Each Could Understand the Other

Dear People of Christ Church,
Lots going on in the coming weeks, with this Sunday being back to our usual first Sunday of the month children’s sermon, May 8 the Mother’s Day Walk for Peace, and May 15, Pentecost Sunday! This year at Pentecost we’ll have our parish jazz ensemble (let Daniel know if you want to play), and the baptisms of the O’Toole family, and even, if the altar guild sets it up, a rare Sunday morning appearance of incense! We also read the Pentecost story in all our various languages, so please let me know if you want to contribute to the reading.

We were talking about all of the varieties of Christian denominations in the Episcopal Church class last week. We are not a “Pentecostal” church, with speaking in tongues and dramatic worship, but we do celebrate in the light of Pentecost. On that first Pentecost, told in the book of Acts, the diversity of human community was all in one place. We think Waltham is diverse! Jerusalem had more cultures, more languages, more beliefs than we could imagine, all in one place. Even more people than usual were in Jerusalem for Pentecost on that day 2000 years ago—50 days after Passover, they gathered to give thanks to God for Mt Sinai, when God called the people of Israel into covenant. So it wasn’t only the ordinary diversity of Jerusalem, it was every last breed of traveler and pilgrim, on top of all the year round inhabitants of Jerusalem, pagan, Jewish, Christian, all there to give thanks.

All there, and all very seriously divided by substantial issues—the question of circumcision, of women, of dietary laws—all of these topics were incredibly contentious. We argue over different issues today, but they are no less—and probably no more—fervently debated. Last week’s story of Peter being told that no one should call profane what God has called clean is a prologue to all of the astonishing unity given in Christ. The lives of all God’s people are treasured. No one is “unclean,” a fact our brothers and sisters would do well to remember in conversations about gender and bathroom usage!

Even in the midst of Jerusalem’s diversity, a glorious outpouring of the Spirit gave birth to the church. Pentecost teaches us that Church is more of a verb than anything else. Church happens when each of those different people heard what the other was saying, even though they spoke different languages, even though they came from different places, and probably believed pretty different things. Pentecost teaches us that church isn’t a club. It’s not about like minded people coming together to improve themselves, or even coming together to improve the world. Pentecost is about a new reality, a reversal of those old divisions and desires for ownership and control that came to be at the tower of Babel, that ancient precursor of division. Pentecost is about our souls and bodies being a home for Jesus Christ.

On Pentecost, each could understand the other; but each understood in his or her own language. The languages—the differences—were preserved. The Gospel is about unity, not homogeneity. We are unified in our love of God, in the grace of the Holy Spirit that we have each received at baptism. But the song of that love is sung with different words in all of our lives.

One of my favorite prayers in the prayer book shows up in some different places—
—at the Easter Vigil, but also Good Friday, and the liturgy for ordinations. Our church is a “wonderful and sacred mystery.” We don’t quite know how it really works, or why. How some relationships begin, how others end. So much comes down to mystery—an invitation to us for humility, I think, to remember we don’t have it all figured out. How is it that we in the Anglican Communion can share a faith and be so different? What would it be like, really, to truly trust in God?

O God of unchangeable power and eternal light: Look favorably on your whole Church, that wonderful and sacred mystery; by the effectual working of your providence, carry out in tranquility the plan of salvation; let the whole world see and know that things which were cast down are being raised up, and things which had grown old are being made new, and that all things are being brought to their perfection by the One through whom all things were made, your Son Jesus Christ our Lord; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

Blessings,
Sara+