You Had to Be There (Here)

The story from Acts read as the first lesson this morning is the Pentecost story. I hope it is familiar to you, but not so familiar that you did not hear it anew this morning. The book of Acts picks up right where Luke’s gospel ends. Luke’s gospel, of course, ends with Jesus’ death and resurrection and then recounts several post resurrection appearances, when the resurrected Christ spent time with his followers, teaching them, speaking to them, breaking bread with them. Then the Book of Acts begins with Jesus’ ascension. (Jesus’ ascension from earth to heaven was a beginning, not an ending. It was the beginning of the world in which we live.) After Jesus’ ascension, the author of Acts tells the story of Matthias being chosen to take Judas’ place among the twelve and then: when all twelve were gathered together suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind and it filled the entire house where they were staying and they perceived tongues, as of fire, dancing among them so that each person was aflame. The Holy Spirit had come a calling and the disciples and whoever else was in that house would never be the same again. They were changed!

The Holy Spirit had come a calling. Can you imagine what that Pentecost experience was like? It was so overwhelming, so wondrous that words cannot describe it. There was a sound like the rush of a violent wind. It wasn’t really a wind; it was a sound, but a sound that they didn’t have words to describe. It came from God; it was as powerful as God; there was no place inside the house, no place inside the people, that the sound of heaven did not fill. Nor could words describe what they saw. Divided tongues as of fire. It wasn’t actually fire, but when they looked at one another they saw people literally ablaze, enlightened, enthused, inspired. People filled and shining with heavenly light (enlightened), filled and radiant with theos, God’s own presence (enthused), filled and afire with the Holy Spirit (inspired). They heard and saw the Holy Spirit come and they had no words or images that could describe the experience. You had to be there.

You had to be there. Really. No second-hand description can create or recreate what the experience was like. Words fall short. Even if they’d had camcorders in that day, it wouldn’t be the same.

You had to be there. And a lot of people were there, which is an interesting part of this story. The Pentecost story begins: They were all together in one place. The experience of Pentecost was a group experience. Pentecost is sometimes described as the day on which the church was born. What we mean is that the experience of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost transformed a collection of individual disciples into a community that was and is the Body of Christ. But you had to be there to be a part of it. It was the people who were gathered there together in one place in that house who were transformed. As a group, into a community. This is not a story of individual conversions. This is not a story of seeking and gathering lost sheep. God cares deeply about those individual stories of salvation, but the Pentecost story is the story of individuals who were already gathered being transformed by the Holy Spirit, as a community, into a body who then, as a body, miraculously spoke with Christ’s own voice, healed with Christ’s touch, baptized with Christ’s redemption. It starts immediately as this new Body of Christ effectively speaks the Gospel of Christ to every nation under heaven. Not something the disciples could have done before the Holy Spirit came a calling.

But you had to be there. If you missed church that day you missed the Holy Spirit. If you were not part of the group who gathered in the house you didn’t hear the sound like a violent wind or share the dancing tongues, as of fire. You had to be there.

Hear me: that was not the only time or place that the Holy Spirit ever went a calling. The Holy Spirit visits this house every Sunday when we as a community gather together in one place and invoke the Spirit’s presence to change bread and wine and us into the Body of Christ. Do you have words to describe that experience? We are given the Body of Christ and we become the Body of Christ. It’s indescribable, but if you have been here gathered as part of the assembly, you have experienced it.

We try to describe the Holy Spirit in many ways… comforter, advocate, guide, activator of spiritual gifts. I don’t want to suggest that the Spirit is only active within the church assembled. It seems to me that the Spirit is that aspect of God’s being that keeps God alive for us and in us whoever we are, wherever we are in this post resurrection, post ascension world in which we live. And as comforter, guide, advocate, giver of gifts, the Spirit certainly inspires us privately, individually. (Yet, as St. Paul notes in today’s epistle even those individual inspirations are not given for our personal edification; they are given for the common good, to promote the life of the body.)

But the Pentecost story is not about individual inspiration, it is all about the community of Christ, the Body of Christ, the church. The indescribably wondrous, powerful, amazing transforming power of the Spirit for those who were there, for those who are here, gathered together in one place as the church. For Pentecost, you had to be there. You have to be here.

In a recent issue of the Christian Century, Garret Keizer wrote a defense of organized religion. There are different degrees of organization possible within the religious life or the life of any community. And there are definite pitfalls that loom once religion becomes organized. But we should note that in a sense Pentecost is the beginning of organized religion. And the Pentecost story, with its glorious visitation of the Holy Spirit, occurs within the setting of organized religion. It takes some level of organization for people to come together, as the disciples did, in one place at one time. And they were gathered together in the holy city of Jerusalem on the occasion of the Jewish Pentecost, a holy day falling 50 days after Passover in the highly organized calendar of first century Judaism. That organization is the setting for this wild, exciting visit of the Holy Spirit.

Keizer’s piece is titled "Reasons to join: In defense of organized religion." He lists six particular virtues of organized religion. Several of them center around the fact that organized religion takes us beyond ourselves. By being here, by being connected with other Christians and interacting with them, we are taken beyond ourselves. The teaching of the church across history and the shared experience of other Christians across time and space offer us vistas well beyond anything we could ever see or learn just on our own. And this great breadth of learning and perspective also help to save us from our individual illusions about God and from the insularity of any one time in history. As part of the church, we share the struggles and the epiphanies, the writings and the revelations of countless others. These both test and expand our individual experience. Remember that the disciples saw the tongues of flame dancing on one another. They knew that their companions had all been filled with the Holy Spirit. Everyone else’s experience was just as powerful, just as authentic as theirs. And as they lived and "processed" that experience together, its power and meaning would be both refined and magnified.

Kaizer also points out how organized religion affirms the giftedness of the collective in a society that glorifies the individual. And I want to share an anecdote Kaizer retells from a work by Richard Rodriguez entitled Days of Obligation:

"An old nun, old and as white as a lizard, used to pray in Sacred Heart Church when I was a boy. One day, as I passed her pillar, her hand shot out to catch my sleeve; her regard shone on me in the gloom. ‘If you are ever in church, and for one reason or another you cannot pray,’ she whispered, ‘then ask God to unite your lazy prayers to the good prayers of the people kneeling around you.’"

In church, there are always good people kneeling around you. But you have to be here.

As a postscript today I want to point out that being a part of a church, in this case a church organized as the Episcopal Church, also gives us things like Episcopal Relief and Development. Kaizer talks about how the church, as an organization, has the power to mobilize for good in a way no individual could, to change the world. I thank God for all of you who by being here, by being a part of this organization, have already offered your support to ERD’s development work. Last Sunday was our major focus on that effort, but you can still participate if you wish. Last Sunday, within the context of the Millennium Development Goals, our focus was on development. But Episcopal Relief and Development does development and relief; it organizes us to do development and relief.

Speaking of relief… being a part of organized religion means that I know John Wilme. John was a classmate of mine at seminary, the Protestant Episcopal Theological Seminary in Virginia. He was from Burma. Like many students at Virginia from overseas, he was already a priest, and came to Virginia Seminary for further education in anticipation of taking on greater leadership at home. Not long after we graduated and he went home, he was made a bishop. You should have seen the photos… with remarkable vestments combining our Anglican heritage and traditional Burmese dress. I didn’t keep in touch with John. This week I don’t know if he is alive or not. But because I personally have this connection to him through the organization of the church I know in my own heart that somehow, sometime, someway, Episcopal Relief and Development will bring relief to the people of Myanmar. Through the organization of the church, we can be there for them.