May 31, 2020 - Pentecost Sunday

Day of Pentecost
Acts 2:1-21; Psalm 104:24-34, 35b; 1 Corinthians 12:3b-13; John 20:19-23

May 31, 2020

Adapted for print from transcription.

Happy Pentecost, Shepherd of the Hills. Just a few announcements before we actually start to reflect and break open these readings that you've heard so beautifully proclaimed. One is a COVID-19 update. I've had many folks ask, when will we be getting back to worshiping in person, what I would call, “real-time worship”?

That's a great question. I can say that the one update that I can give you is that the church council, your council will be meeting this Tuesday evening, virtually, to talk about just that. The other piece of that, as we've we've shared with you before, is our Southwest Conference has issued guidelines, and those guidelines are in conjunction with CDC and World Health recommendations for public gatherings.

One of the recommendations that we have shared, and this information is also on the White House website, is in order to resume public gatherings, what we would be looking for is a 14-day downward trajectory on infection. And at that point we would then determine how to resume some type of gathering.

There are steps involved that our Conference has issued in terms of guidelines of what that might look like. Our council will be meeting this Tuesday to discuss what the next steps might be. Now, what I can say it is, is after several VIP meetings this week, and just purely looking at our numbers for Arizona, we are currently not in a downward trajectory. So, for at least the upcoming several weeks, we will continue to worship virtually. I'm mentioning all of this in the sermon because we do have several folks that are not able to worship with us virtually, and so each week my sermons go through this computer generating system that spits out the words. So this is for those that will be reading the sermon later in the week. Pentecost pictures. I mentioned in the announcements that we invite you today to take a picture of yourself on this Pentecost Sunday, and either email it to myself at pastor@sohucc.org, and we will share that picture of you on Facebook, if you're comfortable with that, or if you're Facebook savvy, as I said, go ahead and go to our Shepherd of the Hills Facebook page and share that picture. Look for the pictures in red. You know, this is kind of a tradition for us at Shepherd of the Hills, at least for two years now, that we invite everybody to wear red on Pentecost Sunday, and we take a congregational picture.

So I wanted to continue that tradition in a virtual way. So again, just to invite you to snap a picture of yourself so we can see your beautiful faces and celebrate this Pentecost Sunday with you more fully.

Our readings for this Sunday are all, of course, spirit-driven. We're hearing about the spirit.

Sometimes I like to come up with kind of a wordplay gimmick. And so this Sunday, as I read and reflect on our three readings for this weekend, the gimmick that I was thinking about was “womb, tomb, and room.” What are those three words? What are those three things in terms of stories that we hear in the scriptures? What do they all have in common? The womb, the tomb, the room.

The one thing they all have in common; our births. In the womb, we see Mary giving birth to Jesus, the word made flesh. The incarnation; the birth of the divine into the world. The tomb. We see a transformation. Death does not have the final say. That's a birth. That's at least a mental transformation for many of us. And then finally, the room that we hear about in today's gospel from the 20th chapter of John. You know, it's not your imagination, you just heard this story. We actually have the same gospel on week two of Easter, and I think the framers of our lectionary knew that it was important to include it again in the season of Easter, because, as I've mentioned before, that Second Sunday of Easter, that Sunday after Easter tends to be one of those low church Sundays. So they thought, “Well, we'd better share this story again,” but it is really a wonderful story. Especially during this time where so many are isolated in their home, and as we hear in this story that the disciples are locked behind closed doors in fear. So I think that really speaks to our world today, but there was a birth there. So going back to that womb, tomb and room, there was a birth that happened in that time of being locked in, locked behind closed doors. It was the birth of the spirit. And so that birth of the spirit, that birth of the church is what we celebrate today, on the feast of Pentecost.

So we have the disciples locked in this room in fear, and rightfully so, they should have been fearful, when you think about it, they were locked in this room, I think for nine days. So not the 50 days that we've been locked, in or the 60 days, some of us are on different schedules of lockdown, but they were locked in and they were living in fear, because they each essentially turned away from Jesus, except for one; John, the beloved disciple. They each turned their back on Jesus.

And so the next thing we have in this story is Jesus appearing to them. Now he had reason to be pissed, and I think they knew this. So yes, they were living in fear, but their Lord had just been crucified. So they were also fearful about that. So here we have in this story today, Jesus appearing to his disciples, and instead of coming back angry, we have him coming back with words of forgiveness, with words of comfort.

You know, these are things that we too are called to; words of forgiveness, words of comfort, but what does he do when he comes back? He shows them his wounds. He shows them his wounds. And I love that in today's story, because what he does is he shows them vulnerability. He shows them his woundedness. And so too, we are called to show, to expose our wounded self to the world.

So I love today's reading because it's giving us a glimpse of what this Christian life is all about. More importantly, it's giving us a glimpse of this idea that it's okay. It's okay to share our woundedness, to share our hurts. So Jesus shows his wounds. Now, there are reasons that he showing them his wounds, but it is interesting for the sake of the story that he shows them his wounds, but he also speaks words: “Peace be with you.”

And then he breathes on them. The Holy Spirit. And so at this point, we're experiencing a birth in this room. And what many people refer to, as we talked about in our children's time, is this idea of the birth of the church. Now that might be infantile to see Pentecost as the “birthday” of the church, but it's based in this idea that there is a new happening, a new beginning when Jesus shows up and he shows his wounded self and he breathes on them the spirit of life, the breath of life, and there's this birth, and he speaks words of “Peace be with you.” These, brothers and sisters, are words that we need to hear in today's world. These are words of peace.

We yearn for Jesus to show up in this time of isolation, in this time of fear; to show us his wounds. To know that he is also journeying with us, because as I said a few weeks ago, we're in this together. We're doing this in community, and in our second reading today from First Corinthians, we hear that each of us have been given different gifts.

We all have gifts to share. And what this means is that we have burdens that we can shoulder on one another. Our first reading from Acts is the reading for Pentecost Sunday. And so thank you to all of our readers today. This first reading that you heard in multiple languages, proclaimed so wonderfully, really gives us a sense of the Pentecost story. But what I love about it is that we see that the whole known world says from all over the Mediterranean, people are gathered.

And so the breaking open of that really gave me the sense that when we are together, we're better together. But it's when we are together in our diversity, gathering the world's diversity, maybe even gathering the world's religious diversity, it's then that we recognize that the Spirit's already been given. Just like in confirmation, you know, many people talk about confirmation in terms of you're getting the Holy spirit. We're not getting the Holy spirit. That's why it's called confirmation. It's a confirmation of the spirit.

So the spirit is already with us. So confirmation is purely an acknowledgement of that which already is. So just like baptism, when we name, or proclaim, an infant a beloved child of God. Baptism doesn't change that; baptism doesn't make you a beloved child of God. You already are. Just like confirmation doesn't give you or impart the Holy spirit. The Spirit's already with us. It's acknowledging. It's waking up, or maybe a birthing inside of us. It's something to be midwifed. So, First Reading; it's in our diversity that the spirit is shared that the spirit is poured out. Gospel Reading from John; Jesus is showing up. He's saying, “Peace be with you” when we're living in fear, just like now. And then, First Corinthians; we all have many gifts. We all have different gifts. So all this said, a lot of people have asked or a lot of people have expressed to me, their hope for things to get back to normal.

I had the privilege of speaking on a panel this week for the Arizona interfaith Movement. And it was different voices of faith from a variety of faith traditions, and I was the Christian representative. And what occurred to me during that time of sharing with people of a variety of faith, is that we all yearn to get back to “normal.”

But as I've said before, we can't go back. Just like the disciples, they yearn to go back and to be with Jesus. They couldn't go back.

I said a few weeks ago that life has changed. Not ended. Things will be different, but as we begin to open up and we see, and we reflect on the loss of great death, over 100,000 lives lost in the United States alone to the Coronavirus. Friends, we can't go back. As we hear stories of the COVID-19 outbreak with our Navajo brothers and sisters, just to our north, on our doorstep, and their struggle to get some of the things that many hospitals are struggling with now, in terms of PPE. Not only that, their struggle with just getting clean, drinking water. The struggle with affordable housing. Friends, Congress made the monies available to help people get into affordable housing, but that needed to happen a long time ago. Being a pastor that worked with the homeless, I know that we have a crisis in America. We are in crisis, and we've been in crisis with those that are the poorest and most vulnerable among us for a long time.

And finally this week with the murder of, yet again, another black body, we find out that maybe our greatest sin is again, separation. Is apathy. And we find out that racism and bias, coupled with policing are lethal. Maybe we've known that for a long time. This Pentecost, yet again, we're reminded that we're being called into a different life. We're being called –maybe even every Sunday– into, not only a different life, but we're being called into conversion. We're being called to come alongside those that are not like us. All the people. We're being called to come alongside them.

So often we practice charity, which is wonderful, but this Pentecost Sunday, we're being called to practice justice.

Friends, happy and blessed Pentecost. May the spirit’s wind blow on us in a new and radical way, to propel us into a future that is just and sustainable for all; a truly just world for all.

Peace be with you.