I never wear my clergy collar on airplanes.
Even so, I sometimes have chatty seatmates who find out what I do, and
then want to spend the rest of the flight talking to me about what churches do
wrong, their own specific interpretation of the Bible, or sexuality and
religion.
Now, some of those conversations have turned out to be pretty
interesting and fun, but once I’m “out” as a pastor, I wonder if people will
judge me differently if I take my shoes off, or read a racy romance novel. Or if it will seem like another
rejection by the church (or the decadent failure of the church) if I say “I
just don’t want to talk about Leviticus and sex today.”
The thing is, for that hour or four, stuck in a metal tube hurtling
through the sky, I am the church for
my seatmate, for good or for ill.
But I’m a cradle Episcopalian, and I don’t get on planes to
evangelize.
Neither did the disciples.
Leaving aside the question of planes, the hundred and twenty of Jesus’
followers who gathered in Jerusalem during the spring harvest festival were no
more interested in evangelism than me in seat 21A.
They were still disturbed and uncertain about this death and
resurrection thing Jesus had done, and were probably too nervous to go out in
the streets where people might ask them about that dead rabbi they had
followed.
And then the Holy Spirit comes to them,
like a stormy wind and fierce fire,
and they find themselves out on the street, preaching the gospel to
all comers in languages they’ve never spoken in their lives.
I’ve always tended to imagine that evangelism would be easier that way,
set on fire by the Spirit. That if you’re caught up in the Holy Spirit, all the
anxiety and embarrassment and awkwardness would disappear; that you’d be
confident and convincing without having to figure it out, and that people would
believe right away.
It is a great idea, but I’m willing to bet that if we could get inside
the heads of those disciples, they would be full of questions instead of tidy
triumph. I’m willing to bet that on that day, those disciples in Jerusalem were
wildly conscious of being far outside
their comfort zone.
Because God does that to us.
The Holy Spirit is a big fan of pushing us out of our comfort zones into
new and unfamiliar places.
I learned that from Calvary’s Vestry, by the way. In our Vestry Bible Study at last week’s
meeting, we read today’s Genesis story about the tower, and language, and
babble. And right away, someone noted that God takes one look at the people
building the city and pushes them out of their comfort zone.
In fact, God does for them exactly what they were trying to avoid by
building their big, strong city and tower: scatters the people over the face of
the earth.
And that happens so that the story can go on.
If there’s no diversity among us, if we stay in one safe fortified
place, we lose the wonder of discovery, the inspiration for change and
invention, and – most of all – the need and desire for a relationship with God
that transforms lives.
That’s what Pentecost is about.
That’s the gift of the Holy Spirit to the church.
Not something as simple and spectacular as a miracle of language,
but the stormy, fierce Spirit that keeps on pushing us out of safe places,
out of our comfort zones, so that God’s story can go on.
If that little community of disciples – a congregation the size of
Calvary on a good Sunday – had stayed in their safe room, wondering and talking
amongst themselves, the story of resurrection and redemption would have faded
and died,
and you and I wouldn’t be here today.
We wouldn’t be here, praying and living our relationship with God, taking
the chance on being inspired to tell God’s story somewhere way the heck out of
your comfort zone.
Lillian Daniel, a popular Christian writer and a UCC pastor next door
to us in Glen Ellyn, talks about the times when one of us church folk is in a
place with others who don’t know much about church, don’t feel confident about
their relationship with God, and suddenly wonder.*
Say you’re in a hospital room with a friend or family member who’s
never seemed interested in religion, but suddenly asks if you believe in
heaven.
Or a friend tells you about a personal tragedy, and wonders out loud
how God can let bad things happen.
Or your niece, or your daughter’s boyfriend, asks how you can go to
church when Christians are so judgmental.
All of a sudden,
like a pastor on an airplane,
you stand for the church.
The whole church.
And you kind of stand for Jesus, too.
You make the
church real in that time and place, for better or worse.
These things don’t happen to you everyday. But they do happen, or something like them, and usually when
we are least prepared to talk Bible or Doctrine.
And Lillian Daniel points out that in fact, that’s not what we need to
do.
You don’t need to quote scripture. You don’t need to know how to preach the gospel. What matters in those moments is just
that you tell your own story.
Your beliefs, your hopes, and your own questions about heaven,
whatever they may be.
The time you, too, wondered if God was mad at you, or didn’t exist,
because you were drowning in tragedy…and how you survived, still believing in
God, or at least in your friends from church.
Or just taking the time to listen
to the one who thinks the church is judging them unfairly.
When we stand for the church, it’s not a polished, convincing sermon
that matters. It’s taking a chance
on telling your own story, offering your testimony that God has something to do
with you, even if you couldn’t exactly explain
what that is.
It’s letting the Holy Spirit nudge you out of your comfort zone to
tell your own story, so that God’s story can go on.
I’ll bet that when those disciples found themselves on the Jerusalem streets
speaking languages they didn’t know, it wasn’t a creed, or a smart,
well-crafted sermon that they offered.
I’ll bet they stammered a bit and lost their train of thought
occasionally, as they told their own personal stories.
Stories about being healed, or loved, or found. About a rabbi whose words changed them.
Stories told way out of their comfort
zone, unpracticed, untaught, and unplanned,
and that day three thousand people were baptized, and God’s story
could go on.
Pentecost isn’t just a holiday to remember. Pentecost keeps happening,
over and over.
And the Holy Spirit doesn’t necessarily make it easy, but she does
make it happen.
When God is ready, the Spirit makes those times when someone is ready
to listen, and invites you out of your comfort zone,
to tell a story, or act
with love, so that one more time, God’s story can go on.
*"The Stand-In Church", in When "Spiritual But Not Religious" Is Not Enough" Jericho Books, 2013
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