Birth

Charlotte Collins Reed

Christ Church Episcopal

May 31, 2020

Pentecost

          Last weekend, our Cincinnati granddaughter, Evelyn, celebrated her first birthday.  On Friday night, Don and I gathered via Zoom with Evelyn, her parents, and her other set of grandparents who live in Cincinnati, for the traditional cake smash.  We watched Evelyn’s delight as she sat on a blanket in the yard with only a diaper on and ate the raspberries and whipped cream off the top before grabbing the chocolate cake, eating some, and smearing more on her face and her father’s shirt.  On Saturday morning, there was a larger Zoom birthday party with friends and family from all over the country gathered for the opening of the gifts and the “real” birthday cake, which is the traditional family cake that I made and sent.  Zoom birthday parties are just about the only birthday parties these days, and they will do when Covid-19 keeps us apart.  But Zoom is a far cry from being there in person.

          Today is Pentecost, the birthday of the church, and here we are at another online birthday party.  Rather than being gathered here in this church to celebrate, to baptize, to hear the gospel read in many languages, have birthday cake at coffee hour, and all the other ways we celebrate this day, we’re scattered all over, gathered on Zoom and Facebook Live, being the church that was born on Pentecost in new ways most of us never imagined.

          On Pentecost, the disciples were gathered in Jerusalem for the Jewish festival of Pentecost, or the Feast of Weeks, which celebrates the day God gave the law to Moses on Mt. Sinai.  On the day that the disciples were gathered to celebrate this Jewish festival, we are told that the Holy Spirit descended as wind filled the house and tongues of fire rested on each of them.  The disciples were given the ability to speak in other languages so that everyone around them could hear and understand the gospel in his or her own language.  The fire of Pentecost brought people together in a new way, creating the unity that comes when people can understand each other.    

          When the fires of Pentecost rested on the disciples and gave them the gifts they needed to proclaim the gospel to an unsettled world, the Church was born.  The reading from 1 Corinthians speaks of the gifts of the Spirit directly with a long, but not exhaustive list of those gifts and reminds us that we are one body and that all the members of the body, along with their gifts, are needed for the body to function well.  All of the gifts are needed for the Body of Christ to do her work.  But I do not want to lose the fact that the Holy Spirit came as the disciples were gathered to celebrate the Jewish feast of Pentecost and the giving of the law on Mt. Sinai.  In Matthew’s gospel, when Jesus is asked which of those commandments is the greatest, he replies “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.’

          I do not think it is a coincidence that the disciples were baptized with the fire of Holy Spirit and empowered to be the church in the world on the day they gathered to celebrate the giving of the law that taught them how to love God and love their neighbor.  While the apostle Paul writes about many different spiritual gifts in the reading from I Corinthians that we heard this morning, Paul also tells us in the very next chapter that the greatest gift of all is love.    

          Pentecost is a baptismal feast day, although we are not able to baptize this morning.  In the Episcopal Church, at every baptism, we promise to proclaim the gospel of love in specific ways.  We promise to be faithful in worship, to repent and return when we fall into sin.  We promise proclaim the gospel in word and action, to seek and serve Christ in all people, to work for justice and peace, and to respect the dignity of every human being.  In other words, we promise to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love our neighbor as ourselves in very specific ways.  In Luke’s gospel, when Jesus is asked “Who is my neighbor” the response is the story of the Good Samaritan.  In short, the answer is that our neighbors are those who do not look like us, believe like us, have the same background or ethnicity as we do.  Our neighbors are the whole human family.

          Today, on the day that we celebrate the fires of Pentecost, we read about fires around the country as people protest, sometimes peacefully but too often violently, the injustice of racism manifest this week in the murder of George Floyd, a black man, at the hands, or knee, of a white police officer.  Twenty five cities in the US are under curfew and five of those cities are in Ohio, by far the most of any one state.  Living with Covid-19, the over 100, 000 deaths, and all the restrictions to protect our health already had nerves on edge, causing conflict and violence.  Now cities have erupted in angry, fiery protest against the ongoing, systemic injustice manifest in the murder of George Floyd.  Into weeks like this one, Pentecost gives us the gifts we need to do the hard work of being the church as we proclaim the gospel, loving God with our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and loving our neighbor as ourselves by seeking and serving Christ in all people, working for justice and peace, and respecting the dignity of every human being.  Into weeks like this one, Pentecost gives us the courage we need to speak out against racism, injustice, and all that divides the human family from each other and treats some members of the human family as less than others.  Into weeks like this one, Pentecost has given us the gifts we need, as Paul says, to serve the Common Good.  This morning, Jesus says “Peace be with you.  As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”  Jesus is not talking about cheap, superficial peace.  Jesus is talking about deep peace, real peace, that respects the dignity of every human being and requires hard work.  For difficult weeks like these and the hard work ahead, the fire of the Holy Spirit gave birth to the Church on Pentecost.

                                                                             Amen.