All Together Now

A Sermon for the First Congregational Church of Albany, NY

by Rev. James Eaton, Pastor • © 2020

Pentecost Sunday/A • Mary 31, 2020

Acts 2:1-21

Today is Pentecost, a Greek word that means ’50’, a special day 50 days after Easter that was in part a Christian response to the Jewish festival of Shavuot, marking the day when God gave the Torah to Israel assembled on Mt. Sinai. It is sometimes called the birthday of the Christian Churches; it’s when Jesus’ followers began to act themselves, inspired by the presence of the Holy Spirit. You’ve just heard the story and often what gets the most attention are the fireworks: tongues of fire, whirling wind. But if we read it closely, it’s part of a longer theme we’ve been following at least since Palm Sunday, a meditation of the them of presence and absence. On Palm Sunday, Jesus was present and acclaimed as the heir of King David, the Messiah coming to reestablish a worldly kingdom. Days later, he was absent when he was crucified and killed by the Romans. On Easter he was present as the resurrected Christ. He was present to his friends for a time and then absent again, as we talked about last Sunday, after the Ascension. Presence, absence: see how they alternate? Now he’s absent but the Spirit becomes present, just as he said. It becomes present, the text tells us, when, “…they were all together in one place.” [Acts 2:1]

Just reading those words, proclaiming that message, feels ironic today when we can’t be all together in one place in our normal way. So like the story, we’re grappling with the issue of presence and absence. Some watching this will remember and perhaps wish they were present here in our beautiful worship area, as they were, as we were until a few months ago. Others have never been here and are sharing a different presence in this time. Are we present together? Are we absent?

Surely those followers of Jesus were wrestling with the same question. They’ve been through the whiplash of Jesus present, Jesus absent, Jesus back and now absent again, but absent after a promise: that they would experience a moment of feeling a spirit come upon them. It’s a holiday weekend, Shavuot, as I said. Shavuot is a pilgrimage festival, like Passover, so Jerusalem would have been full of strangers, Jews who had come from all over to celebrate. It would be noisy, crowded, perhaps the sounds of the crowds and the smells of the food wafting into the room where they  are all together. You know what those weekends are like; we all do. The smell of the neighbor’s barbecue on Memorial Day weekend, the sound of someone setting off fireworks over a block, a parade where you u get jostled and buy a balloon for a little kid. Got it in mind? That’s the setting when they are all together in one place. 

Then there is an experience we never hear about again:

…suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability. [Acts 2:2-4]

Suddenly, they are present with the living presence of God. They know it, they feel it, they picture it and they express it in this fiery language and in what comes next. But what was that really like? What is absence, what is presence?

I’ve been thinking about that question this whole season, thinking about my own experiences of absence and presence. Some seem routine. Most of you know Jacquelyn is a flight attendant so before the pandemic, our life was full of absence and presence: most weeks she would leave, we’d patch our absence with phone calls and then after three days come home: present again. 

But one of the most powerful experiences I’ve ever felt of presence was the days just before my mother died. My mother and I were never close; I think she’d secretly hoped to have daughters and having three sons was a kind of joke on her. But as the one set of friends who knew us both said, she always worked to make sure I had what I needed. One day when Jacquelyn and May and I were having a casual dinner, I got a rushed phone call from my brother: mom was in hospice, not expected to live long, I should come quickly.  So I did: off to Florida, a quick trip to her hospice, where I sat with her for two days while her presence in this life gradually faded, alternating between consciousness and sleep. But before you wonder why I’m telling a sad story, let me say it wasn’t sad: it was glorious. Because in those times she was awake, for the first time, my mother told me about her life, her real life, growing up in the depression, having other family members come to live with them when they lost their own homes, going to college and working at a time when it wasn’t usual for women to have careers. My mother became present to me as a real person, a whole person, for the first time. When she died, she wasn’t absent; she was more present than she had ever been.

That’s what’s happening at Pentecost. Throughout Jesus’ life, Jesus’ gathered usually separate people at his table, all together. It is one of the most striking things of his ministry and perhaps the one most often criticized since it ran against the customs of his time. But Jesus gathered them all together and that happens in three other particular events. At the Last Supper, his disciples, we’re told are with him; John tells us that his friends were also together in a room when he came to them after the resurrection. Finally, the story of his ascension begins, “..when they had come together.” [Acts 1:6] In all these events, Jesus is obviously present; here, at Pentecost he isn’t. If we stop being distracted by the tongues of fire and the noise of the wind, what’s clear is that the disciples and the friends of Jesus suddenly feel the same divine presence they felt with him, just as when my mother died, I felt her presence more clearly. Pentecost is the advent of presence, not in a person but through persons, through all persons.

The “all persons” part gets lost sometimes because we are more interested in the languages than its meaning. Long ago, in Genesis, the Bible explains how ethnicity and division came to be. In their pride, human beings determined to become God like and built a tower, called the tower of Babel [Genesis 11:1-9]. When God frustrated their plans, different languages were the symbol of their failure. Now the Tower of Babel is being reversed. The amazing thing isn’t that t he disciples become multi-lingual, it’s that they speak in a way that everyone understands. What they do with that is simple and powerful: they tell people about the life of Christ and the love of God.  That’s Pentecost: in the grief of absence, they have felt the empowering, inspiring presence of God he promised and they tell people about it.

Isn’t that what we need most today —to recognize God’s presence? We’re here, all together, not in a physical way but a spiritual way. Just as our Pilgrim fathers and mothers brought about a new way of worship, we’re forging one together. The spirit of Pentecost is what the prophet Joel said centuries before Jesus, that God would pour out the Spirit on all people, even old men will have new dreams, even those marginalized will be heard. The life of Christ is present; the love of God is present. What should we do about it?

Shouldn’t we follow those first disciples and do what they did? Over the last few weeks, we’ve found a surprising fact: our in person services usually average 25 to 30 people but this online service is viewed by more than twice that number most weeks. Wow! Now there’s something you can do if it’s important to you to share the good news of a church where all people are welcome and cherished. Like the disciples going out to the crowds, you have a crowd to which you can speak by clicking on the share button on your screen. Share this service, share all the services. Do it as part of your Pentecost celebration. 

But clicking a share button isn’t the most important thing we can do. The most important thing we can do is to take seriously the Pentecost message: that God is present right now, right here, wherever here is, whoever’s life ‘here’ is. We can look at others as children of God. We can reject the division so fundamental to our culture and demand that we be treated as all together now, all children of God. For that long list of nations, you could substitute all those things that divide us up: race doesn’t matter to God, gender doesn’t matter to God, age doesn’t matter to God, party doesn’t matter to God, language doesn’t matter to God, nationality  doesn’t matter to God. We know where these divisions lead, they lead to violence. In the recent past, we’ve seen a black man lynched in Georgia and another murdered in Minnesota and an EMT killed in her home. We’ve heard about a public official in Texas saying that the only good Democrat is a good Democrat. What he really means is that he can’t stand someone different. Divisions lead to death. God’s all together now love leads to life. When the divisions don’t matter to us, we draw closer to the presence of God.

Many years ago, I was a young minister serving as a counselor at a youth camp. Someone who didn’t know me well gave me the job of leading singing at the campfire. Now, I can tie a bowline upside down lying on my back, I can preach, I can do many things. But singing isn’t one of them. Nevertheless, at the time, I got up and tried to get everyone to sing; it was a complete failure. My tuneless attempts weren’t just flat, they fell flat. Then a smart senior with some stood up and  yelled, “All together now!” The guitar player struck up “Do Lord”, and people sang and it blended together and it swelled and we were all together, and we were all together, and God was present as surely as at Pentecost and we were all together and present and the presence gave us peace. You can have that peace: God wants you to have that peace. All together now: living in the love of God.  Amen. 

Don’t Wait for Jesus

A Sermon for the First Congregational Church of Albany, NY

by Rev. James Eaton, Pastor

Ascension Sunday/A • May 24, 2020

Acts 1:1-11 • Psalm 47 • Ephesians 1:15-23 • Luke 24:44-53

We’re near the end of a four part story. The first part was the amazing entrance of God into the world in the person of a vulnerable baby born to two peasants in a small town. The second part was his life preaching that the reign of God was beginning to bear fruit, healing people, inspiring people, opening eyes, opening hearts, joining them together across lines of gender, class and nationality. Among those, 12 were chosen as emblems of a larger congregation. They splintered in the third part when he was crucified and died. His absence killed their kinship but they’ve come back, called back, by his resurrection and the every day miracle of his presence. Now they’re milling around, waiting for the next part to begin, like people waiting for the curtain to go up at a theater, waiting for Jesus to take the stage. When he does, they have one question: “What’s next?” In many ways, we’re in a similar situation today. Our church goes through a cycle every year and it climaxes on Easter Sunday, celebrating the resurrection. This year of course, that cycle has been disrupted. We stayed home on Easter; we’ve struggled to learn to share worship through video. Now we’re wondering, like the disciples, “What’s next?”

Luke wrote both a gospel and the book we call the Acts of the Apostles and he gives us two stories of this moment. If we pull back from the stories and see the whole context, we see how like us Jesus’ first followers were. Some left after the crucifixion; most didn’t believe the first reports of the resurrection. A few Sundays ago, we read the portion of scripture in which Thomas stoutly says, “Unless I see the marks on his body, I won’t believe it.” Some of the followers apparently went home to Galilee or other places. We read about two who encountered Jesus as they were leaving Jerusalem, on the road to Emmaus. Some stayed in Jerusalem and these are the ones we hear about in the story today. Luke says, “After his suffering, [Jesus] presented himself alive to them by many convincing proofs, appearing to them during forty days and speaking about the kingdom of God.” [Acts 1:3]

What did he teach them? The gospel says, “Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures.” [Luke 24:45] Jesus doesn’t come out of nowhere; comes as the fulfillment of the whole tradition stretching back to Moses and Abraham, his life is the embodiment of God’s promises from the beginning. That’s why our worship focuses so fully on the Bible. That’s what Jesus does, over and over, teaching from the scripture, helping people understand how God has worked all along to make love present in the world. The fruit of that love that Jesus presents is a call to repentance and a promise of forgiveness. He says, 

Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations beginning from Jerusalem. [Luke 24:46f]

Notice that everyone is welcome here: all nations, all people are included. Notice that there is no set of rules here, instead the forgiveness is unconditional. Repentance—changing your ways—is there, but it’s connected to forgiveness, not punishment. And forgiveness is all about the future.

The future is very much on everyone’s minds in the scene with which Luke begins Acts. The disciples are together, Luke says. Jesus is present. They ask the question on everyone’s minds: “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?” [Acts 1:6]. That’s what everyone assumed the Messiah would do. After all, he’s supposed to be the fulfillment of King David who had pulled the tribes together and created a great kingdom, a kingdom that had not been the same since. It wasn’t the same in Jesus’ time; it was governed by people appointed by the Roman emperor and occupied by Roman troops. It’s precisely the fear that Jesus would lead a movement to violently throw out the Romans and restore the kingdom that led the Romans to crucify him. So now that he’s back, now that he’s resurrected, now that he’s present, everyone’s waiting for him to get on with it. To all these questions, he simply says, “Not your business”—“It is not for you to now the times or periods that the Father has set…” [Acts 1:7] and then, as if to make the point, POOF, he disappears into a cloud. Gone: absent, just like after the cross, just like after the crucifixion. 

I said at the beginning that we were in a similar place and I think that’s what’s driving a lot of the discussion about reopening. We are used to worshipping in a particular way. We get up, we get ready, we walk or drive to a place, a building, this building. We go in, someone greets us, gives us a bulletin, we see others and greet them. For the past few weeks, my friend Remy has been coming in to do the liturgy, and it takes a conscious effort not to hug him, because that’s a Remy greeting. I still find myself looking over to my right, to where Eva sits, back to where Joan is settled, and Joyce, wanting to greet the choir behind me. We gather; we greet, we listen to God’s Word, we pray, and then we gather for coffee and treats and more greeting. It all takes place here, in this building and that’s what church has meant. 

But now we don’t. Now we’re absent from each other. You’re at home, I can’t see you. I have to imagine your presence. I’m not in front of you, I’m on a screen and you’re probably doing other things as well; maybe having some coffee, maybe talking to someone else there. When we started this live streaming, the background assumption was that somehow we would all watch together at the same time but as I talk to people, that’s not how it works. Some watch at other times; some don’t watch at all, they just listen. It can all leave us with the same impatience: “Will you at this time, Lord, restore the kingdom?” The disciples want to go back to the past. So do we. That’s where they felt God’s presence, in the preparation for restoring the kingdom; that’s where we felt God’s presence, in the building, greeting, worshipping, meeting together. We long to restore it as they longed to restore the kingdom.

But Jesus has something bigger and more wonderful than a restored kingdom in mind: inviting all people to a loving relationship with God and with each other, a relationship founded on a mutual forgivingness and repentance that changes them, takes the grasping, jealous, angry present and turns it into a place where the fruits of the spirit—“love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control” [Galatians 5:22f]—are the normal reality every day. Jesus isn’t going back to David’s kingdom, he’s going forward to the kingdom of God. He leaves the disciples there, standing, feeling his absence, but with a message as well.

So, too, if we have a feeling of absence because we can’t meet here, we should listen to the message. Long ago, I became part of the Clark family. Harry was my minister, Nora was my Sunday school teacher, their daughters were my friends. In time we shared so much and loved so much that we became family. Now in the Clark family, goodbyes take a long time. They start when I go have everything packed and Nora kisses me and sometimes gets teary. Then there’s taking the stuff to the car, more goodbyes, good wishes. And I’ve never driven away from the Clarks that I didn’t see in the rear view mirror, Nora and Harry, standing in the driveway, watching, waving. When Jesus has left, ascended, the disciples remain and I think of them just like that, standing there, staring, as if their staring could call him back. They felt his absence.

That’s when two angels appear. Remember these guys? They always show up at a critical moment. One showed up to tell Mary she was going to have Jesus; others told the shepherds about the birth and they show up again at the tomb, after Jesus’ resurrection. They’re the ones that tell the women what’s happened, they’re the ones that tell them that the absence of Jesus, his death, was a moment and that they should look for his presence. 

Now the disciples are staring, now the angels appear, now they say simply, 

“…why do you stand looking up toward heaven? This Jesus who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way…” [Acts 1:11]

In other words, don’t stand around, looking where Jesus was; look where he’s going. He’s told them that: Just wait, he said, “…you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth.” That’s where he’s going, they just haven’t seen him there yet. They need to look in a new place. That’s the story of Pentecost, and we’ll talk about it next week.

But this week there is an important message for us. We are all talking bout reopening; we should be talking about renewal. When we talk about reopening, the assumption seems to be, “back to normal”. But simply reopening an in-person worship service will not be back to normal. We know we need to wear masks; we know we can’t do coffee hour, we know other things need to change. We know that we now have people coming to worship through the live stream for inspiration regularly and we won’t abandon this or all of you who do that. 

The message of the angels is one we need to hear as well: don’t stand around waiting for Jesus. Renewal comes from moving to make his vision a reality. Don’t wait for Jesus; don’t stand around. Wait for the power of the Spirit and when you feel it, live it. Don’t wait for Jesus, share the news that we can live for him today, loving God, living from God, loving others, letting that love blossom into those fruits of the spirit today. Our future isn’t just reopening, it’s a renewal of our life as the body of Christ. Don’t wait for Jesus: he’s already going ahead, making the way for us, loving us, inspiring us. 

Amen.