Sermon for Pentecost.
Scripture: Acts 2.
There’s an installation service this afternoon. I don’t get to talk at that service, not much anyway, and so I wanted to try this morning to put into words some of what I’m thinking about on the day of installation, which also happens to be the day of Pentecost.
Like most ceremonies, this one is more a recognition of something that already exists than a creation of something new. I have felt at home here at Sojourners from the time I was called, even before the time I was called. I certainly do not need an installation service to make me feel a part of this community. And in that sense, it’s not a big deal. What’s important to me in this relationship, between Sojourners and me, what’s important to me about being a member and pastor of this church, will be there, ceremony or no ceremony.
But in another sense it is a big deal—at least to me. Ceremonies like this are important not just as an excuse for a party (which is always a good thing), but to offer an opportunity for reflection, say that it’s important enough not to be taken for granted. So that’s at least part of what I want to do this morning: not take it for granted, this pastoral relationship, and say some few words by way of reflection…and appreciation.
To tell you the truth, I have never liked the notion of “installation”. I don’t want to quibble with words, but to me installing is something you do to appliances. You pay for them, bring them in, put them in place, hook them up, plug them in, turn them on, and expect that they will perform certain tasks. Now in a certain sense I suppose this is what happens to pastors: a person is brought in to fill an open space in the household of faith, she or he is put in place, and expected to perform certain functions. And an installation service then is kind of an official enactment of that idea of putting a pastor “in place” so that person can perform certain duties in the life of the church. It’s not a wrong notion exactly, but it does lack a bit in the area of romance or of artistic presentation. Maybe you can see why it wouldn’t be my favorite way of looking at things.
Let me suggest some words, or ways of thinking, that I like better. “Covenant” is one. How about instead of installation, recognition of covenant. There are several things about this word. First of all it has a kind of a religious or spiritual sound to it. You enter in to a contract, you’re on sort of legal or legalistic ground. You enter into a covenant, you’re more in spiritual or religious territory. A contract has terms. A covenant has commitments and promises and dreams and a sense of belonging.
The problem with words or concepts that have an aura of spirituality about them may be that they also have an aura of not-quite-knowing-what-they-mean. They can be a little fuzzy. And that in turn means that they can be used in different ways, and potentially abused in different ways. In other words just using the word covenant doesn’t necessarily mean that we are saying something good, any more than using the word God necessarily means that we are talking about something good. As with any other religious word it can be put to good use or bad use.
I don’t want to dwell today on how the word covenant can be misused. I do want to say why it’s a positive word for me today. Covenant is a relationship word, and it is not about just an external relationship, which is what a contract is, but about an internal relationship, a sense not just of being brought together for some specific reason or to accomplish a specific purpose, but a sense of belonging together, and sense of being connected to each other from the inside out, if I am making any sense at all here. And that sense of connectedness is, for me, what the installation service this afternoon is all about. What’s important to me about the installation service is not the position I’ve been invited to fill, not the job I’ve agreed to do, but the community I have come to be a part of, and the connection I have felt from the beginning between my inner life and the inner life of this community.
So I am thinking today, I am appreciating and giving thanks today, for this community that I have been fortunate enough to be summoned to as a pastor. The service this afternoon is not so much about putting a pastor in place as it is about acknowledging and affirming this covenant between me, a called pastor, and the Sojourners community. For you that’s not such a big deal. Your community remains pretty much the same. You just have a new guy to assimilate and break in. For me, it is a whole new community to be a part of. And as I say, it is with a deep sense of thanksgiving that I find myself here.
I am also thinking of this community today in the light of the story of Pentecost that appears in the second chapter of Acts and that we are actually in the midst of hearing this morning. That story, and some of the images in the story, speak to me about Sojourners today.
The tongues of fire for instance. That strange vision spoken of in the first verses of Acts 2 where the disciples are basically just sort of hanging out, sitting around wondering what to do next, when the holy spirit arrives with a great sound, like the rush of a mighty wind, and divided tongues, divided tongues, as of fire appeared and came to rest on each individual, and they all began to speak different languages as the spirit led them to do so.
Now I have to say that it is not hard for me to transfer that image to the community of Sojourners, with each person having that tongue, something like fire, resting there on your shoulders. Sometimes, you know, scripture helps us interpret present experience, and sometimes present experience helps us interpret scripture, and often it works both ways at the same time.
My short experience here at Sojourners helps me understand what those divided tongues, something like fire, are all about. They are about people who have had life breathed into them by the holy Spirit, who have been animated by the spirit in very specific, individual, and personal ways to speak justice and to seek justice, or to go deeper in their relationship to God, or to explore all the different dimension of a life of prayer, or to do good and caring works. Those flames were divided flames, and they rested on each individual, even on individuals maybe who don’t quite see the flames resting on their own shoulders, perhaps especially on people who have trouble seeing things in that way, or describing things with that language, or who are able to see the flames on other peoples’ shoulders a lot easier than they are able to see them on their own.
My experience here at Sojourners has led me to see the scripture in a way that in turn helps me to see this community in the light of that image. I am blessed to be able to stand up here and see every Sunday people, all of whom have tongues resting on their shoulders, tongues like fire, that motivate them to go off in all kinds of different directions, that cause them to speak all sorts of different languages, and who all have things in their lives, in their hearts and spirits, more important than a church.
That is who we are. It is also who we want to become as a church—to always have those separate flames, divided tongues animating us to go off in all sorts of different directions and causing us to speak different languages—never to ask people to give up that very individual voice in favor of some common, colorless language we can all easily speak and understand—never, in other words, to become homogenized.
But the scripture does not stop there. Nor do our hopes as a community stop with that appreciation of the ways the spirit works in us individually and uniquely. The next passage Martha read talks about a miraculous coming together where people from all kinds of places and backgrounds—Parthians, Medes, Elamites, Virginians, Yankees, a few mid-westerners, children, elders, gay people, men, African-Americans, straight people, women, European Americans, recovering Baptists, recovering Catholics, recovering Unitarians, recovering U.C.C.ers, recovering clergy, laity, recovering Democrats, recovering Republicans—all these different people began to hear others as though the others were speaking their own languages. Unbelievable! Appreciating, protecting, preserving our dividedness…but transcending it at the same time. That too is who we are and who we hope to become. We have said it in other ways. The Pentecost scripture says it again to us this morning.
And it goes on. You haven’t heard it yet, but you will in a few minutes. A passage later in the chapter that talks about the people joining up with this new church or movement and how they all together devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching, and fellowship, to the breaking of bread, and prayers—in other words, in my interpretation, they were devoting themselves to trying to understand and become a Christian community. Not only to try to understand each other as individuals but studying together, laughing and working together, sensing God’s presence together, praying…hard… for each other.
The movement here, in this scripture, in our reality here at Sojourners, is toward community. It is toward an ever increasing and deepening sense that we do not simply go our separate ways as individuals in this world, that we do not have to and are not intended to make our journeys alone, that we do in some fundamental sense belong to each other, that we are tied together in our inward being both by the threads of our common humanity and by the spirit of God.
I am happy to assume the position of pastor here, and to be officially installed in that position this afternoon. What that really means to me though has to do with a covenant that was already here before I arrived and that I am now a part of. And it means to me a common commitment to a continuing effort to make that covenant even stronger and even richer as time goes on, by the grace of God. Amen.
Jim Bundy
June 11, 2000