Pentecost Sunday, Year A, 2014 – Acts 2:1-21; Psalm 104; 1 Corinthians 12:3-13; John 20: 19-23
This looks like a rock concert but it really is a church, says the CNN news report. With his leather jacket and ‘body ink’ the pastor, Karl Lenz, of Hillsong NYC looks more like a rock star than the head of a Pentecostal church, says the reporter. “Come on people, that is worth a Pentecostal shout down,” he says. On an average Sunday 6,000 people pour into the church’s five services. “It’s not for everyone. But that’s OK. It’s a place for diversity,” says the pastor’s wife. “I feel filled with the Holy Spirit each time I come,” says a twenty-something hipster. The pastor wears a patterned shirt, unbuttoned, with short sleeves to reveal his ink and the evidence of regular gym workouts. He wears a gold chain. Yes, they have a rock band that sells millions of recordings. The songs the crowds sing with such passion have very plain words. The music is not subtle. It’s easy to distance yourself from that, to criticize the approach as shallow. But there is no mistaking the anointed preaching of the pastor. The whole congregation is drawn towards Christ and his work on the cross.
Now take the sermon I saw posted (with accompanying video) on the website for St. Paul’s Cathedral in London England given by the retired bishop of St. Alban’s. The picture shows him in classic bishop’s attire. He preaches in a spectacular setting with one of the best cathedral choirs to spin the music of the worship. His sermon was on the Beauty of God. He regrets that prior to his retirement he did not reflect on the “stunning loveliness” of the church buildings of his diocese. The beauty is not there by chance, he points out, but reflects something of the “ineffable beauty of God.” He thinks of the beauty of English Church music, of its poetry. But he complains that despite the beauty that surrounds priests their words about God have become drained, empty and ploddingly banal. He says that we have forgotten what words were for. “We miss the truth,” he says, “that for most people it is beauty, in nature, music, poetry and art which touches, redeems and refreshes their souls.” He wants re-instate beauty into our Christian formation, so that we might re-discover “the awesome, holy beauty that is revealed within the very life of God himself, by grace, and through Christ he so prodigally and courteously shares with us.” Once again, I could sense my level of irritation, and false pride rise up.
What I have set out are two drastically different approaches to Christian worship. These two Christian pastors have two very different collections of gifts for ministry. Whichever side you find yourself favouring you will be confronted about your reaction, as I was, with what happened on the Day of Pentecost and afterwards. Various gifts of the Holy Spirit flourished within the Church. Look at the list in our epistle from 1 Corinthians 12 – gifts of speaking with wisdom, of speaking with knowledge, gifts of faith, of an ability to heal, of working miracles, of prophesying, gifts of the discernment of spirits, of speaking in tongues and the interpretation of tongues. Most commentators agree that this was not mean to be an exhaustive list. But one thing is certain from Paul’s letter, he wanted to say something very important to the fledgling Church because already, the gifts of the Holy Spirit were causing division and party strife. People were arguing that some gifts were more holy or more important and that those who possessed them should have a more privileged status. As it was then, so it is now. There may be varieties of gifts says Paul, but the same Lord, the same God. Each gift is for the common good. And everything is to be held together in one body.
This applies with even greater force today. A generous and humble attitude to fellow Christians, to their gifts and to their stylistic differences is badly needed because the gifts given by the Holy Spirit from the day of Pentecost on were given so that Christian disciples would be one.
Just two weeks ago we were heard the gospel passage containing Jesus’ prayer to the Father before he went to the cross: “I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one. As you Father are in me, and I am in you, may they also be in us. The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one as we are one,” (John 17: 20-22). It would not be hard to make the case that the primary gift of the Holy Spirit to the Church would be the gift of unity – the gift that allows us to be one. If the gifts of the Holy Spirit cause one group to feel more exalted than another, there is a very serious problem.
With just the two collections of gifts in the two congregations I described earlier, there was indeed potential for misuse and misunderstanding. I wished there could be a mash-up, by way of a solution: the bishop being able to preach powerfully like a rapper; the cool hipster pastor speaking quietly about God’s beauty in those old-fashioned places of worship around NYC. That will never happen and perhaps should never happen. The real change should be in the hearts of baptized Christians.
The gifts of God flourish in their natural contexts. This is true about artistic and intellectual gifts. But there is a deeper music, when it comes to the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Where these gifts are concerned we are called to weigh their authenticity, with humility to be sure, but weigh them we must. “There are ways to discern which claims or activities might be authentic manifestations of the Holy Spirit,” says one commentator. We find the same test set out by Paul in his letter to the Corinthian Church. First, the Spirit bears witness that Jesus is Lord – “no one can say Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit” (I Cor 12:3). That is to say, the Spirit’s purpose is to bring forward at all costs the proclamation of Jesus’ Lordship. Second, the work of the Spirit contributes to the unity and the harmonious functioning of that body. Matt Skinner offers these useful questions for all Christian Churches to ask of themselves: “How is Jesus, the one in whom we are united, magnified among us?” Or to put it another way, when looking at the gifts of the Holy Spirit, “What builds unity and community well-being into the unified shape of Christ’s body, the church?”
There must be a unified diversity, yes, but the gifts are valid only as they proclaim Jesus in whom we are to be built up as a people.
There will be surprises for each church, to be sure when all things are measured by God.
It’s always a problem if a sermon on Pentecost Sunday dwells more on the gifts than on God who is the giver of these gifts. I am so glad we have Luke’s very brief but powerful account in Acts 2 of what happened. Anyone familiar with the Old Testament would have recognized the elements that mark God’s presence: the sounds, the rush of a violent wind and something like fire, which burns but doesn’t destroy.
What is striking here is that the fire comes to rest on each apostle. The holy presence of the living God isn’t at a fearful distance, it draws close to pull ordinary human beings into union with Jesus and with the Father. This is an awesome mystery. The whole congregation at prayer became flames of fire, a community of prophets.
This is what happened in the early Church, all kinds of unlikely people became prophets, not only the twelve apostles, but people like Ananaias, like the four unmarried daughters of Philip the Evangelist who had the gift of prophecy (Acts 21:9) and Agabus, who prophesied that Paul would be handed over to the Romans as a prisoner (Act 21: 10). In the old days of Israel the office of a prophet was reserved for those with long training and a holy life. Here in the early church, even household servants, were given the gifts of prophecy. And as with the Old Testament prophets they were given, in addition to their speech, gifts of healing, of discernment and of power for the sake of the people of God.
When the Church was born at Pentecost, the Holy Spirit was poured out on all flesh – not as a sort of ‘personal’ gift from God to function as a personal preserve. It was meant to be expressed together in one body, the Church, and to be used together in exalting Jesus in the world. That pouring out of the Spirit at Pentecost was meant to continue – and in the past 50 years it has been more and more evident all over the world and in every denomination. This is a glorious thing – and it becomes true only when the whole people of God draw closer in heart, in mind, in teaching and in truth to the one Lord. Is there a common declaration about Jesus when our style of churchmanship differs so greatly as the two I started out with?
It may appear that this sermon focussed on two very different leaders. That would be unfortunate because Pentecost is about the people in the pews. Jesus may have breathed on his twelve disciples before his Ascension, but he poured out the Holy Spirit and an unending collection of surprising gifts on hundreds of very ordinary people who together would become the body of Christ. That truth hasn’t changed one bit. So, even at St. Matthew’s, let us wait attentively and prayerfully for what will draw us as one people into the whole life of Christ. The Holy Spirit of God.
