Pentecost Weekend!

Has anyone ever told you that you look divine in red? It’s true. Everyone needs that distinctive splash of red to show their true identity , so this weekend you get to bring it! Wear the color of fire, because this weekend we are celebrating Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit filled the place where Jesus’ followers had gathered and empowered them to speak about God’s mighty deeds in ways that were understood universally. 

 

Let’s remember that story for a moment: Jesus had been crucified, then raised, then spent forty days with the disciples before his ascension. Before departing, he told them to wait for an infusion of power that God would give them, in order that they would be able to carry the gospel to the ends of the earth. And on the Day of Pentecost, that power came and filled each one of them as they were waiting and praying. 

 

The phenomena were outstanding! “Tongues of fire” came and rested on each of them. I don’t even know that that means, exactly, and it gives me goose bumps! Whatever those tongues of fire are supposed to be, or to represent, they didn’t discriminate. Tongues of fire fell on each of them – men, women, old, young, timid, bold, doubters, believers,  buoyant, depressed – you name it. No discrimination; all of them. With the fire was a loud noise like a mighty wind, that filled the entire house. The whole house, not just the front row, and not just the cool kids’ table! And the narrator says, “All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in tongues.” Again, I’m not so sure what the “speaking in tongues” is supposed to be, or to represent, but I know the word “all” and that means each and every one of them. And whatever “speaking in tongues,” “the sound of a rushing mighty wind” and “tongues of fire” are supposed to mean or represent, here’s what happens: Each of them began proclaiming the “mighty deeds of God” in ways that people from all over the world were able to hear and understand. The Apostle Peter – who only recently had timidly denied that he even knew Jesus three times – was bold enough to stand and declare to the people gathered from all around how these strange phenomena were fulfillments of the promise from the prophet Joel that in the last days God would pour out God’s Spirit on all flesh. (Again with the word “all”!) 

 

That’s the story. You can read it for yourself in the book of Acts, chapter 2. It has such powerful, but mysterious imagery, so the church has found many different ways to express it. 

- Pentecost is a reversal of the story of the Tower of Babel (Genesis 11), so the diversity of tongues that once represented chaos and discord is now a gift that allows the good news to be proclaimed in every language, culture, and place. 

- Pentecost is an expression of the wind/spirit/breath that sweeps over the valley of dry bones in Ezekiel 34 and brings the skeletal remains of a battlefield back to new life. 

- Pentecost is the spirit of God that hovered over the waters in the creation story of Genesis 1, once again giving new life. 

- Pentecost is the true meaning of Shavuot, the Festival of Weeks (in Leviticus 23), which started as a harvest festival celebrating God's abundance, and later became a celebration of the gift of the Torah.  

- Pentecost is the gentle lilting of a dove, swirling down to the baptized Christ (Luke 3), newly declared the Beloved Son. 

 

This Spirit is many things and - as my friend Ched Myers likes to say - "She's quite a lady." 

 

So, I invite you to wear red this weekend as your way of signifying our participation in this story of Pentecost. May God fill us with fire, fiery tongues, a profound breath of God’s Spirit, and enable us to proclaim the Good News of God’s Love in ways that anyone can hear it and rejoice. 

 

See you in worship,

Mark of St. Mark

 

 

 

This Weekend

This weekend we have a split schedule. By that, I mean our worship services on Saturday and Sunday will be quite different, with me preaching on Saturday and a guest preacher, Diane Moffett, preaching on Sunday. I am going to offer a brief overview of what you can expect this weekend in worship, because this may a great time for you to attend both Saturday and Sunday without it being redundant. 

Tomorrow we will be reading Paul’s sermon in Athens, from Acts 17, which is an intriguing text because of the theology that we see presented there. One could make the case that it is more Luke’s theology (presuming that Luke wrote the book of Acts) than Paul’s – which is often the case when someone is retelling another person’s story. Still, it is an amazing chapter, which I believe has been mistranslated and misinterpreted for many years because it challenges our customary way of thinking. I will not go on and on about the translation issues now or during the sermon, but if you are interested in hearing more, here’s an opportunity. In some ways I see this sermon as an extension of the sermon I preached two weeks ago on John 14. Our Saturdays @ 5 services are followed by a fellowship reception in the Bonhoeffer Room that we call, “Life Together.” If anyone wants to look at the translation issues behind Acts 17, I will be happy to walk through some of them during that time. 

On Sunday, we will host the Rev. Dr. Diane Moffett as our guest preacher in worship and Dr. Moffett will offer a presentation in the Fellowship Hall following worship. Since 2018, Dr. Moffett has been the President and Executive Director of the Presbyterian Mission Agency (PMA), which is the mission arm of the PC(USA). Under her leadership, the PMA is inviting congregations, presbyteries, and synods to become “The Matthew 25 Church,” which has three foci: Building Congregational Vitality; Dismantling Structural Racism; and Eradicating Systemic Poverty. Dr. Moffett will be preaching in our 9:30AM service on Sunday, then offering a presentation on being a Matthew 25 church in the Fellowship Hall at 11:00AM. The vision of the Matthew 25 initiative is very much in keeping with how God has led St. Mark over the years, so we will benefit from hearing Dr. Moffett’s presentation in how that vision is shaping the larger Presbyterian Church. What I find refreshing and instructive is how the Matthew 25 initiative connects the work of systemic justice to the exercise of compassion in everyday life. Too often those two approaches to faithfulness are posited as an either/or, when in reality they are two levels of the same work. I am looking forward to Dr. Moffett’s presentation and I hope you will make an effort to be there for them. 

Next weekend, May 26-27, is Pentecost Weekend. So, here’s a heads up: Wear Red! We’ll talk more about that next week. 

Until then I am humbled and grateful to call myself, 

Mark of St. Mark 

God's Word in Human Voice

 God’s Word in Human Voice 

July 10, 2011

Matthew 13:1-23 

Heartland Presbyterian Church

D. Mark Davis

 

Tony Campolo once told a story that I will never forget. One day Tony was going to a convention where he was going to speak to a Pentecostal gathering of some sort. And, just before the event started, Tony gathered with the leaders in a room backstage because they wanted to have prayer for him. If you’ve ever been in a Pentecostal prayer group, you’ll know that, while one person is technically ‘leading’ the prayer, everyone prays aloud all at the same time (a nightmarish form of prayer for polite Presbyterians.) One guy in particular was praying quite loudly and he wasn’t even praying for Tony. Tony heard him saying, “Oh, God, please reach out today and touch Bernie Stolzfus.” Then the guy went on to help God figure out who Bernie Stolzfus was and what the problem was. He said, “Oh, God, you know Bernie Stolzfus, who lives in the blue trailer in that first road in the park next exit 40 off the highway. Bernie is struggling and he’s about to leave his wife Elise and he’s just very confused and Elise loves him so much and he just doesn’t realize how much she loves him and wants to work things out with him. Oh, Lord, just reach out to Bernie today and lead him home to that blue trailer in the first road next to exit 40 off the highway.” Tony, of course, has simply left off praying entirely, and is now wondering, “Okay, why are you telling God where Bernie lives? Shouldn’t we assume that God already knows that? And other such questions.” So, eventually, the prayer ends and Tony does his thing and ‘a good time was had by all’ and later he gets in his car to drive back to his home in St. David, Pennsylvania. 

 

As he’s getting near the highway, Tony sees a hitch-hiker. And, while this is often an ill-advised thing to do, Tony decided that the guy looked harmless enough and he offers him a ride. The guy is clearly troubled about something and as they’re making small talk he says that his name is Bernie Stolzfus and he’s heading to the next town. Tony pulled off at the next exit and turned around to head back where they came from. Bernie looked at him puzzled and asked, “What are you doing?” Tony answered, “I am taking you home! Your wife Elise is sitting at home right now crying, wanting to you to come home more than anything else in the world, and you just don’t realize how much she loves you.” And Tony drove to exit 40 and got off the highway and turned onto the first road and drove to a blue trailer. As they pulled up, a weeping Elise came to the door and said, “Bernie, what’s going on?” Bernie looked at her and said, “Honey, we need to talk.” Then, he turned and looked at Tony and said, “How did you know all of this?” To which Tony says, “God told me!” And whenever Tony tells this story and the audience is laughing at his response “God told me!” Tony will look at the audience and add, “And he did.” 

 

So, what, exactly, is “the Word of God” here? Is it a curiously inappropriate prayer, which happens to contain just the right amount of detail which will later serve to help reconcile a couple in crisis? What is this thing we call “The Word of God”? 

 

In many Christian churches, the phrase “the Word of God” is used to signify the Bible itself, this collection of 66 books written across centuries and put together as a collection across other centuries. But, within the Bible itself, the phrase “the Word of God” has a much more dynamic meaning than simply a collection of books. In the Hebrew Scriptures, when the prophets speak of “The Word of the Lord,” they are very clearly speaking of something that is given to them prior to the spoken message, and therefore much more original than any written account of their spoken message. Likewise, in the New Testament, “the Word of God” is not used simply to refer to what we now know as the Bible. In fact, in the Gospel of John, the writer begins by describing “the Word” as something that existed from the beginning with God, and which was the means by which God called all things into being in the first place. And, it was the Apostle Paul who made the excellent distinction between letters written in ink or chiseled on stone and the Spirit that gives life in the message of the gospel. We will, on occasion, use the shorthand of referring to the Bible itself as “the Word of God,” but I have often found it helpful to follow the theologian Karl Barth’s lead and refer to the Bible as that which ‘contains’ the Word of God, but not to equate the Bible with the Word of God. The Word of God is a dynamic, life-giving entity, which might even come in the form of a curiously inappropriate prayer that just so happens to say the right thing. 

 

For the early church, particularly the community to whom the parable that we have read this morning is written, the question of what “the Word of God” is was a pressing question. It is not that they were trying to root out heretics by deciding who was the real “Bible-believing” church and who was not. It is not that they were trying to justify their own point of view on a hot-button topic of the day by equating their perspective with “the Word of God” and everyone else’s perspective with some depraved form of “human wisdom.” Matthew’s community saw itself as a ‘missional community.’ We saw that a few weeks ago when we read the end of Matthew’s gospel and heard them being commissioned to disciple others in the way of Christ, in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and even to the ends of the earth. They saw their reason for existence, not to build a more impressive church than all of the other churches in town, but to continue the work that Jesus began, preaching, healing, and making God’s reign a reality for others in the world. 

 

But, this was also a community that struggled. Many of them were part of the Diaspora, that dispersion of people out of Jerusalem after Rome attacked the city and destroyed its center, including the great temple. Many of them had not gone out deliberately, but had fled the violence and destruction, leaving as refugees, looking for some kind of sustenance and shelter. This original mission was not a program being smartly led by directors from abroad, but a way of life that was both a scraping to get by and a mission of hope. Their lives were the message, the “Word of God” that they sowed was not a written Bible or even dumbed-down cartoon pamphlets, but a message that was embodied in real living. The “Word of God,” for them, was the dynamic power of living with purpose, even as the world around them was inflamed with violence and despair. When we read of “the Word” in this parable, it is “the Word of God” that was originally embodied in the life of Christ, and then alive in those who saw themselves as “the body of Christ” in the world. And this parable of the Sower is a way of framing what this missional community would experience. 

Matthew’s community saw that when “the Word of God” was sown, sometimes it would lay, unattended and never rooted, because some places were beaten down and compacted. When “the Word of God” was sown, sometimes it would take root very quickly, but some ground has never been tilled and the stones along the surface will not allow roots to grow, so the plants would wither in the sun. When “the Word of God” was sown, sometimes it would grow among other more vicious forms of life that overwhelmed it. The same seed, thrown with the same abandon, the same message lived through the same faithful lives, would often come to very different results. And this missional community would experience times of rejection and times of dashed hopes and times of conflict with other concerns. That is just how it is for the missional community. It is not a signal that their message was bad or that they embodied it insufficiently or anything of that sort. That is just how it goes for “the Word of God” in human life. 

 

But, in a twist of hope, there was the seed that fell on good soil. In this parable, the seed that fell on the good soil produced a ridiculous amount of harvest – some thirty-fold, some sixty-fold, and some a-crazy-hundred-fold! This is where some people criticize Jesus, saying that it is obvious that he was a son of a carpenter, and not the son of a farmer. The point, of course, it not whether or not Jesus knows reasonable yields for seeds. The point is that the missional community – with all of their struggles and failures – can take heart, because under the right conditions “the Word of God” produces abundant life, so abundant that it provides enough, despite those dry and barren patches. 

 

That is the hope that sustains us when we find ways to spread the dynamic “Word of God” with abandon. The results may lie far outside of our influence, but the hope is that, by God’s grace, the harvest is plentiful. Thanks be to God. Amen. 

 

 

Keeping the Flame; Passing the Torch

We have had and will continue to have a lot of great opportunities here at St. Mark for you to lean into building our church community and following the path of discipleship. Two weeks ago we hosted Dr. Kathleen Treseder from UCI to speak about Climate Change and heard about how our recent decision to adopt guidelines for going carbon neutral that have been provided and encouraged by the Presbyterian Church (USA). We call our action, “Shifting into Neutral,” as we aim to become carbon neutral by 2030. Last week, we hosted Sister Sara Tarango, to discuss the forthcoming Farm Bill and its effects on families throughout our country. We have some other events coming up soon that we’ll begin promoting in due time. 

Our guest presenters tell me often how impressed they are at the degree to which St. Mark is informed and active with regard to things like caring for the environment and advocating for the marginalized. That certainly has been St. Mark’s modus operandi for a long time, but it is not a wave that we want to ride until it dies out on the shore. It is a movement that we want to renew again and again, passing the torch and sharing the collective wisdom from generation to generation. So, today and next week I want to address how this happens. 

I had a friend named Gus – a former presbytery executive and insightful church analyst – who long argued that when someone retires from their occupation, they should immediately consider themselves as freed up to participate in Christian ministry, whether that is fulfilling a volunteer role in the church, becoming an advocate for their passion, or simply seeing to it that something they always felt should be happening through their church starts happening through their church. His argument was the younger church members are spread too thin, between working day jobs and raising children, so it is unrealistic to expect them to carry the church’s load. Their job, he said, was to be good workers and parents, not to laden themselves with tasks or guilt over the work of the church that others could be doing. 

I won’t lie – not everyone accepted Gus’ invitation to see their retirement as a time to step up, but one person I know answered that challenge beautifully. After an early retirement as a C.F.O. at a major media outlet, he would golf just about every day. But first he showed up, with a toolbox, and piddled around the church, replacing that faucet that never seemed to work right, cleaning the gutters, shampooing the carpet, etc. He worked in conjunction with the Buildings and Grounds Committee and simply said, “I have 2-3 hours each morning that I can devote to doing all the little things that everyone knows need to be done, but nobody gets around to doing. So write up a list and I’ll take care of it.” After, he’d head out to the tee box. 

Not everyone has the leisure or finances to take an early retirement and carve out morning hours for volunteer work. And not every younger person is so spread out that they can’t find time to engage and enjoy the work of the church. Still, Gus taught us two things. 

1. If we’re ever tempted to say something like, “The church ought to be …” then we immediately need to change our language to “We ought to be …” because we are the church. 

2. There are seasons to life. Too often church leaders like me are so focused on meeting the need and recruiting volunteers that we become insensitive to how parenting, establishing a career, or taking care of one’s elders is how many people live out their faith, whether it is part of the church’s collective work or not. 

So, where does that leave us? I’ll say more next week, but for now we need to think of our calling at St. Mark as a dynamic movement that needs constant regeneration. One thing I’ve found amazing about the L.A. Dodgers since moving here is how good they are at regeneration. After winning 111 games last year (that’s s LOT), they did not just bring back the same team for this year. They have two rookies in their starting lineup and have moved into first place even with their anticipated starting shortstop and ace pitcher on the injury shelf. How do they do it? Some teams wait until they hit rock bottom to renew themselves. The Dodgers renew their lineup when they are riding high, constantly investing in their farm system, where younger players are being prepared for being the ‘next man in.’ As focused as they are on this week’s series against the Padres, they are also already thinking about where they will be in three years. 

Sorry for the sports analogy, but it seems appropriate to me, because who we are and who we are becoming are one cloth. As I said, I’ll get back to this with more next week. Until then, let’s continue to be the church.

Mark of St. Mark