The Birth of the Church
Acts 2:1-21
They were all together, celebrating Pentecost.
As a Jewish people, Pentecost was already a festival they knew. It was the feast of 50 days; 50 days following the Passover, and also one of three pilgrimage festivals that brought Jews from all around the Mediterranean back to Jerusalem for the celebration.
This festival, like all the others, connected them to their ancient story; the story that formed their identity. From Passover, commemorating the time of their redemption from slavery in Egypt to Pentecost, the time when God gave them the Torah, on Mount Sinai, counting the omer for 49 days in between those two festivals represented spiritual preparation and anticipation for the giving of the Torah.
When the disciples of Jesus counted the Omer following the crucifixion of Jesus, they did it with a combination of wonder and confusion.
In those 49 days they had mourned the horrific crucifixion of Jesus, been stunned by his resurrection appearances, been wondering over and over again about what his life and words and healings and eventually his death had meant. And as they wondered these things, they had not ceased to gather. In the midst of their gathering and their worship and their participation in their ancient story of freedom and identify formation:
In the midst of this
God did a new thing,
God sent the Holy Spirit among them in a new way.
With wind and fire and new speech.
This gathering of Galileans – fishermen, sellers of fish, lepers, others who had had demons cast out, wealthy women who took care of their needs from their own resources, into this gathering something new happened.
It was so powerful, this violent wind and fire and new speech, that it brought to mind for Peter the prophetic passage of Joel.
Filled with the power of the Spirit himself Peter stood up in their midst, denied the accusation that any of them were drunk because it was only 9:00 in the morning and repeated the words of the prophet:
‘In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams.
2:18 Even upon my slaves, both men and women, in those days I will pour out my Spirit; and they shall prophesy.
2:21 …..Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.’
Peter used this passage in Joel to begin to explain this dramatic experience of the outpouring of the Spirit and its connection with the man Jesus who had been crucified and was raised. This man, Jesus, whom death could not contain, promised that the gift of the Holy Spirit would come to his followers. And as they continued to gather, in remembrance of the ancient story of their identity formation, this outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost began a new chapter in that identity formation.
When we explain this event to children we often use the imagery of the birth of the church. And when we celebrate Pentecost we say that we are celebrating the birthday of the church.
Birthdays as we know are often a fairly tame affair. We usually have candles, and cake and maybe balloons and we sing, Happy Birthday or some equivalent. I realize that lots of people get creative as well and do something on a birthday that is a favourite something of the birthday celebrant.
But usually birthdays don’t try to recreate the drama of the original moment. The moment of birth as far as I know is rarely accompanied by cake, balloons and singing. The original moment of birth, as I’ve experienced it anyway, is a pretty raw and powerful event just as the coming of the Holy Spirit as described in Acts seems to have been raw and powerful – violent wind, flame and new language.
This dramatic entrance of the Spirit at Pentecost reminds me of a reading about the Shekinah, with which I am familiar and one that I have wanted for some time to share with you and this seemed like the right moment. Shekinah is a transliteration of a Hebrew word that is often used in Jewish writings to speak of God’s presence. The term has feminine gender and means “that which dwells,” or if feminine could be translated, “She who dwells.” The Shekinah is implied throughout the Bible whenever it refers to God’s nearness either in a person, object or God’s glory. The author of this piece of creative writing about the Shekinah, or Glory of God, Kristen Johnson Ingram, was seeking to know the feminine nature of God, reminding herself as she waited that she would know Her when she arrived.
and so I begin reading part way through this brilliant piece of writing that was originally published in 1994. Kristen writes:
“I knew she would be kind, calm, and meek, would be like the portrayals in movies of the Virgin Mary – wise-face, full of s
weetness, a quiet and gentle spirit. Sagacious words would fall from her lips like petals, her hand would steady me, she would be clothed in righteousness and adorned with charitable works. She will be nothing like me, I said, but she will make me better.
I sometimes prayed to her, calling her Lady and Sister; I waited for her beside quiet pools and in the fernlight depths of the woods. I listened for her in the voices of flutes and harps, sought a vision of her in moments of peace.
And so it was without my expectation that Shekinah roared into my life like a hurricane, like unchanneled electricity, like a torch suddenly thrust into the black darkness, like cosmic fanfare. She came unpredictably and unpredictable, full of demand and violent love, yanking me up and plunging me into the fire.
She came as Wind, she came as passionate intuition, she came as blinding light and breath-sucking presence. Shekinah came not as a handmaiden but as a queen, not whispering but crying out like a hoyden in the streets, bringing no consolation but urgency of motion. She sails out of heaven on powerful wings, she dives out of heaven in flashing tongues of fire, she blazes from heaven onto altars like a supernova. She moved over the face of the waters at Creation and caught the blood of the crucified Christ in her chalice. She is glory, she is light, she is clothed with the sun and stands on the moon, she wears a crown of twelve stars on her head.
She takes other names; she is Shabbat, she is Presence: and she is Spirit, the Hebrew Ruach. In the beginning, Breath or Spirit or Wind rippled over the face of the womb of creation, brooded over and within the womb, stirred the waters to break and gush out and let God give birth to everything.
She moved over the face of the waters, roughing them up as she blew over them, sending her own divine Breath into the deep, sending down all the primal Cause through whatever was here when there was nothing. She is the Life-Giver, the Paraclete, the wildest force known to God. She is God and she is God’s breath; she is the Spirit of God, she is the wind that blows suns and Magellanic clouds and gravity and particles from Kingdom Come and back again. And she is God.
She travels at warp speed and beyond: she is in the mouth of blessed Miriam on the far shore of the Yam Suph, drives Miriam to grab her tambourine and lead the dance of rejoicing. Shekihah vaults to glorious Deborah, and gives her an army and a song: she races into the mouth of angry Huldah as she warns the men of Judah that they have forsaken God and God’s book: she speaks through Isaiah’s prophetess wife, she comes forth in the host of heaven to say she will go forth and delude the priests of Ahab. And Shekinah swirls over a young Galilean girl and lines her womb to prepare it for a salvific miracle.
She is not content with the past, but wants your present life. She hovers over a woman kneading the Communion bread who wants to be a priest, and rushes on to dance on the teeth of a [Korean] teenager who is determined to speak in tongues.
When Shekinah comes into your life she ruins it. You may be perfectly happy until you forget yourself for a moment and pray; and then there she is, on your threshold or sliding down your chimney or peering in your windows. The Breath of God is also the wrath of God that can both woo you back to life and start a nuclear winter of the soul. Her name also means something like “a region of the sky,” which I presume means that she not only creates but somehow participates in her own creation.
‘That’s it” you yell; “That far enough. This is heading toward pantheism.”
“Actually, pan-en-theism,” Shekinah says, “I am in nothing I make, but all I create is in me. Allow me to set you on fire, and then you’ll understand.”
Don’t run. Don’t run away from the fire. And don’t just get warm: burn. Shekinah sets a universe aflame and drives it with her fiery breath until you are fire all over, until fire heats your bones and surges out of your fingertips and consumes your soul. Spirit will cool you as well as heat you, too. God’s Wind shimmers over the deep of your mind and heart until the surface tension is broken, until ripple after ripple become wave after wave, and the waves break on fresh, untrod rock and the rock breaks into sand and the cool sand begins to heat up again like a throbbing womb. The Breath of God holds you in her hands and breathes into your interstices until life pours into you and through you and over you until you are bathed in Creation.
God the Spirit is not only holy but determined to make you holy too. She urges you to eat, yes, just a little of this bread, and here, drink some of this wine, just to wash it down, just so you’ll grow strong, just so you’ll be fit for the Kingdom of Heaven.
“Act like God,” you yell at raucous, fecund Shekinah. She reminds you that she is acting like God, is a matter of fact being God, whose whole, full Name rings Creation like a bell and who roars through your bones like a mighty, rushing wind. Because she is ageless, so are you in her presence: she doesn’t care if you are fifteen or sixty-seven. Because she is tireless, so are you when you’re full of her, writing or sculpting or singing or rocking children into the night. Because she blesses Earth, she will drive you to making bread or shearing lambs, to preaching or painting, to using your hands to bless when you are in her presence. She will swallow you alive and make you more yourself than you dreamed you could be.
A man planning to be a Catholic priest comes to see me regularly for spiritual counsel. Do you know God as Shekinah? I ask him one day. He blanches, he cringes. “I’m afraid,’ he says finally. “She will consume me.” Yesss…..
Here ends my reading of this creative writing by Kristen Johnson Ingram.
And so it is with the power of the Spirit that entered the feast of Pentecost like a violent rushing wind and tongues of fire as if on each of them. The power of the Spirit has always frightened me a little, for even as a child, I was afraid that the Spirit might make me stand up and speak like Peter and that’s the last thing I ever wanted to do.
But when the Spirit is at work in the church what might have been frightening is all of a sudden right. Our confession of Faith in a Mennonite Perspective says this about the Spirit
….the Holy Spirit gives us power to proclaim the word with boldness, to love enemies, to suffer in hope, to remain faithful in trials, and to rejoice in everything. As we walk by the Spirit, the Spirit produces the fruit of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
According to our passage in Romans today as long as creation exists, the Spirit will be at work, interceding for us with sighs too deep for words, groaning with us and all of creation in our efforts and desires to live into the kind of world for which we hope but cannot yet see.
As with the passage in Joel are we in the last days? The Mayan calendar would have us think so.
Whether we are or not, let us not cease to gather and remember our identity forming ancient story, as we will again when we celebrate communion today for it was when they were gathered and celebrating their story that God gave birth to the church through the power of the Spirit. Will the Spirit yet again grant that our young women and men will prophesy and our young ones have visions, and old ones dream dreams? If it is so, and we are once again consumed by Her power, may we be granted the bravery we need to live into this power. We might end up being even more of what the Spirit is creating us to be than we ever dreamed we could be. Amen.