Loneliness and the Mystery of Friendship--Walking with the God of Pentecost

A year ago, I was taking a couple of days for exploring historical sites about the conflicts between the European settlers and the Dakota in Minnesota after an academic conference in St. Paul.  While in St. Paul, I had been with some long-time friends as well as some brand new acquaintances as part of our regional group of Baptist professors who take a weekend a year to hang out with our Catholic colleagues, talk about theology, Bible, history, etc., as well as worship and party together.

As I mentioned in a recent blog post, this time of year brings out more intense emotions for me because of various memories from my life spent with Everly, including the last weeks of her life.  Last year was no different.  I found myself deeply appreciative of the time spent with my old and new colleagues.  We worked on our academic topics together, and we also learned about one another's lives, whether as graduate students or teaching faculty.  A group of us were presenting a panel dealing with various baptist statements on sexuality which had been published in the past couple of years.  In the midst of getting ready for the panel, news kept breaking about Paige Patterson's history of sexist attitudes and sermons, as well as his overt attempts to repress reports of rape and sexual harassment in his role as seminary president.  The main point of mentioning all this is that we were keenly engaged with one another, talking about matters of significance for the church, the academy, and the lives of our students and ourselves.

As I drove up the Minnesota highways, I found myself thinking back on time with various people during the weekend.  I had been deeply moved and surprised by a new friendship that sprung up at the meeting.  I marveled at the thoughtfulness and attention shown to me by people with whom I had not previously grown a history of exchanged kindnesses.  I found myself overwhelmed by the grace of unexpected friendships during our days together.

The other side of that warmth and gratitude as I drove alone was the realization that we had all gone our separate ways, and it would be unlikely that many, if any, of those people and I would spend time together until the next May rolled around.  So there was a weight of sadness as well.  I found myself pressing deeply into my experiences of friendship, my capacity to make friends and sustain friendships.  One of the side effects of being a student through so many degree programs is that I have developed very deep and close friendships while working with fellow students toward a degree, only to fulfill those academic years by having all of us relocate and leave one another behind.  I find that I can hold on to friendships with long breaks between contacts, but that I am not so good at keeping them steadily growing by communicating regularly while living far apart.

This inconsistent communication is a flaw in my practice of friendship.  I am too easily affected by the habits of "out of sight, out of mind."  But I think there is another key factor in how I maintain friendships that has also affected this lack of communication with people who are in remote places.  While I have often had a circle of friends with whom to enjoy talking and hanging out, I am most likely to have one or two very close friends at a time, not five or ten or twenty.  That leaves me most likely to be in a close relationship with friends who are close by, to whom I have face-to-face access, and whose lives are present and connected enough to my own that we are able to maintain a deep awareness of what is happening with each other.

For over thirty-five years, from our late teens until her death, Everly was the primary friend to whom I turned and with whom I shared my life.  Depending on where we lived at the time, there would always be one, or maybe two, other close friends.  I am an introverting type of person who can find a great deal of satisfaction entertaining my own thoughts.  It is part of what helps me be a good researcher, to gain mastery of subjects, write about them, and recall extensively from stores of knowledge to use in teaching.  Hours of focused study, thinking, or writing are not nearly as taxing of my energy and vitality as an hour or so spent in a large social gathering, especially if it involves trying to converse with people whom I have not previously met and who share little in common with my areas of expertise and knowledge.  When mingling in a crowd, telling someone that I am a theologian or an ethicist is a pretty sure-fire conversation ender.  Struggling to find common ground for conversation can quickly wear me out.

By the way, Everly was pretty much the opposite.  She gained energy from social occasions.  She was likely to find her way into being the life of the party.  She maintained many more close friendships than I seem capable of doing.  I admire all these things about her, and marvel at how her way of moving in the world was so different from mine.  I often miss one of her greatest talents.  Everly could "read" the crowd.  Now while I may be able to get a sense of a room full of people's mood or bias, she could also quickly discern the demeanor and body language of most everyone present.  Most of these signals and signs go over my head or bounce off my forehead.  I often miss the tone and tenor of what is going on between people in social gatherings, including how people are reacting to me.

Because I was driving alone, I turned on some music.  I often do some of my important thinking through the poetic insights of songwriters.  On this day, I was listening to Carrie Newcomer and the Indigo Girls, both of whom have helped me think through issues over the years.  I took note of a particular song (with a strange title) by Newcomer that day, "Cedar Rapids 10 AM."  The song's refrain is an invitation to continue in friendship.  The singer is needing some time to think, and has determined to do so by hiking up to a promontory to rest, look at the sky, and mull over what is on her mind.  She wants her friend to come join her.

Will you come with me to the ridge top?
Lay all your burdens bare, right there.

It's an invitation to honesty and struggling to get through to the truth of things.  The lyrics continue to speak of the value of deep conversations between friends.

Take away all the white noise;
It getting hard to hear.
Souls stretched as thin as tissue paper
Edged with cuts and tears....

You've always been a cup of coffee;
You've always been the cream.
You've always believed that I was better
Than I could ever dream....

So much for all the chips we've earned.
So much for all the things we've learned.
So far it is still you and me.

Dealing with the erosion of a life by the daily disrespect, frustration, and longing for something more--all that can wear someone down.  That image of being stretched, with cut and torn places scattered across a tissue-thin surface, is something I can identify with.  It's a picture of wearing away one's substance until it seems little is left, and even that remnant could dissolve so easily, with just a shred of dignity and energy left.  In some moments, even one's length of experience makes little difference for understanding, like round after round of poker, gaining chips whose exchange value  you don't care about, or knowledge that makes no difference in the current situation.  Sometimes, it is only the presence of a faithful friend that can hold one together.

Last May, having seen a a valued time with friends come to an end, and sulking a bit over the state of my own life, I was feeling that, unlike the song's character, I didn't have anyone available to hike up to the ridge top and work through whatever could be on our minds.  I was having a bout of self-pity, and I knew it.  But knowing that didn't make me feel any better about my situation.  For almost five years, I had not had Everly, my "go-to" friend.  And having returned to live in Durham, I kept seeing other close friends move away, making it harder to keep that kind of presence I need when things get hard.

I started to realize that one issue for me was that in having had Everly faithfully available as my friend for such a long part of my life, I had come to take the availability of friendship for granted.  It's not that keeping a marriage friendship functioning well isn't it's own kind of hard work.  But having grown into mostly good habits of relating with one another, I hadn't needed to put out much effort to cultivate other friendships.  With Everly gone, and later some of the other friends no longer nearby, I had come upon a new challenge to make my life work well.  The kind of friendships I needed were not just going to walk up to me day after day.  I was going to have to figure out how to work at being a better friend so that I could have friends.

I realized at that point that there were a number of people in Durham who had already been generous in their friendship toward me.  There were friends whom we had known since arriving in North Carolina in 1986, with whom our family had been through many important events in our lives.  They had not pulled back from their hospitality and availability to me.  I simply had not been taking the opportunity to spend time with them and to make sure I was a friend to them as well.  Another small group of friends who had invited me on several occasions to join them for conversations, dinner, or an outing, had not put up any barriers to my seeing them more often than I have been.  As I stated above, I was becoming aware that there were people ready to be good friends with me if I would put in more effort rather than simply waiting around to see what would happen spontaneously.  And in the year since that time, these good people and I have shared our lives and hearts in what is a pleasant relief from the pattern I had fallen into.  It's what your momma or grandma always told you--don't take good things for granted.  That was one of the insights that was dawning on me last May.

But there was another very important thing I was realizing about friendship on those highways. During my drive across the prairies of Minnesota, I spent some time reflecting on the mystery of becoming friends.  It is commonplace in contemporary popular wisdom to assume that friendship is chosen.  "You can pick your friends."  I'm not saying it's a completely empty aphorism.  When a person has "run with the wrong crowd," there may be the possibility of walking away from that set of friends, but it may not be easy in all cases.  People often try to pick their friends by picking a neighborhood to live in, a school to attend, or a club to join.  These decisions do have some impact, but whether the type of friendship that allows a person to find support, honest communication, and love will come about is not so easy to plan.

There is a mystery to friendship that can't be explained by choosing who will and won't be our friends.  The Indigo Girls song, "Mystery," reflects on this hard to explain part of becoming close to another person.  It puzzles over whether friendship happens by fate or choice.  It asks whether the unplanned and unexpected coming and going of a friendship means that it never was real.  It's likely many readers have wondered about the same kinds of questions.  The person one is sure will become his best friend is just a passing acquaintance.  The person she hardly even noticed grew to be the truest friend.  Two people who might seem to be different, even opposite, in so many ways find themselves becoming friends: "My heart the red sun. / Your heart the moon clouded."

It's common in the popular theology of the kinds of churches that I have always been part of to think of our associations, friendships, and loves to be arranged by God's plan.  I've written about my understanding of the will of God in at least four previous posts, but it seems to me that such a commonly discussed topic deserves attention again and again.  I'm not inclined to think of God as a master chess player, moving all of us pieces around a board to meet some grand plan.  I did not say that I do not believe God has plans for us, which I know to be that we ought to become more like the image of divine love revealed in Jesus Christ, living in community with those who gathered to him and found bounty and healing even without a permanent home and a truckload of possessions. 

God's will for me and for you is beloved community, and we are the agents to share in the plan and the construction of a world that bears marks of God's Reign.  Our efforts are partial, local, frail and temporary, yet they are real products of the goodness, beauty, and love in which God has made us to live.  Nor do I think of God as a scriptwriter and puppeteer.  There is not a single predetermined path for all of history.  God works in history with infinite creativity, capacity to repair and heal, and patience with the failures, shortcomings, and outright evil projects that humans get caught up in.  The calling is persistent and repeated whenever we can hear it, to turn our efforts toward the good of one another, and in loving and just ways to remake the communities in which we live.  God is in the midst of the living and unfolding story.

In either image, whether the chess master or scriptwriter, God is more remote from us than the God revealed in Jesus Christ and coming in the power of Spirit on Pentecost.  In Jesus, the Word became flesh and moved in the neighborhood.  Jesus associated with everyday people, not the boardrooms and ruling halls of the elite.  He couch surfed his way around Galilee and Judea, walked confidently through the "bad neighborhoods" of Samaria, fell in with the rough crowd and got run out of Gadara, and he built a movement of the masses that made him dangerous in the eyes of the rulers.  The Spirit came to the people and gifted them to share good news in the language of all who were present on Pentecost.  There was not a booming voice from the clouds, but the many voices in many languages of people who had learned who God is by following Jesus.

I am inclined to think of God's working out God's will in ways that accord with these manifestations of God's presence.  Rather than moving a chess piece near me to become my friend, or moving me around to make a certain person be my friend, I am inclined to think of God as a caring companion, present with us, not scripting or manipulating us as a puppets.  As we live our lives, people come our way, or we come upon people in our pilgrim journey.  We will not become fast friends with everyone we meet.  But as our companion, our guide, the one who is shaping us to be more what we are made to be, God will be at work to help us discern and appreciate the allies, friends, and beloved companions who can be part of the beauty that God intends our lives to be.  It may sometimes seem like choosing, and other times an unexpected mystery.

Thomas Aquinas echoes the words of Jesus from the gospel of John chapter 15 when he says we can grow to be friends of God (Summa Theologia, Second Part of Second Part, Question 23). With God as a friend, an ever-present companion, our prayer without ceasing opens our hearts and minds to hear the gentle prodding of God. Maybe at times it is not a gentle prodding, but a strong push to move, a wake up call to see what is right in front of us, or opening our ears to hear the cry that requires our response.  In this way, God leads us into opportunities for friendship, by being the one who cares enough to get us going in the right direction, to speak up to greet someone, and to above all to listen to people.

If I think about some of my own experiences (and I'm not going to give a long inventory), there is much that is unexpected and unchosen in the process of our becoming friends.  One very close friend was a graduate school colleague of mine, but everything about our demography other than being theology graduate students worked against our becoming close friends.  However, when we each had a three-year-old daughter taking a Saturday morning dance class, dads with coffee and time on their hands struck up a friendship and found they were able to talk honestly about the most difficult things they were dealing with at work, home, and church.  An unanticipated intersection of daddy responsibilities created the groundwork for a long-lasting friendship. 

In another case, an acquaintance came to offer prayer for me one Sunday during worship, and the conversation that followed led to recognizing a deep commonality in our longing to deepen our loving relationships with our children.  If an observer judged by our different ages and background, one probably would not lay odds on a budding friendship coming from what could have been merely the formalities of performing a religious duty.  If this post were a study of all my friendships, I could easily describe other cases that could be even more unexpected friendships.

Friendship isn't strictly a choice.  It emerges out of contingent occurrences.  It comes as a gift more than as a choice.  Friendships grow as a kind of grace.  That was another lesson I was beginning to learn last May.  I can't predict where friendship may arise and grow.  Half a year earlier had met an academic colleague from another school almost by chance as we were participating in the same conference.  It was a break in the programming, so we sat down and became acquainted, learning a few things of interest about one another.  I enjoyed the conversation, but I didn't expect much to come of it. 

By May, we had met several more times.  I was surprised that someone would make that much effort to get to know me, not being in the same town, the same academic discipline, or having very similar networks or background.  By then it was already clear to me that grace was at work to allow our friendship to blossom.  As I indicated in the first part of this post, I was struggling both with needing  a friend, and with needing to be a better friend.  And here without any plan or effort on my part, a friend had walked into my life.  It's reasonable to say that I was puzzling over the same kinds of questions Emily Saliers was in the lyrics of "Mystery."

Why do you spend this time with me?
May be an equal mystery....

Psychologists and other social scientists, philosophers and theologians--we all can bring some general insights into understanding friendships:  characteristics of good friendships, the likelihood of friendships to last, the needs friendships bring, the goods friendships help to produce, the virtues that support friendship and vices that undermine it, examples of good and bad friendships.  When all is said and done, a great deal comes down to the simple acceptance of who shows up in one's life, the contingent events that get our attention, the opportunities we take to show concern for someone, the willingness to be honest and vulnerable, and the interconnection that grows from having a history with one another that has made us better people. 

I think people can reasonably put in the effort, even choose, to become the kinds of persons ready to be friends with others.  Yet there is a remainder in the narrative of friendship that is housed in mystery. Perhaps you met at that time that your soul was "stretched as thin as tissue paper," with so many cuts and torn places you did not know how you could make it much farther without someone to share the burdens.  It could be that sitting to share a cup of coffee, maybe adding some cream to soften the bitterness, led to that mysterious realization that your friend can see good and power in you that you have not been able to find--"You've always believed that I was better than I could ever dream."

I'll close out this far too verbose post with perhaps the most powerful lines of the Indigo Girls' song that say a great deal to me about entering the grace and gift of friendship when loneliness seems to be the only possibility.

Maybe that's all that we need--
Is to meet in the middle of impossibility.
We're standing at opposite poles,
Equal partners in a mystery.

Waiting for the Revealing of the Children of God

Romans 8:19-27

19 For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God; 20 for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope 21 that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.

22 We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now; 23 and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies.

24 For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen? 25 But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.

26 Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. 27 And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.

         From this text today, I want to reflect on the phrase, “Waiting for the revealing of the children of God.” 

Back in April, it was not my day to give words of tribute to our pastor, teacher, and friend, Dr. Turner, on the occasion of his retirement from teaching at Duke Divinity School.  But as I begin, I want to offer thanks that are relevant to this sermon today.  I could make a very long list, but I will limit to three words of thanks.

There are many things that I have to thank William C. Turner for.  I have met pastors of Black Baptist congregations before whose first reaction to me was to be suspicious of what kind of angle this white man is playing.  I don’t blame them.  They have good reason to be suspicious.  And I wouldn’t be surprised if at least part of Rev. Turner’s reaction to me when I showed up at Mt. Level was to wonder just what I might be up to.  But whatever his range of thoughts may have been, his public and official reaction to me was never anything but care and welcome.

            Some of you may think I still have a ways to go on this next matter, but I have to thank him for teaching me how to preach.  I was at best a mediocre preacher in my experience up to the time I came to Mt. Level.  I found in our conversations that Dr. Turner and I had similar ideas about what a sermon should accomplish and how it should be structured.  But I had never had such a week-by-week training school of how to make the most of the divine opportunity of standing behind this sacred desk.  While I still have much to learn, my colleagues at Shaw tell me I have become a decent preacher over the years.  You all have had to endure my training, periodically sitting while I inflict my schooling in this craft.  And you all have been very good to help me understand when I am doing better, or maybe not so much better.

            But by no means least of all, I have Dr. Turner to thank for helping me to grow into a robust and rich understanding of the work of the Holy Spirit.  I explain to my students in theology class that I come from a kind of Baptists whose doctrine of the Trinity is weak, almost replacing the Holy Spirit with the Bible.  Dr. Turner’s writings on the tradition of the holiness churches and their relationship to the invisible institution of the black church before white people would allow free public worship by enslaved Christians—these have awakened me to a lively and powerful understanding of the Spirit’s work in the church.  His insights and guidance helped me not to ignore the way other theologians pointed me toward the Spirit’s work. 

            So today on the festival of Pentecost, the high holy day of the Spirit and the church, I cannot but stand before you to offer praise to God the Spirit who comes to us, pursues us, convicts us, calls us, fills us, and drives us onward toward God’s purpose for us.  We gather today to worship God who is Spirit, and we must worship in spirit and in truth.  We cannot come trampling the courts of our God who sees deeper into our hearts than we can see ourselves.  We cannot gather with pretense of self-righteousness before the convicting Spirit of God.  We cannot fast, cannot pray loud, wordy prayers, cannot try to impress others with our vocal expertise, cannot wear fashionable displays, cannot boast of our righteousness, and expect to please God who is Spirit.  We worship in truth.  We come and offer our righteousness as filthy rags before the Holy Spirit of God.  We humble ourselves to pray with pleading for the Spirit to fill us and guide us.  We gather in this sanctuary made sacred not by our feet, but by the Spirit who sets us on our feet every gifted day that we awaken into the world God has made.

            “Come, Spirit!  Come!” is our worship cry.  “Send the power!” is our plea to the God of heaven and earth.  Like the disappointed and confused, yet hopeful followers of Jesus in the first century, we bring ourselves together into one place, and behind closed doors we await the Spirit promised to us by Jesus.  We long to be nothing less than the very body of Christ, Christ’s presence on this piece of ground, a glimpse of the glory of God enlivened by the unction of the Spirit.  The church, the household of faith, gathers in the Spirit’s power to be the church, to be God’s people, the beloved community living as God created us to be, in fellowship with one another through our shared life in the Spirit.

            This is the festival we celebrate today, and it is good and right to seek to know how the Spirit works and leads us on a day like today.  The apostles found themselves surprised to know the way that the Holy Spirit would work among them.  Empowered by the Spirit’s movement, they served God in ways that they had not imagined.  The Jews gathered in Jerusalem for the festival also encountered the surprising work of the Spirit, hearing the preaching in their own languages from dozens of lands and locales in the known world.  Pentecost reminds us that no matter how much we thought we knew about God, God will still surprise us in the work of the Spirit.

            The texts for today include the story of the first Pentecost Sunday in the history of the church.  We have already acknowledged that story from Acts and will have it in mind throughout our worship.  However, I am focusing on the epistle for today.  It speaks to the kind of experience that the earliest church gathered in Jerusalem had faced as they waited for the coming of the Spirit with power.  Even though the first Pentecost of the church had happened during the first half of the third decade from the birth of Christ, what we might call the “30s,” Paul is writing more than two decades later about a similar pattern of experience in relation to the Spirit.  Yes, the Spirit had come at Pentecost with power.  Yet the Christians in Rome found themselves also waiting to see what the Spirit might be about to do. 

            This entire eighth chapter of Romans is a study of the work of the Spirit in the life of the church.  We cannot let ourselves try to create our own way of living, to be guided by our own desires apart from God’s transforming Spirit.  On our own, we will try to earn our place with God.  We will think God owes us something.  We will try to game the system and get over on God and one another.  But the Spirit lifts us out of this self-centered, selfish way.  The Spirit sets us free from sin and death.  We who are united to Christ and one another share in the Spirit.  The Spirit who enlivened the executed Jesus now gives life to our mortal bodies and to the corporate body of which we are limbs and organs.  As a people, we learn to listen for the Spirit’s voice.  The voice of the Spirit has not been isolated in any one of us, but each of us has the Spirit working to guide and shape our lives together as God’s people.  No one has a corner on the Spirit’s leadership. 

Thus, we all listen for the Spirit’s voice in one another.  We listen to the still, small voice of God calling for us from our inmost hearts.  We pray.  We study.  We praise.  We listen.  And often, we must wait.  Paul tells the Romans that in their time, during the fifth decade after Jesus’ birth, creation waits with eager longing.  Creation…that’s a big word, a big idea.  It’s kind of like a popular word from our era, the “universe.”  Creation means everything that exists that is not God, but which comes from God.  It is stars and planets, atoms and subatomic particles.  Creation is plants and animals, rocks and rivers.  Creation is food and drink, atmosphere and soil.  Creation is humanity in community, neighborhood and countryside.

So if our era of living is anything like the era of Paul the Apostle’s living, then we might conclude that also in our time, creation is waiting.  The land on which our sanctuary rests is waiting; the trees that line our parking areas, the grass in the cemetery, and the stones carved with our ancestors’ names are waiting. The timbers that were carted down from Granville County wait with eager longing.  The congregations worshiping across the street and down the road, the neighbors busy in their yards or homes, those sleeping in on a Sunday morning are all waiting.  The residents of Mill Grove who continue generations of family in this part of town as well as the immigrants from Mexico who found this neighborhood attractive and affordable wait with eager longing.  The workers at the Circle K, at the Bojangles, at the Waffle House, and at the Advance Auto Parts are waiting.  The worn out gravel roads, the boarded windows, the wrecked cars all in rows long to be set free from decay.  The poles that support power lines or t.v. and internet cables, the yellow stripes that divide lanes where we drive, even the deep pit where gravel is quarried wait for the revealing.  The new families who found a place to raise their kids off Hebron Road wait.  The hardworking folk who walk down our streets to reach the bus stop so they can go to work are eager.  The dogs and squirrels and cats and foxes and birds who live all around us—all creation is waiting with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God.

Are there any children of God in Mill Grove?  How will they be made evident?  What would make anyone believe that there are children of God here?  God made this world, this vast creation, with the purpose of building love and justice for all people, for all of God’s creatures.  In all our efforts and failures, we have not managed to live up to what God wants for us and our neighbors in this world.  Mt. Level Missionary Baptist Church recounts our admirable history of serving God through more than a century and a half, and yet we read Paul’s words to the Romans and understand that creation is groaning in labor pains. 

There are labor pains in our neighborhood as flood waters rise through the sewer system into our sanctuary.  We wait for clean up of a mess and for proper repairs of a drainage system unready to handle the rains of the recent storm.

There are labor pains as teachers in our state, in West Virginia, Arizona, Oklahoma, Colorado, and across the land, stand up together to tell the legislature and state school board that enough is enough.  Students need textbooks.  Schools need buildings repaired.  Teachers need to be able to afford a place to live and food for their tables.  How long will politicians prefer to pay more for housing prisoners than for teaching children?

There are labor pains in Santa Fe, Texas, near the home of your own daughter Lydia Broadway who found herself driving by ambulance after ambulance on Friday morning a children with gunshot wounds were being driven to the hospital down the street from her home.  All creation groans, waiting for the revealing.  Where are the children of God?  Where are the people who live as Jesus led them to live?  Where are those who love God and neighbor?  Where are they who bind up the wounded they find on the side of the road?  Where will they be revealed.

Paul says that even we groan.  We wait as a woman in labor.  The urgency can be overwhelming.  The possibility of what may come lies beyond a struggle that we fear we may not be ready to face.  We long for our adoption into the family of God.  We know that Jesus has come to us, that we have followed him, that he has saved us, yet we find ourselves longing for the fulfillment of all that it means.  We feel in our bodies the need for the fullness of God, of the Spirit’s presence and power, of the transformation from one degree of glory to another.

All creation waits, longs, groans, for the Spirit to set us free.  Free to be what God made us to be.  Free to live as God calls us to live.  Free to share our lives with abandon, with relentless affection, with humble service toward one another.  Come, Spirit!  Rule in our hearts today!

For many of us, the calling of Vision 150 has become a sign of the Spirit’s presence.  [Vision 150 is a plan to enlarge our church’s ministry in our community, including replacing a no longer structurally sound building with a new facility that will support more community ministries.]  We have grown into the vision, perhaps initially skeptical or doubtful, waiting for the Spirit to take hold of us.  We have seen signs of the Spirit moving in new ministries and in concern for the use of the land beneath us.  We have talked about the need to know our neighbors.  We have recognized that this corner of our town has needs that we may, perhaps, be strategically situated to be able to help meet. 

And still we wait.  We wait to see an adequate down-payment toward building a facility.  We wait for the future breaking of ground and the passing of a treasured but weary landmark as it is replaced with functional spaces for ministry.  We wait with all creation to see what will be revealed.

On the other hand, if we claim to be the followers of Jesus, if we have given our lives to our Lord, if we have the Spirit living in us, then part of what this letter to the Romans is saying to us is that we are the ones creation is waiting for.  We are the children of God, or at least we are called to be them.  God has touched us, laid a hand on us, filled us with the Spirit, and we are the ones to be revealed as the children of God.

All around us, creation is waiting to see if we will step into our calling.  Will we be friends with the people who live on Denfield, Monk, Ryan, Bobs, Todd, Teel, Weeping Willow, Rainmaker, West, Sun Dried, Felicia, Summer Storm, Justice, Shay, Graymont, Melanie, Geranium, Miller, Cozart, Swanns Mill, Genlee, Magnolia Pointe, Fanning, Lillington, and more and more and more?  Will we learn from them what kind of community they long to be part of?  Will we make partnerships with neighbors to see Mill Grove flourish as more than just the houses near a fast food smorgasbord?  Will we reach beyond to Old Farm, Argonne Hills, Danube, and Dearborn, where many of our Mt. Level family live?  Will we be among the voices advocating for a just and equitable plan for improving or rebuilding Oxford Manor?  Creation all around us is waiting to see what will be revealed in us.

And creation waits because it is not clear what is coming.  Too many churches have closed themselves to their communities.  They live far away, drive to their building, dress in their fancy clothes, get entertained, make networking connections, and leave, hoping never to have to talk to anyone who might be walking near their church building.  Many churches have revealed themselves to be the latest version of a social club or an entertainment center, but not to be the children of God who are following Jesus toward God’s purpose of beloved community.  Too many churches are satisfied to share a couple of hours of the week together, but want to be left alone to make their own friends and plan their own activities without concern for the people who live across the street or down the block from where they gather to worship God in the Spirit.

What will be revealed on this piece of land?  Will it be the revealing of the children of God, the ones who love the people they meet on the street, who are willing to make new friends for the sake of the one who they have promised to follow?  Will it be the children of this world who are mostly concerned with keeping up with the Washingtons or the Johnsons and watching their favorite shows and hiding inside their houses to avoid associating with the people they don’t even care to know?  What will be revealed?  All creation is waiting, eagerly anticipating, groaning for redemption and liberation.

We don’t see it yet, but we hope.  We hope, and we wait with patience.  And in our waiting, we already start to live the way that shows what kind of world we want.  As the teachers of nonviolence have taught us, the path to the goal must take on the character of the goal.  If we want to live in a loving world, then the path to get to it is to start loving right here as we walk toward it.  If we want to live in a world with justice, then we need to hunger and thirst for justice as we seek to bring it into being.  If we want to live in a peaceful world, a world of shalom, then we have to become peaceable people making peace with one another as we walk toward our goal.  The means must be as pure as the end.  The road to beloved community is to start building a community of love.  The path to a friendly neighborhood is to start making friends with our neighbors.  We live in the hope of what we are being called to be, but do not yet see.

The Spirit drives us to be the church that Jesus called us into.  The Spirit gives us strength to make new relationships.  The Spirit gives us power to change the character of our neighborhood.  The Spirit calls us to make our home to be the foretaste of the Kingdom of God, the Reign of God in this world.  In our weakness, the Spirit helps us.  Even when we don’t know what to do first, the Spirit is way ahead of us, praying in us and with us for the fullness of God’s purpose to be revealed in us.

All creation waits, and the Spirit is drawing us forward.  The Spirit is ready to make us into the very people God wants us to be.  The Spirit works within and around us to make things happen that we are not sure can happen.  The Spirit is transforming us to be the revelation of the children of God in Durham, on Hebron Road, on this soil and among these trees, on the streets and in the homes.  Will we heed the Spirit?  Will we walk in the Spirit?  Will we let the Spirit reveal to us and to our neighbors that we can be what God has called us to be?

What a day that first Pentecost of the church was!  Peter went far beyond his own learning to proclaim a new word.  He recognized that the prophets had expected a day when a great transformation would begin.  Whatever the barriers and limits that people had put on themselves, blaming it all on God’s will and God’s plan, the word coming from Peter and the apostles on that day said that God would be shaking things up.  The young and old would all be blessed to see what God can do.  The men and the women would all proclaim the world of God with power.  On that day, Jerusalem changed dramatically, and the change had implications for dozens of cities and regions and language groups for miles in all directions.  It was not a day for narrow vision or limited possibilities.  The Spirit was doing the kind of work that would free creation from its bondage to decay.  The labor pains were ending with the reward of transformation.  The Spirit was bearing fruit that would expand and continue for millennia into the future.

Can we join that movement here in our neighborhood?  Will we join the gospel band?  Spirit, guide us!

Lord grant us the capacity to listen to your Spirit, to wait for the guidance we need, and to step out in public to reveal that as for Mt. Level and our house, we will serve the Lord.  We will be the children of God revealed as the loving koinonia, the communion of sharing our lives and our goods and our gifts with one another for the good of all creation.  Lord, send your Spirit to fill us.  Spirit, change us.  Spirit drive us forward.  Come, Spirit!  Amen, and amen!

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Benediction:

Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of the faithful and enkindle in them the fire of Your love.

Send forth Your Spirit; renew the face of the earth.

O God,

Who instructed the hearts of the faithful by the light of the Holy Spirit,

grant us in the same Spirit to be truly wise,

and ever to rejoice in Your consolation.

Through Christ, our Lord. Amen.

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Pentecost and Education Day at Mt. Level Missionary Baptist Church

Numbers 11:24-30 (NRSV)

24 So Moses went out and told the people the words of the Lord; and he gathered seventy elders of the people, and placed them all around the tent.  25 Then the Lord came down in the cloud and spoke to him, and took some of the spirit that was on him and put it on the seventy elders; and when the spirit rested upon them, they prophesied. But they did not do so again.

26 Two men remained in the camp, one named Eldad, and the other named Medad, and the spirit rested on them; they were among those registered, but they had not gone out to the tent, and so they prophesied in the camp.  27 And a young man ran and told Moses, “Eldad and Medad are prophesying in the camp.”  28 And Joshua, son of Nun, the assistant of Moses, one of his chosen men, said, “My lord Moses, stop them!”  29 But Moses said to him, “Are you jealous for my sake? Would that all the Lord’s people were prophets, and that the Lord would put his spirit on them!”  30 And Moses and the elders of Israel returned to the camp.

Getting an education, going to school, is like having a job.  It has its good days and its bad days.  It has its steady tasks and its deadlines.  It has issues of getting along with supervisors and peers.  It requires an everyday dedication that at worst becomes drudgery and at best reveals new blessings from day to day.

In one way then, completing a course of study or finishing a degree is like finishing a task on the job.  Deadlines have been met.  The work has been approved. Catch your breath.  Okay, what’s next?

But in another way, finishing a course of study or a degree is a major crossroads in life.  It is both a consummation and a watershed.  It is an ending and a beginning.  It is a time of looking back and looking forward.

For this reason, we gather as a congregation to celebrate Education Day.  As God’s people, we gather today to consecrate the accomplishments and achievements of all who strive to better themselves through education.  As the body of Christ, we gather bearing sacramental witness to the work of the Holy Spirit who pours out grace upon grace into our community of faith. 

This Education Day is therefore both a joyous and a solemn occasion.  It is a joyous day of looking back as we remember the blessings of friendships, the fascination of new knowledge learned, the satisfaction of a tasks completed successfully, and the affectionate pride of our loved ones.  It is a solemn day of looking back when we remember the sacrifices required of us and others to reach this accomplishment, when we recall the many times when the line between success and failure was as thin as a hair’s breadth, when we relive the moments when the first try was not good enough, and when we meditate on the grace required to hold us up through the challenges we faced.

It is also a joyous and solemn day of looking forward.  It is joyous to revel in the knowledge that fifth grade or middle school or high school or a bachelor’s degree or a graduate degree is done and we never have to do that again.  It is joyous for many who have been waiting while studying, looking ahead to the opportunity of work or further education that can only come when this degree or course of study is complete.  We are joyful when we realize the possibilities for serving God that have become greater because of what we have learned and now know. 

It is also a solemn occasion of looking forward.  One segment of life is complete, and whatever comes next will have a whole new set of challenges.  It is solemn for those who move forward to jobs or further education, knowing the opportunity will still require striving and struggle.  It is solemn to look ahead and see that God’s purposes for our lives draw ever nearer and require greater faith and discipline than we have yet demonstrated in our lives.

Education Day, thus, is a day for celebrating the joy and reflecting on the solemnity we meet at the current crossroads of our lives.

You may not realize that this Education Day has also fallen on one of the high holy days of the Christian year.  By habit, Baptists are keenly aware of Christmas and Easter, but we often do not hold in mind the third great festival of the church, Pentecost.  On Pentecost we celebrate the coming of the Holy Spirit with power to enliven and commission the church to be the body of Christ in the world, receiving the task of living out the very purposes of God for all creation.  On Pentecost, we receive the calling to break down the barriers of race, class, nationality, language, and any other superficial distinctions, and we become the family of God, a holy nation, a peculiar people who up until Jesus called us together were not a people.  We become a family, not by blood relations but by a new creation, united with Christ in his life, death, and resurrection as a new race of humanity from every tribe and nation, people and language.

As the festival of the Holy Spirit and the church, Pentecost has much to tell us about how to celebrate Education Day.  On Education Day, we don’t want to merely acknowledge accomplishments from a secular realm of life, say a prayer over them, and then let our education and worship part ways for the remainder of our lives.  As I said earlier, we celebrate Education Day as a consecration of the work we have done in school, not for ourselves, but for the good of all of God’s people and for the glory of God who made us able to learn, grow, and achieve.  In that way, the diploma or degree takes on sacramental significance.  Just as Jesus increased in wisdom and stature and in favor with God and humanity, so we mark our educational achievements as steps toward taking onto ourselves the full stature of Christ, bearing his image as a new creation.

The Old Testament lesson for this Pentecost Sunday speaks to our reason for celebrating Education Day.  It is a familiar story about Moses and the children of Israel during the time of the Exodus.  Moses, as the leader of a great crowd of people, often found himself overworked and worn out.  Perhaps Moses had the kind of personality that sometimes led him to think only he could do things right.  If you want a job done right, he might have said to himself, do it yourself.  Or maybe, and this hits closer to home for me, Moses tended to put off getting things planned and finished.  Dragging everything down to the last minute meant that when the crunch time hit, it was too late to get the help that he needed.  We don’t fully know the cause of Moses’ problem as described in Numbers, but we do know how his God recommended that he solve the problem.

God told Moses that he was not the only one who could do the important tasks needed to lead the people.  He was not the only one who could discern the will of God and speak a word from the Lord.  So God told Moses to select seventy elders from among the people to share the burdens of leadership.  Spread out the work, God told Moses, and don’t be surprised that there are many more gifted people out here ready to lead.

Well Moses was sick and tired of being sick and tired, and he eagerly did what God told him to do.  As Numbers puts it, God “took some of the spirit that was on Moses” and spread it out by putting some on each of the seventy elders.  It is a kind of crude image in a way, but it gets the point across.  If we imagine that Moses had power from God smeared around all over him, then what was to prevent sopping up some of that and smearing it around on a bunch of other folks? 

So there we have it.  Moses and God transferred some of the leadership responsibilities to others, and the story tells us that all of the seventy elders began to prophesy, just as Moses had been prophesying.  Now we don’t use the word prophesy very well in our time.  We tend to narrow its meaning to be the same as predicting the future.  But Numbers is not telling us that the seventy elders formed a psychic hotline and started predicting the future.  No, prophesy means first of all to deliver a message from God.  These elders became leaders who spoke the truth of God and guided the people in solving their problems and getting their lives moving the right direction.  These elders became servants of God to serve the common good.  They began to focus their life’s work around making everyone’s lives better.  With all of these elders serving the common good, less of that work fell on Moses.  And since it was no longer just one man’s job, probably a whole lot more got done.

One of the questions that came to my mind in reading this story has to do with the number of elders.  Now we know that symbolically, the number twelve is very important for understanding the people of Israel.  The twelve tribes are a constant organizing principle, and so we might have expected God to tell Moses to choose twelve elders, one for each tribe.  Instead, God told him to choose seventy.  Seventy is not even a multiple of twelve.  That would have been seventy-two, making six elders per tribe.  But the number is not seventy-two, it is just seventy.

If we analyze the number seventy, we can see some possible reasons for choosing that number.  The most obvious thing to see is that it is a multiple of seven.  With seven days of creation and Sabbath, a seven year cycle of debt remission and letting the land rest, a seven day week, and for many other reasons, seven is also a highly significant number.  It is a number that expresses completeness.  It is a number that implies a cycle of restorative justice.  It is a number reminding us never to get too carried away with our schemes and activities without stopping to devote ourselves to God and renew our covenant relationship.

So choosing seventy has within it a symbolism of completion, of divine remembrance, and of just social existence.  But Moses did not choose only seven elders, but seventy.  Now seventy is a round number, and round numbers have a biblical symbolism of many and plenty.  If seven is symbolic of completion, seventy symbolized complete and more, plenty to accomplish the task.  So what we see in Moses’ selection of seventy elders is choosing a number adequate to do a very big job.

Sometimes in church we get a couple of people together and just try to get by, do the minimum to say we have fulfilled our responsibility.  In this case, Moses is choosing enough to get the job done effectively and get the job done right.  This plan from God for Moses does not operate in an economy of scarcity, fearful that if Moses does not have most of the power, then these other leaders will edge him out or steal his turf.  It is not about jealousy and control.  This selection of elders is about what is good for the people.  And unless Moses wants to be a candle burned out by next week, it is also going to be good for him.

So on Education Day, we acknowledge with Moses that the work of God is far too great for Dr. Turner to do it all himself.  The work of God is far to vast for a few people to hoard all the power of God’s Spirit as if it were their personal possession.  On Education Day, and on Pentecost, we recognize that the Holy Spirit has come with power.  God has poured out the Spirit on all flesh, on the young and the old, on the women and the men, on the slave and the free, on the Jew and the Gentile.  By striving for knowledge and working to complete a course of study or a degree, we offer ourselves as servants of God, as vessels of the Spirit’s power.  Today, on Education Day, we gather to consecrate this commitment to serve God and to share in the coming of God’s Spirit with power on each of you who have offered yourselves as a living sacrifice to God.  You today stand in the position of the seventy elders of Israel.  The Spirit is calling on you to use your gifts to prophesy, to speak a word from the Lord, and to serve the good of all the people.

Now there is another interesting detail in this story of the seventy elders that we do not want to miss.  Joshua got very disturbed about one thing that happened.  He was a young man with a lot to learn.  As the story unfolded, a couple of the elders chosen to lead did not manage to make the official meeting at which they would be set aside for service.  We don’t know why Eldad and Medad did not make it to the big house . . . I mean the tent where they were supposed to gather.  Maybe they got preoccupied with work they were already doing.  [From the pew, Dr. Turner inserted, “Maybe they overslept.”]  Maybe someone told them it was a mistake that their names got on the list, and they should just go on home and not try to be uppity.  Maybe they never got the message that they were supposed to go to the meeting.  Maybe a family crisis came up, and they decided to give up their dream in order to support the family.  We don’t know why they did not show up.

However, when the meeting was held, and the elders were set aside for their task, the power of the spirit came upon all seventy of the elders.  That means that when the other sixty eight who showed up for the meeting started to prophesy, Eldad and Medad started prophesying, too, back in the hood.  It was such a big deal that a youngster got all excited and ran to the tent of meeting to tell what was going on.  Joshua heard the news and started worrying that Eldad and Medad were getting out of line.  He burst out to Moses saying, “This has got to be shut down.  We can’t have stray people prophesying here and there and acting like they are in our select, elite group.  There are rules and precedents to follow!”

I suspect Joshua was pretty surprised by Moses’ reply.  The Bible says Moses was the meekest man on earth, and here is one of the occasions when we can see what that means.  Moses did not need to be the head man in charge of everything.  He was happy to see the work of God done, no matter who was doing it.  He told Joshua that as far as old Moses is concerned, he wished everyone would become a prophet of God. 

Whoa, Moses!  Thank you God for setting Moses’ mind on You.  On the day of selecting the seventy elders, Moses has caught a glimpse of Pentecost.  He is looking for and longing for the day when God’s Spirit is poured out on all flesh.

Moreover, this day of setting aside seventy elders to lead and speak a word from the Lord also looks ahead to a day when Jesus gathered his followers and sent out seventy missionaries to all the towns and villages to tell them the good news of the Kingdom of God.  As it was when Jesus’ sent the seventy, the God of Jesus Christ is in the business of calling all of us out to take up the task of living and loving and bringing about the beloved community.  These elders could no longer live merely for themselves, but they now would live for the good of the entire community.  Eldad and Medad, back in the hood, would live for God and for the good of the whole community.  No more looking out only for number one.  Now they must look out for the way that we can all become one.

Some of you, in completing this season of school work, may remember bitter moments when you were told you were too dumb to finish school.  Maybe someone told you your clothes were too plain, your teeth too crooked, your hair too nappy, your skin too dark or too light, your speech too country, your voice too squeaky, your people too poor, your neighborhood to run down.  Maybe it was even someone with the status of Joshua who stood in your way and made you feel like you should not even try. 

But like Eldad and Medad, if you are here today, you have found the courage and strength to put that dispiritedness behind you.  You have risen over that adversity, using it as a stepping stone to remember that God has called not only this preacher and the teachers and the ministers and the deacons, but God has called you.  Maybe nobody wanted you to know that you could come to Moses’ meeting.  Maybe somebody got in your way.  But praise be to God that the Spirit is poured out on all flesh.  If God is calling you, nobody can stop the power of God from filling you with all that you need to do what God has for you to do.

On the Feast of Pentecost, we unite ourselves with the Holy Spirit who gives gifts to all.  The Apostle Paul, who sometimes reminds folks that he was a latecomer to his work, maybe like Eldad and Medad, wrote to the churches that we are one body with many gifts.  The Spirit gives each one a gift, and each gift is needed for the good of the whole community.  If you don’t cultivate your gift, grow it, and allow it to flourish, all of us will be diminished.  God’s Spirit is poured out on all of us, and our educational milestones of maturity are part of the process of learning to exercise our gifts for the good of all.

The Gospel Lesson for today comes from John, chapter 7.  In that passage, Jesus says to the crowds in Jerusalem that the day will come when the Spirit will work with power in the lives of all believers.  He says, “Out of the believer’s heart will flow rivers of living water.”  This is the work that the Holy Spirit is doing in all of us, and in all of you whom we recognize on this Education Day.  God is at work to will and to do in you what has not yet been seen or imagined.  The transformation of your life underway through the work of the Spirit will make you into a wellspring.  The gift of the Spirit will be the water of life for all those whom God sends your way.  Whether back in the hood with Eldad and Medad, or at the big meeting with the rest of the elders, you will be a vessel of the very life of God. 

Receive this work of the Holy Spirit.  Lift up your hearts to God.  You stand here today as a sacrament of the work of the Holy Spirit.  You are gifted.  Hasten to use the gifts you have received.  Amen.