{"id":625,"date":"2017-06-05T10:02:46","date_gmt":"2017-06-05T14:02:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/?p=625"},"modified":"2017-06-16T10:40:05","modified_gmt":"2017-06-16T14:40:05","slug":"pentecost-sunday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/2017\/06\/05\/pentecost-sunday\/","title":{"rendered":"Pentecost Sunday"},"content":{"rendered":"<h1>Use Your Words<\/h1>\n<h2>A Sermon for the First Congregational Church of Albany, NY<\/h2>\n<h2>by Rev. James Eaton, Pastor \u00a9 2017<\/h2>\n<h2>Pentecost Sunday\/A \u2022 June 4, 2017<\/h2>\n<h3>Click Below to Hear the Sermon Preached<\/h3>\n<audio class=\"wp-audio-shortcode\" id=\"audio-625-1\" preload=\"none\" style=\"width: 100%;\" controls=\"controls\"><source type=\"audio\/mpeg\" src=\"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/useyourwords.mp3?_=1\" \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/useyourwords.mp3\">https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/useyourwords.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n<p>\u201cUse your words.\u201d That\u2019s a phrase we\u2019ve said to our grandchildren when they were at that between pointing at what they wanted and asking for it by name. Isn\u2019t language amazing? May\u2019s first word was \u2018Joy\u2019; she liked the song, \u201cI\u2019ve got the joy, joy, joy, joy down in my heart\u2026down in my heart.\u201d So her first word was more like this: \u201cJoy-joy-joy-joy.\u201d Think how language can change us, lift us up, cast us down. The Biblical story imagines God creating with language, creation by the Word. \u201cLet there be light\u2014and there was light.\u201d Now today, in this story where language and words are so important, it\u2019s clear that what God means to say is this: \u2018ahabak [Arabic}, W\u01d2 \u00e0i n\u01d0 [Chinese], te amo [Spanish] or in English: I love you. <\/p>\n<h3>Pentecost<\/h3>\n<p>The story we read in Acts invites us into a gathering of the first Christians after Jesus has left. It\u2019s Shavuot, a Jewish festival fifty days after Passover that celebrated the giving of the Torah as well as the wheat harvest in Israel. In the Christian story, it\u2019s also some time after the Ascension; we talked about that last week. Jesus had gathered his followers, told them to stay put until they received the Holy Spirit, and then was enfolded by a cloud and left them. So his followers have been doing what we do when we grieve: retreating, I imagine, but also gathering together at times, praying, healing. Now they are gathered together. Nothing in the text prepares us or them for what happens next. <\/p>\n<p>What happens next, of course is amazing, incredible: tongues of fire! the sound of a rushing wind!\u2014remember that Spirit and Wind are the same word in Greek and Hebrew\u2014it all must have been amazing and stunning. Sometimes I\u2019ve been in worship when we\u2019ve tried to illustrate this. I remember one Sunday morning when we\u2019d brought in three big fans; some people who had hairdos blown around were not amused. And of course there are various things you can do with fire; and no, we\u2019re not going to do them here. This building is almost a hundred years old and I am not going to be the pastor who burned it down. But you get the idea. <\/p>\n<p>When was the last time you were amazed? Think of that moment, hold on to it for just a second. Here are these people still grieving, they\u2019ve come together, told stories of Jesus, probably sung some songs and suddenly it\u2019s all blowing up. God has spoken. Like Genesis, the Spirit of the Lord is moving and making and it is amazing.<\/p>\n<p>Creation by the Word is always amazing and mysterious. I know this because I\u2019ve done it and so have many of you. You stand before your friends in a dress that cost more than you spent the whole year on clothes and that you will probably never wear again; you put on a tux for the first time since prom. Someone speaks and asks if you will marry, if you promise to be married and you say, \u201cI do!\u201d\u2014and just like that you\u2019ve created a new family, a married couple. You stand before a congregation you\u2019ve been attending for a while, a place that\u2019s helped you feel God\u2019s nearness and presence and we speak the words of the church covenant together\u2014and just like that, you\u2019re a member of the church, we\u2019ve created a new moment in the church\u2019s history, no matter how old or young that church is.<\/p>\n<h3>Pentecost is When the Church Begins<\/h3>\n<p>So here is the Spirit, here is God, doing the same thing: creating something new. That something is us: the church. Pentecost is the moment Jesus\u2019 followers become the church, become his body in the world, caring for the world, as he cared. And of course they are so excited they can\u2019t keep it in the house, they go out in the street. There are things that have to be told and this is one of them. So we have this incredible scene of the first church members in the streets, speaking to people in a way they understand. This isn\u2019t \u201cspeaking in tongues\u201d, they way it\u2019s practiced in pentecostal churches; they is speaking to people in a language they understand. <\/p>\n<p>Now the Bible takes language seriously and it tells the story of the Temple of Babel to explain why there are so many languages. Long ago, the story says, human beings were so full of pride they built a temple, imagining they could build it high enough to enter heaven through their own efforts. Taller than tall it reached until God saw their pride, saw the tower and cast it down and at the same time, created the variety of languages so that never again would humans cooperate in such a thing. At Pentecost, the speaking is a way of saying that ancient curse has been reversed: God is now speaking to all people in ways they understand. One writer said, <\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Pentecost is a unification of the separated families of humanity. This unification isn\u2019t accomplished through the will and power of empires and their rulers, but through the sending of the Spirit of Christ, poured out like life-giving rain on the drought-ridden earth. In place of only one holy\u2014Hebrew\u2014tongue, the wonderful works of God are spoken in the languages and dialects of many peoples. The multitude of languages is preserved\u2014a sign of the goodness of human diversity\u2014and human unity is achieved, not in the dominance of a single human empire, or in the collapsing of cultural difference, but in the joyful worship of God.- Alistair Roberts , http:\/\/www.politicaltheology.com\/blog\/the-politics-of-pentecost-acts-11-21\/ <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<h3>Use Your Words<\/h3>\n<p>You can do this. Use your Words. We\u2019ve had some folks here over the last few years who came to church even though they couldn\u2019t speak English. Yet over and over again, because someone smiled at them, spoke to them, they understood this: you\u2019re welcome here. This is how God speaks: in whatever language is needed to say, \u201cI love you.\u201d When you welcome someone, you create this welcome, you create this presence.<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s what happens at Pentecost. The special effects, the tongues of fire, the rushing wind, the enthusiasm of the Jesus followers are all just prelude. The real event is what happens when they get out there in the world.<\/p>\n<p>Amazed and astonished, they asked, &#8220;Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? Creation by the words: these followers of Jesus are creating an invitation by their words. <\/p>\n<p>Of course, words are interpreted and the first interpretation is that these people are nuts or in a kinder way, drunk. I think the fear that we will be seen this way often holds us back from sharing about our spiritual life. I learned long ago it\u2019s a lot easier to ask Congregationalists to donate to a cause than to tell someone about their faith. We often miss the power of that conversation. Remember what Jesus said about his followers: that they were to be witnesses. Now what does a witness do? Tell what they\u2019ve seen. These first Christians aren\u2019t asking the people they meet to join the church they aren\u2019t asking them to sign a petition, or anything else. They simply tell them about the power of God\u2019s love.hat\u2019s <\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s the thrust of Peter\u2019s speech. He uses his words to say: first of all, these people aren\u2019t drunk. They\u2019re just amazed.  And then to say that this outpouring of Spirit has been coming for a long time. Long ago, the prophet Joel described it and said it would embrace everyone. <\/p>\n<blockquote><p>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. Even upon my slaves, both men and women, in those days I will pour out my Spirit; and they shall prophesy.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>We talk about radical inclusion here, we use the phrase \u201cEveryone welcome\u201d but God has already gone beyond us, gone beyond our imagination, gone beyond our ideas of who is in the circle of care. \u201cAll flesh\u201d: that\u2019s you and I, that\u2019s you and everyone you meet, that\u2019s you and the whole world. There are no walls in the love of God. There are no outsiders in the love of God. There are no illegal immigrants, because all flesh is included. There are no racial lines here; the kingdom of God is not gerrymandered, it is not a gated community: the spirit is being poured out on all flesh. There are no gender lines here, no lines that say, straight people enter here, LBGTQ people stand over there: I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh. <\/p>\n<p>This is creation by the words, creation when you use your words to tell someone about God\u2019s love in your life. It is creating a new reality, it is making a new heaven and a new earth. and there they are, those few followers of Jesus, off to change the world. How will they work? What will they do? Simple: use their words, be witnesses, tell people what they\u2019ve seen, what they\u2019ve felt, what they\u2019ve experienced. This is Easter: \u201cdidn\u2019t our hearts bun within us?\u201d\u2014the testimony of the people who met the Risen Lord at Emmaus.<br \/>\nOur witness is how God\u2019s love is braided with our lives, together turned into a life line. <\/p>\n<h3>Today is Pentecost<\/h3>\n<p>Today is Pentecost. Pentecost is not just a moment hundreds of years ago: today is Pentecost. Today is the birthday of the church because the church is born new every day that we plant the seeds of the spirit. We plant them when we use our words to share what we\u2019ve seen about the love of God. What will happen? Well, someone might think you\u2019re drunk; someone might think you\u2019re crazy. But what will surely happen is that some of those seeds will grow up. And the fruit of the spirit, as Paul says, is as obvious as a field of corn planted in the spring. It doesn\u2019t look like much at first but eventually it covers the ground. It\u2019s the same with this spirit. You may not see much at first but God promises that if we use our words to witness, the result will be amazing.<\/p>\n<p>Amen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Use Your Words A Sermon for the First Congregational Church of Albany, NY by Rev. James Eaton, Pastor \u00a9 2017 Pentecost Sunday\/A \u2022 June 4, 2017 Click Below to Hear the Sermon Preached \u201cUse your words.\u201d That\u2019s a phrase we\u2019ve said to our grandchildren when they were at that between pointing at what they wanted [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[31,52,3,2,69],"tags":[51,100],"class_list":["post-625","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-easter","category-pentecost","category-sermon","category-worship","category-year-a","tag-pentecost","tag-word"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/625","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=625"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/625\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":638,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/625\/revisions\/638"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=625"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=625"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=625"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}