This is a “both/and” day: a festival day that we look forward to celebrating with our church family. And here we are, faithfully gathered in our red clothing, but it’s no festival day for a family that has lost a brother, a son and a father; a community that has suffered another senseless loss that leaves them wondering if their lives really do matter in a land under a constitution that says in its 14th amendment that “no one shall be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law.”
As Christians, we are also simultaneously living as the Body of Christ on Earth, simultaneously living within earthly civil institutions, while trying to live the Kingdom of God into being. Maybe the Day of Pentecost has something to teach us about how to live in both of these realms at the same time?
This is why we turn to The Word as often as we can; to gain insight into the challenges of living as good citizens of public society and faithful Jesus followers, true to our baptismal vows. Sometimes something that might be confusing in the Bible, maybe even contradictory, actually helps us to solve a mystery. The Gospel of John tells us in chapter 7 that “as yet there was no Spirit, because Jesus was not yet glorified.” But of course, the Hebrew Bible is full of references to the Spirit of God. Today in Acts 2, we heard St. Peter reference the prophet Joel, who speaks of God pouring out the Spirit upon a host of prophets.” In fact, the Spirit of God is prominent in Genesis, where God creates and breathes individual people into life. How many times have you read a passage in the Hebrew Bible (The Old Testament) that speaks to the Spirit of God” falling on someone? So, what could John have meant when he said, “for as yet there was no Spirit?”
This is an urgent conversation for the faithful to have because understanding what John meant could be a matter of life and death for the church as it grapples with a full plate of challenges at this moment in our evolving history.
I invite you to consider this possibility: what if John was talking, not about individual believers upon whom the Spirit had fallen through the centuries, but rather the collected assembly—what we call the church? What if John meant that the Holy Spirit was coming to breathe life into the Body of Christ on Earth? What if physical churches on Earth are only sustainable if rivers of living water flow from the heart of the collected assembly of believers, as John says, just before that part about “as yet there was no spirit?”
We are entering a transformative period in our church and in our communities and country, as we make preparations to emerge from the “time out” in which we’ve been living for the last twelve weeks. If we can shift our thinking away from consideration of what we believe to be our “inalienable” rights, to instead thinking of what our inescapable responsibilities are to God, to other people and to ourselves, then we will liberate a host of possibility, opening the floodgates holding back “the rivers of living water” that can flow from the heart of our church. Jesus said, “‘Out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water.’”
To be alive at all is a privilege, and we all possess varying degrees of privilege, both earned and unearned that not all of us share. Unearned privilege makes life easier for the person who has it than life is for the person who does not. My time in quarantine has been much easier because I live with two other people and three wonderful animals. My time in quarantine has been made easier because I have a job where I can work from home or drive up to the church with my own transportation without exposing myself to a potentially dangerous infectious disease. My two sisters, do not possess these privileges that I do. And based on demographic statistics, I am less likely to die of COVID-19 if I do get it, than is a person of color. I am a white woman wearing a cloak of unearned privilege.
As Christians, the concept of unearned privilege should be familiar to us, because the Grace of God is truly and completely unearned. The concept of individual rights doesn’t seem to have served anyone well in the Bible; brother has betrayed and even killed brother in pursuit of the cultural dead end of “birthright.” Jesus challenged that culture and turned it upside down by saying “the last shall be first and the first shall be last.” If we can stop focusing on our individual rights to the exclusion of our individual responsibilities as ethical humans and think more deeply about our responsibilities as members of the Body of Christ, we will recognize that the church is itself a living organism, into which God has breathed life with the Holy Spirit. God breathed life into a man named George Floyd. Another human squeezed that life away, while his colleagues looked on, apparently unable to exercise the moral judgment to intervene. It is our responsibility, both as individuals and as a church, to seek justice for everyone, because that’s what Jesus would do. On today of all days: the church’s birthday, for goodness sake, let’s harness the power of whatever unearned privilege any of us might possess to seek justice for all, as we have vowed to do in our baptismal covenant. Know this: if we can harness the unearned privilege of God’s Grace to the task of ensuring that the rivers of living water flow from the heart of the church, then all will bathe in the sweet waters of justice.
Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being?
I will, with God’s help. Amen.