After Pentecost [Easter 4A]

The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson

Acts 2:42-47

After Pentecost

It was a moment like no other moment. You, I'm sure, remember the story; it is after all quite memorable. It started with that rushing wind. And then there were the flames of fire dancing on the heads of those patient followers of Jesus – those followers who stuck with Jesus through death, resurrection, and ascension and were then even willing to live in a one-room loft in first century Palestine with 119 other people and no shower for what turned out to be a week and a half. And then came the languages. A bunch of hillbilly Galileans spontaneously blossoming into erudite language scholars so enthusiastic about their newfound linguistic abilities that the crowds beyond that door thought them the most impressive drunks they had ever encountered.

And as if that Spirit-ed day were not memorable enough, a fisherman best known by his Holy Week betrayal and his many monikers – Simon or Peter or Simon Peter or Satan, depending on what kind of mood Jesus was in – launches into an elegant, convicting sermon that stirs the crowd. And at the end of the sermon, at the end of the day of Pentecost, that little community of 120 saw their numbers increase by almost thirty times in the waters of baptism. That is a memorable day.

And imagining where the young Church would go from there, well, it frankly boggled the mind. The buzz around town must have been deafening. The momentum unprecedented. How might the Church capitalize on such a dramatic outpouring of the Holy Spirit? The possibilities were endless. They could take that frenzy on the road – from Jerusalem all the way to Rome. Within a matter of days the entire Mediterranean could be scorched by Holy Spirit fire and then doused in baptismal waters.

And so what do these followers of the Risen Christ do next? What do these on-fire, Gospel babbling, Holy Spirit-ed women and men do? Well, they start a Bible study, plan some liturgies, establish some rituals, say some prayers, and share a potluck; they make a church. I can just imagine all of those “spiritual but not religious” folks just rolling their eyes. They tamed the movement. From explosive to expected.

But the truth is every day can't be Pentecost. You can't campaign forever; at some point you gotta govern. Pentecost was the start of something; it got folks excited; it put bodies in the water. It got the movement out of the room. But the Church could not live in that moment forever anymore than Jesus and his inner circle could pitch their tents forever on the Mount of Transfiguration. Flaming heads everyday a burnt out Christian will make. And the Church was not meant to be a short story; they needed a second chapter. But the question then becomes, is this the best next step: to hunker down and fall into a routine?

What they do after the Pentecost moment is devote themselves to the apostles' teaching – some Bible study here, a sermon or two there. And they devote themselves to fellowship. And they devote themselves to the breaking of bread – following Jesus' commandment to “do this in remembrance of me.” And they devote themselves to the prayers.

Unlike the mass hysteria of Pentecost morning, the devotional practices that follow feel to us very familiar. We're not recreating Pentecost on a weekly basis but most churches can still offer a sermon, coffee hour, and a prayer or two. A little more tortoise than hare.

But at what cost? Routine and ritual is important; it is good for the soul. Without routine and ritual everything becomes a short story. And the work of the Holy Spirit in and through the Church, in and through each and every one of us is way too important to be anything other than an epic tale. We need our rituals; they sustain us. But the comfort of the familiar also threatens to strip from our memories the radical nature of our rituals. We get comfortable and forget just how strange this early Christian community truly was. And when we lose sight of that, we tend to forget that we are called to be just as strange as they were.

When they walked out of Pentecost and into that first Christian community, these earliest followers of the Risen Christ did not set out to establish an institution that would run on committee meetings, fundraisers, schisms, and denominational politics. The first leaders of the Church were not looking to be memorialized or establish a legacy or get their names on church marquees. Instead, they were pretty convinced that the Holy Spirit showed up to empower them to do one thing: carry on the work of Jesus. And the work of Jesus was to usher in the kingdom of God. So they weren't looking for an institution; they were looking for the kingdom.

And that kingdom was not to be found in the palaces of Rome. It was not political strategies that they held in common. They were not looking to secure political influence or force folks to adopt their religious ideology.

If Pentecost made anything clear it was that the Holy Spirit was calling them to something new – a new way of living in this old world. The God of Resurrection life was ushering in a reality that undermined the politics of division and death that for so long had dominated. And rather than work through the old systems with their old kings supporting their old forms of injustice and oppression, a new spirit was blowing in a strange new kingdom.

And these lowly followers of a crucified criminal were the ones God chose to be about this kingdom work. And this is what they did, this was their radical move, this was the way of their strange new kingdom: they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread, and the prayers. They held all things in common; they sold all of their possession and took care of each other. They formed a family – a family in which love was more important than power, in which friendship had higher value than money or stuff. It was a strange kingdom indeed.

It might seem a little quaint. It might look a little naive. It might feel a little strange. This kingdom, with its crucified king and alternative values, even ruffled a few feathers. This kingdom did not come to play nice with the established order. The kingdom did not come to cozy up to politicians or powerful people. The kingdom is God's assertion that, in the words of NT Wright, “the world of debt, the world of injustice, [has]come to an end.” And it was this new Church, established by the Holy Spirit, that God chose to model the new kingdom of forgiveness and love that will rise in its place.

The Church is not called to be some stale institution or political player. The Church is called to put flesh on Jesus' prayer for the kingdom to come – to live the values of Heaven in this messy world.

By devoting ourselves to the apostles' teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread, and to the prayers, by devoting ourselves to each other – brothers and sisters through the waters of baptism, we provide an alternative to all of those things in this world that corrupt and destroy the creatures of God: an alternative to the isolation that plagues our world, an alternative to the separation that confines people to lives of loneliness, an alternative to the cold individualism that harms the soul, an alternative to selfish consumerism that reduces people to value of their bank accounts, an alternative to the fearful nationalism that denies the image of God in people beyond our borders, an alternative to the racism and prejudice that violates Jesus' commandment to love our neighbors as ourselves. The work of the Church is to start living the kingdom of God right here and right now – to give the world a vision of what can be.

The kingdom of God is not a one-time event. The kingdom of God is not a short story. The kingdom of God is an epic dream realized only through the stubborn efforts of devoted people – people who believe that the nightmares of this world can and will give way to the reality of God's dream. Devoted people who keep showing up, who live the kingdom even when the dream seems like a mere fantasy, who live the kingdom because they believe that one day the kingdom dream will be this world's reality.

Those first Christians were strange; they dreamed strange dreams of a strange kingdom. The Church, at its best, is strange – still dreaming dreams of God's kingdom. You are called to devote yourself to a Gospel message that commands you to love your enemy, forgive those who hate you, welcome the stranger, and lose your life; that's strange; that's not a popular message. You are called to adopted a new family, break bread with folks who don't vote like you do, to pray to a God you cannot see, to worship a man killed two thousand years ago, and to live as if God's dream for this world could possibly come true. You are called to hope when things seem hopeless. You are called fill cemeteries with alleluias. You are called to dream the strange dreams of God's kingdom.

Pentecost was a memorable day and a lot of people came to Jesus on that day. Pentecost was a good first chapter. But it was after Pentecost, the next day, when the Church started acting like the Church, being about the mission of Jesus, stubbornly living out the kingdom of God, that things really got good.