Sermons

• Pentecost: Being Undone, Becoming Renewed – The Rev. Michelle Meech

  May 19, 2024

  On the day you are wearing your certainty like a cloak
  and your sureness goes before you like a shield or like a sword,
  may the sound of God’s name spill from your lips
  as you have never heard it before.
  May your knowing be undone.
  May mystery confound your understanding.
  May the Divine rain down in strange syllables yet with an ancient familiarity,
  a knowing borne in the blood, the ear, the tongue,
  bringing the clarity that comes not in stone or in steel but in fire, in flame.
  May there come one searing word – enough to bare you to the bone,
  enough to set your heart ablaze, enough to make you whole again.

  This is a poem about what the Feast of Pentecost is about. It’s called Blessing That Undoes Us, from Jan Richardson’s book, Circle of Grace, a collection of poetic blessings for different seasons of our church year. What Richardson explains to us in her poem is that the Day of Pentecost, this day on which we celebrate the coming of God’s Holy Spirit is a bit of a dangerous day, a day that undoes us. And in that undoing, we are blessed.

  

  Pentecost by Holger Schue

  It might sound a little scary or undesirable – to be undone. It sounds scary, I think, most of our lives it seems, we’re just trying to keep it together. Why in the world would we want to be undone?

  In the texts we are given for today – from the Acts of the Apostles to Paul’s letter to the Romans to the Gospel of John – there is a theme.  Renewal.  Because they are baptismal texts, really. So many people talk about Pentecost as the birth of the church but, as the woman who ordained me, Bishop Nedi Rivera says, the church was born when Jesus called the disciples. Pentecost is the baptism of the church. The baptism of the church. The renewal of the church.  The blessing and renewal of us. And a renewal is an undoing.

  The Day of Pentecost, this bizarre story from the Acts of the Apostles reads like a fantasy story to our modern and post-modern sensibilities. Is it real? Did it really happen like this? Does that even matter? How do we read this story? What’s here for us?

  It says, “suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the house where they were sitting… All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.” It’s hard to imagine that “suddenly” we are given the ability to say things that we could never have said before.  Or is it?

  It could be that God’s Holy Spirit inspires people to speak in other languages. I’m not disputing that. But in my own life, it was a little different: I know I have told you all my story before but when I first started going to church in my 30’s, I wasn’t looking for a church. I wasn’t looking for a community. I really didn’t know what I was looking for, I just knew that it felt good to go and sit in a pew and stand and sit and kneel along with other people. Sometimes saying words in a prayer and wondering why I was saying these words. I had been baptized before in a perfunctory service but never really went to church.  Yet, there I was… nearly every Sunday morning… in a church.

  The music wasn’t great, so it wasn’t that. I didn’t see too many people my age, so it wasn’t that. I liked the priest and thought his sermons were worth listening to. But that wouldn’t have compelled me to go every week. To this day, I’m not sure exactly why I kept going back. I left the building most Sundays without talking to anyone, except the priest, Bill Ellis, who stood by the door at the end of worship to greet everyone and he genuinely seemed happy to see me.

  And, gradually, something shifted inside of me – things I was certain about before, I started wondering about. And without my certainty, I became curious about things I would have never known how to open my heart to by myself. This is, I think, how the Holy Spirit works. Gradually, over time. This is the undoing I think Richardson is talking about in her poem.

  Maybe you have a story like this – a story in which you laid down your certainty long enough to allow the fabric of a new story to be woven. A story in which you heard yourself saying things you never thought you could have said before, trying something new and wondering just how far this unraveling might lead. And I know it’s not easy to give up the need for certainty. Whenever the ground feels shaky, we naturally start to get protective and fearful and we have a desperate need for certainty.

  I can see this in our nation. News sources are no longer sources of actual news, but are platforms for ideological and political pundits that offer up a narrative about the days events. Why bother with learning more or pausing to consider all the aspects of a situation when we’re going to be told what to think? Or, at the very least, confirm our own opinions. Because when things seem unclear and we have no tolerance for ambiguity anymore, we humans have a tendency to look for something that feels like safe ground. Or a “simpler time.”

  Clear ideas of what things are supposed to be like and what people are supposed to be like. Ideas that are by their very nature, inherently oppressive. Because the need for certainty leads us to a need to control. And that usually means – a need to control others. This is the Christian nationalism that is being brazenly expressed, which is not Christianity at all. But it is bigotry and misogyny and racism and homophobia all wrapped into one and labeled as Christian.

  What we see on a national level is the same thing we do to ourselves when the ground gets shaky under our feet and we feel discomfort. We search for certainty instead of simply staying present to the discomfort.

  What we learn from these scriptures, the lesson we get from the Feast of Pentecost, is that this need for certainty can keep us imprisoned. This fear of looking foolish can prevent us from becoming renewed. The pain of losing something or someone important to us can prevent us from becoming renewed. The deeply misguided need for certainty at all costs can prevent us from becoming renewed. We don’t want to say yes to something if we don’t know exactly what it’s going to look like. And that isn’t liberating.

  Yet, as Paul tells us in his letter to the Romans: “… the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves… we wait for redemption!… And Paul tells us that hope is not found in the things we know, not in the things we can see. He says, “For who hopes for what is seen? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait in patience.”

  It’s hard to know what God’s Holy Spirit is working on, how we are becoming more and more God’s Holy Creation, how exactly we will be called upon to be Christ for others in this world. We want certainty. I know we do. I want it too.

  But Christian faith is not about certainty. That’s Christian nationalism, like I described above.

  The very definition of Christian hope is a very simple but very radical idea: God is with us. God is not a watchmaker who put this whole thing called creation together and then left us to our own. The God of Life, God who is Love, is with us. This is the only thing of which we can be certain. I know though, we want the certainty of knowing what will happen. But when that need to know becomes our god, not only will we find ourselves frustrated and scared, we will most certainly miss how God is asking us to become a new creation. We will miss the blessing!

  According to Luke, who wrote the Acts of the Apostles, the whole thing seemed so utterly preposterous that the people standing around watching thought that the people who opened themselves to God’s Holy Spirit were drunk. And Peter says, “You people of Jerusalem, indeed, these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only 9 in the morning! No… this is what the prophet Joel was talking about… that God said: I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh.  And the young shall see visions and the old shall dream dreams and they all shall prophesy.”

  God’s spirit comes, not to coddle us and help us to feel certain again.  God’s spirit comes to renew us, like the rush of violent wind that fills a house. God’s spirit comes like the thunderous noise of thousands and thousands of bones clanging against each other as they are knit back together with sinews and flesh. God’s spirit comes like fire, like a blessing that undoes us so that…

  “On the day you are wearing your certainty like a cloak and your sureness goes before you like a shield or like a sword,
  … the sound of God’s name may spill from your lips as you have never heard it before.”

  The sound of God’s name. Spill from your lips as you have never heard it before. We become God’s hands and feet in the world instead of trying to make the world conform to our need for certainty.

  On this day of Pentecost, as we baptize 3 very special young people into the Body of Christ – Joniel, Alberto, and Amelia. Know that this baptism, while it is theirs, is not just for them. For as they are being made a new creation in Christ, so are we. As they are saying yes to God, so are we called to say yes to God. So are we called to renew our faith in the God of Life who is Love.

  Our Baptismal Vows are reminders of the ways we are called forth. In this time and in this place, to see ourselves anew. To set aside our need for certainty and rest in the faith that God is with us and that God’s Holy Spirit is doing something that we cannot yet see. And this is our hope – that something we have yet to imagine is being woven and we are a part of that new fabric.

  How might we utter God’s name in a way that we have never heard before? How do we need to loose our need to be certain and be open to speaking God’s name anew? How are we being called to be undone, to be renewed?

  Let us truly receive this blessing of being undone today. And let us embrace who God is calling us to become.