Baptized into Ministry
May 11, 2008
May 11, 2008 – Pentecost
Rev. Susan Gilbert Zencka
Frame Memorial Presbyterian Church
Texts: 1 Corinthians 12:3b-13; Numbers 11:24-30
Most of us, when we think of Pentecost, think of the story as it is told in the second chapter of the book of Acts: the disciples are gathered in an upper room – this is after the resurrection appearances and after the ascension disappearance of Jesus. Jesus has died, Jesus is risen, Jesus will come again, we recite sometimes in the communion liturgy, and this is where the disciples are at this point. He has come, he has gone, they are alone, and despite experiencing the miracle of the risen Christ, they are frightened and discouraged. And suddenly there was a sound of rushing wind, and people saw tongues of fire resting on each of the disciples, and they were filled with the Holy Spirit, and given the ability to speak in other languages – for this occurred during a Jewish holiday, so there were devout Jews from many different nations gathered in Jerusalem, and they were each able to understand the speech of the apostles. The story tells us that: Amazed and astonished, they asked, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs—in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.” Some assumed they were drunk, but the apostle Peter seized the moment and proclaimed that they were not drunk, but filled with the Holy Spirit of God, and he told the story of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, and the Bible tells us that 3,000 were added to their number that day. And so we call Pentecost the birthday of the church, and we celebrate it with the color red to remember the flames, and we consider the Holy Spirit and its work among us.
But too often we think of the Holy Spirit as just that miracle-working presence of so long ago – yet the Bible, in both the Old and New Testaments, speaks of the action of the Spirit of God among people from the earliest stories. Next week, the church celebrates Trinity Sunday, so we will try to talk about the relationship of God, Jesus, and Holy Spirit, but for now it is fair to think of the Holy Spirit as the way that people experience God in their present reality. This was not just the experience of people on Pentecost – it was the experience of Eldad and Medad during the era of Moses, it was the experience of the church in Corinth during the ministry of Paul, and it is true of people today. Not all experiences of God are miraculous, not all experiences of God are spectacular. According to Paul, the Holy Spirit’s work is part of the ordinary functioning of the church – each person is given gifts of the Spirit, and these gifts are for the good of the community: some are gifts of preaching, prophecy, or teaching, but some are quieter gifts of faith or discernment. In another passage, Paul lists such gifts as encouragement, generosity, and compassion. God’s presence is shown among us through gifts in each of us, and as we gather in community, we experience God together in our openness to each other and the gifts that we have been given. As we seek to know God, we also seek to recognize our own experience of God, and to understand our own gifts, and how those gifts can be a blessing to the community.
As the story of Eldad and Medad shows, individuals are often given gifts that they don’t seek, but God claims and commissions us each through the gifts that we are given. A significant part of our individual journey of faith should be getting to know ourselves, and recognizing that God intends for each of us to experience God, and for others to experience God through us.
The experience of the church at Pentecost, of Eldad and Medad in the wilderness, of the church in Corinth all proclaim that the God is alive, and the reality of God can be experienced in every era – Jesus, in his ministry, continually proclaimed the kingdom of God as a present reality. The message of Easter and of Pentecost is carried over into the celebration of the sacraments: that the spiritual reality of God intersects our own material experience. God truly enters our experience, and one significance of baptism and communion as we understand them is that God enters our experience as we are gathered in community – thus, although we can individually experience God through prayer, through God’s creation, through love – in celebrating the sacraments of baptism and communion we understand that we are more in community than simply the sum of who we are individually. We have a different experience of God together, and it is because we are together. So in being community with one another, we acknowledge that in some very significant ways we are part of one another. We form a different reality together, and God is present in that reality.
Are we open to this? Are we ready to experience God together? Are we willing to not only receive God, but to bear God to others?? For implicit in the reality of who we are as a gathered people of God is that we are called – we are called to feed the hungry, to work for justice, to live in the new dynamic of the kingdom of God. This is the call we embrace in baptism – to be present to the reality of God in this world, to be citizens of God’s kingdom, to be ministers in our relationships and in our work, and to be prophets: speaking truth to power and hope to the hopeless. In baptism, we affirm that each person is claimed by God, valued by God, and called by God. And so we listen – we listen to the children, we listen to the poor, we listen to each other, we listen to God’s Word to people in other times and we trust that each of us is important in the work of God.
In Communion, we recognize that in order to serve God, we must let ourselves be nourished by God – we acknowledge that on our own, we are not yet who and what we are called to be, but that by forming a community who is nourished by God in community, we are opening ourselves to the goodness of God that is greater than our individual goodness. We are accepting our identity within the transcendent community of God’s kingdom.
And we all have choices – Elded and Medad could have chosen not to cooperate with the Spirit of God within them calling them. God’s kingdom doesn’t automatically appear – we have choices, and God’s work includes our own hard work. And it includes our own willingness to live for God instead of only for ourselves, trusting that we will be more in God than on our own. Are we ready to receive what God is ready to give us, through our own giving ourselves to God? In baptism, we are asked to choose, and every day, we make choices again. Can we say yes to extravagant love? Can we say yes to justice? Can we say yes to unpredictability? Jesus said, “The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” Can we say yes to the possibilities of the Kingdom? Or are we satisfied with life as it is, the world as it is, ourselves as we are? God’s reign is breaking into this world, and each time we cooperate with the Spirit, we make a difference, and we become different. Think of some of the impossibilities that have come to pass – apartheid gone from South Africa, without a war, and followed by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Think of the changes in our own country over the past 50 years: for women, for people of color…and think of the possibilities.
Pentecost isn’t about what happened in Jerusalem so long ago, any more than our own birthdays celebrate merely that we were born. Our birthdays celebrate all that we are and all the possibilities of what we are becoming. So too, does Pentecost celebrate the possibilities that exist within the community of God’s people today – the possibilities of healing the earth, of feeding all the hungry, of choosing to use our powers, our gifts, and all that God has given us to live God’s dream for the world. Amen.
Rev. Susan Gilbert Zencka
Frame Memorial Presbyterian Church
Texts: 1 Corinthians 12:3b-13; Numbers 11:24-30
Most of us, when we think of Pentecost, think of the story as it is told in the second chapter of the book of Acts: the disciples are gathered in an upper room – this is after the resurrection appearances and after the ascension disappearance of Jesus. Jesus has died, Jesus is risen, Jesus will come again, we recite sometimes in the communion liturgy, and this is where the disciples are at this point. He has come, he has gone, they are alone, and despite experiencing the miracle of the risen Christ, they are frightened and discouraged. And suddenly there was a sound of rushing wind, and people saw tongues of fire resting on each of the disciples, and they were filled with the Holy Spirit, and given the ability to speak in other languages – for this occurred during a Jewish holiday, so there were devout Jews from many different nations gathered in Jerusalem, and they were each able to understand the speech of the apostles. The story tells us that: Amazed and astonished, they asked, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs—in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.” Some assumed they were drunk, but the apostle Peter seized the moment and proclaimed that they were not drunk, but filled with the Holy Spirit of God, and he told the story of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, and the Bible tells us that 3,000 were added to their number that day. And so we call Pentecost the birthday of the church, and we celebrate it with the color red to remember the flames, and we consider the Holy Spirit and its work among us.
But too often we think of the Holy Spirit as just that miracle-working presence of so long ago – yet the Bible, in both the Old and New Testaments, speaks of the action of the Spirit of God among people from the earliest stories. Next week, the church celebrates Trinity Sunday, so we will try to talk about the relationship of God, Jesus, and Holy Spirit, but for now it is fair to think of the Holy Spirit as the way that people experience God in their present reality. This was not just the experience of people on Pentecost – it was the experience of Eldad and Medad during the era of Moses, it was the experience of the church in Corinth during the ministry of Paul, and it is true of people today. Not all experiences of God are miraculous, not all experiences of God are spectacular. According to Paul, the Holy Spirit’s work is part of the ordinary functioning of the church – each person is given gifts of the Spirit, and these gifts are for the good of the community: some are gifts of preaching, prophecy, or teaching, but some are quieter gifts of faith or discernment. In another passage, Paul lists such gifts as encouragement, generosity, and compassion. God’s presence is shown among us through gifts in each of us, and as we gather in community, we experience God together in our openness to each other and the gifts that we have been given. As we seek to know God, we also seek to recognize our own experience of God, and to understand our own gifts, and how those gifts can be a blessing to the community.
As the story of Eldad and Medad shows, individuals are often given gifts that they don’t seek, but God claims and commissions us each through the gifts that we are given. A significant part of our individual journey of faith should be getting to know ourselves, and recognizing that God intends for each of us to experience God, and for others to experience God through us.
The experience of the church at Pentecost, of Eldad and Medad in the wilderness, of the church in Corinth all proclaim that the God is alive, and the reality of God can be experienced in every era – Jesus, in his ministry, continually proclaimed the kingdom of God as a present reality. The message of Easter and of Pentecost is carried over into the celebration of the sacraments: that the spiritual reality of God intersects our own material experience. God truly enters our experience, and one significance of baptism and communion as we understand them is that God enters our experience as we are gathered in community – thus, although we can individually experience God through prayer, through God’s creation, through love – in celebrating the sacraments of baptism and communion we understand that we are more in community than simply the sum of who we are individually. We have a different experience of God together, and it is because we are together. So in being community with one another, we acknowledge that in some very significant ways we are part of one another. We form a different reality together, and God is present in that reality.
Are we open to this? Are we ready to experience God together? Are we willing to not only receive God, but to bear God to others?? For implicit in the reality of who we are as a gathered people of God is that we are called – we are called to feed the hungry, to work for justice, to live in the new dynamic of the kingdom of God. This is the call we embrace in baptism – to be present to the reality of God in this world, to be citizens of God’s kingdom, to be ministers in our relationships and in our work, and to be prophets: speaking truth to power and hope to the hopeless. In baptism, we affirm that each person is claimed by God, valued by God, and called by God. And so we listen – we listen to the children, we listen to the poor, we listen to each other, we listen to God’s Word to people in other times and we trust that each of us is important in the work of God.
In Communion, we recognize that in order to serve God, we must let ourselves be nourished by God – we acknowledge that on our own, we are not yet who and what we are called to be, but that by forming a community who is nourished by God in community, we are opening ourselves to the goodness of God that is greater than our individual goodness. We are accepting our identity within the transcendent community of God’s kingdom.
And we all have choices – Elded and Medad could have chosen not to cooperate with the Spirit of God within them calling them. God’s kingdom doesn’t automatically appear – we have choices, and God’s work includes our own hard work. And it includes our own willingness to live for God instead of only for ourselves, trusting that we will be more in God than on our own. Are we ready to receive what God is ready to give us, through our own giving ourselves to God? In baptism, we are asked to choose, and every day, we make choices again. Can we say yes to extravagant love? Can we say yes to justice? Can we say yes to unpredictability? Jesus said, “The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” Can we say yes to the possibilities of the Kingdom? Or are we satisfied with life as it is, the world as it is, ourselves as we are? God’s reign is breaking into this world, and each time we cooperate with the Spirit, we make a difference, and we become different. Think of some of the impossibilities that have come to pass – apartheid gone from South Africa, without a war, and followed by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Think of the changes in our own country over the past 50 years: for women, for people of color…and think of the possibilities.
Pentecost isn’t about what happened in Jerusalem so long ago, any more than our own birthdays celebrate merely that we were born. Our birthdays celebrate all that we are and all the possibilities of what we are becoming. So too, does Pentecost celebrate the possibilities that exist within the community of God’s people today – the possibilities of healing the earth, of feeding all the hungry, of choosing to use our powers, our gifts, and all that God has given us to live God’s dream for the world. Amen.