Can the Church be Born Again? by The Rev. Dr. Donald L. Hamer, Rector
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Trinity Episcopal Church, Hartford, Connecticut
Year A – Pentecost Sunday
June 4, 2017
Can the Church Be Born Again?
Acts 2:1-21; 1 Cor. 12:3b-13; John 7:37-39
Happy Birthday, Church! Today is the Day of Pentecost – or Whitsunday as it has traditionally been known in the Anglican Communion. The word Pentecost is from the Greek word meaning “50” and today bears that name because Pentecost always falls 50 days after Easter.
Many of you may not be aware that our Jewish brothers and sisters also celebrate a Pentecost Feast – in fact, the events we heard about in the Book of Acts this morning took place while the disciples were celebrating that very feast. The Jewish holiday is called Shavuot, also known as the Feast of Weeks, and it marks the wheat harvest in the Land of Israel (Exodus 34:22); and it also commemorates the anniversary of the day YHWH gave the Torah to the entire nation of Israel assembled at Mount Sinai. So Pentecost marks beginnings in both the Hebrew and Christian traditions: It celebrates the giving of the Law to the Israelites, and it celebrates the giving of the Holy Spirit in our Christian tradition.
So why do you think the giving of the Holy Spirit is considered the birthday of the church? Why isn’t it, say, Christmas, when Jesus was born? Or why isn’t it on Easter, when Jesus rose from the dead? I want to propose what may seem like an unusual answer: Those aren’t considered the birthdays of the church because Jesus wasn’t born, and he certainly didn’t die, to start a church. Jesus devoted his life to starting a movement – a revolutionary movement – that was meant to give a glimpse of heaven on earth even during our lifetimes. And ever since the time of Constantine in the 4th century, when the Roman Emperor became a Christian and that movement was adopted by the very culture it was meant to challenge, we – Jesus’ followers – have lost sight of that countercultural movement and instead persisted in establishing a church.
The word “church” can have a number of meanings: It can refer to a building; it can refer to a community of people who claim that building as the epicenter or home base of their participation in the Jesus Movement; it can relate to a particular subset of Jesus purported followers, e.g., The Episcopal Church, The United Church of Christ, the Roman Catholic Church; or more broadly it can refer to the Church Universal – the collection of all of the institutions in the world that claim to follow Jesus.
But this morning I want to consider that second sense of church – the community of people who claim a building or a particular location as a base of their participation in the Jesus Movement. We often refer to a community like this as a congregation or a parish. And on this Pentecost morning, I would like to share with you a vision – an alternative future for what has become known as “the church.” It is a vision of the Church as the Body of Christ, a vision that will help us let go of many of the trappings of “church” of which we have become enamored but have little to do with the movement that Jesus actually led. This vision is rooted in a definition “parish” or “congregation” that a widening circle of folks– both clergy and lay – have been considering over these past several months. And here it is:
A parish is a community of theological imagination, fed by Word and Sacrament, empowering disciples and apostles in furthering God’s mission. (repeat) Let’s take a few moments to unpack those words.
A parish is a community of theological imagination. We may be frightened or intimidated by the word “theological” in front of the word “imagination.” We shouldn’t be. Professor Anna Williams warned us in seminary never to demean our congregations by assuming they can’t “do” theology. When you hear that fancy word “theology” always remember how St. Anselm defined it: Faith seeking understanding. Theology is nothing other than what we do when we pray – Embracing our faith in God’s merciful love and working to understand it more deeply, more fully. So a community of theological imagination is simply a community of Jesus’ followers that is trying to understand our relationship to God in Jesus Christ more deeply.
One of my favorite verses in our Book of Common Prayer (Eph. 3:20, 21) is one of the benedictions from Evening Prayer: It begins, Glory to God, whose power, working in us, can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine.
The prophet Joel captured the spirit of this in the passage quoted in Acts this morning: In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams. Even upon my slaves, both men and women, in those days I will pour out my spirit; and they shall prophesy.
What does that look like? Take a look at the book of Acts this morning: A rush of a violent wind filled the house where they were sitting. This is a sign of the Spirit – the Hebrew word is ruach, or breath. Remember the story in Ezekiel about the valley of the dry bones? They were dried up and lifeless until the human breathed breath into them, and then they came to life!
What else do we see in Acts? Tongues of fire resting on each of them. That is such a powerful image for me. This is going to sound crazy, but you know at Christmas time when you have the little Santas and Mrs. Clauses and snowmen that are candles. When I see them lit, you know the first thing I think of? You got it – Pentecost. Frosty the Snowman slain in the Spirit!
Beyond the flames, we see people speaking in languages that they have never studied or spoken, and other people hearing their own native languages from people who don’t speak them. And what are they hearing? They are hearing about God’s deeds of power
Ask yourselves, when was the last time we really dreamed about our congregations? When was the last time you looked around and wondered what God’s power, working in us, could do that was infinitely more than we would ever ask or even imagine? In this alternative vision of what a church congregation should be, in the words of Joel, we would dream dreams about what God’s power, working in us, could do.
Fed by Word and Sacrament. By now, all of us have heard about the reorganization of the Episcopal Church in Connecticut, and many of us have participated in helping to create that. One of the criticisms of these early efforts – and I have been very vocal in this regard – has been that the emphasis on what God is up to “out there” has not given proper attention to the importance of feeding and preparing Jesus’ followers for that work. In this visionary understanding of what a congregation is, we acknowledge the importance of being fed spiritually and intellectually not only to strengthen us in our faith but to better prepare us for the work to which Jesus calls us.
Empowering Disciples and Apostles. As I intimated in that last sentence, it is good for us to be fed regularly by Word and Sacrament. But for far too long, we have been lulled into the belief that our Christian involvement and commitment can be fulfilled by coming to church. And don’t get me wrong, that is super important and a great start. But it’s only a start. As that wise sage Garrison Keillor wisely observed, sitting in a church doesn’t make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.
Jesus called ordinary people to be his disciples – to stay with him and learn by his teachings and example what it meant to be one of his followers. Then he commissioned them to be apostles – folks who went out from the home base and, by their words and their manner of life, proclaimed to the world what it meant to be a follower of Jesus. In order to reclaim the power of the movement that Jesus started, it is important not only for each of us to claim our status as theologians, but for us to realize that as member of the Body of Christ, each of us has a role to play as a disciple and an apostle in the Jesus Movement.
We don’t all have the SAME role -- as Paul writes in 1st Corinthians this morning, not everyone has the same gifts. Each of us has our own unique set of gifts, and all of them given by God and coming from that one Spirit that we celebrate today. But as Paul writes elsewhere, it takes us coming together, sharing our individual gifts, pooling our gifts for ministry in a synergistic way that brings us together in the one Body to which we are called. Remember Ephesians – Glory to God whose power working in us can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine.
Furthering God’s Mission. We need to remember that individual congregations have no mission of their own, no matter how grand their buildings or how important they may think they are. There is only one mission, and that is God’s mission, and we understand that mission to be the one proclaimed by Jesus the Christ in his life and in his teachings. Like individuals who have individual charisms but must work together to become the body of Christ, so congregations have unique charisms based upon the individuals that comprise them. But no one congregation can be all things to all people. It is up to each congregation to discern what unique gifts it has to serve God’s mission in the communities it reaches.
On that first Pentecost, the Holy Spirit descended on those early followers and opened their eyes to the possibilities that God set before them, leading to a movement that changed the course of history. On this Pentecost Sunday 2017, I pray that the Holy Spirit will visit us anew, giving us a renewed sense of the mission that Jesus proclaimed, reflecting on our congregations as communities of theological imagination, fed by Word and Sacrament, empowering disciples and apostles in furthering God’s mission..
Glory to God, whose power, working in us, can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine. Glory to God from generation to generation in the church, and in Christ Jesus for ever and ever. AMEN.