The other night Brent and I watched one of my favorite movies: Chocolat. It is about a woman who makes wonderful chocolate and also Johnny Depp. Johnny isn’t the story, but he plays a wonderful part in it, and that’s really all you need to know. It is a wonderful story, but even if it weren’t, … well chocolate and Johnny Depp.
The movie takes place in a small, French village in 1959. As the movie begins, you see the villagers in the town’s church. The congregants are singing, not very enthusiastically, a hymn that invokes the Holy Spirit. It was 1959 so they still referred to the Spirit as the Holy Ghost.
“Come Holy Ghost and be our guest.”
And as they are singing, a wind
begins to blow. It swirls around the outside of the church, and it blows inside
the church through the cracks in the stone walls. The wind is strong and
getting stronger. The singing falters. Candles flicker. The young priest looks
nervous. The people look around at this wind that has suddenly and unexpectedly
joined their congregation. Then with a mighty and even violent gust, the front
doors of the church blow open. Everyone stops, startled, astonished, even a
little afraid. Except for one man, the Conte de Rayneaux, the town mayor.
He stands up with a fierce
expression of determination on his face. He strides to the doors, and even
though it takes some great effort, he closes them. He prevents the wind from
gaining any further entrance. That rushing wind is not welcome in his church.
When the Spirit comes the doors we
would rather keep closed get blown wide open.
When the Spirit comes. Sermon titles
are not always my strong suit. I generally must pick my title long before I
write my sermon, and I feel like the title commits me to a particular direction
in the sermon. I don’t just write my sermons; I labor over them. Sometimes in
the laboring, my sermon takes a vastly different turn from where I thought it
would, and the title I have chosen seems out of whack. But it’s my title, so I
have to work it in somehow. But this week, I was so looking forward to this
day, to this sermon, because it is Pentecost. When the Spirit comes!
As I said in my weekly letter, I love
Pentecost! I do. I love this day. I love thinking about the power of the Spirit
blowing through that upper room. I mean, just think about the mind-boggling
changes that were wrought when the Spirit came upon the disciples. They were
doing much like we have been doing the last few months: sitting shut away,
praying, waiting, hoping.
Then from heaven there came this
roaring, rushing sound. A violent wind, a battering tempest rushed through the
room where they were, and it filled them with the Holy Spirit. That filling was
visible. Tongues of fire and flame licked above their heads. There was no room
for wondering or doubt. They had the Holy Spirit, folks. It blazed above their
heads.
And the Spirit did not stop. The disciples
began to speak. There were a lot of folks gathered in Jerusalem for the Feast
that came fifty days after Passover. There were folks from all over the
diaspora. People who spoke every known language at that time. And these
disciples, these followers of that crucified guy Jesus, these people who knew
no language but their own, stood up and began to speak in every language
represented there.
And the people gathered were
dumbfounded, bewildered, amazed, astonished.
“What?! What is going on here?! Aren’t
these men Galileans? But we hear them speaking to us in our own language!
Parthians, Medes, Elamites, Mesopotamians, Judea, Cappodocia, Pontus, Asians,
Phrygians, Pamphylians, Egyptians, even parts of Libya. Even Romans are hearing
in their language! What is going on here?”
Everyone was amazed and perplexed. Some
folks thought they were drunk. Which is pretty funny actually, because when has
great quantities of alcohol ever really helped people when it comes to
speaking? But people were trying to find a reason, they were searching,
grasping for an explanation. I guess drunk seemed plausible because what else
could this be?
It’s understandable that the people
gathered were confused. But the Spirit was not finished. When the Spirit came Peter,
PETER, stood up and began to speak. Peter! Impulsive, rash, you are the
Messiah, but stop talking about what it means to be the Messiah, no Lord I’ll
never deny you, but then he did three times Peter stood up and addressed the
crowd. He didn’t just address them or give a little talk. He preached. He
interpreted the scripture to them.
When the Spirit comes, people find
the courage to preach. When the Spirit comes, ordinary folks who have been
afraid and uncertain are filled with the power to share the good news. When the
Spirit comes, unexpected people find the courage to speak the truth.
When the Spirit comes, ordinary
people find the courage to speak the truth of the gospel.
When the Spirit comes. Maybe you
would not look at me this morning and think that I am just some ordinary person
who decided to stand up and preach. I am the preacher, the one educated and
ordained specifically to do just this Yet I am incredibly ordinary, and even
after almost 25 years of doing this, I am still the most unlikely person to be
in this place and in this position. So even though I stand up here every week,
I have been doing a lot of praying these last few days, more than usual, for
the power of the Spirit to give me particular courage on this day. Because when
the Spirit came to the disciples on that Pentecost, they did not just stand up
and recite the Mesopotamian alphabet song. Peter did not just stand up and
denounce the charges that they were drunk. He preached the truth. They preached
the truth.
We’ve been talking a lot as a
session, as a congregation about what it will look like when we come back
together in this building. I have talked to folks on the phone and gone back
and forth in emails about how they feel about the restrictions that may be put
in place in order for us to worship in one place. I know that the restrictions
that have been sent out are not popular. I know that to some they may even feel
punitive. But I also know that part of the frustration that people are feeling,
that we all are feeling, is that we just want to be together again. We want to
worship together again. We want to see one another outside of a computer
screen. We want to hear each other’s voices and hug one another. We want to be
a gathered community once more.
And one of the things that I have
tried to say and preach, and that the session has tried to convey is that these
walls do not make us a community. We are not a community because of this
building. And it has been the building that has been closed, not the church. The
church is still wide open. The brick and mortar of this place do not define us,
nor do they make us a community.
It is the Spirit that makes us a
community. That was the ultimate outcome of the coming of the Holy Spirit, that
rush of a violent wind. It formed and forged a new community. The Holy Spirit,
the breath of God, the Advocate that Jesus promised, came and a new community
was created. The church was created. And it didn’t happen in just one place, it
happened in so many places, with so many people; unlikely people, unexpected
people, previously unwelcome people.
When the Spirit came, a new
community was formed and a new way of being and doing and living was made clear
and necessary in its wake. The Spirit has made of us a community, but we are
not isolated unto ourselves. The community the Spirit is trying to create is so
much larger and reaches far beyond the physical boundaries of this place. The
community of the Spirit is large, and in that community our siblings, our
brothers and sisters are hurting and angry and dying in the street. Yes, I know
there is rioting and looting and violence, but as Dr. King said, “rioting is
the language of the unheard.” Our siblings have gone unheard for far too long.
And none of us are without blood on our hands because this country was built on
violence and with violence.
There is injustice and inequality and
hatred and racism, and it is not just out there, it is in us. We are all
affected by it, we are all infected by it. None of us are without stain. We are
all drowning. Our community can never be whole, can never be complete, can be
fully at peace until we address it, until we stand up, and trust that the power
of the Holy Spirit is still filling us, still moving us, still sending us and calling
us to say, “Enough.”
When the Holy Spirit comes, we are
filled with the power and the righteous anger to say, “Enough,” to say, “No
more.”
No more. No more. No more.
But it cannot be just us saying it,
we have to do something about it. We have to act on the no more.
At the top of the first page of this
sermon, I wrote in bold letters the names of many of my friends, people I have
known and know, people who love me, have inspired me, have challenged me. I
wrote their names because I don’t want them to be another George Floyd or
Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Aubery. I wrote their names because I owe them my no
more.
So to my kindergarten teacher, Mrs.
Von Winbush and my sisters and friends, Ericka and Pamela and Shelia, and to my
brothers, Jeff and Ronnie and Walter, and to so many others I say no more. I
cannot sit by and know that you are in danger simply because of the amount of
melanin in your skin. I cannot be fully at home in any community until we are
all in community together.
It is time for all of us to say no
more. Because when the Spirit comes, we finally have to speak the truth of the
gospel, the truth of the good news. And one truth of the good news is that when
some of us are suffering, all of us are suffering. When will we finally say, “No
more?” No more.
Amen and amen.
