Power and Pentecost—A Sermon Somehow Featuring Both the Avengers and Bishop Curry

Grace and peace from God our Creator, hope in our Redeemer Jesus the Christ, and the promised gifts of the Holy Spirit are with you always.

Last week, Leigh and I had a very in-depth conversation about all our theories about what’s next after the wild ending of Avengers: Infinity War. I promise, no spoilers, unless you are surprised to hear that the ending was wild. It’s a multi-billion-dollar superhero franchise that somehow keeps us all hooked, so I think a cliffhanger ending is kind of a given. Leigh and I talked about all these different characters, and their fates, and weird details we didn’t know about them—neither of us has read any of the comic books that serve as source material for these movies, but we have read a bunch of fan theories online.

One of the things that true, deeply committed, lifelong superhero comic book fans tend to know about is the whole complex relationships between the heroes, as well as the heroes’ origin stories. Some of them are more obvious than others, like, Peter Parker became Spider-Man when he was bitten by a radioactive spider on a school field trip. Or Captain America, who was an American soldier during WWII who was given this “super soldier serum” and woke up decades later, essentially indestructible. The narratives and relationships that develop are set in motion by those origin stories, and we can always go back to them to see the motivation of that character, what drives them to be the hero they are.

Pentecost, my friends, is the Christian Church’s origin story.

The reading from Acts—the one we did in various languages—sets the stage for the rest of the work of the apostles, the early Church, and us. The apostles are all together in one place, as the story goes, because it was the Jewish festival of Shavuot, seven weeks after the second day of Passover. Pentecost is the Greek word for “fiftieth day” and is celebrated 50 days after Easter. Shavuot is the celebration of God giving the Torah at Mount Sinai, and God “re-gives” the Torah each year.

In this way, these holidays are deeply linked for us as Christians, as they commemorate receiving something important from God, forging deeper connection between God and God’s people. The gift received on Pentecost, for those first Christians, was the power of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit showed herself by making it possible for all of the people gathered there—from different regions, tribes, cultures—to hear the good news spoken in their own language. The family of God is so expansive, that language does not limit us.

Each of us, as children of God, carries within us that same power, that same gift. Each of us can—and must—share the story of Jesus with everyone we know. Now, I know what you’re thinking, that sounds scary and your friends are already not sure about your whole Christian thing, and you’re not about to start yelling on street corners about how the kingdom of heaven has come near.

The Most Reverend Michael Curry, the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, was the preacher at the wedding of Prince Harry to Meghan Markle last Saturday. I imagine you’ve heard that the royal wedding took place, and perhaps you’ve heard that Bishop Curry brought the house down with his jubilant 13 minutes on the power of love. Did you watch the video? It’s so great. He is a very dynamic preacher, and you can imagine that the congregation at the royal wedding is a bunch of stuffy white British people, who are definitely not used to someone with so much enthusiasm.

After the wedding, Bishop Curry was quoted as saying that he was only allotted 8 minutes, but that he “caught the spirit” and went off-script in the middle. Nobody else has ever gone over their time limit, so there was, apparently, no protocol to stop him. Bishop Curry is an incredible person, and will keep doing God’s work in the world that will be worth talking about, but I sort of want this to remain my favorite story about him, forever. Bishop Curry was given the responsibility of preaching the good news of Jesus Christ on one of the world’s biggest stages. He knew what the parameters were, and he intended to follow them. But once he got going, he still left room for the Holy Spirit to move him. And she sure did!

As a black man preaching in one of the world’s oldest whitest institutions, Bishop Curry quoted the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King and an old slave spiritual. In the video of the ceremony, audience members are shown looking at each other sideways, suppressing smiles, raising eyebrows.

In our Acts story, I can only imagine that those who were witnessing the Holy Spirit in action were doing the exact same thing. The story tells us that someone thought the apostles were drunk! Clearly they were behaving outside of the expectations, speaking in all of these different languages, and those in the vicinity did not know how to respond. This may not be convincing you that you, too, should be engaging in this behavior, but I swear I’m getting to the point.

In Bishop Curry’s sermon, he quoted the spiritual There Is a Balm in Gilead. Balm like b-a-l-m, like lip balm. Like healing balm. One of the verses goes “if you cannot preach like Peter, if you cannot pray like Paul, just tell the love of Jesus, how he died to save us all.” What that songwriter, and Bishop Curry, and Pentecost are all telling us is that it doesn’t have to be fancy. Because of this Pentecost daty, we are filled with the breath of God, inspired—literally—to spread the word. We do this each in our own ways, each in our own languages, each according to our own cultures and capacities.

When we treat each other as equal partners in the work of the gospel, we are telling the love of Jesus. When we treat every person with dignity and respect, we are telling the love of Jesus. When we tell the truth about things we have done wrong and then work to do them right next time, we are telling the love of Jesus. When we strive for equity for everyone, we are telling the love of Jesus. When we share in experiences of joy with each other, and sorrow with each other, we are telling the love of Jesus. When we live in response to the grace we know we have received, we are telling the love of Jesus. When we do this authentically, when the love of God shows through us to others in their own language, we can change the world.

The Holy Spirit changed the world on that first Pentecost day, and she hasn’t stopped. Today, we are celebrating that we share in that story and we share in that power.

After worship tonight, it’ll be time for our annual Pentecost balloon launch. Every year, we write our prayers for the church and the world on pieces of paper that we tie to—biodegradable, minimal turtle murder—balloons. We launch these prayers into the sky, in hopes that our words and our work will move far beyond these walls.

This activity may feel silly; we live in a cynical world. Our cynical world routinely disparages or gives up on something before it has even begun, rather than risk being disappointed or rejected. We struggle to trust that any good news is not fake news. In this environment, the bearers of good news are desperately necessary.

You may not ever have the opportunity to tell the love of Jesus from the pulpit at a royal wedding. You may not ever have the opportunity—or desire—to tell the love of Jesus from any pulpit. But you have the power to do so, and you have the power to tell the love of Jesus in whatever way you know how. In whatever languages you speak, in whatever time and place you live, you are co-conspirator with the Holy Spirit!

Hallelujah! Amen.

The (Good) News—A Sermon on Preaching and Power

School is out at UC Davis, so my weekly Wednesday beat is on hiatus until September; I preached this sermon to the good people of Lutheran Church of the Incarnation, as part of a handful of Sundays of sabbatical coverage throughout the summer.

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Grace and peace from God our Creator, hope our Redeemer Jesus the Christ, and the promised gifts of the Holy Spirit are with you, always.

Preparing a sermon each week is an interesting task. It’s one of my favorite things about my job, and it can be the most difficult part of my job. There’s always so much to say, and each week, I get to say it through the lens of the lectionary. And as the three-year cycle of the lectionary rolls through, even though we get the same texts, the sermon is never the same. And that’s because the world is never the same. The preacher is never the same. The congregation is never the same.

If years have passed, and a preacher has nothing new to say, I’m just not quite sure how that could be. I think, sometimes, that I could preach on the same scripture every week and still have something new. Because the Spirit is always moving. I am participating in the world around me, and I am reading literature, and I am talking with my friends and family, and I am scrolling through twitter, and I am listening to the news, and there is never a dull moment around here. Sometimes the constant movement of the world around us is overwhelming, and it causes preachers—myself included—to scrap a sermon and start over. This happens, in particular, in the wake of national tragedy or a major global event or even the results of a sports game, especially if it’s your local team. And especially if it happens on Saturday.

There’s a saying, attributed all over the place, but we’re pretty sure it was Karl Barth who said it: “Take your Bible and take your newspaper and read both.” He meant it for everyone, but it is most critical for religious leaders. So critical for preachers. In my life as a preacher, newspapers have been fewer and farther between, but I carry the whole internet in the palm of my hand. I sat down to write this sermon—like I do each one—having perused the news of the day on twitter, and taking into account the non-stop nature of our cultural development. Sometimes, someone tweets something that inspires me. Sometimes, someone tweets something that angers me. Sometimes, my entire timeline is dedicated to a breaking news story, and I know that that will dominate our hearts and minds for a while.

This week was one such week. On Wednesday, I awoke to news of a raging apartment fire in London, the official death toll of which has risen to 58. I kept scrolling to see that congressmen had been shot while practicing for their annual softball game, and that a UPS employee had killed three of his co-workers in San Francisco. On Friday, Amazon announced that they’re buying Whole Foods, and a lot of folks in the grocery industry—like Safeway, and Costco, and other giants of food in our nation—are wondering what this might mean for their jobs. Also on Friday, a jury in Minnesota acquitted Jeronimo Yanez of last summer’s murder of Philando Castile.

All of these news stories swirled around in my head as I read through this week’s lectionary texts, but none so heavily as this verdict. There have been so many black men and women killed by police in the last few years, that I have absolutely lost count.* Some of them stand out more clearly in my memory, like this one in particular, because it was broadcast on Facebook Live by Mr. Castile’s fiancée, who was in the back seat with her 4-year-old daughter. I didn’t watch it live, but it eventually made its way into my feed and it broke my heart.

Yesterday was the two-year anniversary of the murder of the Charleston Nine, black church leaders and Bible study participants who were gunned down by a white terrorist. That violence touched us directly—the shooter was a member of an ELCA congregation, and two of the pastors had graduated from our Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary—and so we acknowledged it more openly, including our Presiding Bishop Elizabeth Eaton.  

It is hard, as a white leader in a predominantly white denomination, to know what to say from the pulpit about another instance of racist violence in our nation.

In the case of Dylann Roof, he has been tried and convicted and sentenced; he is accountable for his crime in Charleston. In the case of Jeronimo Yanez’ acquittal, no one has been held responsible for this crime. Philando Castile was a beloved child of God, and he was murdered, live online. 

The injustice of it all renders me speechless—and not a lot renders me speechless. Fortunately for me, the Spirit moves—and others speak. I have many clerical colleagues that I only know from the internet, and I turned to them this weekend for guidance. One such colleague, the Rev. Marcus Halley, is a black Episcopal priest in Minneapolis. He tweeted, on Friday, about not being scheduled to preach this morning: “I want so badly to articulate a new world, and my anger over the senseless deaths of POC at the hands of police prevents me from seeing it. So, until I can see it, I will commit myself to praying for it, hoping my words can paint a world I'm not sure I believe in some days.” Father Marcus folds his hands in prayer, and for a moment, I stop wringing mine.

Fortunately for me, and for Father Marcus, we have Jesus to turn to, to help us see. We have stories of compassion, and justice, and healing, and liberation, and resurrection to turn to. In the most serious of manners, I exclaim “hallelujah!”

The Gospel story we are given this week is very lengthy, and, in it, Jesus is far from speechless. He gathers his disciples and friends and sends them out, empowered to continue his work in the world. He sends them to “proclaim the good news”—the kingdom of God has come near—and to “cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons.” When we feel rudderless, Jesus’ instructions set the course. There is good work to be done. There is good news to be shared.

In his letter to the Romans, the Apostle Paul makes it so clear. “Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we now stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God” (Romans 5:1-2). Again, I say, “hallelujah” because grace abounds. There is nothing that we have done, nothing that we have left undone, nothing that we can do, nothing that we can fail to do, nothing whatsoever that will affect the grace in which we now stand. We can sometimes get antsy here, as Lutherans, because we’re so nervous about the slippery slope of works righteousness. As Martin Luther reminds us, good works do not cause our salvation—we have obtained access to this grace through Jesus the Christ. Our good deeds are not a necessary component of some cosmic transaction—but they are necessary.

In our life together, we respond to the grace we have been given with gratitude to our God and by showing God’s love to our neighbor. Paul’s letter to the Romans continues: “God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us” (Romans 5:5); and because of this, because of the grace we have received, because of the love we have been shown, because of the power that has been shared, we are moved beyond our own understanding to love and to serve and to bring forth the kingdom of God. 

You may have noticed, though, as I was reading the Gospel text, that there were some caveats and some warnings. This good work of loving and serving and healing is not without its challenges. Some folks do not want to hear the good news, if it means they have to do something differently. (Some of us do not want to hear the good news, since it means we have to do something differently.) Some folks do not want to be healed, if it means they have to do something differently. And no demon is agreeable to being cast out, so that’s probably going to take some work.

There are a lot of stories of people reacting negatively to Jesus entering their communities—the folks who try to run him off a cliff earlier in Matthew’s gospel, being a shining example—and so he knows the disciples’ triumphal entries will be few and far between. He does not discourage them from going, or tell them to go only where it’s safe, or somehow make a way for them that has no trouble. He says, “See, I am sending you out like sheep into the midst of wolves; so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves” (Matthew 10:16).

The Rev. Alexia Salvatierra is an ELCA clergyperson and a community organizer in Los Angeles. She wrote a book about faith-rooted organizing, and devotes a lot of words to the ideas of Serpent Power and Dove Power, concepts developed right from this verse. “Serpent Power,” she writes, “is evident and measurable. It is the power of force, wealth, social influence, and numbers. There is nothing wrong with the use of serpent power with integrity….however, if all we use is serpent power, we have lost our unique call and contribution—the capacity to embody the power of the dove….When we take dove power seriously, we take seriously the best in people, the reality of the image of God in each of us, and the transforming work of the Holy Spirit.” We, as disciples of the risen Christ, must rely on our deeply held dove power. “We believe in the power of prayer. We believe in the power of truth and the power of love. We believe that there are contexts and moments in which moral authority is real, tangible, and effective" (74).

Jesus knew that the power at work in the world was mostly serpent power, and so the disciples would have to know how to maneuver through that. But they would also need to challenge serpent power with dove power. They did not need to be imbued with serpent power—their humanity and their society gave them that resource freely—but they needed the power of the Holy Spirit to be given to them, and the encouragement of Jesus to push them out into the fray. We do not need to be imbued with serpent power—our humanity and our society gives us that resource freely—but we need the power of the Holy Spirit to be given to us, and the encouragement of Jesus to push us out into the fray.  

Again, I say, “hallelujah” because that has been done for us! As members of the body of Christ, we have all the power we need. We can, as humans interacting with other humans, use our power for good or for ill. And when folks use their power to hurt us, it can be hard to turn that around and just “shake off the dust” (Matthew 10:14). But it is my prayer, for all of us, that we will rely on our dove power, and that we will “be brave enough to be kind." [2]

Amen.

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* — Dear reader, you can peruse excellent statistics and reporting on this from mappingpoliceviolence.org and the Washington Post's Fatal Force.

For He is Our Peace -- A sermon on Ephesians, mostly.

Jeremiah 23:1-6

Psalm 23

Ephesians 2:11-22

Mark 6:30-34, 50-56

I bring you greetings this morning from the Belfry, the Lutheran-Episcopal Campus Ministry at UC Davis, and LEVN, the Lutheran-Episcopal Volunteer Network. I spend my days with a gaggle of young adults—some Lutheran, some Episcopalian, a whole bunch trying to figure out just where they fit in God’s world. 

My favorite thing about this—about my job, about ministry—is that not a single one of them is going it alone. For centuries—millennia, even—people of faith have been grappling with just what that means, what that looks like, and what to do about it. Sometimes, we do really well and life is good—we love our selves, we love our neighbors, we love our God. 

Other times, we do less well, and life is less good. We doubt ourselves, we hurt our neighbors, we ignore our God. 

If we look at the texts before us this morning, there’s some of this confusion. The prophet Jeremiah is lamenting that the flocks have been scattered; Psalm 23—a crowd favorite—acknowledges that we do occasionally walk through the valley of the shadow of death; Paul’s letter to the Ephesians centers on a schism between early Christians; and Mark’s gospel recounts a story of Jesus teaching wayward people who “were like sheep without a shepherd.” These stories take place hundreds of years apart, and yet carry with them the same idea—we cannot go it alone.

I want to focus on the Ephesians passage this morning; it feels like the real gut of these stories. The Apostle Paul is writing to a group of folks who are together, in some way, as a religious community in Ephesus, but who seem to have lost the spirit of that. They’ve tried to set up barriers. They’re all Gentiles, he says, so it’s not the classic Jewish Christian versus Gentile Christian argument. It’s a bunch of people who were once excluded now using their religion to exclude others. 

“Remember,” Paul writes, “that you were at one time without Christ…strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world.” How soon they have forgotten who they once were. “But now,” he continues, “now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.” How soon they have forgotten the promise. 

These texts can speak to all of us. Whether we are “in” or “out”—or whether we’re not sure if we’re “in” or “out”, or whether we’ll remain “in” or “out” for long!

Just like these ancient Ephesians, we as 21st-century Americans have forgotten the promise. We have forgotten that all of our fellow humans are created in the image of God, and we have forgotten that all of us have been created equal. We have treated our neighbor in ways unworthy of the gospel. 

We have slandered our neighbor, we have enslaved our neighbor, we have terrorized our neighbor, we have assaulted our neighbor, we have deported our neighbor, we have incarcerated our neighbor, we have subjugated our neighbor, we have murdered our neighbor. 

Some among us are bold enough to call this a Christian nation—would the Apostle Paul? He begs the Ephesians, and us, to remember that Jesus “is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us.” 

We have gone and rebuilt that wall, time and time again. We have built that wall between members of our congregations—between those who prefer the hymnal and those who prefer the electric guitar; between those with small, noisy children and those without; between those who give a lot and those who give a little. 

We have built that wall between ourselves and our communities, offering our space to the AA meeting, but not inviting addicts to join our worshipping community. 

We have built that wall between ourselves and the poor—donating to the food bank but not asking why children go hungry. 

We have built that wall between ourselves and other people of faith—proclaiming the love of God through Jesus applies only through our particular set of circumstances. 

We have built that wall between ourselves and the LGBT community—proclaiming that the unconditional love of God does, in fact, have conditions. 

We have built that wall between white americans and black americans—by refusing to acknowledge the racist system that continues to oppress and enslave.

We have built that wall between ourselves and God—blaming our struggles on God’s absence, yet failing to praise God’s presence for our every blessing.

The Apostle Paul reminds the Ephesians, and us, that Jesus the Christ “has abolished the law with its commandments and ordinances, that he might create in himself one new humanity in place of the two, thus making peace, and might reconcile both groups to God in one body through the cross, thus putting to death hostility through it.”

In Christ there is no more need for division. In Christ there is a new creation. We are made whole, new, and unified through our baptism into the body of Christ. 

“So then,” Paul writes, “you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone.” 

Here in the household of God, the challenge and the solution are the same—Jesus the Christ lived, died, and was resurrected to end divisions. To free us from the power of sin and death, to liberate us from powers and principalities. In this new, undivided world we are free to love ourselves and one another—and we must.

I know I said that the Ephesians text was the meat of this week’s lectionary selection, but it’s the last two sentences of the passage from Mark that really seal the deal. Jesus and the disciples get out of the boat, and “people at once recognized him, and rushed about that whole region and began to bring the sick on mats to wherever they heard he was. And wherever he went, into villages or cities or farms, they laid the sick in the marketplaces, and begged him that they might touch even the fringe of his cloak; and all who touched it were healed.”

The people who meet Jesus, who know Jesus, immediately bring all of their people that they know and love who are sick to also meet him. They rushed about the whole region, it says! They understand that what Jesus is bringing to them is life. They do not hoard that for themselves, they do not keep it quiet. They tell everyone they know, they crowd him, they are relentless in their pursuit of the opportunity to share in the love of God through Jesus. 

That, too, is what we should be doing! Since we, through our baptism, meet Jesus and know Jesus, we should prioritize bringing everyone else into the love we know and that we receive, and that we therefore reflect. The way in which we do that is by proclaiming the good news, loving our neighbors, fighting for justice, tearing down walls, seeking reconciliation—all of these are the deeply rooted challenges that come with being people who are oriented in love. 

That is a blessing. Thanks be to God. Amen.