St. John’s Lutheran Church
28 May 2023 + Day of Pentecost
Acts 2.1-21
Rev. Josh Evans
(Video unavailable this week.)
It was hands-down one of my favorite classes in seminary: Christian Mission and World Religions.
Together we took field trips to an Islamic mosque in the suburbs of Chicago and a Buddhist temple in the heart of the city. Through individual site visits, we explored a Jewish synagogue, a Hindu temple, a Latter-day Saint meetinghouse, and a Zoroastrian fire temple.
We had robust debates about practical, real-life case studies, including challenging questions about interfaith weddings, facility use, and welcoming practitioners of other faiths to the Christian eucharist.
It’s a peculiar thing to “study” another religion as an outsider. The rituals, the buildings, the holy texts, even the languages they’re written in. It is all so foreign – and yet so deeply fascinating to me.
In every religion I’ve encountered, I’ve always found something I appreciate and even wish was a part of my own tradition – the mindfulness of Buddhist meditation, the rhythmic Hebrew recitation of prayers and songs in Jewish Shabbat services, the complete and utterly devout sense of dedication to the pattern of daily prayer for Muslims.
Sure, we have all these things – in their own way – in Christianity, but there is something about looking at them from a foreign and fresh perspective that instills in me what the late Swedish theologian and bishop Krister Stendahl famously called “holy envy.” At its best, holy envy is the result of an openness to genuinely learn from our interfaith neighbors, discovering in their faith traditions and practices something truly remarkable (enviable), and absorbing that experience into our own.
In her book Holy Envy: Finding God in the Faith of Others, Episcopal priest and professor of world religions Barbara Brown Taylor recalls a field trip of her own to a local mosque. The imam ended his meeting with her class by saying, “Our deepest desire is not that you become Muslim, but that you become the best Christian, the best Jew, the best person you can be.”
Taylor’s experience rings true to my own. There is not a doubt in my mind that our world is richer and more vibrant because of the plurality of religions around us. And learning more about world religions has not only given me a deeper, more nuanced appreciation of others’ faith, but it has indeed made me a better Christian in my own beliefs and practices.
Our world is so much better for the diversity found in the faiths of our neighbors.
It is also for this reason that I find myself struggling with Pentecost.
To consider the apostles speaking in all the different languages of the known first-century world, in an effort to evangelize, to share the good news of the Jesus movement, in a mass act of conversion? Does it erase the particularities of beliefs and practices, cultures and values in the crowd that had gathered for the festival that day?
There’s this tendency on Pentecost to stress unity over diversity. To emphasize the end result (conversion) over the process that led us there. As though the movement from diversity to unity somehow erases the former.
Interestingly, however, the movement in the story of Pentecost, as Luke tells it in the book of Acts, is just the opposite. The story draws us from a cloistered group of disciples into the wider community.
They were all together in one place… and then suddenly the Holy Spirit shows up… and before you know it, they’re in the midst of a crowd of Jews from every nation, speaking in the native language of each.
Now let’s be clear: It’s not that the disciples were suddenly speaking some universal language that everyone could miraculously understand. These were all different languages! The litany of nations and nationalities isn’t there for its own sake – or for the sake of keeping church readers everywhere on their toes. It’s meant to emphasize, even exaggerate, the dramatic diversity of people to whom God’s Spirit and message of liberation is being revealed.
But what the text doesn’t say, and what I fear we all too often read into it, is that God’s Spirit will make everyone the same.
Instead, there’s a movement here towards greater diversity, and it’s a diversity that enhances our common humanity and the mission of the gospel.
In a global society marked by ever increasing hostility between peoples and religions, it is more important than ever to cling to this message of Pentecost.
***
We don’t have to reach too far back into world history to remember the atrocities of the Holocaust that led to the mass genocide of a people solely for their ethnic identity and religious beliefs.
This past week, I had the opportunity to see Leopoldstadt on Broadway – a play that follows the lives of a wealthy Jewish family living in Vienna in the years before, during, and after World War II.
In the play’s first three acts, the family gathers to celebrate Christmas (for the side of the family that has assimilated into Catholicism) and observe Passover, and mostly just go about the daily rhythms of domestic life at the turn of the century.
But by the play’s dramatic fourth act, after Germany’s annexation of Austria, the reality of what the family didn’t think could ever happen to them quite literally barges into their home, giving them all less than a day to pack one small suitcase each, for a future most of them would not survive.
It’s a violent and poignant reminder of a past that is simultaneously too heartbreaking to remember and too horrifying to forget.
In the play’s final act, set 17 years later in post-war Vienna, the three surviving members of the family return to their home, struggling to come to terms with the reality of what happened and remembering, by way of a mournful litany, each of their family members who died.
In the words of one reviewer, Leopoldstadt leaves us with the haunting warning that not only must we never forget the Holocaust, but we must also always expect it again.
Maybe, like the family at the start of the play who couldn’t bring themselves to believe the worst until it finally happened, that warning sounds a bit exaggerated.
But it’s really not.
Just this past February, warnings were issued by law enforcement agencies across the country, New York included, in anticipation of threats of violence against Jewish synagogues and communities on a national so-called “Day of Hate.” Or we can look back to 2018, to the mass shooting at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh. Or 2012, at the Sikh Temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin.
That’s not to say we should perpetually live in fear and prepare for the worst, but it does urge us to vigilance and a more intentional hospitality in an era plagued by increasing hostility.
Ultimately, the fear of difference must give way to the celebration of diversity. That is the gift and the promise of Pentecost we can cling to.
***
The movement of the Pentecost story draws the disciples from the smallness (in more ways that one) of the upper room into the vastness of the crowd. Sameness gives way to difference and diversity …
A diversity ushered in by the rush of the wind and flame of God’s Spirit …
A Spirit that, as Luther puts it, “continues [their] work without ceasing… for [they] have not yet gathered together all of [the] community” (LC 439.61-62).
The work of the Spirit is ongoing. It is as ancient as creation, when God’s Spirit hovered over the waters before life began, and it is promised and received anew on the Day of Pentecost.
The work of this Spirit is not done with us yet either.
***
In next month’s newsletter, you will get a chance to study St. John’s revised Reconciling in Christ welcome statement, which our council has approved for provisional use this summer, and which the whole congregation will have a chance to affirm later in the fall.
It reads:
“Trusting in the extravagant grace of God that sets us free, we affirm the sacred worth and dignity of our siblings in Christ – of all sexual orientations, gender identities and expressions, racial and ethnic identities, ages, abilities, and socio-economic statuses. We confess the church’s complicity in systems that harm God’s people, including homophobia and transphobia, sexism, racism and white supremacy, and ableism. Together, as a community of Jesus followers, rooted in grace, we commit ourselves to the work of racial equity and anti-racism and to confronting and dismantling all systems of injustice and oppression in all we do and say.”
When the Son sets us free from fear, we are free indeed. And when the Spirit shakes things up, we are shaken up indeed.
This is the gift and the work of Pentecost to which we are all called.
Expanding our statement of welcome is one small but important part of our shared commitment to this Pentecost work.
***
The work of the Spirit that manifested itself over two thousand years ago in Jerusalem continues in our midst.
This Spirit is all-inclusive, far-reaching, and ever gathering their people. The Spirit doesn’t magically change all those people into the same carbon copy of the next person. But the Spirit thrives in diversity and uses that diversity – in all its expressions – to enhance our life together.
The Spirit draws us together in new and varied ways of worship, song, and prayer; they engage us continually in new ways of understanding and knowing; they unite us around one table – our diversity intact, honored, and celebrated; and they send us forth – strengthened, renewed, and inspired – to ever more fully bring God’s reign of justice and peace into being.
Alleluia! The Spirit is here!
The Spirit is here indeed! Alleluia!
Pastor Josh Evans 