Sermons from Mission Hills UCC San Diego, California Rev. Dr. David Bahr [email protected] June 26, 2022 “For What Do You Stand? The UCC at 65” Luke 9: 57-62 57 As Jesus and his disciples traveled along the road, someone said to him, “I will follow you wherever you go.” 58 Jesus replied, “Foxes have dens and the birds in the sky have nests, but the Human One[a] has no place to lay his head.” 59 Then Jesus said to someone else, “Follow me.” He replied, “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.” 60 Jesus said to him, “Let the dead bury their own dead. But you go and spread the news of God’s kingdom.” 61 Someone else said to Jesus, “I will follow you, Lord, but first let me say good-bye to those in my house.” 62 Jesus said to him, “No one who puts a hand on the plow and looks back is fit for God’s kingdom.” Jesus didn’t make following him an easy choice, no promises of great rewards here. As this passage makes clear, nothing was to come between a decision and immediate enactment. “I need a couple of days to go bury my father.” Sounds reasonable. Who’s going to say no to that? Jesus. “Can I at least go home and let my family know where I’m going?” “No.” C’mon Jesus, let’s be reasonable. But, no. There’s no time for delay, the time has come. There’s no time for delay, because the time is now. Well, there was a delay in the formation of the United Church of Christ. This could have been our 70th or 71st anniversary but our official birth was delayed until 65 years ago. Let me explain. 1957 marks the official union of two denominations into the United Church of Christ – the Congregational Christian Churches and the Evangelical and Reformed Church. Each of those was the union of two previous denominations about 25 years earlier. We call them our four streams. Now, note I said “union,” not merger. They may have merged the business functions of the previous entities, but it was a union of people – a reunion of Christ’s followers who had continually divided into sectarian groups. Our ancestors had a passion for “overcoming the sin of denominationalism,” reversing the separation of Christ’s people into divided churches. I want to tell you a little about each of our denominational predecessors. First, the Congregational Churches, our Mission Hills UCC heritage. Congregational Churches are some of the oldest churches in the US, some pre-dating the US, originally formed as dissenters in the Church of England. You may have heard of a group of people on a boat called the Mayflower? And some folks known as Pilgrims? That’s us – for all the good, bad, and ugly that represents. Pilgrims and Puritans didn’t start out by calling themselves Congregationalists but they were people who passionately believed in self-governance. They sought the autonomy of local gatherings of Christians who were bound together by covenant. For the cause, some were actually martyred. Others escaped persecution seeking religious freedom. Sadly, it wasn’t a grace they always extended to others once they were in control. Our Congregational ancestors weren’t united so much by a set of doctrinal beliefs as much as their commitment to self-governance, autonomy, for the local church to believe and act as it sees fit, with each member equal – of course, male member, likely property-owning and white. Still, it was this model of self-governing democracy that greatly influenced the whole notion of American democracy. Many Congregationalists were involved in the American Revolution. In fact, the Boston Tea Party was the result of a meeting at Old South Congregational Church. With their focus on autonomy instead of creed, congregations could be as liberal or conservative as they felt called because no higher authority could dictate to them. Education was a huge priority, evidenced in such institutions as Harvard and Yale, and especially the 500 schools they started for freed Blacks in the wake of the Civil War. Congregationalists had been prominent in the cause of the abolition of slavery – something they did not believe should be delayed for even one more day – and the Social Gospel. Secondly in our family tree, there’s some misfit groups formed post-American Revolution. One was a group who objected to the authoritarianism of bishops. They called themselves Republican Methodists. There was a group of Baptists in New England who believed in universal or Free Salvation. And there was a group of Presbyterians in Kentucky who embraced revival meetings and wanted to be free of the shackles of doctrine but were shunned by their fellow pastors. These three anti-hierarchical, anti-creedal, anti-establishment groups found each other and called themselves simply The Christian Church, or Christian Connexion. Despite being opposed to the idea of denominations, they created their own in order to further their work. For their times, they had very unique ideas. Principles, they call them:
A fourth group emerged later and joined in, comprised of formerly enslaved persons who called themselves Afro-Christians. These anti-doctrinal Christians were so committed to the freedom of interpretation that when they went looking for partners, most other Christians shunned them – and in one case even burned down their church for not believing in the Trinity. Eventually they found a willing partner among the non-creedal, non-hierarchical Congregationalists and the two denominations joined together in 1931. Most church members probably didn’t even know. The biggest benefit was felt by the relatively small memberships of Black Congregationalists and Afro Christians. Working together, these groups fostered leadership among young people that has played a wonderfully outsized role for decades. Congregationalists had the most racial diversity of all the groups – including Chinese churches, Japanese, Filipino, Mexican, American Indian and more. In the early 1700s, in the aftermath of the 30 Years War, Germany lay devastated, plundered by lawless armies, much of its population decimated. Many exhausted Germans began landing in the US and settling in Pennsylvania and the Mid-Atlantic. Among them were people of the Reformed faith, people shaped by 200 years of the Heidelberg Catechism. The catechism is a set of questions and answers memorized by generations of Reformed Christians but which were more relational than doctrinal, more focused on the heart than the head. For example, question #1: What is your greatest comfort in life and in death? That I belong heart and soul to Jesus. These German Reformed folks could have joined together with their Dutch Reformed counterparts in America but the Dutch were too strict. These Germans preferred loving Jesus over being right about him. These ancestors in our family tree had a mystical bent with a high regard for the sacraments and the church as the Body of Christ, not a voluntary association. Another group of Germans started coming in large numbers in the mid-1800s, also escaping poverty, settling in large numbers in Saint Louis and beyond. Like the Reformed in the previous century, they practiced a simple heart-based form of Christianity with this motto – in essentials, unity; in non-essentials, diversity; in all things, charity. They were known as Evangelicals, but not like our current understanding of the word. In Germany, Evangelicals were a moderating force, representing a middle way – between rationalism, a complete rejection of religion, and confessionalism, the kind of rigid adherence to creeds that most of our ancestors rebelled against. These folks in our family tree had a heart for service, especially health and human services. During its time, this little group started more hospitals and health care institutions per capita than any group. Even today, major hospital systems in Saint Louis and Chicago have their roots among these servant people. These two immigrant denominations found commonality and joined in union in 1934, but without a constitution or agreed upon statement of faith. They just thought, “we’ll figure it out as we go.” You know, “In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, diversity; in all things, charity.” I’m not sure anyone quite said what essential meant. They formed the Evangelical and Reformed Church. And just five years later they began talking to another recently formed denomination, the Congregational Christian Churches. On paper these two denominations, the E&R and CCs, had very little in common, except that in their very divided world – mid World War 1 and 2 – they believed Christians should present a united face to the world. How could the world cooperate if Christians couldn’t? So, conversations began that led to serious consideration of union, perhaps consummating as early as 1949 or 1950. However, into this harmonious optimism came a group of Congregationalists who feared the loss of their autonomy. The E&R operated more like a group of churches than individual ones. Opponents sued, the case went to court, and an injunction ceased conversations. Four long years later, a judge threw out the case and work proceeded, culminating with the Uniting General Synod in Cleveland on June 25, 1957 – 65 years ago. All E&R churches became UCC that day and all changed their name. Given their polity, each Congregational church voted on its own. 1,000 did not join. Many that did, like Mission Hills in 1961, did not change their name – or like us, at least not for decades. These new UCC Christians had a “Basis for Union” that guaranteed autonomy but structured our life together as a group of churches in covenant with each other. Among the first items of business was a statement of faith adopted in 1959. Importantly, it reads not as a creed or a test of faith but a description of the deeds of God to which we testify. From the very beginning, you can see our faith has been characterized for its concern for the world in which we live. For example, we testify how the Holy Spirit “binds in covenant faithful people of all ages, tongues, and races.” 1959. In 1959 the General Synod also adopted a Call to Christian Action in Society that set the stage for our activism still today. Building upon the heritage of the abolition of slavery and the social gospel, among the 51 statements adopted in 1959 is a call for environmentalism, “the conservation of the earth’s resources for the benefit of humankind in the future.” The expansion of public services. The protection of migrant workers and their families. The admission of more immigrant refugees. Better treatment and rehabilitation for prisoners. The independence of church and state. And the end of racial segregation and discrimination in our communities – in church life, in housing, in employment, in education, in public accommodations and services, and in the exercise of political rights. 1959. In 1963, only six years old and much yet to do, the General Synod set aside the internal business of the church and turned its attention to more important matters – racial justice. President Ben Herbster asked, How can we care about what happens in our churches more than what happens on our streets? I wish I had more time to tell. The 1973 General Synod paused business one day to charter a plane full of delegates to go to Coachella to stand with Cesar Chavez. And thinking of the Supreme Court reversal on Friday, I’m reminded how our heritage of love for the world was expressed by the General Synod in 1971, pre-Roe v. Wade, calling upon all the members and churches of the United Church of Christ to support the “repeal of all legal prohibitions of physician-performed abortions.” The United Church of Christ isn’t always easy to explain. We’re several historic denominations more interested in unity than doctrine that came together in 1957. But instead of trying to explain what we believe, perhaps it would help to answer, for what do you stand?
Saying to Jesus, “I need a couple of days to go bury my father” might sound reasonable. Who’s going to say no to that? Or, “Can I at least go home and let me family know where I’m going?” C’mon Jesus, let’s be reasonable. But no. For the sake of the vulnerable people Jesus loved, I get it. There’s no time for delay. In the spirit of our ancestors, the time has come to support and protect our sisters, siblings and kindred in Christ. It’s our heritage. It’s our calling because we are the United Church of Christ.
0 Comments
Sermons from Mission Hills UCC San Diego, California Rev. Dr. David Bahr [email protected] June 19, 2022 “Juneteenth and the Jubilee” Jeremiah 34: 8-16 When God delivered a Message to Jeremiah after King Zedekiah made a covenant with the people of Jerusalem to decree freedom to the slaves who were Hebrews, both men and women. The covenant stipulated that no one in Judah would own a fellow Jew as a slave. All the leaders and people who had signed the covenant set free the slaves, men and women alike. 11 But a little while later, they reneged on the covenant, broke their promise and forced their former slaves to become slaves again. 12-14 Then Jeremiah received this Message from God: “God, the God of Israel, says, ‘I made a covenant with your ancestors when I delivered them out of their slavery in Egypt. At the time I made it clear: “At the end of seven years, each of you must free any fellow Hebrew who has had to sell himself to you. After he has served six years, set him free.” But your ancestors totally ignored me. 15-16 “‘And now, you—what have you done? First you turned back to the right way and did the right thing, decreeing freedom for your brothers and sisters—and you made it official in a solemn covenant in my Temple. And then you turned right around and broke your word, making a mockery of both me and the covenant, and made them all slaves again, these men and women you’d just set free. You forced them back into slavery Now, that’s what you call an obscure passage! It’s the Prophet Jeremiah’s justification for the exile. The exile was the time when the Israelites were forced from their land and made to live as captives in Babylon for decades. This is the explanation for such a consequence. So, as the story goes, King Zedekiah made a covenant with all the people of Jerusalem to free the humans they enslaved. Everyone agreed and let them go. And then broke their promise and took back all the men and women they had freed, to enslave them again. As a result, according to the Prophet Jeremiah, God was mighty unpleased. If you won’t free these people, then I will free you – You’ll be free to die by the sword, disease, and famine. Keep reading this passage and it’s grim, unfit to read in polite company. The people re-enslaved those they had agreed to set free. So, Jeremiah basically asked them, “what’s wrong with you people!” and reminded them that God had freed their ancestors, that God had brought them out of the land of Egypt, that God had led them out of the house of slavery. This passage references one of many commands God gave to Moses during their 40 years in the wilderness. “Every seventh year each of you must free any Hebrews who have been sold to you. After they have served you for six years, you must set them free.” That’s what this obscure passage is based on. An equally obscure reference to the Book of Leviticus! Leviticus 25 contains a number of very oddly specific commands, including verses like 3 and 4: “You will plant your fields for six years, and prune your vineyards and gather their crops for six years. 4 But in the seventh year the land will have a special sabbath rest, a Sabbath to the Lord: You must not plant your fields or prune your vineyards.” There are many more just like this. Why? Well, think of the period of 40 years in the wilderness as Freedom Training. How does someone who has been held in slavery adjust to freedom? Once you have been property, how do you own property? So, they must create a new identity for themselves, one that doesn’t involve belonging to someone else. And that was the job of Moses to teach – freedom training. According to the great biblical scholar Walter Brueggemann, Moses sought to give the Hebrew people a distinct identity – not an identity based on territory or ethnicity or language but an identity defined by their ethics.[1] And at the heart of it, back in Leviticus 25, is something called Jubilee. The Jubilee Year. Listen: “Count off seven weeks of years—that is, seven times seven—so that the seven weeks of years totals forty-nine years. 9 Then have the trumpet blown on the tenth day of the seventh month. 10 You will make the fiftieth year holy, proclaiming freedom throughout the land to all its inhabitants. It will be a year of Jubilee for you: each of you must return to your family property and to your extended family. 11 The fiftieth year will be a Jubilee year for you. Leviticus 25 has numerous specific directives, for example: Do not plant, do not harvest the secondary growth, and do not gather from the freely growing vines 12 because it is a Jubilee: it will be holy to you. 13 Each of you must return to your family property in this year of Jubilee.” And here’s a big one: 39 If one of your fellow Israelites faces financial difficulty with you and sells themselves to you, you must not make him work as a slave. 40 Instead, they will be like a hired laborer or foreign guest to you. They will work for you until the Jubilee year, 41 at which point the poor Israelite along with their children will be released from you. They can return to their extended family and to their family property. 42 You must do this because these people are my servants—I brought them out of Egypt’s land. They must not be sold as slaves. 43 You will not harshly rule over them but must fear your God. These are not generalities but specific instructions. Moses wanted his people to be unlike their neighboring nations. They were not to be known because of any great wealth. He wanted them to be distinct as people who had once been someone else’s property to have a different, ethical, relationship with property. And what is that? To have a lifestyle not based on accumulation or always trying to acquire more. After all, at the end of 49 years, it reverts to the original owners. There’s no purpose for greed or monopoly for them. They were not to be a community based on haves and have-nots because whatever inequality had grown over the course of 49 years, it was to be returned in the 50th. Where did this idea come from? Moses watched the extreme inequality of the neighboring Canaanites and declared they would live differently. He named and declared it Jubilee. As Brueggemann said, “this was not just about good intentions or kind thoughts or a religious idea. These were concrete, material, economic acts to be undertaken with discipline and intentionality.” He adds, it’s the “most difficult, most demanding, and most outrageous requirement of biblical faith.” And as many will note, there is no evidence that there actually ever was a Jubilee Year. Taking the Bible literally is not regularly applied to this text. But it does set a vision. It sets an expectation for God’s people. From Brueggemann: God’s vision is not of accumulation so that those with the most at the end win but a vision of peaceableness, of neighborliness “when the vicious cycles of violent accumulation are broken.” When the vicious cycles of violent accumulation are broken. Such as when no human owns another human. Or that no human is ever so indebted that they can never be free. That’s Jubilee freedom. And that’s Juneteenth – a celebration of people finally set free. This once obscure observance now turned national holiday is finally getting the attention it deserves. We should take every opportunity to acknowledge there was a time when some people owned other human beings in our country. To tell the truth. To understand the consequences. And then to repair and continue to ensure freedom remains in all its forms forever. And to celebrate: that God is a God of freedom for the enslaved God is a God of liberty for the captives God is a God of Jubilee for the indebted This is central to our biblical faith. And it is central to the followers of Jesus who declared his mission of heaven on earth in Luke chapter 4. 16 Jesus went to Nazareth, where he had been raised. On the Sabbath he went to the synagogue as he normally did and stood up to read. 17 The synagogue assistant gave him the scroll from the prophet Isaiah. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written: 18 The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me and sent me to preach good news to the poor, to proclaim release to the prisoners and recovery of sight to the blind, to liberate the oppressed, 19 and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor. 20 He rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the assistant, and sat down. Every eye in the synagogue was fixed on him. 21 He began to explain to them, “Today, this scripture has been fulfilled just as you heard it.” The year of the Lord’s favor is an enactment of Jubilee. Release from captivity. Enslaved humans freed. Debts cancelled. Families returned to their land. And the land itself is given a break. Let me say briefly that biblical slavery and the kind of chattel slavery practiced in the Americas are not the same thing. Those enslaved in the Bible might have been conquered people but not because of a hierarchy based upon an entire race deemed inferior. And someone might have found themselves enslaved because of debt, or even sold themselves to pay a debt, but not the kind of economic exploitation that fueled an entire nation’s expansion of extreme wealth on the backs of one race without any hope of release, in fact whose children and grandchildren were born enslaved too. So, Juneteenth. We’re becoming more familiar with the broad strokes of the story. Two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation, word had not yet reached Texans who were enslaved. Union General Gordon Granger issued Order No. 3 announcing their emancipation and “absolute equality.” But it wasn’t just his word. He was flanked by two transports full of Black soldiers. The enslaved saw the evidence of their freedom in the uniforms of all those soldiers, an entire Corp composed of free and formerly enslaved Black men. What a sight that must have been to behold. But here’s a detail I didn’t know.[2] Granger and his soldiers had not been sent to Galveston to spread the news, as I had imagined. They were enroute to secure the Mexican border against the invading army of Napoleon. What? The French were establishing colonies in Mexico so the southern border had to be secured from the French! That sort of blew my mind. It was while they were on their way for that assignment that a storm hit, bad enough to cause their ships to seek shelter. The storm forced the transport ships to anchor in Galveston Bay on June 18, 1865. It was the day after that they went ashore and discovered thousands of enslaved people working in the ports and houses and fields. And so, Order No. 3 was written. What if there had been no storm? When would have word of emancipation, freedom, reached Texas? You know how sometimes storms are called Acts of God. I’ve never liked that. But at least in this case, I’m glad for such an Act of God storm. If Jesus had continued reading from the scroll of Isaiah, after said, “To proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor,” it continues: to give them garlands in place of ashes, oil of joy in place of mourning, a mantle of praise in place of discouragement. 4 They will rebuild the ancient ruins; they will restore formerly deserted places; they will renew their ruined cities and places deserted in generations past. So, on this Juneteenth, let’s commit to building a land where we bind up the broken. To build a land where anyone captive can go free. A promised land where everyone is truly free to be who God created each of us to be. [1] Walter Brueggemann, The Collected Sermons, Westminster John Knox, 2011, page 143 [2] Jayne Marie Smith, Sojourners, June 17, 2021 Sermons from Mission Hills UCC San Diego, California Rev. Dr. David Bahr [email protected] June 5, 2022 “Be the Church!” Acts 2: 1-21 When Pentecost Day arrived, they were all together in one place. 2 Suddenly a sound from heaven like the howling of a fierce wind filled the entire house where they were sitting. 3 They saw what seemed to be individual flames of fire alighting on each one of them. 4 They were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages as the Spirit enabled them to speak. 5 There were pious Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. 6 When they heard this sound, a crowd gathered. They were mystified because everyone heard them speaking in their native languages. 7 They were surprised and amazed, saying, “Look, aren’t all the people who are speaking Galileans, every one of them? 8 How then can each of us hear them speaking in our native language? 9 Parthians, Medes, and Elamites; as well as residents of Mesopotamia, Judea, and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, 10 Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the regions of Libya bordering Cyrene; and visitors from Rome (both Jews and converts to Judaism), 11 Cretans and Arabs—we hear them declaring the mighty works of God in our own languages!” 12 They were all surprised and bewildered. Some asked each other, “What does this mean?” 13 Others jeered at them, saying, “They’re full of new wine!” 14 Peter stood with the other eleven apostles. He raised his voice and declared, “Judeans and everyone living in Jerusalem! Know this! Listen carefully to my words! 15 These people aren’t drunk, as you suspect; after all, it’s only nine o’clock in the morning! 16 Rather, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel: 17 In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy. Your young will see visions. Your elders will dream dreams. 18 Even upon my servants, men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days, and they will prophesy. 19 I will cause wonders to occur in the heavens above and signs on the earth below, blood and fire and a cloud of smoke. 20 The sun will be changed into darkness, and the moon will be changed into blood, before the great and spectacular day of the Lord comes. 21 And everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. After Easter and Christmas, Pentecost is the third most important day in the life of the church. Like many things in Christianity, the roots of Pentecost are in Judaism. You heard Ken read how the Book of Acts records that devout Jews had gathered from every nation known on earth. Every year they gathered 50 days after Passover for the Festival of Pentecost or the Feast of Weeks, a celebration of harvest. For the followers of Jesus, however, being back in Jerusalem this time would have been quite different. It’s only been a few weeks since he had been killed, and then rose from the dead and, among other things, shared some breakfast fish on the beach with them. But then, just 10 days ago, he left them alone again. As the story is told, he ascended into heaven. That’s a lot of leaving, coming back, and leaving again. And promising to come back yet again. In chapter 1, Jesus told them “in only a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit. You will receive power from the Holy Spirit and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.” At that moment, he was taken up into heaven – we call it The Ascension. After Jesus was gone, the disciples were still looking up at the sky when someone asked, why are you just standing around looking up. So, they returned to Jerusalem and spent their days in prayer and chose Matthias to be a 12th disciple to replace Judas Iscariot. One day, not long after his ascension, a crowd was gathered and the room they were in was invaded by the “phenomenon of the divine.” A mighty wind blew and tongues of fire were seen over the heads of the disciples. As they spoke, everyone heard in their own language. They were stunned and amazed. What does this mean? In addition, for them like us, why does it matter? Pentecost is full of meaning, but here’s one idea: Pentecost is important for what it overcame and what it then offered. Pentecost overcame division. Boy, that’s something we could use these days. The Bible includes all kinds of stories that try to explain questions like why do people speak different languages. In the Book of Genesis, as the story goes, humankind tried to build a tower to heaven. While I think it’s admirable that all humankind worked together – wouldn’t that be something! – instead they were cursed for their hubris, trying to do something only God can do. Some suggested the tower project was flood insurance. They were trying to build it just high enough that they could escape another 40 day rain storm - thinking they could fool God! Regardless, we know it as the story of the Tower of Babel, and speaking “babel” came to be synonymous with nonsense, or words that can't be understood. However, Pentecost overcame this division of language. This barrier. Everyone heard the words being spoken by the disciples in their own language. Note that individual languages were not taken away or melded into one, but everyone could understand in their own. They don’t lose language; but they lost division based on it. Their language is not taken away; their understanding is increased. Come Holy Spirit! Apparently, since we all still speak different languages, it didn’t stick. But in that moment of Pentecost, everyone overcame the division of language because not only did they hear, they understood. Dr. Peter Gomes was a form of Pentecost in his own person – African American, republican, openly gay, Baptist preacher, Harvard professor. Gomes said, “the gift of understanding did not diminish the diversity of that great crowd; the people did not cease to be Medes and Persians, and so forth. They were not reduced to some vague generality without past or place. The people did not become less than they were, they became more than they had been.” We can’t ask for anything better on Pentecost! To become more than we had been. Come Holy Spirit! Yet, division remains. Our Lunch and Lectionary group on Thursday spent quite a bit of time talking about how people could be so divided over something as basic as facts. How can you arrive at truth without facts? This came up in our conversation because as we read forward in our text for today, the author quoted the prophet Joel: “In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your young will see visions. Your elders will dream dreams. Your sons and daughters will prophesy.” To prophesy is not foreseeing the future or fortune telling. To prophesy is truth telling. Your sons and daughters will be truth tellers. That would appear to be an expectation of Pentecost. Come Holy Spirit! But how can one arrive at truth with different and conflicting sources of information? Or is truth not about facts but personal interpretation? I guess even Jesus asked, “What is truth?” If we asked one another “What is your truth?” and not only listened but listened until we understood, perhaps that would be a gift of the Spirit. Come Holy Spirit! So, Pentecost is important for what it overcame and then what it now offered. Pentecost overcame human division and offered a new human vision: inclusive communities of God’s love that ate together and prayed and worshiped and met human need. Here’s how it’s described as chapter 2 ends: Verse 41 begins, “The believers devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching, to the community, to their shared meals, and to their prayers. 43 A sense of awe came over everyone. God performed many wonders and signs through the apostles. 44 All the believers were united and shared everything. 45 They would sell pieces of property and possessions and distribute the proceeds to everyone who needed them. 46 Every day, they met together in the temple and ate in their homes. They shared food with gladness and simplicity. 47 They praised God and demonstrated God’s goodness to everyone. The Lord added daily to the community those who were being saved.” What Pentecost overcame and what it now offered was a great outpouring of goodness, hospitality, and radical equality – imagine such a redistribution of resources, the sharing of possessions, that no one had need. Come Holy Spirit! How did this happen? Because the fruits of the Spirit, as one New Testament writer put it; the gifts they received were harvested as love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, faithfulness, self-control, and wisdom. All of which contribute to the growth, transformation, and healing of the world. Come Holy Spirit! On Pentecost the Holy Spirit descended and if even for a moment they overcame human differences and understood the mighty works of God they shared in common. They didn’t go home and say “Oh, that felt good.” They left that place now energized to create communities to live the love of God – filled by the Spirit, empowered by the Spirit, sustained by the Spirit. There is much division in our world to overcome, but that’s what we can offer. That’s who we are meant to be. A community led by the Spirit that worships, shares meals together, and then goes out to live the love of God, to heal and transform lives. So let’s be the church.[1]
Come Holy Spirit! And when the Spirit calls, rise up for justice. [1] The following are from banners around the church from the UCC theme #bethechurch |
AuthorI love being a Archives
March 2024
|