Understood

Acts 2:1-21

When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.

Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. Amazed and astonished, they asked, ‘Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs—in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.’ All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, ‘What does this mean?’ But others sneered and said, ‘They are filled with new wine.’

But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them: ‘Men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to what I say. Indeed, these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o’clock in the morning. No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel:
“In the last days it will be, God declares,
that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh,
   and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
and your young men shall see visions,
   and your old men shall dream dreams.
Even upon my slaves, both men and women,
   in those days I will pour out my Spirit;
     and they shall prophesy.
And I will show portents in the heaven above
   and signs on the earth below,
     blood, and fire, and smoky mist.
The sun shall be turned to darkness
   and the moon to blood,
     before the coming of the Lord’s great and glorious day.
Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.”

I always wonder what I should do when a special Sunday in the Christian calendar falls on a special day or weekend in our American holiday calendar. Sometimes the scripture or theme doesn’t match up with the holiday at all. Sometimes we get lucky and it does. In the case of today, in which we’re celebrating Pentecost and Memorial Day, on the surface it didn’t seem that these two celebrations were especially complimentary, but the more I thought about, the more I realized that they’re both, in some ways, about understanding, or a lack thereof.

Pentecost is the day in which the Holy Spirit, at long last, was gifted to God’s people, and for one brief and beautiful moment, they could all understand one another in their native tongues. And this day seems to have been foreshadowed in the gospel of John, in a passage that we discussed during Dinner Church on Wednesday—Jesus says, “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink. As the scripture has said, ‘Out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water.’ Now he said this about the Spirit, which believers in him were to receive; for as yet there was no Spirit, because Jesus was not yet glorified.” Well, we’re at the point where Jesus has been glorified, and the Spirit is very much with us.

As I’ve mentioned a million times before in talking about my rationale in experimenting with things like Dinner Church and Breakfast Church is the fact that I think the modern Christian Church as a whole is having a bit of an identity crisis these days. Membership and interest is declining, even as people look for new ways of belonging, companionship, and community. So this idea of worshipping casually around a meal, going back to the roots of Christianity and starting over in some ways, comes from that—trying to figure out who we are really being in community with one another. When we’re able to talk more easily with one another, we can come to understand each other a little better, we can become closer with one another and truly be in community. And it’s so interesting that the very beginnings of the Christian Church started in these less-structured ways. They started with people gathering together around a small table, and trying to understand all that Jesus had taught them, and how to bring that teaching into the world so that all would eventually be able to feel the Holy Spirit and properly understand each other. And it really started with that is described in today’s passage—this incredible, miraculous joy, of people speaking in other’s native tongues, everyone completely enveloped in the Spirit, just giving in, and letting it take over.

I find myself wondering sometimes—does our traditional Sunday worship routine stifle the Holy Spirit at all? Does the structure keep us numb to feeling that ecstatic joy? Does the structure keeps us a little too complacent in the status quo? Does it make us a little too content in our little reserved bubbles? Before anyone freaks out, I’ll tell you right off the bat I do believe the answer is no. As most of you know, I am a reserved New Englander through-and-through, and the idea of doing away with our traditional contemplative Sunday services makes me very upset, and I promise it won’t happen any time soon. And I do indeed feel the Holy Spirit, especially during communion Sundays. But it’s still worth thinking about—how can we worship in ways that will strengthen our understanding of others? Others who worship differently, others who don’t worship at all, others who are longing for community but don’t know how to find it and are a little squeamish about religion or spirituality?

I don’t know exactly how we get there, but I do know that our Pentecost passage today gives us a preview of what the world looks like when we do get there—a world in which there is no longer a lack of understanding; a world in which people no longer have to work to feel compassion and love for those different than them; a world in which compassion and love is a given.

And on Memorial Day, we celebrate the people who served and died fighting for this country—often in wars that are a result of misunderstanding, an unconscious lack of understanding, or—WWII for example, and fight the Nazis and other fascists—  a very conscious and evil misunderstanding of right and wrong. And even more ironic perhaps, there’s a fundamental lack of understanding about where and how and who even came up with and first celebrated Memorial Day. I couldn’t help but shake my head a little, reading about the history of Memorial Day, and the large number of claims of people and places who came up with a holiday meant to be so nationally universal and venerated. There are precedents for it beginning in the Confederate South. There are precedents for it in the Union North. It was once Decoration Day, in honor of people decorating the gravestones of fallen soldiers; eventually, sometime in the 20th century, the Union idea of Memorial Day is the one that stuck, and that’s what we celebrate today.

But in my (admittedly not especially thorough) Memorial Day research, I found one claim to being one of the first Memorial Day celebrations that really stuck with me. On May 1st, 1865, in Charleston, South Carolina, formerly enslaved Black adults, children and families, Black Civil War soldiers, along with white missionaries and abolitionists, held a parade of about 10,000 people. It was to honor 257 dead Union soldiers who had been buried in a mass grave after dying in a Confederate prison camp. The parade occurred after the freed folks and the abolitionists unearthed the soldiers and gave them proper burials.

In our Pentecost passage today, Peter cites the Old Testament prophet Joel in his speech—

…God declares,
that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh,
   and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
and your young men shall see visions,
   and your old men shall dream dreams.
Even upon slaves, both men and women,
   in those days I will pour out my Spirit;
     and they shall prophesy.

Now, while that May 1st parade is certainly not believed to be any kind of official first celebration of Memorial Day, it is, to me, the celebration that most closely resembles the world that Pentecost gave us a preview of, the world we are fighting for—a world where people formerly enslaved come together with people who had an understanding that they were not less-than-human, that they deserved the freedom and the opportunities that every human should have. And so they came together to properly memorialize and put to rest those who fought and died for that freedom. Freed Black folks and whites coming together from wildly different backgrounds with a mutual understanding of the importance of celebrating and honoring those who understood that no man, woman, or child should be in bondage of any kind, for any reason.

The Holy Spirit requires us to be flexible, requires us to understand those of different backgrounds, faiths, and ideologies. It shocks and surprises us with different levels of understanding, with new ways of thinking about others; it overtakes us, allowing us to see people and the world in new ways… that is, if we let it.

Because the more I thought about it, the more I realized, it’s not our traditional worship structure stifling the Holy Spirit, (though this style worship may not be for everyone), it’s the growing intentional lack of understanding in this country. It’s the book banning, the history-censoring—it’s truly an encouragement of a lack of understanding. It’s the polar opposite of letting the Holy Spirit in.

I just read an article the other day about how terrible the pandemic’s effects have been on reading and math test scores, but now, also, it’s coming up that history scores have absolutely plummeted. And it’s not just the pandemic’s effects in this case. It’s the division and lack of understanding constantly be sowed in this country about what’s allowed to be taught—it’s school board fights around teaching the evils and history of racism and antisemitism, about teaching LGBTQ history, about women’s history. And if we continue this way, not teaching our youth the truth about where we came from, about the freedom of religion, of expression, of sexuality, of freedom from slavery, of freedom from fascism, that the people we honor this weekend fought and died for, we will never truly understand each other. And that—that is what stifles the Holy Spirit. That is what stops us from understanding one another. That is what makes us like the “others” in today’s passage, sneering at those speaking in different languages, that surely they’re only acting this way because they’re drunk. The thought of truly understanding each other is so foreign to them, they can’t imagine it coming about by any other way than being intoxicated.

But here’s some good news—I think we have more time to right ourselves than Peter lets on here. While much of what he quotes from the prophet Joel is a little scary—“last of days, blood, and fire, sun to darkness, moon to blood,” yikes—we should know that Peter takes some liberties here. The apostles were very much still in the mindset that the end times were imminent and that Jesus would be returning any day now—again, despite the fact that Jesus makes it very clear that no one, not even he, knows when this will happen. When Peter begins his quoting of Joel, he changes “Afterward” to “In the last days.” Afterward is so much more ambiguous. So I think we have some time to get things right. I think we have some time to make an effort to try to understand each other instead of scoffing at those who try.

And I think we do this by letting go a little. And because I do believe we have some time to make things right, I think we can look back to last week’s sermon about the fact that it’s okay to slow down in this cruel, fast-pasted world in order to get our thoughts together, to wonder in what ways we can work to feel the Holy Spirit. I think, because of the division that those in power attempt to sow within us, the Holy Spirit can get a little muted. The Holy Spirit seems a little muddled and dim these days. So I wonder if, in the context of this long Memorial Day weekend, we can remember what those who fought and died fought for. While more recent wars have been more controversial, Memorial Day, for all the disputes about who and where it started, did indeed begin during the end of the Civil War. It began around a war that finally, ultimately, freed our fellow humans, our Black sisters and brothers, from slavery. And on that May 1st, 1865 parade of 10,000 freed people and their allies, That was indeed a day in which the Holy Spirit was not muted, in which the Holy Spirit, was moving in and through those people—slaves and women, young and old were prophesying—were showing what an earth as it is in heaven could look like.

So again, during this long weekend, the unofficial beginning of Summer, as we honor those who have died believing in the fight for true freedom, let’s slow down a little. Let’s slow down and give in, and let the Holy Spirit take over. And let’s allow it to guide us to true freedom, and true understanding. Amen.