The Spirit Make us One

 Acts 2: 1-21 
May 28, 2023
Pentecost

 

Now, long ago after the time of Noah

and his children, the people

had one language and they lived in one place.

And the people said to each other,

“Let’s make some bricks” and they made some bricks.

And then they said,

“Come, let us build ourselves a city,

and a tower whose top is in the heavens;

let us make a name for ourselves,

lest we be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth.”

 

That is the story that’s been come to be known as

the tower of Babel. Although it never mentions a tower.

The people wanted to band together

for their own glory, for their own power

and pride and ambition,

They thought they could be like God,

if they could just build an empire big enough to reach the sky.

 

But God knew that would not be good news for anyone.

So God made them all speak different languages,

so they couldn’t understand one another

and then they couldn’t build the city to reach the sky.

And the unfinished city was called Babel which means confusion.

And the people were scattered and separated

from one another.

 

Now this scattering can be seen as a curse:

God’s punishment for the human penchant

towards despotism and oppression.

It can be seen as a cure:

The separation of languages

has prevented one power from taking over.

And it can  be seen in the long run as a blessing:

diverse languages and cultures make

the world a more interesting place to be.

The richness of humanity is a gift from God.

 

The difference in language and culture can divide people.

Try as I might, I still cannot understand Swahili,

or Cantonese, or Spanish

or the other languages of friends that I have had.

 

It makes me sad to think,

There have been people that I know

I would have been closer with

if only I could speak their language and they could speak mine.

If we could have gotten beyond translators

and hand signals, we would have had a deeper relationship.

 

The difference in language has lead to suspicion,

misunderstandings, and hostility

between people and countries.

 

But the differences in languages can be a beautiful thing too.

Learning the nuances of a new language is an

exciting adventure. And the tapestry of languages

make this world rich and wonderous.

Languages form culture and they are formed by culture.

Different languages give people and nations their personalities.

 

People have said that after they’ve lived in a country

where another language is spoken,

one of the most comforting things

is to hear their own language again.

And ministry is best done in people’s native language.

When I was in Columbus, we had a Lutheran Swahili ministry.

Other people would preach,

and I would do the communion part of the service

and I would read it in Swahili. I did it phonetically,

and I’m not sure at all times what I was saying

and I can assure you, it was bad pronunciation.

But they wanted that part, especially,

in their own native language.

Their mother tongue.

It comes close to people’s heart.

Language is a powerful thing.

 

And some people have known that power

and have tried to restrict it or control it.

 

In the early years of our country,

Native Americans were not allowed

to speak their own languages,

or to teach them to their young

in an effort to “civilize” them make them American.

 

During the world wars, Germans in the US

were forced to hide their own language,

lest they be seen as the “enemy”

 

And today, although on one hand we claim

to be a proud to be a melting pot,

there is a lot of open hostility

to those who speak languages other than English.

 

Like that city of Babel,

we want to build our own empires  to the sky

and to do that, we try to enforce uniformity,

and make a name for ourselves,

built on our own pride and prejudices.

 

But when the day of Pentecost had come,

they were all together in one place.

And suddenly from heaven there came a sound

like the rush of a violent wind,

and it filled the entire house where they were sitting.

Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them,

and a tongue rested on each of them.

All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit

and began to speak in other languages,

as the Spirit gave them ability.

 

Meaning the disciples spoke,

and everyone in that room, no matter where they were from,

they understood the gospel preached in their mother tongue.

God is doing a new thing in this era.

 

Some have said that Pentecost is an undoing of Babel,

but notice this: everyone didn’t speak the same language,

they didn’t all just start speaking English

or some majority language that was convenient

for the dominant culture.

It says that they were filled with the Holy Spirit

and began to speak and be understood

in other languages.

  

No one lost their identity,

they weren’t a homogenous group.

They were all still distinct from one another: 

Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, 

Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, 

Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt, Libya, Romans, Cretans, and Arabs.

 

Or, as the updated countries would go:

Afghanistan and Turkmenistan, Iran and Iraq, Israel and Palestine 

and many parts of Turkey, including near Istanbul and Ankara; 

Egypt and northern Libya, Rome in Italy, 

the island of Crete or from Saudi Arabia.

They were all different and distinct.

But their differences were no longer a barrier.

 

Pentecost is the birth of the church.

And the church was meant to be a sign

that diversity does not equal division.

 

Even though, as Martin Luther King said,

“The most segregated hour of Christian America

is 11 o’clock on Sunday morning”

and that statement is still true to this day,

The church that God created on that day of Pentecost

day is a blessing of diversity.

Not just bringing other people together so that they can

take on our identity and leave behind their own.

Pentecost is the sign that unity of humanity is possible.

But that it doesn’t mean assimilation, conforming or watering down

of who people are, or where they come from, or who they identify as.

Pentecost is the unity of the Spirit of all people found in Jesus.

Where language and culture and other unique qualities,

don’t need to disappear, but are celebrated.

Where we are one in the Spirit of God.

  

Our goal as a church of Christ is to create a “beloved community”

Another quote from Martin Luther King, Jr.

 The end goal is reconciliation; the end is redemption; the end is the creation of the beloved community. It is this type of spirit and this type of love that can transform opposers into friends. It is this type of understanding goodwill that will transform the deep gloom of the old age into the exuberant gladness of the new age. It is this love which will bring about miracles in the hearts of people.

 

The end goal is a community where people can come together 

in their uniqueness and still be a community.

 

We are scattered over this world

to proclaim God’s peace, understanding, and love

Instead of making a name for ourselves,

we create a servant community, to build up one another.

Instead of building a city as a homage

our own ambition and pride, we build a city of God.

 

And as we do that,

we see that God is breaking down all sorts of barriers.

God is breaking down the barriers of language, culture,

race, gender identities, sexual identities,

physical and mental abilities, age, economic status,

and all other barriers that we have created between people.

 

Often God has to break things down

before God can create new things.

 

We resist, but God goes right on breaking down

barriers to create the Kingdom of God on earth.

After working on it for more than 2000 years,

We’re obviously on the long term plan.

We are always going back and forth between our will

and God’s will, but our faith tells us that

God’s vision of a diverse yet united people will become reality.

At the first congregation that I served,

we had a mission to Honduras the congregation

before I had gotten there, had helped to build

housing and a school, we gave scholarship to the kids

so they could go to school past Jr. high,

someone donated a fire truck.

Once we had done all the practical stuff,

we decided that we wanted to go there

and do Vacation Bible School for them.

 

Sharolyn was our children’s ministry director.

She was an expert in Godly Play,

a Montessori-based Sunday School curriculum,

where you tell stories with objects

and have conversation with the children

and there was craft that went with each story.

 

She told stories all through the week

to different age groups,

We told the story to the older children

first and then they helped tell the stories

to the younger children.

Pablo, our guide, was our translator.

It was going really well.

 

Everything was leading to the final story

on the final day which was the story about Baptism

and God’s love for all of us.

So we gathered all the about 75 teens and children and the adults

together under the portico outside of the school.

And we’re ready to go, and we just needed Pablo.

But he was gone, the Mayor had called him out for a special meeting

or something. I don’t know the details, but, somehow

Sharolyn and I were only ones from our group there

with no one to translate.

 

Now Sharolyn knew the Godly Play Story.

but she didn’t know any Spanish.

Now I could speak a little Spanish,

but not enough to translate completely.

And I didn’t know the Godly Play Story.

And there was a teenage boy named Marco

who could speak a little English but not enough to translate,

but we had been combining our efforts

to do some translation together earlier in the week.

 

So, here’s what we came up with on the spur of the moment

with everyone sitting there waiting for us to get started:

Sharolyn told the Godly Play story and did the visuals.

Which included giving each of the 75 children candles

which they would light somewhere in the story.

I was not really prepared for that part at all.

Then I would translate it into bad Spanish all in present tense,

And our Marco would take my bad interpretation

And put it into something that I can only hope made sense in Spanish.

 

And, in the end, no one set themselves or anyone else on fire

which we could call a success.

But it was more than a success.

At the point they were told to light their candles

on the larger candle and on each other’s candles, which they did.

And once they were all lit, Sharolyn said,

“Look up now and see the light of God”

and I just couldn’t find the words in Spanish,

(even though we had just been saying light and God
over and over again.)

But I didn’t need it,

I just looked up and everyone looked up at the same time,

and everyone fell silent and we could all feel

the Spirit of God move through

that little cement portico we gathered under.

 

 

Language differences can be a barrier, and a joy.

Culture differences can be a barrier, and a joy.

Sexuality can be a barrier, and a joy.

Gender can be a barrier, and a joy.

Mental health can be a barrier, and a joy.

Age can be a barrier, and a joy.

All our differences can be a barrier, and they can be a joy.

But crossing over barriers is what the Spirit of God does.

And what the Spirit of God can help us do.

And when those barriers get crossed,

we can find God’s real joy.

 

God is doing a new thing today,

right here at Christ Lutheran.

Jesus is opening our hearts and minds.

The Spirit is breaking down our barriers.

God is giving us new challenges.

 

God is pouring out God’s Spirit on all flesh.

and our sons and daughters are prophesying,

and our young people are seeing visions,

and our old people are dreaming dreams.

And with the Spirit’s love and grace,

we will all be saved together as one.

 

We Are One

John 17:1-11  May 21, 2023

 

I was born Roman Catholic.

I was baptized Catholic, had my first communion as a Catholic

was confirmed as a Catholic, and, after I was confirmed,

it was the Roman Catholic church that I was actively

not attending in my teen years.

 

St. Thomas the Apostle Catholic Church
of Woodhaven

My first congregation was St. Thomas the Apostle

Catholic Church. It was on the next corner from our house

in Woodhaven. When you were Catholic, at that time,

you were assigned a church depending on where you lived

that was your parish, and you didn’t dare try another church.

I’d like to say that church was full of close relationships

and meaningful encounters, but looking back, it was

pretty cold and mechanical.

You went in, you went to mass, you went home.

To be honest, the whole time I lived in New York,

I don’t remember going to another Catholic church,

I certainly didn’t go to any protestant churches

and I frankly, until I was 8 years old and we moved

into the South, I didn’t know that there were such a thing

as churches of other denomination besides Catholic.

I don’t think this was just because I was a dumb kid.

I think it was because people just didn’t go back and forth too much,

we didn’t mix with other denominations.

 

Now things are much more fluid.

I hear Catholics are choosing which church they want to go to.

People are moving around to other denominations willy-nilly.

 

I chose the Lutheran Church because

it was closest to my apartment in New York.

It was the first one I went to .

I was going to try one of the dozens of different

kind of churches in my neighborhood, but this one stuck

for many reasons.

 

Some people see this recent fluidity as a bad thing.

A departure from God’s will.

They long to go back to the days of strict delineation.

And some think that the only way to do God’s 

will is to go back to having one denomination. One expression of Christ’s Church.

 

In Columbus, there was a guy named Bruce

who would call up Lutheran pastors and try to 

persuade us that the Roman Catholic faith was the only true faith.

I guess he started with us because we were the first to leave

it would be right for us to be the first to come back.

I talked to him on the phone about five times 

and he tried to persuade me to leave the ELCA and join his church downtown.

 

I once told his priest about his calls and the priest gave me the

sympathetic pastor face,  which told me that he had interesting ideas

on quite a lot of other things too.

 

Bruce’s vision for this, which we fleshed out on the phone,

was that I would come into church on Sunday and tell 

my congregation that we were going to all become 

Roman Catholic again and then we would all get up and get downtown somehow.

We never figured out how the transport downtown would happen,

(he said if I committed to it, he would figure it out.)

And we would all become Catholic again.

I always ended our conversation by telling him,

I have no intention of doing this, Bruce, but I love your dedication.

 

One of the places that Bruce and other people get the idea

of Christian unity is from this Gospel today.

 

Jesus is talking to his disciples again this week.

It’s the end of his long, three chapter farewell discourse.

He ends with a prayer to God. The preamble to the prayer

is pretty confusing, so much so that you might want to give up.

All are mine, and mine are yours, and we are all together.

But the actual prayer is pretty straightforward.

Jesus just says:

“God, protect my followers,

so that they might be one as we are one.”

 

Jesus was praying for his followers, for the church.

For us in other words.

That we could be as close to each other as God is to Jesus.

That we would be one.

 

And that is it for Jesus. After this prayer, he goes right out

into the garden and he’s arrested. Jesus’ last prayer:

Protect them, so they may be one as we are one.

 

And if you look at unity as defined by denominations,

we have failed miserably in Jesus last prayer.

 

Now lots of people, Bruce included, believe that

the real trouble started when Martin Luther

separated from the Catholic church in 1517.

But there have been troubles long before that.

 

Right in the beginning, even in the scriptures, we see

signs of division, Peter and Paul start fighting and

Writing letters about how wrong the other was.

Talking bad about each other in their churches.

 

Paul and John, who was also called Mark,

start off working together, but then they part ways and

Paul starts complaining about him to Barnabas.

Then Barnabas and Paul start fighting about things.

(Maybe Paul was the problem)

 

We don’t have a good beginning examples of Christian unity

and we don’t have a good history of it either.

Whenever you talk about Christian unity,

it seems vaguely hypocritical.

It’s hard to pick out a time when Christians

were unified in the same spirit that Jesus wanted us to.

Even before the Martin Luther when we were

at least one church, the unity was kept with threats and violence.

 

And then, for the entire time he was alive after

The Catholic Church threw him out,

Luther was involved in heated debates with other reformers

about how the new church should live it’s life.

 

I’m reading a lot about Lutherans in the Civil War,

and in 1863 the Lutheran Churches in the South

divided themselves from the General Synod of Lutheran churches

over the issue of slavery and the war. 

The church was divided like the country until 1918 when they reunited.

 

And the Lutheran Church in America has spent the last 100 years

trying to get together and just when it looks like 

everything is working out for the ELCA, hundreds of churches left the ELCA

over issues of sexuality. Now Methodist churches are leaving

their denominations because of the same issue.

 

It doesn’t take an expert in religious studies

to see that Christians have trouble getting along.

All you have to do is post any opinion you might have on

a Christian page and see that most people don’t 

agree about anything. And some Christians are willing to curse at you,

call you names, and even threaten

bodily harm to you when they do disagree.

 

There are thousands of denominations that have been

churches created out of Christian disagreement.

Wars have been fought over Christian disagreements.

 

Even at the personal level,

in most churches you can

Just sing the wrong song, or change the drapes,

or misplace something in the kitchen

and you can start a small war.

We’re all better than that here now, of course.

 

But, of course,  this congregation has its own history of divisions

over the course of its 50 years that have added to this mix.

Some very recently.

 

So to some extent, it could seem like Jesus prayer

hasn’t been fulfilled at all. Like we and God have just ignored it.

 

But as I was thinking about this,

this week, kind of consumed in the despair of our divisions,

I decided maybe I was thinking too literally about this.

It’s easy to see the division and point out the fights,

The devil would like us to only see the separation between us

and lose hope for the future.

But as I thought more, I believe  there is hope.

 

I don’t believe that Jesus was praying for denominational unity.

If I know Jesus at all, he doesn’t really care about our denominations

and our hierarchy and our structures and constitution.

But Jesus does want us to get real about preaching the gospel.

He does want us to get real about sacrifice, about care for each other and our community,

 about loving the outcast, about justice,

and about forgiveness, about taking up our crosses and following him.

 

Jesus doesn’t want us to put on happy faces and act like we’re

fine just so we can put on a show of unity.

Our divisions over the years are us trying to work

all this important stuff out, we’re trying to figure out

what is vital to the gospel and what is not.

Jesus wants us to have a deeper sense of unity. A unity of the Spirit.

 

For more than 2000 years,

this church has held together in one form or another.

Though it’s changed over time,

we’re still talking about the same things,

sharing the same words, using the same creeds.

We’re still amazed by the same stories,

we still call ourselves followers of Jesus.

And  even through all the disagreements,

we still have a connection over the

centuries to the people that have come before us.

That is unity that very few can claim.

 

When I went to a Lutheran Church for the first time,

when I moved back to New York City,

I couldn’t tell what it was. It SEEMED like a Catholic Church.

The only difference was that they didn’t say the Lord’s Prayer.

I left going, okay, this denomination doesn’t say the Lord’s Prayer.

but I didn’t know that the pastor was a little forgetful sometimes

and he just skipped it that week, so other than that,

I wouldn’t have noticed any significant differences in the liturgy

from my childhood Catholic Church.

 

And right now I know there are thousands and thousands of

people of all denominations, all over the world who are

sharing the same scripture this morning,

and struggling to figure out what it means,

and wondering some of the same things we are.

though we don’t all know each other,

or agree with each other most of the time we are a community.

And wherever I go, I know I can depend on that community.

 

And I know that if I went to any church -

even if they have a theology and beliefs

that I couldn’t relate to at all,

I know that I could find some

common ground with the people there,

that we would know the same stories,

that we have shared some of the same history.

 

And I’m pretty sure that anywhere in the world,

I could find a Christian Community that would welcome me,

who have struggled with the same Word,

and who know the same Jesus that I do.

And who would pray for me and help me if I asked them too.

 

 Things seem to be splintering apart,

but maybe that’s part of God’s plan to join us back together again.

 

When we say, in the creed that we believe in the

Holy catholic church, notice that it’s catholic with a small c, not a capital C.

This catholic means the universal church.

The definition says “including a wide variety of things, all embracing”

 

Who here grew up in another denomination besides Lutheran?

Now things are fluid enough so we all don’t stay in our

strict lanes and only see one denomination our whole lives.

We’re switching lanes, trying others out, learning about each other.

We know much more about people of other denominations

than we did in the 20^th century.

We are starting to belong to the catholic, the universal church.

 

So, maybe Jesus prayer has been fulfilled.

Maybe the disciples heard it too and have passed it on to us.

Maybe we are still working it all out.

And we may be a long way away from visible unity

or any kind of agreement on anything.

But maybe this is God’s path we’re on.

 

In spite of our differences,

we are joined together by something larger

and more powerful than our opinions or actions.

We are all joined together by God’s Spirit.

And Jesus is glorified by our life together.

We are all on God’s long plan for unity.

And even with our earthly divisions,

we are one as God and Jesus are one.

It Surrounds Us. Penetrates Us. Binds Us Together.

John 14:15-21

May 14, 2023

 

Last week I told you about my home in Woodhaven,  NY

and that my grandparents lived

in the ground floor and we lived upstairs.

Then my family moved to Houston,

and then my grandfather died,

and then my grandmother moved to Houston with us.

After more than 70 years of living in New York

and over 50 years of living in the same neighborhood,

she left, and left all those relationships and

friends and family, and went to the strange

and foreign city of Houston, TX.

I’m sure she was sad about leaving New York,

But she adjusted very quickly.

 

I think the reason why she adjusted so well

is that she sent cards and letters.

She did this before she left NY and she continued

after she moved with us to Houston.

That was her hobby. She sent A lot of cards and letters

to everyone all the time, every day.

She had a hand-drawn spreadsheet of birthdays

and anniversaries and ordinations and

And then she had a file by months of when

these events were happening and she’d get cards

for each event and put them in the file folder

ready for that occasion.

The people at the post office knew her by name.

 

And then there were cards for holidays

of course there was Christmas, but then

there were others like St. Patrick’s day,

and Halloween, I think I got an Arbor Day card

(when even is Arbor day?)

And in each card she would

hand write a letter about what she was doing

that day or what she was making for dinner

or what TV show she had watched.

 

Even though she wasn’t with all those people she left

behind and wasn’t with in-person,

the relationships she had were still alive.

She adjusted well to moving because she

had already crossed that physical boundary of

for her relationships.

 

Now I don’t know about you, but I did not inherit

that trait of sending cards and letters from my Grandmother.

I’m actually terrible at doing that.

 

But even for those of us who aren’t good at

keeping in touch we know that there is more

to relationships than physical presence.

 

I think we knew that before the pandemic,

But we became very aware when we had

stay away from people to preserve life and health.

 

We know we are linked to our families and friends even

when we can’t see them in person.

We are linked to our church community even

when we don’t see each other all the time.

We are linked with other people around the world

when we hear about their suffering and we feel compassion,

even though we’ve never met them and will never meet them.

And we are linked to those who have died,

even though we will never occupy the same space

on this earth again.

We know, we have connections that exists

beyond our physical connections.

  

My grandmother made that link through cards and letters.

Some of us do it through phone calls.

Lots of people do it through social media.

Many people share that link through prayer and meditation

We share it with our thoughts and our memories.

 

Of course, in person, in present, touching, hugging,

eating together can’t be replaced.

But even though we might not be able to do those things,

that doesn’t mean that we don’t have links

to people we’re not in physical contact with.

There is a link between us.

 

Let’s call that link, the Spirit.

Like Jesus calls it.

 

As I said, Jesus is planning on leaving the disciples.

This is part of what is called his “final discourse”.

The speech given on the night of his last supper.

 

He tells them that he’s physically going away.

They would not have him there in person any more.

But he promises that he will not leave them orphaned.

He won’t leave them alone.

They will have the Spirit.

We will have the Spirit,

we will live in the Spirit, and the Spirit will live in us.

 

The way that Jesus describes the Spirit, is the Advocate.

An advocate is one that supports us,

that stands up for us, that helps us,

that speaks for us when we can’t speak.

 

It is what reaches out – from us to others,

and what reaches out – from others from us.

 

It is the link between us and Jesus.

Between us and God,

and between us and each other. The Spirit.

It surrounds us. Penetrates us. Binds us together.

 

I stole that from Star Wars by the way,

It’s how Obi Wan Kenobi described the Force.

But I think Obi Wan stole that from Jesus’

description of the Spirit here in John.

 

It is the link that exists between us

even without any physical connection.

And that link is also called love.

 

Love is in everything that Jesus says,

he actually can’t stop talking about it.

In the gospel today, Jesus says to us,

“if love me, you will keep my commandments.”

And in chapter 12, Jesus left us a new commandment,

And that commandment was that,

“We love one another as Jesus has loved us.”

So if we love Jesus,

we will keep Jesus commandment to love others.

 

And that love surpasses time and space,

that love is unconditional,

it overcomes faults and foibles,

that love is stronger than sin and death.

That is the Spirit, the Advocate, the Holy Ghost.

It surrounds us, penetrates us, binds us together.

 

There was a pastor in South Texas I met about 15 years ago

who told a group of us something. He said:

 

“Jesus did two things in his ministry,

he built a bridge between us and God and

he built a bridge between us and others.

 

Now, the bridge between us and God was not too controversial,

Everyone was talking about that.

But this bridge between people,

this is what got Jesus crucified in this world.

Talking about the link between us all

is what got Jesus in trouble

and it will always get us in trouble.”

 

I wrote this down then because I’d never heard that before.

But I think it’s true. Because the world is more comfortable with division. 

The world benefits when we fight and hate.

When we isolate.

 

The devil loves it when we feel no link with each other.

When we can’t see that Spirit connection we have

with each and every living thing in this earth.

 

The devil would love it if we were divided

by space and time and distance.

The devil would love it if we thought we were all alone

if we fended for ourselves, and cut off  the connection

that the Spirit provides to all of us.

 

But we know that the Spirit lives in us.

And we know that Christ lives in us.

And we know that we live in Christ.

And we know we are linked to God forever.

And we know we are linked to each other forever.

 

That is Jesus’ final message of love to all of us.