Acts 2: 1-21

sermon for May 19, 2002 Pentecost Sunday

Grace United Methodist Church, Urbana, IL J. Michael Smith, preacher

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Pentecost Sunday is the birthday of the church. So what? Who really cares? After all, nobody brought any birthday presents with them this morning. The truth is, almost none of us are very excited about today being the church’s birthday.

Come to think of it, people are increasingly disinterested in the church itself. Involvement in our own congregation has been declining for the past 30 years. Our participation levels are down 40% in that time period. And we’re one of the more stable United Methodist Churches in Urbana--Champaign. There’s a kind of ‘so what’ attitude about the church in general.

Nationwide, there is a ‘so what’ about the church. Whenever the public is polled, 95%+ say they are very interested in spiritual matters. Yet less than half the people in America are involved in organized religion. For half the people in America, the church is almost totally irrelevant. Church? So what! And even when people DO identify with a church, even among those who join a church, there is a high degree of ‘so what?’ On an average Sunday in America, in the average church, only 33% of a given congregation’s MEMBERS actually bother to show up for worship. In our own congregation, for example, we have over 400 professed members. Yet in the nearly one year I have been here, we have had less than 5 Sundays when our attendance topped 200. The ‘so what’ attitude concerning the church seems to be growing.

Now, one of the nice things about birthdays is that birthdays give us an opportunity to get acquainted again with the person or thing having the birthday. Last Sunday, the Zeibart family turned in a joy (in our time of joys and concerns) that it was Brian’s 20th birthday. And in their little slip of paper they brought forward, they said wonderful things about Brian. I’ve never heard that family say wonderful things about Brian before. I’m sure they’re all true. But sometimes it takes a BIRTHDAY for us to get around to acknowledging a person’s qualities. And sometimes it takes a birthday for us to revive our appreciation for an organization. On July 4th, we celebrate our country’s birthday. We don’t normally think about the blessings of our country. But on July 4th, we often feel at tug at our consciousness, and we ponder our gratitude for the country and what it means. We may actually think about what it means--on our country’s birthday. Birthdays are a time for us to revive our appreciation for a person or an organization.

And so on this Pentecost Sunday, I’d like to invite you to join me in reviving our appreciation for the church.

And in order that we might appreciate the church, move with me into the second chapter of Acts where we find the story of the church’s birth. We turn to this scripture to hear again how the church began.

First of all, the church is a gathering of people to be infused with the Holy Spirit. We gather in worship and we gather in small groups. We gather in choirs and classes and work crews. We gather to eat, to pray, to play. We gather to study the Bible, to discuss ethical decisions, to explore heritages and doctrines of faith. We gather to plan, to be trained, to become open to new visions for the church. We gather with children, we gather with youth, we gather with senior citizens. We gather at noon, we gather in the evenings, we sometimes gather at outrageously early hours in the morning for breakfast. The beginning of the Christian Church was the GATHERING of the disciples in Jerusalem. The renewal of the church in our own day begins with OUR gatherings. Renewal of the church does not revolve around the pastor of the church. The church is renewed when the people gather to be infused by the Holy Spirit. Period. We can’t gather ‘in theory.’ We have to actually gather--in time and space. It is only when we devote ourselves to sharing time and space together that the church has any chance of the liveliness described in the Bible. A living, growing, spiritual, joyful church doesn’t come cheap. The price is always a commitment of the people: that they will share time and space together.

In the Bible, when the church gathered, the Holy Spirit came upon them. The gathering itself was infused with love, joy, and peace. Individuals felt themselves gifted with patience and kindness and goodness. They became transformed, practicing faithfulness, gentleness, and self control. (Galatians 5:22-23)

Whenever the church gathers, we gather to be infused with some blessing and gift of the Holy Spirit. When the church softball team gathers, it is to receive some gift of the Holy Spirit: perhaps joy, or patience, or self-control. When the quilters gather, it is to receive some gift of the Holy Spirit: perhaps peace or goodness. When we gather in worship, it is to receive some gift of the Holy Spirit.

Sometimes we get so focused on the church as an institution, the church as an organization, the church as a business--that we are not open to the Holy Spirit. Churches these days are defined by their buildings, their income, their membership numbers, their personnel, their publicity success in the community.

Every living church is a growing church. But not every growing church is a "Day of Pentecost" church. Do we want to grow because we love people and we want them to be included with us, and we love God and want to please God by introducing people to God’s family? Or do we want to grow because we need more contributors to help us pay the bills, because it will make us look good in reports and publicity, and because extra people can take some of the volunteer work off of our shoulders. The church on the day of Pentecost was filled with a Holy Spirit, not a selfish one.

The first feature of the church is that it is a people who are gathering and being infused with the Holy Spirit. The second feature of the church is that everyone talks. Everyone talks about the mighty acts of God. Let’s examine ‘church talk.’

Somehow things that gotten turned around backward in the church--when it comes to how we talk. We have strayed far from the way things were done in the book of Acts. Today, we have this sense that when you come into the church: you stop talking like everyone else and take up ‘church language.’

You know what I mean. Sometimes someone will say, "Now, don’t talk like that, you’re in the church." Do you know how often I hear someone say, "Now I guess I shouldn’t be saying this around the preacher...or using that word around the preacher...or bringing up this subject around the preacher." We have somehow gotten in our heads the notion that there is only one appropriate way for religious people to talk or write. We speak piously. We speak in euphemisms. We are always polite and appropriate. If we must saunter into delicate subjects, we sugar coat our thoughts with words that obfuscate. We revel in academic language. And we often turn pedantic in our speech. And then we wonder why our church membership is dwindling. And we wonder why our young people wander off and don’t come back. And we wonder why people who are only a stone’s throw from the church don’t find us interesting or relevant. How did we get to the point that when people become a part of the church, they are expected to STOP speaking like everyone else and start speaking piously?

When we read the second chapter of Acts, we find that the people who were infused with the Holy Spirit began to speak in languages that the folks on the street understood! Christianity doesn’t curtail one’s language...it appropriates it, rests on it. Christianity rides the vernacular into the world!

Several years ago I did a funeral for a young man who was killed in a car accident. He was high on some sort of drugs and ran out in front of a car on the interstate and was killed instantly. I did not know the young man, or his family, or any of his friends. But I was asked to do his funeral. The funeral was held in the church. Before the funeral began, I stepped into an empty room to collect my thoughts and spirit for the funeral. When it was time for the funeral to begin, I walked upstairs and opened the door to the sanctuary. And nothing prepared me for what I saw. The sanctuary was packed with high school students. Crammed full of them. And not one of them looked normal to me. They were the grunge crowd from the high school. They were the druggies. The rebels. Their hair colors, their body piercings, their tattoos, their clothing--it didn’t look like what I saw on Sunday mornings. And they all glared straight ahead at me. Nobody said a word. The only sound in the whole room was the boy’s grandmother, in the front pew, wailing hysterically. I had met her the day before, and found her to be a rather rough, earthy woman, who didn’t like preachers. We all looked at each other. What did God want me to do? Did God love those people? Those kids? That family? Did God want to use me to speak a word of comfort and grace to those in that room? Did God want to use me as an agent of peace, and kindness, and gentleness to those people? You bet!

What language would convery the gifts of God’s grace to the people in that room? Could I be faithful to the Holy Spirit if I confined myself to language that was pious, euphemistic, polite, obscure, academic, and pedantic? Could I speak to that gathering in the same tongue I used to speak to my middle class, establishment, highly educated congregation? No way! The words I used in that funeral--I would not use this morning. Too many people here would be offended. My role that day was not to be polite, pious, or proper. My role was to speak to that group--before me--of the mighty acts of God.

We live in Urbana, Illinois in the year 2002. It is inconceivable to me that any church can be in THIS place, THIS year, and escape the salient truth of Acts 2--that ALL of us are called upon to talk--in the languages that can be understood by the people who live here. God cares DEEPLY about the people who live in our own community. God cares enough that God is willing to teach us different ways of speaking--so that God’s goodness, and grace, and gifts can be conveyed beyond the walls of this church to all God’s children: educated or uneducated, polite or rough, pious or profane, old or young, middle class or poor, black or white, conservative or rebel, English speaking or non-English speaking? Are we open to talking and singing in various ways--so that God’s mercies might bless ALL God’s children? God cares! And to be a church means that we are a gathering of people where we ALL talk. And we talk in so many different ways that there is scarcely anybody in Urbana who can’t understand at least one of us.

When we retreat into ‘church language,’ what a blasphemy of the Pentecost story we have become! A story where tongues as of fire descend on EACH one. And each one is to speak until the WHOLE community hears--each one in his or her own language. What a wonderful birthday present to the church it would be to remember who we really are.

The first mark of the church is that it was a gathering infused with the Holy Spirit. The second mark of the church, in Acts 2, is that it is made up of various people speaking in various ways and languages. The third mark of the church is that people in the public arena were intrigued, drawn in, and transformed by what they heard.

There was an article this week in the New York Times about a large church in the south that has become an enclosed, self contained community. Within its complex of buildings, children attend school, one can shop and bank and get hair cut, one can visit a health gym, hang out at the coffeeshop, go to a restaurant. The church itself is designed to insulate its members from the public. Now I don’t want to pick too much on this particular congregation in the south, because the mentality that birthed this church is present in our own congregation. We often think of the church as a place to get away from it all. But what a blasphemy the church today has become! We don’t want the church getting into politics, social issues, economics, cultural matters. We like our church to be a separate compartment in our lives. We want our churches insulated. In the book of Acts, however, the church is born to go public. The church is born to speak all the languages of the culture, all the languages of the world--in order to carry the grace of God to the public--all the people.

The primary purpose of the church is to draw people in and let them experience for themselves the transforming power of God’s love. The real issues of the church are also the real issues of the public. Think about the life of Jesus. It was a life devoted to public issues. He healed the sick. Isn’t healing an issue that concerns everyone? He raised the dead to life. He forgave the guilty. He included outsiders. He gathered children to himself. He subverted the sexism he found in his culture. He used images of nature to teach people wisdom. He ridiculed religious and political authorities who served themselves rather than the public. He fed the hungry. Over and over, Jesus entered the public arena, spoke the common language, gave people gifts they needed, and invited people to live lives transformed by his gifts. The public was intrigued with Jesus. Intriguing and engaging the public was a significant part of Jesus’ work.

A church faithful to Jesus, a church faithful to the spirit of Pentecost, is a church that faithfully resists the weight of inertia--staying within ourselves. On the day of Pentecost, the first Christians spoke about things that mattered to the public, that intrigued the public, that attracted the public. And by the end of that day, 3000 people from the public joined the church!

How often we get so involved in our INTERNAL church business, that we bore the public rather than intrigue and engage it.

Last Sunday, I flew from Bloomington, IL toward Baltimore, MD. I had to change planes in Detroit. We landed in Detroit on time. But the plane couldn’t roll up to the gate because there wasn’t an empty gate. And so we sat on the plane and waited, and waited. We were a stone’s throw away from the gate! But by the time they finally let us off the plane, I had missed my connection to Baltimore and had to spend the night in Detroit. And the whole thing was so stupid. We were right there! Ready to make the connection! But we never rolled up, opened the door, and got out.

The witlessness of that night reminds me of what often happens in the church. Here we are, the church, infused with the Holy Spirit, gifts galore--ready to connect. But instead of opening the doors, getting out, and connecting--with people just a stone’s throw from the church--here we sit--keeping it all to ourselves. Within walking distance of our church--we have two schools bursting with children, we have retirement homes, apartments, students at the U of I from around the world. All we have to do is open our doors, get out, and speak the words. We have so much people need to hear: of God’s love, healing, mercy, grace. All we have to do is open the door and get out. That’s what happened the day the church started: they just opened the doors. And the public was intrigued with all the varied talk of the church folks, and they were noticing that the church folks were infused with a spirit. And that very day, 3000 of the public were added to the fellowship.

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