FUMC Phoenixville

Acts 2:1-21

“A Miracle of Hearing”

May 19, 2013

Pentecost

Paul Harris died last year.  He was pastor to different segments of my extended family at different times over the years and to my immediate family for a couple of years.  He did a great job of staying in contact with people, usually by sending little notes, which was a lot easier for him than phone calls and sometimes even than visiting, because Mr. Harris was hard of hearing most of his adult life and toward the end he was just plain deaf.

When I was in high school he could still manage pretty well on his own.  He made sure to face people directly and pay close attention, and he was not afraid to ask you to repeat your words.  He wore hearing aids, but sometimes, for all the good they did, you got the impression that they were more of a fashion statement than anything else.  In large settings it was even harder, but he had the help of his wife and more than once when someone was saying something in church and he didn’t realize that anyone was speaking, Jane would stand up and wave her hand and say, “Paul!  Paul!” and point toward the speaker.

            When Mr. Harris retired, the congregation gave him a TTY machine.  Anyone who wanted to reach him by phone could then call a central number and an operator would type their words, which would appear on a screen by his telephone.  Years later, I saw him at Cornwall Manor one time and he was told me about their fiftieth wedding anniversary party. There were speeches, so one of his grandsons stationed himself next to his grandfather with a laptop and typed out what was being said.  Somewhere around the fifth or sixth speech he began to type the first few sentences and then, “Blah, blah, blah.”  No one understood why the two of them were giggling.

            From Mr. Harris and his efforts I learned to appreciate that communication has those two sides: speech and hearing.  On the day of Pentecost, when

“All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability” [Acts 2:4]

the Lord brought about a miracle of speech that the crowd also experienced as a miracle of hearing.

            What happened on Pentecost was not what people call “speaking in tongues”, although “speaking in tongues” in the modern usage of the term, is connected to a deep awareness of the presence of the Holy Spirit: that is true.  But when someone “speaks in tongues” the listeners generally cannot understand what is being said.  Personally, my explanation of “speaking in tongues”  is to say that religious experience can leave someone so overcome with emotion they can become tongue-tied and their feelings flow so quickly that speech simply cannot follow.  That’s why I agree that somebody touched by the Spirit may at times be heard to babble incoherently.  Mind you, I can be skeptical when it seems to be turned on and off at predictable times.

            On the day of Pentecost, the miracle was that something was said and that it was heard clearly.  The good news of Jesus was shared by people who thought they couldn’t reach the strangers around them, and people who by all rights should not have understood a syllable got every single word.

            My friends, that has not changed.  That is a miracle that has repeated in various forms and will continue to do so as long as the Holy Spirit fills the people of God with creativity and imagination.

            I’m not suggesting that faith-sharing should rely on gimmicks.  There are enough of those.  I recently googled “evangelism ideas” and saw dozens of sites recommending that churches hand out bottled water or popcorn or donuts or newspapers, each with the church’s name and information clearly attached.  I saw sites that listed all kinds of service projects, each of which had some value, but each of which had the feel of a publicity stunt.  Real giving and real service aren’t about what comes back to the giver or the servant.

            I am suggesting, though, that real and true outreach is what happens when a believer ignores the barriers that normally exist between people to share what is important to him or her as a human being and trusts that the common humanity that God has created in both the speaker and the hearer will respond to the message of God’s love in Jesus.

            There’s a watercolor painter whose work I really like.  He lives near Harrisburg and his name is Larry Lombardo.  One of his paintings[1] and shows two people sitting on opposite ends of a park bench.  One is a teenage girl wearing a sort of punkish/Goth-ish outfit with black jeans and a studded collar and black makeup on her lips and eyes.  The other is an older woman in a purple print dress with a white jacket and tinted glasses.  The girl is looking at her, sort of out of the side of her eyes, and the woman sits calmly, looking straight ahead, and you get the feeling that if only one or the other of them would just start a conversation, each has something to say that would help the other. 

            Called “The Child Has Grown The Dream Has Gone”, the painting takes its title from some Pink Floyd lyrics that say,

“When I was a child 
I caught a fleeting glimpse
Out of the corner of my eye.
I turned to look but it was gone
I cannot put my finger on it now
The child is grown, 
The dream is gone.
I have become comfortably numb.”[2]

Although the Holy Spirit is called the Comforter, the Holy Spirit can also be called the Great Discomforter, the Nudger, the Elbow-in-the-Ribs-of-the-Soul.  The Holy Spirit is the one who  pushes us out of our comfortable numbness to speak to the person at the other end of the bench, whether or not we think they’ll understand the way we speak or look or think.  The Holy Spirit is the one who gives us words when we need them.  The Holy Spirit is also the one who opens our eyes to the world around us, and who opens the world’s ears to hear what we have to say about it, and to it.

            And what we have to say is simply this:

“God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” [John 3:16]

One thing that happens during annual conference each year is a book sale.  A lot of retiring pastors or those who are moving clear off their shelves and some very worthwhile reading can be picked up for a quarter, with proceeds going to the United Methodist Historical Society.  Cokesbury Books also has a mini-store set up.  The result is an influx of books to church libraries, including ours.   

Add to that several selections that have been made recently as resources for the Administrative Council and others active in various ministries and what you get is the book table set up at the back of the church.

Here are a few of the featured items:

Velvet Elvis by Rob Bell – An extended meditation on Christian living by someone who has been very good at explaining the life of faith to people who admire Jesus but are somewhat skeptical about his followers.

Institutes of the Christian Religion by John Calvin – Heavy reading and not for the faint of heart, but a classic of the Reformation.

Naming the Silences by Stanley Hauerwas – “God, Medicine, and the Problem of Suffering” is the subtitle and the subject of the book.

Suffering Presence by Stanley Hauerwas – “Theological Reflections on Medicine, the Mentally Handicapped, and the Church” by a Christian ethicist who is also the father of a child with cognitive disabilities.

Out Live Your Life by Max Lucado – How God uses simple, regular people to share the Good News.

Care of the Soul by Thomas Moore – As the subtitle says, this is “A Guide for Cultivating Depth and Sacredness in Everyday Life”.

Amazing Grace by Kathleen Norris – Consideration of what a lot of those familiar but vague terms you hear in church circles really mean in life.

A God Sized Future by Ron Phillips – A book about moving into personal and social change under God’s direction.

Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be by Cornelius Plantinga – A book about identifying sin in your own life when it does such a good job disguising itself.

Why Jesus?  by Will Willimon – A look at several of the ways that people think about Jesus, including chapters on him as vagabond, peacemaker, storyteller, party person, preacher, magician, home wrecker, savior, sovereign, lover, delegator, and body.

Revelation 22:12-14, 16-17, 20-21

“Waiting Impatiently”

May 12, 2013

            A few years ago, the father of one of my friends died and I went to the funeral and then to the cemetery.  His father had had Parkinson’s disease since we were in high school, so none of this was unexpected.  It was a Jewish funeral, so at the graveside everyone was supposed to add a shovel or a handful of dirt as we left, beginning with the nearest relatives.  The widow took her turn and stepped aside, handing the shovel to one son.  He added his shovelful and handed it to his brother.  His brother stabbed the shovel into the pile of earth, then looked down onto the casket, then looked back at the soil, then into the grave, then back at the shovel – and this went on until his mother said, loudly enough for everyone to hear, “Come on!  We haven’t got all day!”

            The Christian Church is very much like that woman, and always has been.  Jesus promised that the day would come when he would return to be with us in a way that would wrap up all of history’s loose ends,

“See, I am coming soon; my reward is with me, to repay according to everyone’s work,” [Revelation 22:12]

and the New Testament is full of the people who were closest to him, whether historically or in spirit, saying, “Come on!  Let’s get it over with!”

“The Spirit and the bride say, ‘Come.’ And let everyone who hears say, ‘Come.’” [Revelation 22:17]

We’ve been standing here for a long time, and except for the formalities, our grieving is done.  We’ve been to the tomb and found it empty.  We’ve been to the graveside and found out it isn’t the end.  So let’s get on with the life of the kingdom.

            If you’ve ever felt that way or thought like that, I want to say, “Good for you.”  You’re in good company.  There’s a poem by Lawrence Ferlinghetti called “I Am Waiting” that puts that sort of general longing well.  It says, in part,

“I am waiting for my number to be called

and I am waiting

for the Salvation Army to take over

and I am waiting

for the meek to be blessed

and inherit the earth   

without taxes

and I am waiting

for forests and animals

to reclaim the earth as theirs

and I am waiting

for a way to be devised

to destroy all nationalisms

without killing anybody

and I am waiting

for linnets and planets to fall like rain

and I am waiting for lovers and weepers

to lie down together again

in a new rebirth of wonder”

            In the early days, the Church had a deep awareness of what could be, an expectation that even led them into living as if the world had already begun to change, with the resurrection of Jesus showing that.  Rob Bell points out,

“To be part of the church was to join a countercultural society that was partnering with God to create a new kind of culture, right under the nose of the caesars.  These Christians made sure everybody in their midst had enough to eat.  They made sure everybody was able to pay their bills.  They made sure there was enough to go around.  The resurrection for them was not an abstract spiritual concept; it was a concrete social and economic reality.  God raised Jesus from the dead to show the world that Jesus is Lord, and it is through his power and example and his Spirit that the world is restored.”[1]

            On the other hand, the Church always has been a little bit like the man with his hand on the shovel, unwilling to bury what has been dear to him, a body without which, even though it is now dead, he would not be alive.  To live in the new reality means letting go of the old one, and that is hard sometimes.

            We see that in times of change.  A huge chunk of the New Testament deals with the newly-forming Church trying to decide what parts of its God-given roots in Judaism and the Old Testament laws to hold onto and which to let go.  Even down to our own day, there are groups like the Seventh Day Adventists who insist that we have been wrong to move our worship from the Sabbath (which would be Saturday) to the day of resurrection (which is Sunday). 

In our time, too, we find that doing things the way they were done for the past hundred years isn’t working, but we are afraid to try new things.  Those of us who are here, after all, are those for whom the old ways have generally worked, and worked well.  It’s hard to see declines in church attendance and reports in the news about the waning influence of the institutional Church and not stand around grieving, even worrying whether the Church may be dying, as some folks think it is, and as you occasionally find someone hoping, just like the Roman Empire did.

            Then you hear the words of someone like a Presbyterian pastor in his early thirties say something you could call prophetic about the situation when he says,

“To speak of the death of the church is to betray one's own bad ecclesiology. First, it assumes that the church can die. Wrong. Christ is going to have his church. It just may not look like yours. Second, to talk about the death of the church in mournful terms is to assume that our purpose is to survive. Quite the opposite. Jesus did not ask us to preserve our institutions. He commanded us to follow him, and he went to the grave for people who hated him. Perhaps, a ‘dead church’ is a church that has lost its willingness to die for love.”[2]

            The church that the prophet John came from, and wrote to, was one that was ready to die for love if it had to, because it knew that dying wasn’t the end, and that it wasn’t the worst thing that could happen, either.  It was a church that waited impatiently for the kingdom, so impatiently that it died a little bit every day, at least as the world saw things, so that it could begin to live in the ways of God.  It even prayed on a regular basis, “Your kingdom come; your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

They waited, but they waited impatiently.  May God grant us to do the same thing.  And may it happen soon.

“The one who testifies to these things says, ‘Surely I am coming soon.’ Amen. Come, Lord Jesus! The grace of the Lord Jesus be with all the saints. Amen.” [Revelation 22:21]

Sunday, May 19th at 9:30 a.m. in Fellowship Hall

The Family Worship theme for May 19th is Pentecost: An Outpouring of the Spirit. David Bryant and our Praise Band will lead praise and worship; Pastor Mark will offer an interactive sermon; and Holy Communion will be offered to all. Family Worship will also serve as the Sunday School finale when classes are recognized and teachers are thanked.

As always, expect a few surprises! You will be blessed!

Register today for Kingdom Rock VBS.  June 23-27; 5:45-8:30 p.m.  Kid friendly dinners, music, games, crafts and Bible adventures.  Open to preschool-elementary school aged children.  Call the church office for more information.  Download a registration form here: http://www.fumcphoenixville.org/downloads.htm?a=&act=view&id=3E1A5246-3AAC-4874-969F-C70F199152C

Watch a Kingdom Rock  video here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rF6xajeAYm0

VBS VOLUNTEERS NEEDED – Adults and youth are needed to make Kingdom Rock VBS a safe, memorable, and fun event for the children of our church and community. See the signup sheet located on the bulletin board across from the Chapel to find the job that is right for you. Sign up even if you can only donate one or two nights of help. Contact Laurie Pfahler for more information and to reserve childcare for young children.