Sermon on May 31, 2020: Pentecost
Boldly Receiving the Spirit
A sermon for Pentecost, by Dr. Lindsey Carfagna
I won’t lie to you right now—I’m a little scared. Not because it is my first time preaching in this church or because this sermon is not even technically happening in the church.
I’m scared because this week’s passages, in all their beautiful imagery of the Holy Spirit and Living Water, also offer us significant insight into the type of political unrest our church was born into. These were not safe times, nor were they comfortable. When I prayed with this week’s readings, I could not help but feel that unrest and that discomfort in my heart. Then, as I stepped away from my Bible, and tuned back into the world we live in, I became even more scared.
I’m scared because at the time of this recording, Minneapolis is burning, George Floyd has been murdered by a police officer, social media has loudly erupted with every possible reaction, and I have no control over what happens in the next two days when you will receive this message. I’m scared. And, I say this as a person with a doctorate in Sociology, who has spent significant time studying the roots and relationships connected to the sin of racism in our country.
Fear can be a paralyzing emotion. It can also launch us into rash actions. Fear is the thing likely tempting you to walk away from your computer or phone right now so you don’t have to hear this message. Please, stick with me, be afraid with me. Pray for the Holy Spirit, with me.
Fear makes us take shortcuts, and in the shortcuts we make judgments that were never ours to make. In our opening Collect, we prayed for right judgment through the Holy Spirit, like our forefathers and mothers of the church were taught at Pentecost. As we celebrate Pentecost as essentially the birthday of our church, let us not forget the fear and uncertainty that was transformed by the Holy Spirit into the bedrock of our Church. In this sermon, I hope to remind us of the conversion available to our hearts if we remain boldly receptive to this same Holy Spirit.
In the Gospel read today, we are told the story of Christ standing up at a festival and crying out “let anyone who is thirsty come to me.” Like a good Seminarian, I made sure to read what was happening just before and after this passage to aid in my interpretation. I learned that Jesus was not welcome at this festival, and that he was mocked when he initially said he wouldn’t go. We are reminded again that even his brothers weren’t on his side.
Jesus of course does end up privately going to the festival, and in the Gospel of John we are led through various reactions to his presence there, both good and bad. Then, on the last day of the festival, in the midst of this mixed crowd, he stands up and makes this bold proclamation about a Spirit that was not yet known to those in the audience. Again, he is met with mixed reactions, and we are told that the police were even sent after him. His time had not yet come, so the story continues.
A woman is brought to him in the next chapter who was caught in the act of adultery. We know the story here. He is being tested by the authorities to make the right judgment according to what they knew to be law, and he sits on the ground, drawing in the dust, and refuses to condemn her.
So here in this short chapter and a half we have an opinionated crowd, the police, those who represent the law, and a person being made an example of for the purpose of condemning one who spoke about a different order for the world.
If we look ahead in the Christian story then to the second reading today, we have Paul’s famously bold proclamation that we are all members of one body of Christ.
While we are used to hearing this language “body of Christ”, we might not be aware that the use of the body analogy was essentially a subversive act by Paul. In ancient politics, the body metaphor was used as a way to conservatively preserve a social order, no matter how unjust that order, by relating to it as a natural phenomenon like our bodies.
All parts of the body must play their role, so the body does not break down. In ancient times, this wasn’t used to hold up the equality of all parts of the body, but instead to keep less status-worthy parts of the body in their lower place.
In Sociology, we have a more contemporary version of this concept in the theoretical works of functionalism. Functionalism was used as a way to justify inequality, by assigning essential functions to the parts of society that were experiencing subordination and injustice.
For example, if you’ve ever heard someone respond to the argument for free college for all with the question “but who will be our garbage collectors?” you’re probably running up against some functionalist reasoning. This is not to dismiss the value and dignity of garbage collectors, but instead to assign to garbage collectors the naturalized role as unworthy of higher education because without them our societal order would cease to function.
Garbage collectors then should not want to advance their station in life, nor should we use our resources collectively to provide for that option, so goes the functionalist rationale.
These social assignments were made in the observation of the phenomenon, not in its creation, which is partly why this theory was thrown away. It was often used to justify racism, sexism, and poverty, and thus preserve the social order, no matter how sinful or evil that order.
For example, I’ll never forget the history teacher who taught me that black people were best suited for the necessary work of plantation slavery in the colonized formation of our country, because black people could stand the heat of the south and had strong bodies for hard labor.
I say I’ll never forget this because I naïvely repeated it to my economics professor freshman year in a class on African Americans in the US economy. Thankfully, she helped me see not just the error in my reasoning, but also how it justified violence against black lives.
As members of the one body of Christ, Paul pushes us to consider our mutuality and to discern our spiritual gifts. He also reminds us that while our gifts are various, the Spirit is the same, as is the “God who activates all of them in everyone.”
This message flies in the face of the ancient political use of the body metaphor or our more recent functionalist logic, because it requires us to quit explaining terrible things away to preserve a comfort that is only available to some.
In preparing for this sermon, I found myself so deeply moved by the radical story of the early Church, drawn in at first by bold prophetic voices and actions handed down to us in the Acts of the Apostles. Literally on fire with the Holy Spirit, these apostles found themselves speaking in other languages.
As I read this passage, I paused at something that felt even more astonishing. People heard them. The people listening heard the message and said “this is for me.” We focus so hard on the bold proclamation that we forget the boldness required in reception.
We forget the boldness of conversion. We focus so hard on the doing that we forget the being.
Without the Holy Spirit, there would be no gift of tongues. Without that gift of tongues, there would be no message discernable to our ears. But without the bold reception of the crowd, there would be no 3000 stepping up that day to be baptized, signaling the birth of our church.
In this moment, as we ask ourselves “what am I to do?” I encourage us first to ask “who am I to be?” I encourage us to first boldly receive the gifts of the Spirit meant for us.
And as I watch Minneapolis burning, I am reminded of my thirst. I am reminded that the Holy Spirit is available to me as living water and that through spiritual discernment I may know my gifts and how to use them in this life for the common good as a member of the One Body of Christ.
Perhaps most importantly though, I am reminded that before I boldly proclaim, I must first boldly receive. The Holy Spirit comes to convert our hearts so that we, as the church, may act in right judgment.
Lord, come into our hearts and help us boldly receive your spirit. Transform our fear and give us the courage to never explain away the deaths of our black brothers and sisters.
I leave you with an excerpt of a poem by John O’Donahue, titled “In Praise of Fire”
As air intensifies the hunger of fire,
May the thought of death
Breathe new urgency
Into our love of life.As fire cleanses dross
May the flame of passion
Burn away what is false.As short as the time
From Spark to Flame,
So brief may the distance be
Between heart and being.May we discover
Beneath our fear
Embers of anger
To kindle justice.May courage
Cause our lives to flame,
In the name of the Fire,
And the flame
And the Light.
Amen.