Our Pentecost Practice Run

Acts 2:1-21, 38-47

Pentecost has been called the birthday of the Church, because it is when the church first formed, but first and foremost, this is the Holy Spirit’s day.

The Holy Spirit is ruah in Hebrew and pneuma in Greek: breath, wind, life force. The Spirit is the outflowing of the dynamic connection between Father and Son  - the verb of the Trinity’s relationship, love in action, the energy of life that binds us to God and each other. The Spirit comforts, leads, inspires, and animates. 

The Spirit of God is has always been here, behind the scenes, under the surface – hovering over the waters at creation, filling the lungs of the Adam, the first earth creature, inspiring of the Psalms of David, quickening the womb of Mary, descending like a dove to claim Jesus as Beloved in the river of  John’s baptism. 

But on Pentecost the Spirit comes out from behind the scenes; the stage manager takes center stage.

Jesus told the disciples to wait, that the Spirit was coming – and they waited, unsure what was coming, wondering how they would become the so-called Witnesses Jesus had told them they were. 

They waited in that liminal space between the end of their following and the beginning of their sent-ness, in the place where their witness-hood began to take shape. 

Jesus had embodied in himself complete unity with God and humanity, he was the person in whom divine and human came together and spilled out as love verbed in the world, and they had followed in his shadow and soaked in its rays.  Then he died, and rose, breaking the barrier between heaven and earth, life and death.  And when the Spirit came at Pentecost, the power of that verbed love was released onto the disciples, and they were suddenly drawn into the dynamic relationship Jesus had with the Father, and into the life and mission of God.  The energy of the Trinity now draws us into God, and fuels us out with the breath, life force, creativity and activity of God. 

These disciples now become the very Body of Christ in the world. They are no longer followers of Jesus on earth, as students to a teacher. Now they embody the relationship and mission of God in their own bodies:  Their words, their own quirks and accents, their struggles and delights, their very hands and feet and voice!

And God’s Spirit that moves through them is also in that space between them – that is, this body they become when they come together with all their different needs and gifts and fears and hopes, and they trust together that God is God and the world is claimed in God’s love.  They’ve become Church.  

But they don’t know yet what they are.

They’re just experiencing things and sharing about them. They are witnessing.

And notice that when the crowd gathers as they speak, all who listen hear in their own language – no matter how distant their homeland is from that place or how few of them are in that crowd – each one hears exactly what they need to hear from God, through the words and actions of these surprised disciples, caught up in God’s love. The Spirit reaches out and draws each of these listeners into the inner dynamic of God’s love, where life originates and abounds forever, where Jesus brought death to die.

Today is the Holy Spirit’s day. 

Today is the day the Church was born.

Remember, last time I said the disciples and the early church throughout the book of Acts were bouncing back and forth between beautiful encounters of supernatural healing and transcendent hope, and the ordinary struggles about housekeeping and money, how to share, and how to listen to each other without fighting?  And they sought to do all of it as Christ’s Body – the place on earth where divine and human come together and spill out as love verbed in the world.

That meant not separating out the holy from the mundane, but recognizing all of it as God’s ministry, and learning to see themselves as stewards of the mysteries of God, as sharers in the life of God for the world. 

They were figuring it out as they went along – listening to the Spirit, seeking direction, using their intellect and their cooperation, and watching God work through all of it.  They were figuring out how to be the people who are with and for each other just as Christ is with and for us, because that is where the Spirit of God is found.  This is what Church means.

This little congregation gathered here today all these centuries later is part of that, a legacy of that group, an embodiment of that same continuing mission.  

And I love this community for the fervent and truthful way we try to be with and for each other and the world.  For the way we try to recognize God’s presence in both the obviously holy and the so-called mundane.  

I love how we believe we meet Jesus when we share each other’s suffering and bear each other’s joy.   And how we seek to honor each person as a minister, tiny or full-grown, with their needs, gifts, fears and hopes, and how our ministry changes with each new person who comes to share in this life together with all their quirks and accents, struggles and delights. 

And I love we learn from our mistakes, and we take risks, and we seek the Spirit’s guidance in the midst of each new hurdle and opportunity that comes our way. And through it all, we try to trust together that God is God and the world is claimed in God’s love.

One of the ways we live out this trust every month is that we give 10% of our income to other expressions of God’s love in the world - other organizations or congregations or ministries where we see people sharing life together, breaking down walls between people, reaching out in hope.  The list of those we’ve given to in the last two years is inspiring:

This congregation has shared with folks who offer people Sabbath rest and retreat, those who resettle refugees, and those who empower conversations and build community across barriers. We’ve shared with people who help communities heal after violence, those who help neighborhoods rebuild after tragedy, those who provide support and care for people who can no longer care for themselves as they used to, and those who provide housing and food for people without.  I’ve hung a complete list on the back wall, and put a few copies in the Gathering Room, so that you can see the amazing things we’ve been part of these past two years. The ministry God does in us spreads far beyond us; we are connected to God’s work in the world in lots of ways.

But as session reflected on Pentecost, and this moment when the mission went from centralized in the person of Jesus, to embodied by all these people who make up the Body of Christ, we decided to do something different with the tithe money for a month. 

What must it have been like to suddenly have the mission in your hands?

To pray to the Spirit for guidance and trust the Spirit to use you to bless someone else?

To learn to let God work through you?

We talk all the time here about noticing God, seeking to join in what God is doing, and coming alongside others in suffering and joy, and that is what we are called to do. To give and receive the ministry of God.  But that can feel abstract. We wanted to make it concrete.

So May’s tithe is right here – 17 envelopes with $100 each inside them. 

This month the tithe is not to be given to an organization, but is meant for personal connections with people.

We trust that in Jesus Christ, we all belong to God and we all belong to each other.  This is a chance to live that out in a creative way. Seventeen of us today will leave here with an envelope in our pocket and the job of praying and asking the Holy Spirit to show us who it might be meant for.

Here is how this will work: First, we will pray over this money – setting it aside, like we do the bread and the cup at communion, asking God to make it something holy, something that God will use to bless people, a tool of the Holy Spirit in the hands of witnesses and ministers, (that’s you). 

And then, we will draw names.  Adults and kids, members and visitors, 17 of you will be representing this whole community, the gifts we’ve all contributed, and blessed, and sent out, will be in your hands in the world.

If your name is drawn, your assignment is: Watch for God. See what God is doing. Join in.  Ministry is sharing each other’s suffering, and holding each other’s joy. How might God be calling you to use this money to do that with someone? This might mean finding someone to whom you’d like to give an unexpected blessing, or someone you’d like to say, “I see you. I am here,” or someone you want to express gratitude to for the blessing they are to you or others.  It could be someone you know well, or someone you’ve never met.

Step 1: Pray about it.  Ask God who to give it to, and how.

Maybe you have someone in mind right away. Maybe you need to sit on it for a while and ask God for direction.  Trust God to show you. (This is God's money. You are God's too. So is whoever will receive it).

Step 2: Give it to that person. 

It might be uncomfortable. That’s ok. Notice the discomfort; God is in that too.

Are there words you’d like to say? Gratitude, Empathy, Love you’d like to express? Pray about that too. Maybe there is something God would like to tell that person through you.  Maybe no words are needed.  Listen with your heart; speak from your heart. 

Step 3: Share about it

Remember, we are witnesses: We encounter Christ and we share about it. Come back and tell us what it was like. Was it awkward? Uncomfortable? Thrilling? Joyful?  How did you choose who to give it to?  What happened afterwards? How did you encounter Christ through this experience? 

We will share about this in worship on Sunday, June 18. 

Those who are comfortable sharing aloud can do so, and those who would rather write a note and have Lisa or me read it, can share that way. Between now and then, the rest of us will be holding you in prayer, that God will arrange the circumstances and the Spirit will guide you.

Kids- your grown up will help you however you need as you pray about it and ask God who to give this money to. Babies, your parents will decide for you and tell you all about it when you’re older. (And Pastor Lisa wanted me to remind you not to eat it).

A word to anyone who feels absolutely paralyzed with terror, or even just extremely uncomfortable about this. If your name gets drawn, and you feel you cannot do this alone- bring in another person. Ask someone else here (or even at home or work) to do it with you, to think, and pray, and reach out to give it away, along with you. You are not in this alone. This whole practice is meant to remind us that we all belong to God and we all belong to each other. 

Finally, this is the practice run, you guys. 

With that money in your pocket you have a specific assignment, something concrete to do.  It’s the training wheels.  The harder thing is to watch and respond in the world with the gifts God has already entrusted to us that we can’t see or don’t recognize as gifts.  Our hands and voice, our words and touch. Our presence, our own needs, hopes, fears, doubts, weaknesses, and joys. God wants to use it all to draw us and others into God’s love.  And through us, the Holy Spirit can speak to each person just what they need to hear, meet them just how they need to be met.

This is our Pentecost jump-start, a reminder that we are Church –the people who watch for Jesus and join him where he is – in the midst of it all, sharing joy and suffering alongside others.  Learning to watch for God’s ministry and join in is a lifelong endeavor that we do together.

So we witness to how hard it is and we celebrate how life-giving it is. We encourage each other to seek God’s presence and share God’s ministry every day in ordinary and extraordinary ways.  And today, specifically, we welcome and celebrate the life-force of God that binds us to Christ’s love and sends us out in that love. 

Today is the Holy Spirit’s Day!  

What marvelous things will the Spirit do with us, I wonder? 

Happy Pentecost, Church!  

Stewards of the Story

Ephesians 1:15-23

Psalm 100

It’s a week to give thanks.  A week to pause and recognize what a gift it all is, and as complicated, messy and hard as life and relationships often are, we are so grateful for them.  It’s a week to celebrate.

Three years ago this week we had asked people in the congregation what they were thankful for, and we recorded it and played it in worship.  I listened to it again this week, and I want to play it for you.

(Recording of people answering the question, “What are you grateful for?”  Answers included family, nature, freedom to elect our own leaders, hope for an upcoming surgery, health, food, relationships…)

Here’s what I noticed when I heard it again.  Two of the voices are those of people no longer with us – together we’ve celebrated their lives and grieved their passing and benefit still from all the ways they kept the faith while they were among us.  Another voice is someone who stopped in with us for a short time, and moved on somewhere else.  A couple of the voices have grown up some, almost doubled in age from the time this was recorded.  

Another thing I noticed was how present, in the moment, contextual, the things were that people were thankful for.  A new grandbaby on the way, in the womb – surely in preschool by now, right?  Safety for a loved one in the midst of a wildfire so long since turned to fertile soil that new trees and shrubs have sprung out of.  And yet, while gratitude is really contextual, our thanks is also timeless – there are always corrupt and unstable governments, always babies being born and surgeries looming and sky and water surrounding us and our own slowing down bodies with us.  Life is strange.  Always changing, always the same. 

Perhaps this is what it means to live within the Story. There is something enduring, continuing, that is outside and beyond us, but there is also something contextual, something about this moment and these people that links us so intimately with it all as well.

Today we celebrate our part within the Story. The table is set, the china is out, we’re marking the moment.  Pausing in gratitude.

We’ve gathered today surrounded by symbols of our story from the past few months – the tree from the garden, the fire we’ve sat at while listening to the old stories, the pictures the children did of Noah’s Ark, the drawing of Joseph’s saga that materialized before our eyes as we listened last week, and the themes that have arisen from these stories all hanging behind us. 

And all the broken and selfish people we’ve met from long ago, whom God loved and claimed anyway, and through whom the blessing continued, are part of this celebration.   Because all the stories we’ve shared – as strange and prehistoric and archaic as they are- they are not so different from our own stories.  And ours wont end up being so different from those to follow.

Today we celebrate our little spot in the Story.  In gratitude and awe we pause to consider this great thing that has been placed in our hands. This thing that it is to be church together, share life together, stand with each other in suffering and joy and together love and serve and hope for and pray for a world that we’re called to stand with and for as well.  This mysterious and amazing thing that can’t be grasped, but can only be shared, that in some way we are connected with all that has gone before and all that is to come by the steadfast love of God, which never ceases, and by which we seek to be defined.  I’m ready to give some thanks for all of this.

But it’s stewardship Sunday.  If there were ever a phrase that made my skin crawl and my defenses go up, that’s it. “Stewardship Sunday.” The Sunday where somebody stands up and guilts you in to giving your money to the church – where it is implied that faith can be measured and the mind of God can be known, because we talk all about all the things God wants to do if only we would fork over the cash and let God get on with it.  Where the plug for money is subtly woven into every part of the service –  and we’re eased into it like a frog boiling slowly in a pot of water that began lukewarm. 

I was invited a few weeks ago to a jewelry party, which I learned later, was next to impossible to escape from without buying an expensive item; I mean, I might have, but I had drunk the wine and eaten the hor devours, and glanced through the catalogs, so if I slipped out without paying up how would I ever look those women in the face again?  That’s the feeling I get with stewardship – if you want to be here, you’d better ante up, or else, how will you look God, or any of us, in the face again? 

Not to mention the air of desperation about all the pleas we get this time of year – wonderful charities on the brink of shutting down, this child who wont eat if you don’t give, this public station you’ve been mooching from all this time without doing your part, this crisis that rests completely in your self-centered hands, it’s oh so overwhelming.  And I hate it.  And it’s not what God or church is about at all. 

Besides, if we’ve learned anything so far from all these stories within the Story, it’s that God doesn’t need our money, or our power; God will do what God will do, and God has a tendency, actually, to work from impossibility and barrenness, from weakness and faltering faith, with the unlikely people and in the sketchy places we’d rather not be seen.

So I approached this week with a mixture of excitement and dread – wanting to get on with gratitude, celebrating the Story, pausing to be thankful - not wanting to disrupt our true worship and life together by carrying on some campaign for money.  I wanted a chance to communicate how thankful I am for this little group of people who love and serve God, and so I was just going to set stewardship aside, until I realized with a start that beyond all the baggage it has, and all the ways it has come to mean only giving money, we actually talk about true stewardship all the time.  And it is completely tied up in gratitude and celebration.

The word “stewardship” means having the responsibility to care for something which belongs to somebody else – and that is what we do. None of this belongs to us, really, this is God’s Story, God’s ministry.  These people sitting alongside you, they are God’s people. This building, this community we’re planted within, the strangers who walk by on the sidewalk or come in to do yoga, or talk about city planning or paint in the basement, this earth and it’s aching and abundance – it all, they all, belong to God. And we have been invited to care for what belongs to God – alongside God, along with God – to be stewards of the ministry of God, and also, as Paul says, of the mysteries of God.  We prepare a table, hang up a coat, pull out a chair and invite the world to have a seat; we hold open the sacred space where Christ meets us in and through and on behalf of a world. 

Oh, may we be good stewards! For the brief and fleeting time that it is our hands holding the mystery – others are to come and so many have gone before, but for this time and place, for the here and now, it is us! - may we steward faithfully!  This rag-tag bunch of people – with all our different, rich and poignant stories, our joy and our pain, all the things that have made us who we are, people each taking our turn to be the confident ones or the fearful ones, the strong or the weak of body or mind, the doubters or the faith-holders, the givers or the receivers and so often both at the same time.  How marvelous this is! 

God is doing something here and we are part of it, we ARE it – we bear it in ourselves and between us - and thank you God, for the chance to be this, together, for this time! 

We are not "campaigning for" stewardship today.  We are celebrating our stewardship today, which means we celebrate all of the ways we participate, the ways we steward the ministry together, the ways we tell and live the Story, (and I am mostly not talking about money).  I’m talking about praying and cooking and lighting candles and changing diapers and singing and planting the garden and welcoming one another.  I’m talking about honesty and hunger and giving away your bike when someone’s is stolen, and gluing pictures with kids we may never see again as they disappear back into the foster care system but with whom we have one sacred moment, and driving our friend to chemo.

I’m talking about watching other people’s kids grow up to know you as a part of God’s family, their family, a way they see and discover what it means to belong to God; I’m talking about washing dishes and taking the recycling home to put on your own curb, and making quilts to sell so the money can be donated to local charities and handing one another a torn piece of ordinary, store-bought bread with the incredible words, “This is the body of Christ broken for you.” 

I’m talking about intentionally being the people defined first and foremost by the love of God.

And one day, when this little congregation is no more – because NOTHING lasts forever- and when WE are no more than the stories we’ve left behind, others will be stewards, carrying on the Story, living within it, celebrating and struggling just like we have. 

But for now, for this moment, we are the ones in the story, one little group in a vast collection little groups of “we” all over the world. We are the Body of Christ, the fullness of him who fills all in all.  And God’s steadfast love that we get to share here and now, endures forever and ever.  

Today is the end of the church year, Next week we sink into the darkness of Advent, but today we call “Christ the King Sunday,” which means we’re liturgically invited to crane our heads backwards and lean our eyes forwards and recognize the hand of our God from the beginning of time to the end, but most especially right here in our own lives, our own stories.  And there’s an invitation here as well.  It is to participate: oh stewards of the mystery, steward on!  But it begins by seeing that you already do – the invitation now is to notice it. Do it on purpose.  Choose it.  And celebrate it, too.  It is quite something to be invited to be a blessing, quite something indeed.

So together let’s

Make a joyful noise to the LORD, all the earth.

Worship the LORD with gladness; come into his presence with singing.

Know that the LORD is God. It is he that made us, and we are his; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.

Enter his gates with thanksgiving, and his courts with praise. Give thanks to him, bless his name.

For the LORD is good; his steadfast love endures forever, and his faithfulness to all generations.

Amen.

Our "table" in worship - with hands of gratitude created in worship, and our shared prayers of thanks and mourning represented in candles

It's (not) about money

(A letter to my congregation)

The Big Question

A friend of mine realized that she only had one friend who went to church. As someone who cares deeply about the church, she wondered why it was. And so she began to ask them, “Why don’t you go to church?”  The answers startled her. It wasn’t what she was expecting at all. The number one answer that she received was, “I can’t afford it.”

Carol Howard Merritt, pastor and author of Tribal Church shared this in a recent blogpost.  As we enter again into “stewardship season,” where we take time to reflect on what we will pledge to the church in the coming year, I am reminded of her words.

She goes on to say that young people, with student loan debt and most of their money going to rent and taxes, don’t have much to spare, and many see church as something that requires money.  A pastor friend of mine heard a similar sentiment coming from her confirmation class. A couple of kids said they didn’t want to join the church because it would cost them too much money.

This intrigued me, because it says something about what they believe church is.  And it begs the question of all of us, What is church?  Is it a social club with membership dues and a building to maintain?  Is it a mission organization? For what?  To get people to believe the same way as “us”?  Is it a charity?  Or a middle-man who decides which charities your money should support?  If it is these things, no wonder people think they can’t afford it.  


In a difficult economic time, when money is tight, why would you want to join a social club with pressure to give money?  People have their own utilities to pay and homes to take care of, why would they want to be responsible for a church building, too?  And I suspect that if they are going to give money away, most people would choose a charity that supports something specific they believe in, and it wouldn’t be one that uses a large portion if its budget sustaining itself.

So here we go into another budget planning year, considering again the meaning of stewardship, and we are faced with some questions.  If the church is merely a social club, or a relic from the past to maintain for sentimental reasons, if it is a charity that only gives a small percentage of its money away, then I, for one, don’t want anything to do with it.  I want my money to make a difference and I want the things I give my time and energy to, to matter.  And frankly, there are better social clubs with more exciting benefits and relaxing activities.  There are charities out there with much more efficient and targeted ways of helping people.  And there are much less risky investments to be made.

But I write this as a pastor of a small congregation that perpetually and knowingly spends more than it takes in, sustained in part by the gifts of those gone before.  I write this as someone who personally strives to give generously, and sometimes does so nervously because it feels like more than I can “afford.”  I write this as someone participating, investing, committing, with my time, energy, prayer, family and money, to church.  And you are too.  Why?

So, I want to ask us a question.  I want to ask you a question. The question is not, Why do you go to church?  Because that means church is something we go to.  Church is not something we go to.  It is something that we are.  The question is not Why should do you give money to church?  Because if it is about where to give money, there are lots of other places to give it and even compelling reasons not to give it to a church, (and “should” questions rarely have life in them anyway). The question is bigger than these.

The question I want us to ponder gets at why we go to church, why we give money to church, and why we are part of this mysterious and strange thing called “church” that seems to defy cultural categories and logic.  I want us to think about why we are involved in this thing at all.  Why are we part of this collection of people committed to this thing that has something to do with God’s love, something to do with loving each other, something to do with loving the world? What is church to you?

It probably includes charitable giving, and I’m sure it involves socializing.  It likely has something to do with what the people and place have meant to you in the past, and wanting to care well for that which is entrusted to you.  But I suspect that for you to be here, willing to share your energy, intelligence, love, and your money, it is also much more than these things. 

I have deep convictions and faith about what God is doing and how we are participating.  I even happen to think God has this little congregation in this time and place for a reason – that we are right where God wants us to be.  I know that the Church goes far beyond our little expression of it in our little corner of the world.  And being the church with each other for the world goes far deeper than socializing or charity. I think we’re part of something gripping, life-changing and world-shaping, something sacred and beautiful in its ordinariness.  I’m committed. I’m in.  And most likely, if you’re reading this, you’re in, too.  I want to know why.

Over the next few weeks, I want you to consider, What is church to me?  We’ll be sharing our thoughts with one another in a few different ways as we celebrate and commit to another year of life and ministry together as the part of the Body of Christ called Lake Nokomis Presbyterian Church.

~ Kara