Journey: The Places We Will Go
Acts 10:34-36
This coming Sunday is an important day in the year of the life of the church: Pentecost. The name "Pentecost" is simply greek for "fiftieth," and is so named because it is the fiftieth day after Easter Sunday (Sunday being considered Day 1 makes this possible for all of you saying that this coming Sunday is the 49th day after Easter).
This day is an implicit reminder of just how linked to Jewish traditions our own christian traditions are. Aside from being the fiftieth day after Easter's resurrection sunday, the day of Pentecost also marked in scripture the culmination of the Jewish Festival of Weeks, or Shavuoth--essentially a harvest festival. This was also the day jewish people also commemorated the revelation of the Torah on Mount Sinai (Exodus 19).
This celebration and its timing is just one more way that we can see how God really never seemed to desire that Christian followers of the Messiah split wholesale from the Jewish faith. Pentecost is considered the "birthday" of the Christian Church, and the story that describes it is one of inclusivity.
Where once this gospel of Christ's defeat of death was contained to a small group of people hiding in fear and grief, Pentecost marks when it burst forth and not even the boundaries of language could contain it.
When we celebrate Pentecost, we ought to recognize that the God we worship is inherently inclusive. Language and nationality does not matter.
And further on in the gospel of Acts we encounter another story, the apostle Peter's vision and the baptizing of a gentile family of a Roman Centurion named Cornelius. Of note is Peter’s sermon where he points out that “God shows no partiality.” (Acts 10:34)
If Pentecost is the birthday of the church, then this story marks when the church started crawling and walking by itself. As many parents have been telling me, once your infant gets mobile--everything changes.
The story of Peter's vision is yet another instance of increasing inclusivity of the church. Now that we have confirmed that the work of the Holy Spirit is accessible to you despite language or nationality, we can also add that the work of the Holy Spirit and the gospel of Christ is a cosmic world wide message. The chasm between gentile and jew in this story was bridged--and that marks the moment when Christianity truly transformed.
I've got to say, I don't know if we can find in the trajectory of scripture many stories where new life and God's redeeming work flourished because we raised up walls and barriers between those considered the "in" crowd and others who weren't. So I find it troubling just how vicious our own denomination's infighting about the humanity of Queer (LGBTQ+) people and the worthiness of their families has become.
I am a pastor who unabashedly celebrates Queer people--their love, their ways of being family, their lives. My early adulthood has been marked by strides that we have made as a nation in recognizing the humanity and civil rights of the queer community. But these days, across the country there is an alarming rise in legislating and rhetoric against Queer people, especially trans people.
It's violent rhetoric and deadly legislation. It represents an attempt try and put up walls that seemed were coming down. And it should concern us--because this violence against their humanity? It is frequently and almost exclusively couched in religious language that has come from the Church across the US.
How can we rise up with a different voice and more inclusive language, much like Peter's voice rose for the inclusivity of Gentiles in the nascent Christian movement? In our own neighborhood, what neighbors still have walls between our community and them? We aren't living in a state or community who is enacting oppressive legislation (at least not yet), but I think there are still other barriers we have yet to pull down between us and our neighbors.
I hope we never shy away from speaking our own belief publicly: that we are a church who openly and proud celebrates the Queer community, their leadership, their voice, their presence. And that we can live into a courage that extends radical hospitality to our neighbors.
The journey we are on, now that we have taken "flight" after our transformation in this worship series, is one of transformation. It's a journey into the unknown. It probably will lead us to becoming a community that looks nothing like it used to. Full of people we might never have thought would join us. Full of new ideas and perspectives of God. It's both terrifying and exciting to think about who we will become these next few years!
Oh the places we will go, indeed!
