If you have never been a lector, it’s possible you have never paid much attention to the lectern up here. One of the features is that it has an added step that flips up and down, so that we can use it or not, depending on how naturally close we are to the ceiling. I thought this was a new thing in lectern design, since women took on more active roles in the church, but found out our flannel team customized it.
Our former church in the south had some beautiful older furnishings, and while the lectern was small and short enough to be accessible for women lectors, the pulpit was not. (St. Patrick’s only has one all-purpose lectern. Some churches have a lectern on one side of the room for the lectors and a pulpit on the other side for the preacher.) Our priest at that church was a woman, though, and she was very petite. Enthusiastic, smart, capable, a wonderful pastor, a huge heart but not a very large person. Barely 5 feet tall, maybe 98 pounds, and the pulpit, while certainly not the biggest I’ve seen, still could have made a studio apartment for someone her size.
Their parish equivalent of a flannel team decided to make her a step, but instead ended up making a removable platform to stand on, so shorter preachers like her (and me!) could see over the top of the pulpit, and not accidently fall off if they shift their weight while preaching. They didn’t stain it to match the pulpit, though. Instead, they painted it bright white, and in bold black letters they stenciled the words ‘Stand Up for Jesus’ across the top.
I haven’t posted it on THIS pulpit or step, and you don’t hear me say it out loud, but I say it to myself every time I climb up here too. Stand up for Jesus.
Our Acts reading today is the famous story of the first Christian Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit came to the followers of Jesus and revealed the church.
According to Acts, after the resurrection, Jesus stayed with the disciples for about 40 days before the Ascension, still teaching, still encouraging. Then he was taken up into heaven right before their eyes, but had given his disciples instructions – stay here in Jerusalem. I’m sending help. The eleven remaining disciples plus the other followers, about 120 in all, had done just that for another week and a half, and now it was time for the Jewish festival of Pentecost. This was the celebration of Moses receiving the law, the Ten Commandments, from God. These first ten of 613 laws from God became kind of a constitution for the people of Israel. A common respect for, and consent to, the law was what formed them into a single nation – the framework that held them in a common life. The law required that all adult men who could make the journey had to be in Jerusalem for Pentecost, to make sacrifices and bring offerings to the temple. The annual pilgrimage was an expectation, not a nice option. If you were able-bodied, you went, no ifs, ands or buts.
This meant Jerusalem was packed. And in today’s reading, the disciples were crammed into a single room with 110 other people, praying and waiting. And waiting. And praying. AND WAITING. For 10 days now – Jesus said he would send help, but he didn’t say when, and staying in Jerusalem at the height of the tourist season was surely getting expensive! I wonder if they were getting anxious, or starting to have doubts. They had to go home sometime, didn’t they?
If you have ever had to spend time around an intensive care unit with a friend or family member, especially when the ICU is full, that might be the right picture – every seat taken, people standing lining the walls, stuffy and no air stirring, murmured conversations in low tones, someone speaking prayers out loud and others answering with mumbled ‘Amen’s and ‘Yes Lord’s, everyone feeling hopeful and scared and exhausted and cranky and tired of all those people, all at once. Caught between pleading with God for a miracle, and waiting for someone to come in and tell you it’s finally all over, and you can get out of there now.
Then the wind started to blow. At first it was welcome, anything to move that thick, heavy, sweat-stinking cloud hanging over the room - but the wind was hot too. Uncomfortably hot. REALLY hot. After a few minutes, some of the disciples quit praying and started looking around, but by then everything was changing. It couldn’t be, of course – the heat was playing tricks on their eyes – but it almost looked like the room was on fire and the other disciples had flames pouring from the tops of their heads. Flames. Everyone in the house looked to be engulfed in flames.
Then the words started pouring out of their mouths too, or at least what sounded like words. It wasn’t Aramaic or Greek or Hebrew though, and what other languages could Galilean fishers and farmers possibly speak? Torrents of words – they were chattering and waving their arms and even shouting, and no one in the room had any idea what anyone else was saying.
The people out on the street knew, though. They heard an entire room of people, talking and yelling over each other about what God had done, and what Jesus had done, and what it all meant – and while the onlookers understood the words, they couldn’t make much sense of the sentences. A king, whose kingdom wasn’t of this world? Who cared nothing about the Romans or Sanhedrin? Dead, but also alive? Empty tomb? Gone to the Father? Resurrected? Ascended? Eventually figuring that the disciples were a bunch of drunken fools, the Jewish pilgrims were just leaving, when Peter raised his voice.
Peter, patron saint of the wishy-washy, Peter who fell asleep in the garden, Peter who denied Jesus three times, and was notably missing from the foot of the cross when Jesus was crucified – this same Peter raised his voice. By the power of the Holy Spirit, the disciple who walked on water for an instant but then immediately sank, that same Peter preached the world’s first sermon to a crowd of people who could have had him stoned. ‘Your young will see visions and your old will dream dreams, when the Spirit is poured on all flesh’, said the prophet Joel, and Peter claimed it had all come true. He told them of King David, and explained how Jesus was the Messiah and fulfilled ALL the prophecies, hopes, dreams of God’s people – and everyone, EVERYONE who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. Because of this very first sermon, 3000 people were baptized.
Peter finally, FINALLY STOOD UP FOR JESUS.
There was still a problem though. You may be thinking all those languages – Parthian, Medean, Elamite, Egyptian, Libyan – meant that people of all those ethnicities were in the crowd being baptized. After all, Peter preached that everyone that calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. But that wasn’t quite so. The crowd that day was Jewish. They were there for Pentecost, and this was before Peter’s vision of the blanket full of unclean animals descending from the sky and the voice saying ‘Kill and eat’. The newly-baptized of the church were all Jewish, all from different places but all alike in that they were born of the house of Israel. All born under the Law. All alike.
ALL alike.
It’s easy to read that passage and think that there was a huge diverse mob, but it was a crowd of cousins, as we would say in the South.
Of course, over the rest of the book of Acts we see the earliest apostles, including St. Paul, start trying to work this out. Did believers have to be Jewish to be Christians too? Peter DID have his ‘kill and eat’ dream, and baptized the centurion Cornelius and his household, and Paul DID take up his role as the apostle to the gentiles. But the relationship between the gentile Christians and the Jewish Christians was uneasy until the fall of the temple, when the split between the Christians and Jews became complete. Christians could still ask their bishops for their sins to be forgiven. With the temple destroyed, the Jews could no longer perform the rituals or make sacrifices for sin. Rabbinic Judaism then began to focus on the analysis and interpretation of scripture, while Christians went their own way, creating their own traditions and developing as a separate religion. Within a few decades, the split was permanent.
That was the first big case of Us and Them in the church, but not the last, not by a long shot. There was the Eastern Church versus the Western Church, Catholics and Protestants, Protestants and Puritans, Anglicans and Methodists and Presbyterians and Baptists. White churches and black churches, charismatic or conservative, evangelical or mainline, women clergy or not, gay friendly or not, immigrant supporting or not, LGBTQ affirming or not. Those are just the huge categories. We can ‘Us and Them’ over little piddly stuff too.
But in that hot airless room full of people in Jerusalem on Pentecost, the church made a start. The disciples shared the gospel with everyone that could hear the commotion, because the gospel is meant for all God’s people - and EVERYONE is included in God’s people. The 2000 year history of the church is one long saga of trying to decide who’s out and who’s in, and the answer is always ‘EVERYBODY’S IN’. However many people you think deserve it, more than that. Whoever you think qualifies, more than that. Whatever seems to be the latest litmus test or gatekeeping device is wrong so throw it away – ‘those people’ get in too. As St. Paul says in I Timothy Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners--of whom I am the worst.
Every human being is made in God’s image. They are loved by God and welcomed by God. The church can do no less.
Every so often, there is a spat in the house of the Lord where one group wants another to leave, or be forced out, or be made unwelcome, or excommunicated. This almost always has zero to do with God, and everything to do with power, privilege, being comfortable and unbothered by new people, how it looks to the neighbors, etc. etc. etc. You will be called on in these disputes to take sides. In fact, I’ll bet that it’s happened to you before, that you’ve been in a church, and one group wanted to push another out the door.
I’ve seen it get ugly too – when Gene Robinson was elected bishop of New Hampshire, the dean of the Alabama cathedral hung black flags all over Cathedral Church of the Advent, so the president of the local chapter of Integrity, an LGBT support group, wrote an editorial in the Birmingham paper calling for him to be subjected to exorcism. No kidding – it was awful. They were awful. This did not build up the body of Christ.
Remember what St. Paul taught: Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners--of whom I am the worst.
This is God’s house. Not mine, not yours. Everybody belongs here. Everybody is wanted, encouraged, and loved here. No exceptions. Jesus didn’t exclude anyone from salvation and we don’t exclude anyone from church family.
So what should you do, as a disciple, if you ever find yourself in that painful situation?
Look down at your feet. You may have to look carefully, squint even, but as your eyes adjust, I bet you’ll see it.
Right there, under your shoes, in bold black letters, are the words STAND UP FOR JESUS.
Keep the doors wide open, refuse to allow shunning or prejudice, and always remember that we are all sinners in a hospital, not saints in a museum.
Everyone is welcome. Everyone belongs here. No exceptions.
Stand up for Jesus.
AMEN
