure the wounded man’s wellbeing.  The parable of the landowner is a challenge to the listener:  how shall you live your life?  Regardless of your economic status, do you still provide, as you are able, for the needs of others?

            In terms of the parable, let’s consider look at the sort of response our congregation gives to these questions.  We support faithfully American Baptist “home” and international mission, providing financial support for programs and staff who offer a variety of ministries around this country and our world.  Our facilities provide space for various community needs for upwards of 100 persons coming on site per day. 

Each week, the church office tracks a variety of canned goods and other items that come in for the Dove Project for community members living with HIV/AIDS and the His Pantry ministry of Sacred Heart/St Francis de Sales Church.  In today’s bulletin you’ll find a listing of the various items received to date for the annual school supply donations given to the Molly Stark Elementary School.   Morgan Flynn has been coordinating pet food donations for Second Chances Animal Shelter.  Beginning today, Bob and Grace Wilson are in New Orleans for a week to volunteer with various Habitat projects. Certainly, the list goes on well beyond this sampling.

            Now, we may consider ourselves like many other faith communities locally and further afield: numerically small, a mix of persons of varying economic backgrounds, dealing with the same challenges of keeping up a physical plant and feeling the financial challenges of juggling all the matters we have to juggle.  Nonetheless, we refrain from storing up our treasures or using our resources for the sole good of the membership.  We turn toward our neighbors with open hands and a willing spirit of service.  It is not about “us” when it comes to our congregational identity and mission.  We call it “missional” work.  Jesus would call these efforts “good examples” of the Kingdom/Reign at hand.

Such consideration makes the gospel come to life. Living with God and neighbor in mind re-imagines the world as the parables envision.  Along the way, we are blessed with treasures of a luster quite unlike fame or gold.

The Baptist layman who said this gave me a look that said, “What I just stated is not negotiable.”  Back home, you only gave that sort of look to people at church when matters of great doctrine were being defended, or worse, when somebody tried to cut in line at the church potluck.  Scowl, say what you need that other person to hear (as they are obviously incorrect), and look intense.  Such a look scares off heretics and people aiming for seconds alike.

The conversation revolved around the church I attended during my college years looking at revising its worship order.  The Baptist layman was perfectly fine with changing the type of music, yet when it came to the place of the Lord’s Prayer in worship (the proposal was to lessen the regularity of its use in worship), the proposal was not received very well by the Baptist layman, hence the scowl reserved for times such as these.

I didn’t quite know what to say.  (The scowl serves as a conversation killer after all….).  I grew up in my “home congregation” with the practice of the Lord’s prayer in worship being very sparing, hardly used except on occasions when the minister decided it was appropriate to a given worship service.  (Also, he believed communion should be held only quarterly.) 

            What I thought was “normative” about praying the Lord’s Prayer (pray the Lord’s Prayer sparingly) was “fighting words” to another Baptist who valued highly a frequent use of the Lord’s Prayer (it isn’t proper worship without this prayer).  Admittedly, much of Baptist history could be explained as variations on the tenor of the conversation:  Baptists have differing practices due to our strong emphasis on the “local church” shaping belief and ritual in ways that puzzle outsiders yet are quite “normal” to the average Baptist.  For our tradition, the variation is more important than the “theme”. 

            Interestingly, both of the Baptist churches I highlight (the one I grew up in and the one that I attended in college) represent the differing attitudes about the Lord’s Prayer over the two millennia of Church history.  In one corner, you have the Christians who have used the Lord’s Prayer as a significant and essential part of devotion and worship. In the other, a group of Christians who have appreciated Christ’s instruction to pray in this manner, yet they vary in their frequency and use of the Lord’s Prayer.

For example, in the early days of Christian monasticism (ca. the 4^th century in Egypt), the Lord’s Prayer was used as part of a disciplined life of prayer.  The monk was called to pray in this manner:

Prostration for prayer, silent confession, rising, signing with the cross (to recall baptism), followed by ‘the Prayer of the Gospel’ (meaning the Lord’s Prayer), followed by another signing, another prostration, silent penitential prayer, standing up, another signing, silent prayer, sitting (for readings).  (Cited by Kenneth W. Stevenson, The Lord's Prayer: A Text in Tradition, SCM and Fortress Press, 2003, p. 64).

            Several centuries later, the regularity of the Lord’s Prayer in devotional and worship life was not without its critics.  In 1605, a pastor wrote, “I had rather speak five words to God in prayer from understanding, faith, and feeling, than say the Lord’s Prayer over a thousand times ignorantly, negligently or superstitiously” (Cited by Stevenson, p. 179).  This was the assertion of John Smyth, an English pastor who led his congregation in 1609 to become the first “Baptist” church.  Smyth was reacting to the Lord’s Prayer in worship use among Christians whom Smyth felt were too given over to repeating the prayer yet not connecting with the meaning of the words. 

            Thus, the tension among Christian followers is illumined.  What is the better path: frequent or infrequent use of the Prayer given to Jesus by his disciples?  Is the Lord’s Prayer to be used daily or occasionally?  How do we most faithfully follow Jesus’ instruction that “when you pray, pray in this way…”?

The Lord’s Prayer is quite familiar to our congregation with the emphasis on weekly use, however, were you puzzled by the version as told by Luke’s gospel?  Luke 11 sets the Lord’s Prayer as part of a conversation between Jesus and his disciples after he has finished his own time for prayer.  The disciples ask how to pray, and Jesus gives this prayer along with a few other words on prayer.  Elsewhere Matthew sequences the Lord’s Prayer as part of Jesus’ “Sermon on the Mount”, various teachings for those who would follow the way of Jesus. 

Historically, Luke’s version of the Lord’s Prayer has not fared well against Matthew’s version.  A historical survey of the Lord’s Prayer evidences a bias toward Matthew’s version in the various Lord’s Prayers used by Christians down the centuries.  Even as early as a generation after the time of the New Testament’s writings, second century Christians were teaching the Lord’s Prayer with a version closely patterned after Matthew’s gospel, leaving Luke’s “shorter” version aside.  Each time we pray the Lord’s Prayer, we know we participate in a prayer handed down from generation to generation, though admittedly, we pray with the modifications (theological, liturgical, and sometimes politicized) that have happened since the day Jesus and his disciples spoke of prayer.

Stepping aside from the two millennia of Christian history, the British scholar N.T. Wright takes us back to the “source material”, that of the gospel writers.  Wright observes, “In Luke’ gospel, Jesus waited until his followers asked him for a prayer; and they reason they asked was because they saw what he was doing.  Something tells me there is a lesson there.” (Christian Century, 1997) Indeed, Luke’s gospel notes Jesus kept a strong prayer life.  He tells the disciples always “to pray and not to give up”.  For Luke’s gospel, the disciple is one who persists in the practice of prayer, despite whatever life throws at you. 

Luke’s motive for prayer is about prayer that knows how to live faithfully for the long haul.  The Lord’s Prayer is bread for the journey, words given so that we might pray rightly (though not meant to be rote).  The disciples in Luke’s gospel are a group of people learning how to follow Jesus and ground yourself in God’s ways, not by the disjointed rhythm of life lived under the shadow of Rome or the struggle to get by (barely so) in a society living with few resources (food, land, status) to go around.  Pray this prayer so that you might live.  As Tom Wright notes, the disciples saw Jesus more than “just praying”.  He seemed to be embodying something far greater. If you will, what one prays to God shapes how one lives their lives before God.

Recently, the Baptist scholar Glenn Hinson traced the theme of “persistence in prayer” through Luke’s writings, better known as “the Gospel of Luke” and its sequel “the Book of Acts”.  Hinson demonstrates how the first churches were known as “individuals and early [church] communities being persistent in prayer”, which was “a key to the faith spreading from Jerusalem throughout Judea to the ends of the earth” (Hinson, “Persistence in Prayer in Luke-Acts”, Review & Expositor, 104 (Fall 2007): p. 721).

What Jesus is teaching in Luke 11 about prayer and the way of discipleship becomes crucial to the followers of Jesus being able to grow in faith, grow in numbers, and spread the gospel across the first century Roman Empire.  To be persistent is to believe in something enough that you do not give up.  Prayer grounds you back in the beliefs you profess.  The prayer life of Jesus is one prepared to move against the grain of Empire and Temple, to proclaim a different order to the world than the competing voices of the world want you to believe.  In this one prayer (despite the tangle of biblical and historical developments), Jesus gives us the heart of the gospel as well as what is on his own heart.  This Prayer comes from the depths within Christ himself, words that he lives by and offers to his disciples to guide them in this same way.

To pray the Lord’s prayer is not necessarily about “how often” one prays it.  As early Baptist John Smyth grumped back in 1605, the repetition alone is not the point.  The Prayer should be like most of our prayers: said in the midst of life, when in rough seas or calm waters alike.  The Prayer is given to us to follow, words that comfort, words that challenge, words that summon us to the humble obedience of the Christ we claim and follow. 

The Prayer is a prayer given to bring us through the difficult times of our lives and the task of remembering ourselves before God, the maker of heaven and earth.  Generations before us have prayed this prayer (and as we have learned) in a variety of ways and with sometimes bewilderingly diverse convictions about praying the Prayer.  However we say it, we go in trust that this is a prayer that Jesus offered long ago so we might be his faithful witnesses, ready to serve and live out our lives in faithful and persistent ways.

A word of warning is also imparted:  there is a great deal of work to be done, and while you find yourself wondering who the Lord’s going to call to do all this work, look out:  the answer is you![1]  Jesus does not reserve this work for the Twelve.  Awaiting the Seventy is something that we rarely welcome in our lives:  the potential for absolute failure!

Jesus does not make light of the task before these disciples.  “I’m sending you out like lambs into the midst of wolves” is not the most encouraging pep talk. Jesus himself is welcome in some places, and elsewhere, he receives suspicion or rejection. He does not pretend that the disciples will be impervious to the same criticism and treatment.  Going out in Jesus’ name is not necessarily the easiest or safest of callings.

Jesus complicates things by insisting that his disciples go out and encounter friend and foe alike with the same attitude.  If you get welcomed in and fed, enjoy the hospitality.  If you are told to take a hike, take it in stride.  There is to be no confrontation.  If a town does not welcome you, dust your heels and move on.

 I find this instruction of the Seventy quite remarkable. It goes contra to human nature, asking the disciple to refrain from meeting fire with fire.  There are to be no angry words or reaction.  Jesus wants these disciples to model what latter-day individuals like Gandhi or Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., (who claimed he was influenced by Jesus and Gandhi alike) envisioned when instructing their own followers to go out.  The rule is given for those sharing faith and encountering resistance:  Take the path of non-violent response. 

From generation to generation, such wisdom continues to bear witness to the better path we humans can take if we opt not to be led by confrontational or adversarial habits.  In recalling the sending of the seventy, we are challenged to find ways to go out into the world to speak a word about Jesus and the Kingdom/Reign of God while also endeavoring to greet those who wish to hear and those who do not with the same humble spirit as those disciples sent out centuries ago.

Such a passage is a welcome word on a Sunday morning that coincides with the Fourth of July.  On this day, we celebrate the Declaration of Independence and our nation’s development into the country that it is today.  One of the rich traditions of the United States is religious freedom, supporting the rights of U.S. citizens to practice their faith convictions as each one of us sees fit. 

 Our nation was founded by those influenced by Christian beliefs, though the U.S. is not a “theocracy” (i.e. government ruled by a dominant religious worldview and a set of values that are maintained by compulsion).  The United States stands for the freedom of the many religions, not “the one”.  

In the greater history of Baptists, a helpful word about religious liberty is passed down through “the Standard Confession”, a document written in 1660 by English Baptists.  In this document, we read:

It is the will, and the mind of God (in these gospel times) that all men should have the free liberty of their own conscience in matters of Religion, or Worship, without the least oppression, or persecution, as simply on that account; and that for any authority otherwise to act, we confidently believe is expressly contrary to the mind of Christ who requires that whatsoever men would that others do unto them, they should even so do unto others, and that the Tares and the Wheat should grow together in the field (which is the world) until the harvest (which is the end of the world).[2]   

From such a commitment to religious liberty in the U.S. and England arose a movement of Christianity holds dear that the freedom of conscience and religious expression of others is to be protected.  To be a good Baptist is to follow Jesus and live peaceably with others, whether one follows Jesus or another path. We share the gospel we hold dear, yet we do not hinder the right of others to believe differently.

Throughout the 18^th and 19^th century, Baptist writings included themes of religious liberty alongside other deeply held convictions such as believer’s baptism.  Baptists advocated for the separation between church and state, knowing firsthand the challenges of being a religious minority. Baptists endured discrimination, incarceration and other forms of harassment for their beliefs and practices. 

For today’s U.S. Baptists, it may be surprising to read of the hardship endured by Baptists in the movement’s infancy.  In the 20^th-century, the Baptist movement grew exponentially, and Baptists in the U.S. became part of the mainstream religious landscape.  Recalling the history of Roger Williams, Isaac Backus and John Leland is helpful in reminding ourselves of our heritage and the continuing need to recognize and protect the rights of religious minorities in today’s U.S. context and around the world. 

In the verses the lectionary omits (vs. 12-15), Jesus gives a word about inhospitable towns, though he reserves ultimate judgment for the divine, not the human.  He invokes the old story of Sodom, a town that has infamy as a place where little welcome was to be found.[3]  Jesus gives a harsh warning about any place lacking in welcome!

For the reader, it is a warning that welcome can be hard to come by for followers sent in Jesus’ name.  It is also a warning to believers not to be party to offering welcome conditionally given.  Likewise, as Baptists who affirm religious freedom, we confidently preach the Gospel, yet we are called to humble co-existence with those who do not believe the same as ourselves.

Earlier this year, I discovered a rather sobering story of religious freedom eclipsed by a fundamental lack of welcome.  In 1943, three Jehovah’s Witnesses were on a preaching tour, and they had a very adversarial reception while visiting my hometown of Sedan, Kansas.[4]  Thanks to the online archives of the Kansas Historical Society, you can find an affidavit sworn by Homer Hunter, one of the Jehovah’s Witnesses involved in this incident, sent to the attention of the U.S. Attorney General.  In this affidavit, Hunter outlines what happened when his group came to town to preach their beliefs and hand out literature. 

In 1943, Jehovah’s Witnesses offered beliefs quite unpopular during the height of the Second World War.  In addition to their beliefs about matters divine, they were known for being conscientious objectors, and they also are known for declining to salute flags of any nation.  Their presence in town soon attracted certain members of the local American Legion Post.  The three men were told they were not welcome and to leave.  The local sheriff was approached for assistance. He told them he could not protect them.

The three men declined to leave town and continued their proselytizing efforts.  A mob of angry citizens gathered to scare off these men.  An American Legion member brought a U.S. flag before the Jehovah’s Witnesses to salute, which they declined to do. The mob turned to violence, beating the three men and forcing them out of town. Recounting the incident in his affidavit, Homer Hunter asked the Attorney General’s office to investigate the incident, so that these men could “safely exercise the privileges of American citizens.”

Despite the laws and court cases helping articulate our nation’s protections of religious freedom, [5] this story from 1943 Kansas reminds us that the implementation of this ethos is in the hands of the average citizen as much as that of federal, state or local authorities. Together, we make space for religious freedom, providing the sort of welcome that we would want others to offer us.  We must work together so that all may “safely exercise the privileges of American citizens”.

Here at First Baptist, I believe this sort of ethos is reflected in the spirit of our congregation.  We work diligently with the local interfaith council, collaborating with people of differing convictions on common ground issues and basic human needs.  We do not come to the council table looking to convert people to our own ways of belief and practice.  Instead, we seek out ways to live with a degree of mutuality, offering respect and partnership. 

A good example of what we’re doing right:  Just two years ago this month, Dr. Richard Dundas was looking for a way to “fast track” a free health clinic sore needed in our community.  He came to the interfaith council, given our collective support for the community through the Food and Fuel Fund.  Within six months, the interfaith movement of Bennington worked alongside the medical community to get the clinic operational.  The cooperative spirit of our council has been a key part of this clinic’s development.[6] 

Recently, our interfaith council received national recognition for an educational partnership with Southern Vermont College.  At a conference at the White House, the Department of Education highlighted our comparative religions course offered last fall at a conference hosted at the White House.  The course offered a genuine approach to religious diversity, not just speaking of what a particular faith believes in a clinical, abstract way.  Being in dialogue with other religions keeps us honest cultivating an open spirit and the same sort of humility Christ called for when the seventy were sent forth.[7]

After we have finished our worship, I hope you will remain for the coffee hour fellowship time.  At coffee hour, we will drink a cup of coffee with a very delicious story.  The coffee we serve today comes from Uganda, a fair trade coffee sold by a unique cooperative of coffee growers.  In a rural village area, times were getting tough, and a coffee grower had a creative idea.  He approached others in his village, especially those who were of different religious beliefs.  Soon, growers developed a cooperative for producing and selling coffee. 

What was their marketing strategy?  They have quite the story to tell.  The cooperative represents coffee growers who are Jewish, Muslim, and Christians.  The common work of growing coffee supports their families while gathering together people of differing faith traditions.[8]  The coffee cooperative models the only way forward for the religions of the world.  Beyond mere tolerance, when we speak a peaceable word and then seek to live it out, the welcome that Jesus expects comes about.

What better way to celebrate this day what it means to be

 an American citizen,

a Baptist,

a participant in interfaith cooperation,

and a good, peaceable human being?

[1] Here, I recall a great line from Stanley Hauerwas, as he reads Matthew’s gospel.  “In a wonderful moment, Jesus, confronted with such need, asks the disciples to pray God will send helpers.  The mission of the church has begun.  The disciples’ prayer is answered, and the answer turns out to be them [i.e. the disciples themselves]” (Matthew, Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2006, p. 104).

[2] Lumpkin, William L., Baptist Confessions of Faith, rev. ed., Valley Forge, PA: Judson, 1969), p. 232-3.

[3] The history of interpretation around Sodom (Genesis 18-19) continues to be divisive, not the least due to the tradition of claiming Sodom’s “sin” revolves around homosexuality.  Modern scholarship ponders the text in a different light, claiming the downfall of the city was due to the people of Sodom’s fundamental lack of welcome and hospitality.  While I advocate a progressive interpretation of such texts, I note even among conservative evangelicals, a few voices echo this interpretation.  See Stanley J. Grenz, Welcoming But Not Affirming (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1998), 36-40.

[4] The affidavit of Homer W. Hunter to the Attorney General (sworn March 22, 1943) is accessible online http://www.kansasmemory.org/item/216559.

[5] The Supreme Court ruled in 1940 (Cantwell vs. Connecticut) that religious groups could promote religious teachings without municipal or state/federal restrictions. I am grateful to Ms Cherilyn Crowe, BJC staff member, who noted the connection to the Cantwell precedent.

[6] Local interfaith council leader Joshua Boettiger offered celebratory remarks at the clinic’s opening in January 2009.  To read his text, visit :  http://cbevermont.org/wordpress/?p=34.

[7] The course is highlighted in the remarks of  Dr. Martha J. Kanter, Undersecretary of Higher Education, Department of Education, given on June 15, 2010.   The speech is available online via: http://www.compact.org/news/doe-remarks-on-compact/11754). 

[8]  To learn more about this fair trade coffee’s back story and online store, visit www.mirembekawomera.com. Thanks to Rabbi Joshua Boettiger and Congregation Beth El for making this coffee available locally in Bennington. 

The parable itself is quite unique.  In fact, among all of the parables Jesus told as recorded by the four gospels, this particular parable is only one of four parables that stand in a class of their own.  Among parables scholars, the Good Samaritan is grouped together with the parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus the poor beggar, the parable about the rich fool, and the parable of two men at prayer:  the pious Pharisee and the humble tax collector.  A 20^th-century German scholar called these type of parables Beispielerzahlungen, or “exemplary stories”.   In telling these stories, Jesus aims to show his listeners an example of the right (and the wrong) sort of behavior.  

Hear these parables and be that sort of person.   So, be more like the humble beggar at the gates than the rich man dining sumptuously at his table.  Pray like a humble sinner than one filled with pompous piety.  Aim for a better way of living your life than hoarding up everything and then losing it when it’s your time to go. 

Also noteworthy is the place where these parables appear.  These four “example” parables appear only in the Gospel of Luke.  Hmmm….what is Luke’s gospel saying about the teachings of Jesus and the way of discipleship?  What sort of disciple does Luke presume is the best?  Considering that Luke goes on to write the book of Acts, the stories of the early days of the Church, one wonders what sort of “church” Luke also expects a body of believers to be like.  What sort of example does Jesus aim to make of us?  Are we really ready to be that sort of disciple?

Ah…the plot thickens beyond our familiarity with the supposedly simple, oft-told parable!  What does it mean to be a good example, if that good example is held up to be a beggar, a person who won’t live out life like the vain wealthy fool, the tax collector (publican) who humbly prays, and finally, and most scandalously, being like the “good” Samaritan?  Ask any first century Jew listening to these parables, and while they might like the stories that make the “little guy” come out on top, they sure wouldn’t like the punch line to this parable.   “You’re talking about a ‘good’ Samaritan?” the first century listener asks.  “What about Samaritans is remotely ‘good’?”

            Historians give a variety of reasons why Jews and Samaritans did not get along, though if you spoke to a Jew or Samaritan in the first century, you would get plenty of reasons.  “Good Samaritans don’t exist,” would be a likely response.  Consider the estrangement between the two groups just like that family BBQ you might be going to this summer.  While everyone’s enjoying the food and catching up on family news, over in opposite corners are those two brothers.  They haven’t spoke in years; the lingering estrangement just hangs in the air.  It’s a stalemate.  You know it, and they know it, and you’d better just leave things well alone.

            The unlikely “example” of a “good” Samaritan would have thrown the “lawyer” questioning Jesus.  This “lawyer” (better translated as “legal advisor on sacred matters”) made his living knowing the jot and the tittle of the sacred text.  Any fool could tell that this story, told in response to a question about eternal life, shouldn’t end up with a Samaritan saving the day.  More to the point, what sort of fool tells this story?  Respectable stories of righteous behavior told to respectable and righteous people do not end in “good Samaritan”.  In fact, even if you’re poking fun at the expense of a priest or a Levite, the person who “saves the day” ought to be at least an Israelite.  Heavens, make it a Gentile, if you must.  But a Samaritan….What is this world coming to?

            In contemporary theology, this parable would be cited as an example of how do people of faith deal with “the other”?  The term “other” is used for that person or group of persons that you cannot see fitting into the worldview or theology you believe.   How do religious people handle “those people”? 

            I can cite a number of sermons that offer up a casting call for “today’s Good Samaritan”.  Preachers look at society (and yes, even his or her flock of the faithful) and wonder aloud in the pulpit who is today’s “Good Samaritan”, if by “Good Samaritan” you mean a person or group of persons who raises the same exclusive reaction as those listening to Jesus spin this parable.  Who unsettles us as a person that we cannot readily name as "good"?  Who is the “Samaritan” today: the good Muslim”…“the good gay or lesbian”…“the good illegal immigrant”…“the good welfare mother”?

            One has to be careful with this story. It could start asking questions of us that we really don’t want to examine!  What do good Christians make of those we might not readily identify as likewise “good”?  The Jew/Samaritan divide reflects truths about human nature and religious worldviews alike.  What sort of example is Jesus asking his listeners to be?

            A few years ago, an urban African American pastor shared his experiences of listening to the conversation of some of his congregants.  They were voicing disgruntlement and anger about the “new people” moving into the neighborhood.   The pastor shared some of the comments: “They’re taking over our stores!”  “Some of them own half my block now!”  “I can’t get down the street without seeing a crowd of them!”   During one of his sermons, he repeated what he had overheard.  The minister asked his congregation if this reflected how they felt about the changing neighborhood.  Then he asked if these sentiments sounded familiar.  The same was said of his congregants when they moved into the neighborhood years ago, back when they were the newcomers.  Now they were treating the Asian newcomers just like the European Americans treated these African American congregants when they were “new” to the neighborhood.

            The question of the sacred law scholar asks about eternal life, a “how do I get to heaven?” type of question.  He is expecting some type of response about righteous behavior (and truthfully, he is among those who doubts Jesus has anything good to say about respectable behavior).  As they debate sacred teaching, the question shifts to the question of “who is my neighbor?”  The parable serves as a bridge between two questions perhaps we do not associate together.  What connects “righteousness” and “neighborliness”?  In the teachings of Jesus, especially regarding the Kingdom/Reign of God, the gospel envisions far more inclusion in the Kingdom/Reign of God than we see modeled in the pews of many churches.  What sort of example do we set?

            We could suggest the parable relates how you treat others has a bearing on your ability to “get to heaven”.  On a more graceful note, perhaps we could read this parable as a tale about how we should not live by our boundaries of separation and difference.  If you believe the Kingdom/Reign of God has a much better vision for humanity, why not start living out these beliefs now?

            If you look down, you see the man left for dead in the ditch.  What do you do?  Do you stop or try not to get involved?  If you find yourself in the ditch at some point, when someone reaches out to you in compassion, do you accept it based on your beliefs about the person trying to help you back onto your feet?  

            Shane Clairborne is a young adult Christian in Philadelphia.  Just after graduating from Eastern University (an American Baptist college) in Philadelphia just over ten years ago, Clairborne and five others felt called to live together in one of the “rough” neighborhoods.  The group called themselves “The Simple Way’, pooled their resources and bought a house.  Over the past decade, the organization has inspired other groups to form, creating small, and intentional communities for people to live and serve among those in need. 

            Clairborne admits it is not “easy” work.  He told NPR’s Krista Tippett about an experience he had in his own neighborhood while walking down the street with his friend Kasim, a middle school age kid.  He recalls, “

…a bunch of teenagers jumped us, and they started calling us names and throwing stuff at us, and they were just ready for a fight, you know? They're just trying to stir it up, and we keep walking and then, I said, 'You know, let's not run from them. Let's go back.' And we introduced ourselves and Kasim is thinking, like, 'What in the world?' You know, we introduced ourselves to them. And I said, 'My name is Shane. This is Kasim.' And they totally didn't know what to do with that, you know, they're ready to fight. And, then we keep walking and then one of them hits my friend, Kasim, on the head with a club….

And then I turned around and I don't know what happened. It just sort of snapped for me. And I looked at them and I said, 'You guys are created in the image of God and you're made for something better than this.' These kids looked at us and they were — they had no idea what to do with that. They just sort of, like, disintegrated into every different direction, you know? And Kasim looks at me and he goes, 'What was that?' And I'm like 'I don't know what it was,' you know?....

[After Kasim and Clairborne returned to the Simple Way House, Kasim said] 'Shane, you know, we get to go to bed tonight, thinking that we acted like Jesus. And those kids have to go to bed thinking about how they acted.' And this is just a middle school kid, you know. And we sat down, and we prayed for those kids, and we thought about it. And I said, 'Kasim, I don't know what Jesus would have done in our place,' you know? I know one thing, he would not have run from those kids, and he would not have hit those kids.'  (From the transcript of Speaking of Faith,  2007 interview, rebroadcast July 1, 2010.  Transcript:  http://speakingoffaith.publicradio.org/programs/2010/monastic-revolution/transcript.shtml

            In the same interview, Shane Clairborne references Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., as one of his influences.  He mentions a quote by King on the parable of the Good Samaritan: "We're called to be the Good Samaritan and lift our neighbor out of the ditch. But after you lift so many people out of the ditch, you start to say, 'Maybe the whole road to Jericho needs to be transformed.'  (Clairborne interview transcript). 

            The parable ends with the unexpected hero saving the man in the ditch, pouring oil and wine on the man’s wounds, suspending his trade business to transport the wounded man, paying a significant sum of money for lodging and meals for this stranger, and then setting up a tab for when the money runs out.  It’s a curious ending: the Samaritan takes on the burden of caring for a complete stranger, investing in this stranger’s wellbeing (even when considered “left for dead”), and willing to risk himself by “getting involved”.

            The parable claims three people pass by.  Each of them (Priest, Levite, and Samaritan) sees the man left for dead in the ditch.  Only one of them is said to have stopped, moved by compassion.  The one who stopped was the least likely person you’d want to see “saving the day”.

            Jesus says, “Go and do likewise.”

            Hmmm…what sort of example is that? 

      Elijah is the better remembered of the two:  the older, more experienced prophet, a great servant of the Lord, who spoke out against the royal court and the recalcitrant people alike.  In last week’s text, we accompanied Elijah out on a journey into the desert as he lost his nerve and received a divine summons to reclaim his prophetic ministry.  This sort of text (I Kings 19) models for us a word of solidarity:  the Bible is not about “great, larger-than-life figures” detached or aloof.  From this sacred text, we learn a word of grace and encouragement that the prophets, priests, kings, patriarchs and matriarchs are more like us.  In turn, reading their stories is cautionary tale and word of hope alike.

      Elisha is often the forgotten prophet.  Other than this one scene, which tradition usually stresses is more about Elijah and his spectacular ascension into the heavens Elisha’s prophetic ministry usually is skipped over by the Sunday school quarterlies.  Elisha has a distinguished prophetic career, an equal thorn in the throne’s side, yet Elisha’s name goes a bit forgotten, eclipsed by his predecessor’s career.

      As they say, fame is fleeting.  Elijah and Elisha served for a season, though centuries later, some of their contributions are remembered, yet their names get muddled together.  It is reminiscent of a story told by a rabbi to a Baptist minister I know.  The rabbi claimed there are five “stages” of a rabbi’s life.  Using the fingers of one hand, the rabbi claimed that rabbis great or obscure are all remembered the same way: 

First:  “Who’s Jacob?  Huh?  Who is this Jacob?”  (bit of disbelief “Jacob” is “somebody”)

Second:  “This?  This is Jacob?”  (Meh!)

Third:   “Jacob!”  (with an approving nod)

Fourth:  “Ah yes, Jacob.” (Pause, then with a remembering sigh!) 

Five:  “Who’s Jacob?” 

For religious leaders, this story holds certain richness:  quite truthful and a bit humbling.  Our time is always for a season, whether years or decades pass, somebody else will take our place in the pulpit.  If you remember last week, Elijah was moping around, claiming he was the only prophet of God left.  (He was not.)  Ironically, you read further in this same chapter (I Kings 19), after Elijah got his courage and vocation back, he is told that Elisha is called to be his fellow prophet.  He finds Elisha in the middle of plowing the field, not exactly the first place you think a new prophet is to be found.  Elijah takes this in stride, calling the man to work along with him.  Elijah even tosses his mantle over Elisha’s shoulders.

The mantle Elijah carries is a fairly practical piece of outer clothing, made of heavy-duty materials (wool).  Used for warmth or cover, mantles were sometimes used as a sign of authority or respect.  Receiving a mantle was a sign of the respect given to the recipient by others.  Tearing a mantle served as a sign of deep grief.  The mantle wore by Elijah was a sign of his power.  Giving the mantle to Elisha was a sign of favor and trust in his potential. 

Curiously, mantles are not tailor-made.  The mantle is a large piece of material that is clasped around the person’s arms, which means essentially the mantle could be worn by anyone.   Elisha could have been dismissed as a rough and tumble farm hand, not the type of person you sent in to go toe-to-toe with the king.  Elijah came to Elisha with every confidence that this was the person God intended to lead.  The mantle was shared, not restricted.

A few years ago, my home church’s long-time pastor of thirty years retired.  His name was quite unique: Dois.  He served the congregation and community as a trusted leader, though as he retired, the church worried if they would ever replace him.  I had the opportunity to be one of the speakers at his last Sunday morning at the church.  A bit tongue-in-cheek, I said, “Now as you start praying for God to send you another Dois, be open to the fact God might send you a Doris!”  I admit it was part of my penchant for being ornery, though I thought a good word about God’s ability to bring about futures unexpected needed to be reminded.

Ironically, Elijah and Elisha share very little “screen time” in the narrative between the humble field and the great whirlwind.  The story focuses on the transition between Israel’s kings and Elijah’s prophetic work.  When it comes time for Elijah’s exit “stage up”, the two prophets are wandering around, seemingly with little rhyme or reason. Trace the path they take, and you see a bit of history recalled. 

As they travel far afield, they cross over the river Jordan, a call back to the time of Moses.  They go away from the familiar territory (aka “the Promised Land”) and travel to a distant place where Elijah and Elisha alike are tested.  Elijah wants to be alone, knowing something is about to happen.  Elisha does not want to let his mentor out of sight. 

Both prophets find that their expectations are turned around.  Elijah will be taken to heaven by the whirlwind and chariot, not by his anticipated death.  Elisha is given the challenge of moving onwards, pushed out of his comfort zone and now coming into his own. After the great spectacle of Elijah’s ascension, the mantle is left for Elisha to pick up.  He uses it to part the waters again, heading back for the challenges of keeping the people and the rulers in line with covenant loyalty to God.

Again, the story of Elijah, Elisha, and the whirlwind serves as a helpful tale for religious people trying to make sense of the life of faith.  Generation to generation, people serve as the leaders of religious communities:  that deacon who knows how to make a good loaf of communion bread and cut it “just right” for serving, that youth leader who took the kids on a mission trip (and didn’t lose a single one!), that denominational leader who led through a time of trial with great integrity.  No matter what, every person lives for a season.  We may worry about the next generation having a drought, but as Elijah learned, with God, lack is a myth.  One way or another, God provides.  The future is not to be feared but embraced with gratitude (and perhaps a bit of awe thrown in for good measure!).

The senior religious scholar Huston Smith was asked once what the future held for the world religions.  Smith has spent his life studying the many religions of the world.  He has written best-selling textbooks, lectured extensively around the world, and appeared on a popular PBS series with Bill Moyers.  As Smith considered the question, he paused for a moment then scratched his head for a moment.  In his measured tones, Smith said, “When I think of the future of world religions, my brain smears.”

            The audience laughed, sort of that knowing laughter that Smith had named what eventually we understand:  the future holds whatever the future holds.  We can work diligently or stand passively in the present.  We can remember the past with open eyes or dwell in past glories with little regard for the changes around us.  Nonetheless, the whirlwind of change comes.  The metaphor is apt:  whirlwinds can allow the “new” to move forward.  The whirlwind can bring disorienting change and a loss of what has gone before.   Whatever the whirlwind leaves is unpredictable, yet we know it shall come.

            Elijah and Elisha did not know what was coming.  One expected death, the other expected more time with a mentor.  The whirlwind’s topsy-turvy nature moved them in different directions.  Elijah is now remembered in the same breath as Moses (cf. the New Testament story of the Transfiguration of Jesus).  Elisha, though later less remembered, picked up the mantle and carries on.

            Once in awhile, I pass through the chapel and stop in front of the portrait of the Rev. Dr. Towart, pastor of this congregation from 1915-1948.   I ponder what it was like serving in an era when the nation was in the midst of one World War, and later in this same pastoral tenure, embroiled in another.  The Towart years would have included the challenges of living though the Great Depression.  I marvel at all of the challenges, upheavals and uncertainties of the world during this minister’s tenure here.

On this side of history, I ponder what the present and future holds for First Baptist.  We are living with our own challenges and our own uncertainty.  We may sometimes feel like the mantle placed on our shoulders does not fit, yet God calls us to be the people for this day.

            Every generation has its challenges.  Every generation feels inadequate in the moment, yet the ones who come later look back and wonder how we did it, living with the challenges of our day.  The whirlwind is still part of our lives, stirring us and prompting us to take less for granted. 

We may want to hang on, praying for a little longer to be mentored or guided through life.  We may find ourselves not quite ready to go on that last leg of the journey.  I suppose life is lived somewhere in the middle of this tension.  We do our best and in turn make room for another to take up the challenges.  Wherever we are in life’s challenges, may we know God’s blessing upon us.

Avoid the Tamed God

Charles Dickens made famous the line: “It was the best of times, and the worst of times”. The phrase comes to mind as I Kings 19 opens.  The prophet Elijah has been at the height of his prophetic work, confronting the corrupt court of King Ahab and Queen Jezebel and decrying the worship of the false god “Ba-al” that had taken over the worship of the God of Israel, the same God who made covenant with Abraham and brought the people out of bondage in Egypt.   Elijah is the old roaring lion, speaking with authority.

            Yet the text tells us, after the great defeat of the false prophets of the false god Baal, Elijah got wind of Jezebel’s threats to kill him, and Elijah ran for his life and hid.  What happened?  Why would Elijah the prophet be in the middle of the fray and then head for the hills?  The prophet once confident in the center of the court and public square is now out in the hinterlands.  The old icon of Elijah in the middle of nowhere (see your bulletin cover) sums this story up well:  the mighty prophet has lost his confidence.

            As for me, I find this story most empathetic.  While we tend to think of the characters in the Bible sometimes far removed from “our life” (aka “real life” with its pressures, stresses, and circumstances well beyond our understanding and control), the truth is this:  these folks called prophets, kings, matriarchs, and priests are as just as human as ourselves.  These are people who may be called to speak for God or get entangled in the drama and pathos of the sacred text, yet they are fallible, capable of following the right path or straying. 

Elijah, there in what appears to be the standard dress of male religious figures (aka “the old dude with flowing beard and a bathrobe”), is a man broken, frightened, and with very little hope within himself.  What we might dismiss as a two-dimensional text is quite textured with the same shades of grey and storm clouds that we live with.  He’s gotten through a number of challenges, yet he has nothing left within or no reservoir of inner strength to call upon. 

            As I read this text, I recalled a song lyric by the television writer Joss Whedon.  In one of his television series, one episode takes the form of a musical with the characters putting their inner strife or anxieties into song form.  At the end of the episode, the ensemble sings these words:

               Where do we go from here?

               where do we go from here? 

               the battle's done and we kinda won

               so we sound our victory cheer

               tell me...

               where do we go, from here?  (“Once More with Feeling”, Buffy the Vampire Slayer)

            The characters in the Whedon “musical” are singing of “victory cheers” with half-hearted belief, knowing that their lives are less than perfect or not remotely going to plan.  So it is with the prophet hiding out in the Hebrew Scriptures.  Elijah sits in a far off part of the kingdom, far enough from Jezebel’s threats but not from the deep misgivings within.  He has “won” yet there is no “victory cheer” rising up from within.  He goes out into the desert in a deep depression.  He lies down to die, considering himself no better than those who have come before.  Despite his success, he feels hollow inside.  He’s ready to let go and give up.  “Just take me now,” he mutters as he lays down, ready to die.

            In Christian history, the desert serves as a powerful symbol of nothingness, where people have gone after becoming fed up or overrun by the passions and excesses of life.  Such people might be called monks, mystics, wanderers, or pilgrims, however, this is after they have found something transformative out in the desert.  Most enter the desert weary of life or confused about life’s questions.  Only after they have acclimated to the harsh “otherness” of the sand, the heat, or the barrenness do they begin seeing the prospects of the better path.

            Belden Lane, a Presbyterian scholar teaching at a Catholic university in St. Louis, has written a searing reflection on such experiences.  Entitled The Solace of Fierce Landscapes, Lane guides you through the writings of many desert travelers, himself included, all out in the less traveled places of the earth.  He jokes that he seeks out those places where travel agents complain no person has ever wanted to visit.  In these places, where harsh desert extends as far as the eye can see, Lane contends the divine can be encountered. 

            Elijah is in the midst of depression when an angel appears, bringing good word and sustaining food.  It is a gift from the God that Elijah has thought absent or without care to his fate.  Despite the great defeat of the false idols and worship, despite the certain reality that Ahab and Jezebel’s corrupt reign surely shall crumble,  despite Elijah’s experiences being “the” prophet of God, he has had a failure of nerve and resigned himself to irrelevance.  The food Elijah is given is not a grand banquet, yet it is given to him as food for the journey, the same journey that he has veered off.

            Behind the scenes, those who read Hebrew (and those of us like myself who read people who read Hebrew!) note with some animation that the angel’s choice of table dressing.  The food Elijah is given appears on a hot coal.  This particular Hebrew word for “hot coal” only appears one other time in the Hebrew Scriptures when Isaiah is being commissioned as a prophet.  It is one of the more spectacular moments in the sacred text as Isaiah’s mouth is purified with a hot coal, made ready to speak God’s prophetic word.  Such rare use of this word highlights the intensity of this moment.  It is not a mere moment of feeling down.  It is Elijah at the crossroads of his life, being summoned anew to his calling.

            In Marilynne Robinson’s Pulitzer-winning novel Gilead, the elderly preacher the Rev. John Ames writes a long letter to his young son.  (The Rev. Ames had a late-in-life, May/December marriage.)  Writing in the mid-1950s, he muses about his life as a third generation Midwestern preacher and ruminates on his declining health. 

He recounts a day in his own childhood during hard economic times when his father’s church burns down after lightning strikes.  The next day, the women and men of the parish gather to try their best to salvage what is left and tear down the smoky remains of the church building.  He remembers his father taking a moment to bring him something to eat.  In his father’s soot-covered hands is a small biscuit. 

“Never mind,” his father says, “there’s nothing cleaner than ash.”  But it affected the taste of that biscuit, which I thought might resemble the bread of affliction, which was often mentioned in those days, though it’s rather forgotten now. [Ames muses,] “Strange are the uses of adversity.”….

I remember my father down on his heels in the rain, water dripping from his hat, feeding me biscuit from his scorched hand, with that old blackened wreck of a church behind him and steam rising where the rain fell on embers, the rain falling in gusts and the women singing “The Old Rugged Cross” while they saw to things, moving so gently, as if they were dancing to the hymn, almost” (Gilead, p. 94-5)

Whether it is the prophet of old or the old preacher looking back at a traumatic childhood event, we learn in the midst of great loss or events that make you feel vulnerable or lost, God provides in unexpected ways.  Rev. Ames sees his father’s soot-dusted biscuit as something as sacred as the bread and wine of communion.  Elijah eats his meal and sees some sort of point that breaks his gloom and sets him back on the right path.  Elijah is told to eat up, otherwise, without such nourishment he would not survive the journey.  Indeed, this one meal is said to sustain him for forty days and forty nights!

Onwards, Elijah travels to Mount Horeb where he encounters the divine presence of God.  Much has been made of God’s choice of self-revelation.  There comes a mighty wind, a strong earthquake, and yet the text says God has yet to show up.  Then, in the least expected manner, God is said to be known in silence, or in the Hebrew: the sound of sheer/fine silence. 

Elijah is still claiming his insufficiency, though now with a bit more humility.  He feels a bit alone, still insufficient.  He has given much and done great things, yet he has very little confidence that things will turn out alright.  Encountering the divine presence chastens him as he wraps his mantle to protect himself from being overwhelmed by being so near to the holy, yet he still unnerved enough that he cannot be fully present in this moment. 

In the unique way of God at work in the world, we learn a bit about human and divine nature.  Elijah reflects the reality of human fallibility, being shown the path ahead yet still slow to embrace God’s abundance. God demonstrates how the world really works:  it is not about the spectacular or the expected.  God moves in ways unexpected and less obvious.  In the spectacle of silence, God is made known.

Elijah stands on Mount Horeb, again serving as a “call back” to the earlier history of Israel, recalling Moses and the time of the Covenant being made between God and the people.  Weary from wandering the desert, the people are summoned to a new way of understanding their identity and their calling.  This is the same covenantal relationship that Elijah finds the people breaking with disregard, and he has been a champion of proclaiming the covenant loyalty expected by God of God’s people. 

Elijah finds himself at the cusp of a new chapter in his life.  He has been given many signs of God’s presence in his life, culminating with being brought literally into the divine presence.  He has struggled as much as the next, yet in the midst of his travails, God has been slowly reminding Elijah of his heritage and his destiny.

            In a nutshell, 1 Kings 19 recalls the tapestry of Israel: the wanderings in the wilderness, the call to be a prophet, the danger of worshipping other gods, the summons to be the people in covenant loyalty.  Elijah rises up and continues his journey, faithful beyond his misgivings.  So this story is handed down to us:  wherever you are in life, whatever you assess your lot in life to be, have you been silent and listened for God?  Have you made yourself receptive to God’s plans rather than those of your own toil and worry?  Have you listened?  Have you discerned?  Have you been transformed by God’s holy presence at work in your life?

The Pharisee’s household smelled wonderful all day as the meal preparations were underway.  It was to be a grand evening, with the guests going away with full bellies and slightly dizzy from the ever-flowing wine.  The Pharisee liked throwing a good party.  After all, your good party meant that your guests were obliged to return the favor.

Planning the meal was left largely to the servants, though the Pharisee oversaw the guest placements himself.  He liked figuring out where guests would be seated, spending his idle time during the day arranging where each person would sit.  Half the battle of a first-century meal was the food.  Guest placement, if chosen without skill, could ruin a meal before the main course, if you placed people together who should not be in the same room together, let alone seated side by side for several hours. 

The one guest the Pharisee had no trouble placing was the upstart rabbi from backwater Nazareth.  He had no great authority, especially among his Pharisee brethren, yet it was “polite” to invite him (and all the better to keep an eye on him as well).  The Pharisee placed Jesus at the table where he could be seen, but not readily heard around the table.   Best place for ‘em, the Pharisee thought, and he chuckled a bit.

The dinner itself went without a hitch.  All of the guests showed up promptly at the invited time.  Each serving came out with appreciative remarks about the taste and presentation of each plate.  The stewards never stopped in their questions of “Would you like more, sir?” 

Reclining around the table, the Pharisee listened with grace to a variety of stories regaled by his guests.  The upstart there in the corner made some light conversation, yet he was not at the center of the room.  The Pharisee had planned things well!

Later, as food eating slowed, but the wine did not, the Pharisee was about to announce “last call” when there was some disruption.  Into the room strode a woman bearing a large jar.  The guests paid her no attention at first, thinking she was a servant wandering through.  The Pharisee, ever the host, was a bit puzzled.  He knew most of the servants, and she did not look like any of them.

About that time, the conversation suddenly died.  In the corner of the room, the woman placed herself before Jesus and started removing the lid to her jar.  She began rubbing Jesus’ feet with a fragrant ointment (fairly pricey from the smell), wiping his feet with her hair.  And in the stunned silence of the dinner party, she wept as she anointed Jesus’ feet.

The men glanced around the room, somewhat perplexed by the spectacle.  The Pharisee felt all of the eyes of the room move from the passive Jesus watching as his feet were anointed and then back to the Pharisee.  It’s his party.  What’s he going to do about this?

As for himself, the Pharisee, trying to keep his rage down, had another brain puzzler to sort out.  How could he get this woman out of here (and better yet, send Jesus along with her!)?  Was this staged?  The only thing the Pharisee knew for certain:  he didn’t know who she was, but he knew what she was: a sinner!

So now the scene is set:  the “pillar of the community” Pharisee meets the sinner from the wrong side of the tracks!   Indeed, the Pharisee capitalizes on the situation. If Jesus is all that he claims, why hasn’t he distanced himself?  It’s one of the older political tricks in the book:  guilt by association.  Short of a camera phone and a TMZ-style website, this Pharisee has a golden opportunity to discredit Jesus.  All he has to do is say all of this aloud to his dinner party guests, nearly all of them his intimate friends and fellow religious establishment leaders.

As he begins to clear his throat, ready to break the silence and hopefully Jesus’ credibility as well, Jesus asks to say a word.

Rather than a word of bluster, Jesus spins a parable.  It might be considered deflection or a skillful misdirection, yet the parable of two debtors fits the situation.  Jesus sees two people who are unequal in the eyes of most, yet in the way of the world as God sees it, these two people have similar standing with one another.

At the dinner party, the Pharisee is the person whose righteousness is unquestioned.  The uninvited woman sticks out in this room of fine, upstanding citizens.  The history of interpretation of this passage suggests a variety of reasons why she was a sinner, however, for Jesus, her status as sinner is not the issue at hand.  In the parable, he indicates the Pharisee and the “sinner” have more in common than either of them can imagine.

Two debtors:  one owes more than the other, but both of them still owe something, and they are not likely to pay it off.  The parable sounds quite familiar, and perhaps even more painfully so in a credit crunch world with foreclosures rising and stock markets spiraling.  Debt is that one thing we don’t want to think about, yet the average U.S. citizen carries all manner of debts, great and small. 

Debt forgiveness has been known to happen, however, most of us think, “Yeah, right!” when we hear the term.  The old story goes:  You don’t get out of debt.  You just get in deeper.  How can anyone ever consider themselves “out of debt” or “forgiven”?

While I make no claims to be a financial advisor, may I offer you a word as a theological advisor?  The good news of the gospel is quite simply:  no matter who you are, or what your life experiences have been, you are never too far (or too far gone, for that matter) to receive forgiveness from God.  Indeed, read the Gospel of Luke for a number of good stories about how everyone is treated equally in Jesus’ eyes.  You may be a person of means or a person of no means, you may be any number of things, yet at the end, nobody’s beyond redemption. 

            The first step towards this truth is the same for Simon the Pharisee as it is for the anonymous sinner.  To sin means “to miss the mark”, or to act in a manner that keeps you from living into the fullness of the love of God and neighbor.  The rich and the poor, the young and the old, the “insider” and the “outsider” have no claim to greater privilege or status in the Reign of God.  The sinner and the saint in the eyes of the world (or the Church) shall receive equal opportunity to be forgiven.

For this scene of Pharisee indignant and woman contrite, we learn a different sort of outcome than that of the Pharisee, or perhaps better said, the religiously religious.  The Pharisee follows a view that the woman is already a lost cause, and he wants people to know that there’s something wrong with Jesus not reacting the same way.  The woman thinks of herself as separated from the goodness she seeks yet she earnestly wants to be forgiven.  

The Pharisee is likewise a sinner in the eyes of God.  Unlike the woman, he has forgotten what she has been reclaiming in her life.  Her faith and her love are commended by Jesus, which in turn he demonstrates are conspicuously absent in the life of the Pharisee, who was not ready to show hospitality, let alone humility before Jesus and those assembled.

For the Church, the people called to be shaped and schooled by the gospel, we have the challenge of setting our own household in order.  Should a church (or a denomination) spend most of its energy (and years) defining exact lists of sinful behavior in the quest for purity?  What sort of church would emerge if the question of sin was framed differently than it tends to be?  

The humorist Garrison Keillor refers often to his upbringing among very conservative Christians, who called themselves “the Sanctified Bretheren”.  Keillor once lamented that in such a fellowship, you never knew that you were forgiven, just merely on parole.

I recall sharing that line with a congregation in Kansas City, a Baptist tradition church with many persons who grew up in fundamentalist churches.  They laughed long and hard.  It was cathartic for some, as they found themselves growing distant (or being held at arm’s reach) by the churches of their upbringing.  Such churches spoke of sin with stern look and ironclad belief.

Here in this place, they found the welcome of the gospel they thought otherwise absent.  More often than not, I recall tears of joy in that congregation’s worship.  Such is the life of the forgiven!

The Pharisee and the woman labeled “sinner” offer the Church character studies in the choice we make speaking of sin.  We should not shy from reflecting on how we “miss the mark” or impair our relations with God and neighbor.  These are just as essential to the gospel as the declaration of forgiveness and mercy, justice and hope.  By avoiding the Pharisee’s ways and understanding the woman’s ways, we learn the ways of Christ, whose hospitality knows no end, and who awaits us with the banquet feast where the many shall gather, all beloved guests, welcome at the Table of our Lord.

In the midst of his letter to the Christians living in Rome, Paul writes that we “believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead.  He was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification”.  Here, Paul is thought to be referencing a creed, a statement of belief or words held in common by Christian believers.  Baptists have a history of ambivalence toward creeds, agreeing that the faith ought to be clearly expressed, yet we remember that creeds have been used in ways that are less about defining the faith for edification and more as a measuring stick for whether or not others shape up to the creeds you keep.  The effort to offer “words held in common” can lead to church disunity and strife when Christians use creeds as blunt instruments against any dissenters around or within their circles.  Creeds can be beautiful and helpful expressions of faith, yet Church history is dotted with stories of Christians who have divided more than united on what “words” should be held “in common”.

                  In our passage today (Romans 5:1-5), Paul is not looking to split the church or brow-beat.  In fact, Paul is hoping he can “preach to the choir”.   Do you know this phrase?  It means you are addressing a group of people who already believe.  It can be seen as an exercise in futility: why convince those who have already been convinced?  I imagine Paul relishes the chance to speak to a group who already believes.  He aims to help them deepen in their spiritual beliefs, not just settle for staying on the edges of the Christian faith.  Just before these five verses we explore today, Paul speaks directly to his reader, welcoming them into his line of thinking. Such goodness found in Christ is given to “us”, those “who believe in him [God] who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead, who was handed over to death for our trespasses and was raised for our justification”.  Paul is aiming to speak to the hearts of those who already profess Christ as Lord.  Paul wants to move his readers from the outer edges of faith and right into the intersection where life and faith intersect. 

                  And what happens when you leave the edges and move into the deep end?

                  As a kid, I was fairly terrified of swimming. I remember taking summer swimming classes, feeling terrified to move into water that was over my head. (Imagine the difficulty they had convincing me of baptism by immersion!)   Swimming around the pool was fine, though I always looked for the number marks along the pool edge giving the depth.  The water was great around the 3-foot mark.  Surely monsters lurked out there beyond the 6-foot mark!

                  I still get nervous in deep waters. (Again, let’s marvel at the irony of me growing up to become an ordained Baptist minister….).  Nonetheless, the “deep end” is a place that I can swim toward and muddle around in.  It took a great deal of determination to get out there into the depths, and once there, I might not know exactly what I’m doing, but I do have a sense of surety that I can at least get out there and tread water.

                  Life can feel a bit like the deep end: a place where monsters lurk or great uncertainties keep you from leaving the shallows.  I had a swimming instructor and a very insistent mother who kept coaching me onwards how to swim as well as how to keep telling myself I can actually do it.  It is not easy to listen to these things.  Life can seem more like lulls between chaos, or outright chaos, as you try to juggle family, bills, work or school, etc.  Paul has a word for those who “believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead”.  The word he has for “us” is one of peace, grace, hope, and love.  Our belief in Christ is not meant to be explored once weekly or only in cases of emergency.  What the faith has for us is a good word, a powerful word of encouragement that is best understood while wading through the deep end of life.  And these are words that we need to keep telling ourselves. 

                   Speaking a word of encouragement to the church in Rome, Paul asks them what word can be trusted most.  He claims that we have peace with God through Jesus Christ.  It is not just the consoling word of peace temporarily given to salve over our wounds.  Paul means that we have the sort of peace that other parts of the Bible call “shalom”, the vision of the world ordered by God’s specifications, not the world created by politics, social or economic disparities, or whatever curveballs life has thrown at us.  The idea of “the peace of God” resounds with a challenging tone to the church at Rome, living at the heart of the Roman Empire and its claim of “Pax Romana”, aka Peace for Romans, as long as you don’t get in our way. 

                  Paul claims we have peace, and therefore no alienation or barriers should be allowed to keep us.  The “peace” of the Bible is powerful in its testimony to God’s “final say” over the way the world ought to be.  Through the cross of Jesus, we are given freedom to live.  Exchanging these words of Christ’s peace in the service each week is less of a liturgical “good morning”.  It is our chance to tell one another what we really need to remember.  When you exchange the peace of God/Christ, it is your chance to throw a lifeline to the person whose hand you are shaking.  We speak a word of the hopeful future our faith promises while gifting another person with perhaps the first “good” word they’ve heard in awhile.  Just like being in the choir, it’s about the singing.  It’s also about the camaraderie of living together in this same hope our faith holds in common.

                  While Paul offers this word of encouragement, he is fully aware of the brokenness of the world and our lives.  Elsewhere in Romans (cf. chapter 8), he speaks of Creation “groaning”, as if in labor, awaiting the opportunity to be free and liberated from the sufferings and travail of a sin-fractured world.  People of faith are not exempted from suffering and the twists and turns of how your life plays out.  The gift of faith that we have in Christ who, as Paul encourages us to confess and remember, “was handed over to death for our trespasses and was raised for our justification”. 

                  Properly understood, hope gifts us and empowers us to look at life with new perspective.  Paul hopes he is preaching to the choir again, for those of us who call upon Christ as Lord are given words of hope and trust that ought not to be forgotten.  Faith is not blind trust or a wishy-washy hope that sounds best when cloaked in trite phrases.  Faith does not shy from the deep end or the precipice.  In fact, these are the times that faith’s promises are best recalled and called upon.

The Episcopal writer Barbara Brown Taylor recalls a congregant, “though dying of cancer and burdened with an oxygen tank slung over her shoulder, [climbed to the pulpit to] read the lesson for Christmas Eve” (summary by Richard Lischer, The End of Words, Eerdmans, 112). She remembers,

Her tank hisses every five seconds.  Every candle in the place glitters in her eyes.  “Strengthen the weak hands,” she reads bending her body towards the words, “and make firm the feeble knees.  Say to those who are of a fearful heart, “Be strong, do not fear!  Here is your God.”  When she sits down, the congregation knows they have not just heard the word of the Lord.  They have seen it in action.  (Home by Another Way, Cowley, 140, cited by Lischer, 112.)

                  The word for us this day is the same word for the first century Christians of Rome.  To those of us, whether in the first or twenty-first century, “who believe in him [God] who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead, who was handed over to death for our trespasses and was raised for our justification”, Paul gives us these very pastoral words of encouragement for the world has not changed much.  It still awaits its fulfillment when there shall come a new Creation birthed from the old order in its decay and sorrow.  Nonetheless, the peace of God, the hope in Christ, and the love of God poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit work into our lives as we invite the words of faith to become the words for our journey through life, in times of challenge and in times of celebration. 

                  To those us who believe, let us take heart.  AMEN.

The Day of Pentecost serves as a witness to the Church, now two thousand years later, to remember that the winds of the Spirit have yet to quiet down.  To understand Pentecost, you must not speak of it as a day long ago, or of the Spirit in a manner that presumes the “work” of the Spirit is done.  The Spirit summons the whole people of God to the ministry and mission of the Church, gifting each Christian and calling the many to be “Church”.  With the Spirit, Pentecost is the beginning and the winds of the Spirit have yet to die down. 

Recently, I read a recent spiritual memoir by Episcopal writer Sara Miles, who coordinates a major food pantry ministry out of her home congregation in San Francisco.  Miles is the grand-child of American Baptist missionaries, yet in her own upbringing, she had no connection to Christianity.  She shares, “I came late to Christianity, knocked upside down by a midlife conversion centered around a literal chunk of bread.”  Her previous memoir Take This Bread is a remarkable celebration of how the Eucharist became such a transforming experience for her. She became involved in a food pantry ministry distributing hundreds of pounds of food each week, using the very sanctuary of the Church as the distribution site. The Food Pantry has become a parable for what happens when the Spirit works in the midst of the gathered people. Miles writes, “The immediacy of my conversion experience left me perhaps freakily convinced of the presence of Jesus around me.  I hadn’t figured out a neat set of ‘beliefs’, but discovered a force blowing uncontrollably through the world” (Jesus Freak, HarperOne, p. xi.) 

Sara Miles’ books celebrate this unshakable belief that the Spirit is moving in the world.  Unfortunately, Miles has discovered in her encounters with churches around the United States, the feeling is not readily shared.  When Miles serves as a guest speaker, she notes how many clergy and laity will praise her work with the Food Pantry ministry project or the creative energy that her home congregation is known for, all while claiming that such things are not possible elsewhere, especially in their own parishes.  Miles finds the claims of insufficiency disappointing to hear.  “What more permission do they need?” she asks her priest.  “‘Receive the Holy Spirit’ isn’t enough?” (Jesus Freak, p. 42)

“Receiving the Holy Spirit” runs throughout the Bible, imaged as seemingly “tame” concepts.  Trace the presence of the Spirit in the sacred texts, and you will see the Spirit as “dove” empowers Jesus for his ministry, the Spirit as flame ignites the Church for a worldwide mission, and the Spirit as wind can be a gale force wind, bringing new life and renewal to the people of God.

In the history of the faith, Celtic Christianity has an image of the Holy Spirit quite unlike any other.  The Celts described the Spirit to be like “a wild goose”:  a bird that is unpredictable, chaotic, and really could shake up the fellowship if turned loose in their midst.  The Spirit as “wild goose” is a good image as we sometimes talk of the Church needing change or improvement, yet we are unprepared when the Spirit works in a manner that is unpredictable, chaotic, and really shakes up the fellowship. 

I shared this “Spirit as wild goose” image awhile back with a friend, who is now preparing to start a new ministry position.  The other day he received a “welcoming” gift from one of his new congregants.  The gift was a “goose call”, sort of a wooden whistle that mimics the sound of a goose.  My friend remembered our conversation about the Spirit as wild goose and started laughing.  What better sign of a new ministry about to begin, in my friend’s life as well as the life of the congregation he’s about to serve as their new minister?

On a recent Sunday morning, I received a gift from Joshua Perkins. He decided I needed something new to wear that would help people know I serve as the minister.  With great skill, he made a sign with a piece of construction paper and drew a yellow cross upon it.  The sign reads “from Joshua” to “the minister”. 

Reading the Acts 2 narrative, it would be most appropriate if we contracted with Joshua to create several dozen more of these signs.  (Stephen and Galen, does Joshua work by commission or through an agent?)  The story of Pentecost is not about particular persons being called above the rest.  The story of Pentecost affirms that all Christians are called to be part of the furtherance of the Church.  There may be persons ordained to ministry as a life calling, however, “ministry” is the work of the whole people of God.  The sign should not be just “for one”.  A sign saying “minister” should be around each of our necks!

The Book of Acts stresses that the Spirit empowers the many, not the few. Each of us is considered “a minister”, perhaps not in the “professional” sense, but rather in the understanding that each of us as Christians are called to live out and share the gospel.  Baptists have kept to this strand of New Testament belief with fair consistency over our past four centuries as a movement.  We speak of “the priesthood of all believers”, believing that the ministry is shared among the many, not the work of one or the few. 

On the day of Pentecost, Acts tells us that the Spirit summoned into being a people, not an institution.  Early Baptists reflected this through their practice of referring to their congregations as “a gathered people”.  We reflect this in the governance model of the church.  Not one of us, ordained or lay elected is given “the last word”.  We work together to do the ministry and mission of the Church.  We can have structures galore, yet the New Testament affirms that each of us is “equal”.  We may be different, but each of us is on the same footing. 

Being the same but different is one of the more delightful and challenging assertions to make on Pentecost Sunday.  Jesus’ disciples were suddenly able to speak in the languages of the world, offering their witness to the gospel.  Again, the last words of Jesus before His ascension are reflected here:  to be Christ’s witnesses to the ends of the earth.  The gospel is meant for every nation and every people, without partiality or particularity. 

The “Church” is meant to reflect the multi-hued face of humanity, its prayer and praise offered up in a multitude of tongues.  The story of Pentecost is often called the reversal of the story of Babel, where the many languages of the world were scattered, and language became a “barrier” between peoples.  In Acts, the Day of Pentecost audaciously claims that what was separate can be united.  In her last work, the theologian Letty Russell observes, “God’s intention is to ‘remove all the bars’ and create a world full of riotous difference” (Letty Russell, Just Hospitality, Westminster/John Knox Press, 2009, p. 53-4).  We see this vision lived out in the many and diverse people gathered together at Pentecost, and it is our challenge to live into that vision as the church of the present generation.

That can be a tall order.  There are many persons in our community and around the world who often feel invisible or marginalized due to something that others have deemed less desirable or commendable about them.  Sometimes, persons will self-disclose some involvement with a church at some point in life, yet they have parted ways with “the Church” after getting treated as “different”. 

The Spirit at Pentecost challenges barriers, asking the Church to live into the divine intent of Creation in all its splendid diversity and help others see “riotous difference” as a good thing, not aberrations to be dismissed, ignored or deported.  What happened on the day of Pentecost is a multinational, multicultural, multilingual, “riotously” inclusive story that Christians are called to tell and live out.  The day of Pentecost gave the Church a vision of its true calling: to be a place beyond borders and boundaries, open to the many.

For the past three years, I experienced a bit of this ongoing “Pentecost” experience when I attended the annual meeting of the Baptist World Alliance.  Each morning’s worship service included hymns and songs in varying languages.  Even though many of us did not speak the language being featured in a hymn, somehow the crowd worked together to learn the words and sing.  It was less of a “singing in a foreign language”.  By the time we reached the last verse, the crowd sang together in one of the many languages through which God is given due praise. 

In our worship and in our common work, the many and different were able to be the “one” body of Christ.  We did not lose our differences in this experience (indeed, other parts of the meeting bore witness to the differing theological worldviews and perspectives among the participants), yet we knew the presence of the one Spirit moving among us, summoning us to be the gathered people called “Church”.  And together we sang of the Spirit who invites us all to live and testify to the gospel way of Jesus Christ.