Groaning With

Text: Romans 8:22-27, Acts 2:1-21

This is the season of graduation and commencement. Degrees are conferred, marking the completion of years of intense work and focussed energy. It is the end of something, and congratulations all around. But by calling it commencement, we acknowledge that it is a milestone, or a portal, not a destination. We stop for a moment, we enter new territory, but we are not done traveling.

It is a good day to contemplate the feast of Pentecost.

We live in a realm of the incomplete. Plans made but not yet carried out, expectations not yet met, constructions not yet complete, relationships not yet jelled. Someday, we think, but not yet, I will get my desk in order; I have not yet traveled to Africa; I have not yet made amends to the friend I betrayed; I have not yet worked against injustice. I have not yet accomplished, repaired, or enjoyed all that I wish I had.

This is the nature of things for us creatures. Physics, biology, and theology conspire against closure, against wrapping things up. There is not enough time in the day or days in our lives. Though we feel the moments—great and small—come and go, time continues to push us forward at its own pace, not ours. Creation is ongoing and unresolved.

We are not perfect. The world is not perfected. There is inevitably a gap between what is and what might be. Our ills and those of the world reveal this. War, starvation, greed, sickness, sorrow. A misalignment between God’s intent and actual existence. We suffer. People suffer, and the world suffers.

We dream of a different way.

The events of Pentecost are a commencement. The ministry of Jesus was not complete. What his followers had hoped would happen had not. The Gospel stories are ended. But the book of Acts, from which this story comes, is the second book of a series of two written by Luke. After only a short period of surprise, fear, and grief, the followers carry on. New plans, new hopeful plans. Dreams that conform to the dreams of Jesus. Peter reminds everyone of Joel, who speaks of dreams and visions of another time, a glorious day. I will pour out my spirit, says God, upon all men and women.

Pentecost was a feast day that comes fifty days after Passover. Originally a harvest festival, it commemorates the giving of the law, Torah, on Mount Sinai. It is a commencement. Having been redeemed from slavery in Egypt (the story of the Passover), now the Israelites are given the law to guide and nurture them. A plan for the future and a way of being in the life of God. The people in the story in Acts are in Jerusalem centuries later celebrating this gift.

In a house, in one place, the story says, the followers of Jesus gather. We are not told about their state of mind. Mixed up probably, and disappointed, facing an uncertain future. Suddenly something like wind filled the house and something like fire came to each one, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit. It was the baptism of sorts—of fire and the Holy Spirit—predicted earlier in Luke by both John the Baptist and Jesus.

Like the ancient event it echoes, it creates a new community. It creates a project of new dreams. The community is heartened, and its dreams fed, by the coming of the Holy Spirit.

This is, we imagine, the same Spirit that moved over the waters in Genesis at the creation of the world, and the same Spirit that Jesus promises in the gospel of John to send to his disciples. It is the same Spirit whose gift we just prayed would be stirred up in Kim. It is, we teach, the same Spirit as the third person of the Trinity of God.

The Spirit is God’s presence among us. Though not physical, the Spirit seems palpable. Noisy and powerful like a wind. Hot like a fire. Near us. Touching us. The Spirit is our companion. I will send you a helper, Jesus says. What all the portrayals of the Spirit have in common is its single-minded connection with creation and especially with the affairs of people. It seems like the Spirit has an assignment and its assignment is us. Humans, earth, things of the earth. The Spirit has been with us from the beginning of the world.

The Spirit is especially bound up in human suffering. Paul tells us this in Romans. Living in suffering and uncompleted aspirations for the world, all of creation is groaning together. And we ourselves groan—it is the same word—groan inwardly. And the Spirit, Paul writes, groans—the same word again, which implies grief and complaint, matching ours—the Spirit groans deeply with us and for us, beyond words.

The Spirit intercedes for us, Paul writes, a sometimes uncomfortable concept for Lutherans. But the Spirit that Jesus sends he calls a helper or an advocate (like a health care advocate—speaking up for us when we cannot; when we are suffering). The Spirit knows us through millennia of keeping company with us. God searches the heart, Paul says, finds what God seeks in the mind of the Spirit. The Spirit is not other-wordly but especially-worldly. The Spirit speaks for each of us because it knows all of us so well. It speaks not only when we do not know how to pray as we ought, as our version translates it, but when we do not know even what to pray, which is a translation just as accurate and, to my mind, more helpful.

The word for Spirit is “wind” or “breath.” We can think of the Spirit as God’s breath, which is a synonym in the Bible for life. All living things look to God for sustenance, says today’s Psalm 104—all look to God. You send forth your Spirit, it says, and they—we—are created, and thus you renew the face of the earth.

The future is not some predetermined mapped-out route upon which we must walk. But we are not bushwhacking alone through the wilderness, either. The future is not only the narrative we create by living through it. We are not helpless, because we have help. We are not directionless, because we have a guide.

It is a gift, not a defect, that life is incomplete, open-ended. Creation continues; God’s breath continues to renew the ever-changing face of the earth. There is still time. We only hope for what we do not see, Paul says. If all the loose ends are tied up and all the tasks accomplished, then what happens to hope? Hope that is seen is not hope, Paul says.

There is nothing, Paul writes a few verses later, that can separate us from the love of God. We are not alone. The Spirit, our helper, advocate, comforter, is here. And accompanied by that Spirit, unsatisfied, incomplete, off we go.

Trump

Text: Acts 8:26-40
Other texts: 1 John 4:7—21

Some Christians like to tell other Christians that the other Christians are not Christian. I have first-hand knowledge of such things. One of my friends, for example, prayed that another friend would become a Christian. Even though the other friend was already a pastor. One of my colleagues at seminary told me that since his fellow-students had not had a born-again experience, they were not Christians, even though they claimed to follow Jesus. In both examples, the ones who were doing the judging felt they not only had a right but had a duty to speak out in judgment. They saw themselves as right—or righteous—defenders of the faith against a weakening of God’s church by pretenders and dangerous loosely-committed hangers-on.

In the best light, you could say they were concerned and zealous. In a different light, you could say they enjoyed the power to say who gets in to see God and who does not. They were certainly unwilling to let God determine who is faithful and who is not. They saw themselves as God’s bouncers, protecting God at the gates.

Though there have been many such folk in the history of the church and now, I doubt that God needed or needs such protection.

The writer of Acts, thought to be Luke, tells a story of a eunuch who is met by Philip, a Jewish follower of Christ who is sometimes called Philip the Evangelist. We learn in the story a lot about the eunuch, but we do not learn his name. Which makes us think that Luke is talking about a type of person, not just this particular person. There is a message here meant for all followers of Jesus.

The eunuch has much against him and much going for him. On the one hand, he was officially outcast. He was a foreigner in those parts, and because he was castrated he would have been unable to worship at the Temple. On the other hand, he held a position of authority (he worked for the queen of Ethiopia), was probably wealthy, was well-educated (he could read), devout, and humble. And also hospitable. He invites Philip to join him in the chariot and to chat about scripture.

The eunuch has three questions for Philip. First, he asks Philip to help him make sense of the Bible passage he is reading. The passage he quotes from is the suffering servant song, verses which have given comfort to people who are outcast and who, like Jesus—and Christians, like Philip, do see Jesus in this passage—people who suffer at the hand of those in authority. The passage promises freedom from those like the eunuch who live at the margins.

Second, the eunuch asks Philip whether the hope present in these verses are claimed only by the prophet or whether they give hope to him also. Is this passage about one person or is it a promise to all who suffer? In particular, could it apply to someone like him? Could it apply to him?

And finally, coming upon some water, the eunuch asks “What is to prevent me from being baptized?”

The church—organized religion—mixes law and grace uncomfortably and with difficulty. Claiming God’s grace and unconditional love, the church nonetheless has been hesitant to wholeheartedly be an instrument of that grace. The church is an institution and has the usual concerns of institutions: perpetuation, keeping on message through doctrinal rigor, maintaining infrastructure so work can be done, appointing task forces and firing people. We preach forgiveness, but ask practically whether is it we who must forgive and—scriptural guides notwithstanding—if so, how much. The church, like other institutions, does see its job partly as a gatekeeper; it thinks that part of its job, amazingly, is to keep some people out. Christians denying other Christians, or those who wish to worship and serve as Christians. The church’s answer to the eunuch’s question is that there is, perhaps, much to prevent it.

But that is not Philip’s answer. By asking the question, by stepping forward to seek baptism, the eunuch has qualified himself. Philip does not question whether the eunuch is prepared. He does not ask him to confess or proclaim one thing or another. He does not look things up in the rule book. The eunuch commanded the chariot to stop, it says, and both of them, Philip and the eunuch, went down into the water, and Philip baptized him. Done deal.

We are not flabbergasted at this because we know that Philip was not acting on his own. This whole story is thick with the presence of the Holy Spirit. There are three people in the story: Philip, the eunuch, and the Spirit. The Spirit brings Philip to the eunuch and the Spirit sends him running after the chariot and the Spirit whisks him away. In between, we can guess that the Spirit no doubt helps Philip interpret Isaiah and is present at the baptism of the eunuch. Right order is not Philip’s concern. He is grounded in a tradition that lets him recognize God’s leading, however strange. Philip listens to the Spirit, and lets himself be led by it, wherever it may go.

In the first letter of John, from which we heard in the second reading today, the writer defines the nature of God. There are presumably lots of ways to characterize God. God, you might say, is power. God is goodness, God is righteousness. But we hear none of those things today. John writes in this lyrical passage that God is love. Love prompted by simple existence alone, not by accomplishment or affection.

Let us love one another, John starts out. That’s the first thing he says. Made possible because God loves us. Loving one another is a sign, a mark of Christians. Grace and forgiveness start there. It is inseparable from following Christ. You cannot claim to love Christ and at the same time hate a brother or sister. John is not polite about this. He says: “Those who say, ‘I love God,’ and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars.”

This love is not ethereal. It is not unearthly and therefore impossible or vague. It is embodied, John says, in the person of Jesus, who was human. It is not therefore impossible for humans.

It is, however, difficult. It is a new thing (we must be born anew, Jesus elsewhere tells Nicodemus, or from above: we must take it from the top). We live on the earth. We make rules to keep focused, to think clearly, to keep safe from hurt or harm or indifference. We wish to keep order. That makes sense.

To love one another, therefore, is an act of courage. An intentional tough decision. To act lovingly, even if it is hard to do. Even if it seems crazy. Even if it means we love imperfectly, as we always do. Love casts out fear, John writes, but that does not mean loving one another is not scary. We are not called to be perfect first and then to love others. It works the other way around: if we love one another, John writes, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us.

The command to love our sisters and brothers is a call to trust in God and to trust in the guidance of the Holy Spirit. But always, prevails. When we are driven to maintain order first, when we are tempted to man the gates and lock the doors, to keep out the pretenders and the dubious—that is when we most need to remember this command, and to remind ourselves that, in all cases, love trumps order.