When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to
them, “Receive the Holy Spirit…” (John 20:22)
Although
Hallmark makes cards for everything from Groundhog’s Day to your dog’s
birthday, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a “Happy Pentecost!” card. That’s a
shame because this holy feast really should be lifted up as a special
celebration. It’s actually one of the six principal festivals on the Christian
liturgical calendar. It’s the Feast of the Holy Spirit, the Third Person of the
Trinity. It’s also the birthday of the Christian Church. We tell the story
every year of those twelve scared and confused followers of Jesus—cowering in
their upper room—who suddenly burst out of their hiding place to proclaim to
everyone in every language the Good News of the resurrected Jesus. Don’t you
think we ought to shoot off some fireworks in honor of this? Or, at least, hold
a weenie roast on the church lawn or something?
Of
course, a lot of Lutheran congregations mark this day with the Rite of
Confirmation. Unfortunately, we at Faith Lutheran of Philadelphia don’t have
any kids who are Confirmation age this year. That’s just as well. I’m starting
to get a quirky, uneasy feeling about laying my hands on the heads of
fourteen-year-olds, praying they receive the Holy Spirit, and then watching
them flee the building like kindergarteners when the bell rings for recess…never
to be seen again.
Martin
Luther taught us a relationship with Christ comes when the Holy Spirit calls us
through the Gospel[i].
The trouble is, not everyone gets a chance to really hear or experience
the Gospel. They might not even know what the word “Gospel” means[ii]. The three young fellows
who will be taking my Confirmation class starting this August do not attend
church or Sunday school. No surprise. Neither do their parents. Nevertheless,
Mom and Dad are going to subject these boys to the Purgatory of my weekly
online pedagogy in order to fulfill some family traditions or obligations or whatever
wacky reasons they have for doing so (Maybe just to keep the little desperados
busy for forty minutes on a Tuesday afternoon. Who knows?).
Now,
imagine me trying to pound Luther’s Small Catechism into these adolescent
skulls. I suspect grasping the Great Reformer’s understanding of the Ten
Commandments, the Lord’s Prayer, and the Apostles Creed will prove a daunting
if not completely Sisyphean task if these kids know neither creed, prayer, nor
commandments and have no clue as to why they should be learning about them. I’m
going to have to start with some really basic stuff like “What is
religion?” “What is God?” “What is the Church?”
Since
Pentecost is supposed to be the birthday of the Christian Church, I
thought I’d spitball an explanation of this curious institution. But first, I
have to start with a definition for religion itself. I’m thinking that as far
as Western Christian thought goes, a religion is an attempt to answer seemingly
unanswerable questions. You know—like “What is the soul?” “What is Creation and
how do we relate to it?” “What is spirit?” “Is life eternal?” “What is good and
evil?” Stuff like that. We Christians try to answer these questions through our
shared mythology. By “mythology,” I don’t mean stories which aren’t true. I
mean stories which contain universal truths and have the plasticity to
be told throughout the generations over and over again with multiple
interpretations—all of which could be right and speak to our human experience. They
are stories which make us wonder and bring us into contact with God and into
relationship with one another. These shared stories are reinforced by our
rituals and festivals. The Church—the gathering together of all who love and
believe these stories—is the vehicle for this reinforcement.
So
what is the purpose of the Church? Ideally, the Church gathers us into
community. The Church teaches and upholds our common values, reminding us to
love one another, care for all God has made, and, when necessary, advocate for justice.
And the Church is the provider of comfort. She provides comfort to the
terrified and guilty conscience, interpersonal support, and unconditional love
and acceptance. That is why the message on our LED sign now reads, “We haven’t
met you, but we already love you.”
When
I was about fourteen, after I’d made my Confirmation in an LCMS[iii] church and received my
presentation Bible and a box of offering envelopes (“Congratulations, my son.
You’re now an adult in the faith. Time to pony up the cash!”), my family started
attending an LCA[iv]
congregation. My mom enrolled the whole clan in a Bethel Bible Series[v] class. What struck me abut
this experience was not just the fact that I was learning the Bible along with
my parents, but older members of the congregation—middle-aged folks—were
treating me like a contemporary and allowing me to address them by their given
names. I felt validated and appreciated by that congregation. This is a power
the Church has if she will use it.
In
the lessons the Revised Common Lectionary assigned for the Day of Pentecost, we
have two different versions of how the apostles received the Holy Spirit. These
stories were written by different authors to different communities, possibly a generation
apart. Don’t try to reconcile them, just take each for its own sake. We usually
lift up Luke’s version in Acts (Acts 2:1-21). We like the blast of the mighty
wind, the tongues of fire, and the miraculous, godly speech gushing like a fire
hose from the mouths of the formerly pusillanimous and dimwitted disciples. But
John’s story (John 20:19-23) has a more subtle, gentle manifestation of the
Spirit. Jesus meets the disciples personally, wishes them peace, and breathes
on them. It’s almost like reviving them with mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. He’d
have to be very close to them for them to feel his breath.
I
think there’s been too much “violent wind” blowing about Christianity in
America these days, and some folks think it scares people off[vi]. I’m going to suggest we
go a little more with John’s story. No shouting, no speaking in tongues, no rallies
on the National Mall. The world doesn’t need more of that. We need peaceful,
loving, honest, person-to-person relationship. That’s something you can’t get
from staring at your cell phone. That’s what I want to teach my confirmands.
Meet
me here next Pentecost. I’ll let you know how well it worked.
[i]
See Luther’s Small Catechism. This is part of his explanation to the
Third Article of the Apostles Creed.
[ii] “The
word gospel literally means “good news” and occurs 93 times in the Bible,
exclusively in the New Testament. In Greek, it is the word euaggelion, from
which we get our English words evangelist, evangel, and evangelical. The gospel
is, broadly speaking, the whole of Scripture; more narrowly, the gospel is the
good news concerning Christ and the way of salvation.” This definition is
thanks to gotquestions.org.
[iii]
Lutheran Church Missouri Synod. Once the biggest group of American Lutherans,
the LCMS went uber conservative in the early 1970’s. No women clergy. No LGBTQ+
clergy either. You get the idea.
[iv]
Lutheran Church in America. A predecessor body of the ELCA.
[v] This
is a really cool series which teaches Bible concepts through pictures. It’s
pretty thorough. You can learn about it at www.bethelbibleseries.org
[vi] You
might think I’m referring to the ultra-right wing Christian Nationalist
Movement. You’d be right.
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