Acts 2:1-4
When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting.
They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them.
This is the opening act of the story that we today know as Pentecost. It’s a long story—a story without an ending because it’s ongoing. In the three years before this a small group of people had found a new vision of what it meant to come together in faith and trust, caring for each other, by following their leader, Jesus.
Now they were to learn a whole new thing – to take Jesus’ life as he lived it here, and their own lives, not in some heaven out there someday, but here and now, and share that understanding out into the wider world. On that first Pentecost, with God’s own Spirit bubbling inside of them, they experienced a truth so big they couldn’t begin to keep it to themselves. And so they slowly spread out into that wider world, not to recruit others to join them in a new religion, but simply to share this incredible Spirit that had entered their lives.
And what had they found? Well, it’s easier to say what they didn’t find. They didn’t find a new theological system. They didn’t find a church called “Christian,” or a pile of church rubrics to be obeyed. They didn’t even find a “Saving Lord,” for perhaps they didn’t really need saving now.
They re-found the Jesus they had followed for three years, only now they could see beyond the miracles that had dazzled them, and they saw that the same Spirit that had led Jesus through his life was in them and with them to guide them as well. And they found ears and hearts to truly hear and understand who he was and what he had been showing them all along.
And then—they found the courage to come out of the shadows where they had been hiding and tell others of this wondrous thing. Tell them that we’re not called to build an empire, but to spread love and joy. They did not find blame or condemnation. They didn’t find dozens of rules which had to be obeyed or else. They found a life to be lived with joy and gratitude.
We have unfortunately, over the centuries, reduced that joy to images of flames on people’s heads and virtual worship of miracles that were likely metaphors anyway. This is not meant to be a story of flames and languages – the “miracle” is that their understanding was opened. They stopped trying to force Jesus and his teachings into a new box that looked just like the old one.
Hearts were touched and they saw and understood what Jesus had been saying all along—a whole new way to see themselves as Jesus had always been given the gift to see them—and the joy and wonder they shared drew others to want to see and feel the same. They wanted to hear they were set free from feelings of unworthiness and sinfulness. This is the miracle of Pentecost.
I want to take a minute to share another story briefly, from 2013. A story which actually began fifty years earlier in 1963, when a quarter million people marched together in Washington DC to demand civil rights and equal treatment for all people.
In 2013, fifty years after that march on DC, one part of this story took place in North Carolina where clergy of various faiths, including Rev. Dr. William Barber (a Disciples minister, among a great many other things), came together in what would come to be called Moral Mondays, to make their voices heard and to insist that their state legislators consider moral truths in forming their legislation, not just political expediency. On that first day, Dr. Barber and 16 colleagues had been arrested for, as Dr, Barber put it,“exercising our constitutional right to publicly instruct our legislators.”
The next Monday, hundreds of people showed up at the statehouse and twice as many people were arrested. As word spread, what was meant as a small personal protest became a mass movement that grew and doubled each week, stretching over 13 Mondays until by the end, tens of thousands of people showed up at legislative sessions and nearly a thousand people had been arrested for an entirely peaceful, and fully legal, protest. A thousand people were willing to put their bodies and their livelihoods on the line and be arrested for the right to say out loud that wrong is wrong and right is right. And the more they were persecuted for it, the more their movement grew.....Sound familiar?
I first read this story a couple of years ago and I remember thinking to myself, this is Pentecost! Just as that first time, there was a small group – an unlikely mixed group -- of folks who had previously been voiceless as far as the establishment of their time was concerned, and they were suddenly speaking out in words all kinds of people could hear and understand. They started out as a few but grew and grew. They would tell the story as they knew it from their lived experience, and not as the power establishment wanted it told.
And as Dr. Barber put it, in his book, The Third Reconstruction, they were “black, white, and brown, women and men, rich and poor, gay and straight, documented and undocumented, employed and unemployed, doctors and patients, people of faith and people who struggle with faith.” And they all had been “hit” by a glorious Spirit which said to them “This is your heritage, this is your right, and now is your time --- stand up and speak your truth and it will be heard.”
This is, of course, only one small story taken from a much, much larger story, going on for years – probably, forever. From this small piece has grown, among others, The Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival, an anti-poverty campaign led by Rev. Dr. Barber II and Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis, a Presbyterian minister who was, I believe, also part of the original group at Moral Mondays. This is a current movement that speaks and acts for the poor, using the actual voices of the poor, speaking for themselves, their own truths.
This is Pentecost happening again. And it goes on and on. Now I wonder, how many times has this happened and I just didn’t notice? How many Pentecosts happen every day somewhere in our world?
Oh, and yes, if you insist on an “honest-to-God” miracle somewhere here, Dr. Barber has one for you. Even though 2013 was one of the wettest summers on record in NC, during those Moral Monday protests, thousands of people stood outside their statehouse every Monday evening spanning 13 weeks, and never got rained on.....The Holy Spirit is flexible that way.
Now they were to learn a whole new thing – to take Jesus’ life as he lived it here, and their own lives, not in some heaven out there someday, but here and now, and share that understanding out into the wider world. On that first Pentecost, with God’s own Spirit bubbling inside of them, they experienced a truth so big they couldn’t begin to keep it to themselves. And so they slowly spread out into that wider world, not to recruit others to join them in a new religion, but simply to share this incredible Spirit that had entered their lives.
And what had they found? Well, it’s easier to say what they didn’t find. They didn’t find a new theological system. They didn’t find a church called “Christian,” or a pile of church rubrics to be obeyed. They didn’t even find a “Saving Lord,” for perhaps they didn’t really need saving now.
They re-found the Jesus they had followed for three years, only now they could see beyond the miracles that had dazzled them, and they saw that the same Spirit that had led Jesus through his life was in them and with them to guide them as well. And they found ears and hearts to truly hear and understand who he was and what he had been showing them all along.
And then—they found the courage to come out of the shadows where they had been hiding and tell others of this wondrous thing. Tell them that we’re not called to build an empire, but to spread love and joy. They did not find blame or condemnation. They didn’t find dozens of rules which had to be obeyed or else. They found a life to be lived with joy and gratitude.
We have unfortunately, over the centuries, reduced that joy to images of flames on people’s heads and virtual worship of miracles that were likely metaphors anyway. This is not meant to be a story of flames and languages – the “miracle” is that their understanding was opened. They stopped trying to force Jesus and his teachings into a new box that looked just like the old one.
Hearts were touched and they saw and understood what Jesus had been saying all along—a whole new way to see themselves as Jesus had always been given the gift to see them—and the joy and wonder they shared drew others to want to see and feel the same. They wanted to hear they were set free from feelings of unworthiness and sinfulness. This is the miracle of Pentecost.
I want to take a minute to share another story briefly, from 2013. A story which actually began fifty years earlier in 1963, when a quarter million people marched together in Washington DC to demand civil rights and equal treatment for all people.
In 2013, fifty years after that march on DC, one part of this story took place in North Carolina where clergy of various faiths, including Rev. Dr. William Barber (a Disciples minister, among a great many other things), came together in what would come to be called Moral Mondays, to make their voices heard and to insist that their state legislators consider moral truths in forming their legislation, not just political expediency. On that first day, Dr. Barber and 16 colleagues had been arrested for, as Dr, Barber put it,“exercising our constitutional right to publicly instruct our legislators.”
The next Monday, hundreds of people showed up at the statehouse and twice as many people were arrested. As word spread, what was meant as a small personal protest became a mass movement that grew and doubled each week, stretching over 13 Mondays until by the end, tens of thousands of people showed up at legislative sessions and nearly a thousand people had been arrested for an entirely peaceful, and fully legal, protest. A thousand people were willing to put their bodies and their livelihoods on the line and be arrested for the right to say out loud that wrong is wrong and right is right. And the more they were persecuted for it, the more their movement grew.....Sound familiar?
I first read this story a couple of years ago and I remember thinking to myself, this is Pentecost! Just as that first time, there was a small group – an unlikely mixed group -- of folks who had previously been voiceless as far as the establishment of their time was concerned, and they were suddenly speaking out in words all kinds of people could hear and understand. They started out as a few but grew and grew. They would tell the story as they knew it from their lived experience, and not as the power establishment wanted it told.
And as Dr. Barber put it, in his book, The Third Reconstruction, they were “black, white, and brown, women and men, rich and poor, gay and straight, documented and undocumented, employed and unemployed, doctors and patients, people of faith and people who struggle with faith.” And they all had been “hit” by a glorious Spirit which said to them “This is your heritage, this is your right, and now is your time --- stand up and speak your truth and it will be heard.”
This is, of course, only one small story taken from a much, much larger story, going on for years – probably, forever. From this small piece has grown, among others, The Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival, an anti-poverty campaign led by Rev. Dr. Barber II and Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis, a Presbyterian minister who was, I believe, also part of the original group at Moral Mondays. This is a current movement that speaks and acts for the poor, using the actual voices of the poor, speaking for themselves, their own truths.
This is Pentecost happening again. And it goes on and on. Now I wonder, how many times has this happened and I just didn’t notice? How many Pentecosts happen every day somewhere in our world?
Oh, and yes, if you insist on an “honest-to-God” miracle somewhere here, Dr. Barber has one for you. Even though 2013 was one of the wettest summers on record in NC, during those Moral Monday protests, thousands of people stood outside their statehouse every Monday evening spanning 13 weeks, and never got rained on.....The Holy Spirit is flexible that way.
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