Refiner’s Fire 2: Racism

It is almost commonplace now to say that there are two viruses in our midst today – the coronavirus and the virus of racism. I contend that there is a third virus as well – the virus of authoritarianism. I call these three the viruses of power, plague and prejudice. They are an unholy trinity that mocks our triune God.

But I believe that in this time of turmoil and fear, God is using these viruses to refine us by fire. God is calling us to turn away from our racist, power-mad, and plague-prone ways, and turn toward a God-shaped life.

I spoke about power last week and had originally intended to address plague today. But events of the last week, and the focus we have seen on the subject, have convinced me that today I must speak about prejudice and about racism.

I don’t want to talk about this. You don’t want me to talk about this. Those are two good reasons that I must talk about this.

The last time I preached about racism to a white congregation I thought I might be lynched. Years later, when I was leaving that appointment, one person said to me: “I’ve always appreciated your sermons – except for that one, of course.”

White fragility and white resentment are two of the main reasons we have never had a genuine conversation about race in this country. It is simply too hard. Again, that is why it is necessary. We are never going to get through this nightmare until we talk about it openly and plainly.

Racism is commonly called America’s original sin. It’s our national birth defect, former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice says. It’s a crack in our national foundation that threatens to bring the whole house down.

More than 50 years ago, the Kerner Commission investigating the 1967 riots came to this conclusion: “To pursue our present course will involve the continuing polarization of the American community and, ultimately, the destruction of basic democratic values.”

That was more than half a century ago. It’s time for a change of direction. As Jesus warned us, a house divided against itself cannot stand (Mark 3:25).

Here is a standard dictionary definition of racism: “prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one’s own race is superior.”

That’s a good start, but it’s missing a major dimension of the problem. Only last week, the editors of the Merriam-Webster dictionary announced that they will revise their definition to include systemic oppression.

You see, racism has two dimensions: the personal and the systemic. Each of us may with some degree of honesty say, “I’m not racist” – at least not overtly so. But our society is thoroughly racist. Racism is more than personal prejudice. As my friend and former seminary professor Tex Sample says, “Racism is prejudice plus power.”

Let’s try to dismantle this evil cultural edifice piece by piece.

First, white supremacy. That lie was created centuries ago to justify enslaving black people. The simple truth is, as Genesis 1:26 attests, all people are created in the image of God. That implies not only equality but special status. We’re all God’s beloved children. The writers of the New Testament proclaim four times, “God shows no partiality” (Acts 10:34, Romans 2:11, Galatians 2:6, Ephesians 6.9). As we say again and again, all means all. All God’s children are beloved.

Though our Declaration of Independence declares that all people are created equal, our Constitution backed way off from that vision of equality. It made a black person worth only three-fifths of a white person when counted for representation in Congress – though, of course, unable to vote or exercise any other rights.

White supremacy is enforced through violence and terror and through a system of special treatment called white privilege. Basically it means that because you are white, you get privileges that are denied to people who aren’t white. W.E.B. Du Boise called it “the wages of whiteness.”

We white folks don’t understand it because it’s a systemic thing. It’s invisible. You can’t see it or touch it, but it governs all our lives. Let me give you three simple examples.

First, suppose that I go to the bank to request a loan for a new house or for a new business. Now suppose that a black person whose credit rating and income are the same as mine goes to the same bank to request a similar loan. Guess which one of us is more likely to get the loan? The system is not color blind. Color blindness is a myth.

Here’s another example. In mid-May, heavily armed demonstrators invaded the Michigan state Senate. They even stood in the Senate gallery overlooking lawmakers while holding rapid-fire rifles. They were all white. What do you suppose would have happened if they’d been black? Do you think they’d had a chance of getting away with what they did?

Jane Elliott is a white anti-racism educator and activist. When she addresses white audiences about racism, she asks, “If you are willing to be treated the way black people are treated, please stand.” No one ever stands.

White privilege is something you were born with and you carry with you always. You can’t shed it like a coat. What you might be able to do with it is use it to help empower others who don’t have it.

Racism is built into our culture. It’s a structure of inter-related and interlocking policies and customs and silent agreements that systematically works against people of color. It affects everything.

Here’s how it typically works. If you’re black, racial discrimination will determine where you live. Zoning laws and redlining practices and other financial practices will mean that you live in a segregated, impoverished neighborhood.

You live in poor housing that will cost more to maintain than it’s worth and will raise your health risks because of lead paint and other problems, including where it’s located – always in an environmentally risky area.

Because of where you live, you will have to travel farther to your job, using public transportation that is inadequate and costly, if it exists at all. You will live in a food desert, meaning there is no place nearby where you can buy healthy food, only the junk food you can get at the quickie mart. Your job and the lifestyle imposed on you will likely expose you disproportionally to heart disease, diabetes and to the coronavirus.

Your children will attend separate and unequal schools – this despite the landmark Brown vs Board of Education ruling by the Supreme Court in 1954, 66 years ago, that separate and unequal school systems are illegal. The future of your kids will be dimmed by poor education and constant exposure to illegal drug and gang activity.

The police are powerless to curb such illegal activity, but they do have the power to make your life miserable. You can be harassed or arrested or killed for driving while black, jogging while black, birdwatching while black, taking out the trash at night while black, moving furniture out of your house at night while black, sleeping while black – doing anything any human being ought to be able to do but you are not able to do because you are black.

The mental and emotional and physical and spiritual toll is great. Stress, anxiety and poor health are the inevitable result. And when things like the George Floyd murder happen, you can’t hold it in anymore.

“A riot is the language of the unheard,” Martin Luther King Jr. said. He was not offering an excuse for rioting. He was simply explaining the phenomenon.

Because of systemic racism, it is clear that in America black lives don’t matter. That’s why the slogan Black Lives Matter is so important. It’s true that all lives matter. And it’s not that black lives matter more than white lives. But to turn around this tide of racism, we have to declare that black lives do matter, and we have to prove it by our actions.

Inevitably, there is a backlash. Some of it is defiantly racist and some of it is simply lack of understanding. White resentment is a huge factor. Some whites just don’t get it. They don’t understand white privilege, so when they see a black person receiving any kind of treatment they themselves didn’t receive, they see it in terms of that black person cutting in line ahead of them. They see it in terms of personal affront. And that resentment boils over into grievance politics. Grievance politics is part of what is tearing us apart as a nation.

Your social location says a lot about who you are, how you view the world, and whether you can see the invisible privilege you were born with. It’s easy to think you deserve what you’ve got. It is said that many rich people are born on third base and think they hit a triple. Then there are those who are born on third base and think they hit a home run but got called back to third, and they are angered by the injustice of it all.

That’s the kind of thinking we’ve gotten from the White House for three and a half years, and it is corrosive to national unity and national identity.

When we white people hear black people complain about racial profiling, we can’t understand because it doesn’t happen to us; it’s not part of our personal experience. But in truth, racial profiling happens to us, too. We are profiled as white, and we benefit from it. It’s time we stopped the negative profiling of anyone.

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,” Martin Luther King said in his famous Letter from the Birmingham Jail. “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied to a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”

Last Sunday was Peace With Justice Sunday in United Methodist churches. I mentioned it ahead of time, but in our worship time itself, I’m sorry to say that I got so tied up in other things that failed to say anything about it. Peace and justice are intimately connected.

In Isaiah 59.8, God tells the prophet that the way of peace is the way of justice. There can be no peace until there is justice. In our churches, too, there can be no genuine worship until we turn away from injustice. In Amos 5:23-24, God tells the prophet: “Take away the noise of your songs; I won’t listen to the melody of your harps. But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream” (CEB).

So that’s a sketch of the problem. You may ask, what can I do about it? Here are several things.

First, don’t be frozen by guilt. You can’t undo the past, and you don’t have to feel guilty about a system you did not create. But you can work for change, and you must.

To begin, learn more about racism and how to combat it. In coming weeks I’ll be sharing resources you can use to educate yourself and arm yourself for action.

Then, listen. In an interview last week, Kansas City Chiefs Coach Andy Reid said that his parents taught him to “have large ears” and to use them to listen. I love that. We all need large ears to hear the pain of our brothers and sisters.

You can’t hear them if you don’t encounter them, so the third thing you can do is engage your black neighbors in conversation and dialogue. Around here, most of your black neighbors are going to be somewhat distant geographically, but that doesn’t mean you can’t meet them.

Of course, you don’t just walk up to somebody and say, “Tell me about your pain.” You have to establish a relationship, get to know each other well, before that kind of dialogue can happen. So engagement means expanding our circle of friendship.

Along the way, we should be doing two other things. We need to be in continuous and intensive prayer. We need to open our hearts to God and ask for a miracle of peace and righteousness and justice in the heart of America and in our individual hearts as well.

That is, we also need to repent of our own racism. Even if we’ve rarely or never expressed it outwardly, we still feel it inwardly because it’s part of our social structure. We’re like fish in water, and we swim in racism every day. We know that the first thing you need to do to solve a problem is to admit that you have a problem, so to rid your spirit of this deadly virus, you have to confess it and then repent of it.

Finally, when you witness acts of racism, or recognize ways that you benefit unfairly from it, you should realize that silence is agreement, so you should speak up and act to stop it. That is one of our baptismal vows that we take whenever we are baptized and we renew whenever someone else is baptized. We vow to “resist evil, injustice and oppression in whatever forms they present themselves” to us.

It is time, as some have said, to replace indifference with compassion and apathy with empathy. This is not a peripheral issue. This is a gospel issue. This is who we are as God’s people. We affirm that all people are God’s children, and God loves each of us, and none of us deserves to be, or should be, privileged in ways that others are not.

And so in this time of three viruses, pandemic, prejudice and abuse of power, we pledge ourselves to God’s purpose.

Would you pray with me?

O Lord our God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, we confess today our complicity in the crime of racial injustice. We beg your forgiveness for this sin and humbly ask you to cleanse our hearts of this and all unrighteousness. Empower us to act to show our love to all people, and work in every heart and every mind of every person in our nation and in other nations around the world confronting this same sin. Make us one, Lord, with you, and with one another. We give ourselves to your keeping and dedicate ourselves to your purpose in our lives. In the name of Jesus, we pray – Amen.

This message was delivered outdoors at Edgerton United Methodist Church on June 14, 2020, the Second Sunday After Pentecost.

Trump Must Apologize to Martin Gugino

Donald Trump must apologize to Martin Gugino.

Gugino is the 75-year-old protestor who was knocked down by police at a protest in Buffalo last Thursday.

Video of the incident shows Gugino approaching a police line, speaking while gesturing with his cell phone. Two officers shove him backward. He falls flat on his back and hits his head on the pavement. The phone falls out of his hand, but he is otherwise unresponsive as he bleeds from his head.

The two officers hesitate but are urged ahead by others. A third officer appears to call in a request for aid, and others step up to provide it.

Gugino was seriously injured and remains hospitalized. The two officers were suspended without pay and later charged with felony assault.

Blindly following conspiracy theories floated by One America News Network, Trump tweeted this claim:

“Buffalo protester shoved by Police could be an ANTIFA provocateur. 75 year old Martin Gugino was pushed away after appearing to scan police communications in order to black out the equipment. @OANN I watched, he fell harder than was pushed. Was aiming scanner. Could be a set up?”

Many sources describe Gugino as a longtime peace activist and member of the Catholic Worker Movement who works at food kitchens and other outreach missions.

He was not trying to “scan” police communications. He fell hard because he was pushed hard, and unexpectedly. He was not affiliated with antifa, a group that exists mostly in Trump’s head. Trumps tweet is a vile lie.

Trump should apologize for spreading vile conspiracy theories and for slandering Martin Gugino. He will not apologize, of course, because he does not have the guts or integrity to ever admit that he is wrong about anything. This man is not a leader. He is a virus.

Refiner’s Fire 1: Power

Last week we celebrated Pentecost Sunday, when the fire of the Holy Spirit descended upon the early church. This week we celebrate Trinity Sunday, and we confess God as three in one – Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

But it’s even harder to celebrate today than it was last Sunday because there’s a fire burning in America today, and it’s burning brighter and hotter now than it was a week ago.

It may be the fire of destruction, or it may be the refining fire of God, or maybe it’s both. I think God is calling us to repent, as individuals, as a society, and as a nation. I think God is calling us to turn away from our authoritarian ways and to turn toward a God-shaped life.

At the heart of God is loving relationship. Whatever else you can say about Trinity, that’s what three-in-oneness and one-in-threeness is all about. Our God is social. Our God is loving. And here’s the payoff. Genesis 1:26 says that we humans are made in God’s image.

That’s all humans, not just some – you and me and anybody you can name, including that nasty fellow down the road, and his gossipy wife, too. We’re all made in God’s image. That means we are made to be, like God, lovingly social. Sadly, because of sin, we are mostly hatefully anti-social. That is, mostly we love only those poor saps who are most similar to us, and we bask in the delusion that we are superior to everyone else.

Shaped like the Trinity, we’re all bent out of shape, and we need a savior to straighten us out. God sent us Jesus, and we had to kill him because he was so loving that he made the rest of us look so bad.

Not long before Jesus was murdered by the powers-that-be, he had a brief political discussion with some of his followers. He said:

“You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. It will not be so among you. Whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be your slave; just as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many” (Matthew 20:25-28 NRSV).

Over the centuries, Christians have basically ignored Jesus’ vision of power and followed the way of empire, the way of Christendom. Still, our best thinkers have agreed that there are two kinds of social systems. There is the human way, what Jesus called the way of the Gentiles, and there is God’s way. There is the way of domination, and there is the way of humility. There is the way of Empire, and there is the way of God’s Kingdom.

Theologian Bernard Loomer speaks of two conceptions of power. On the one hand is authoritarian power, on the other relational power – coercive power as opposed to persuasive power.

Loomer says it’s a paradox that coercive power is actually weaker than persuasive power. If it were strong, it wouldn’t have to use coercion, would it? That’s why racism and authoritarianism are always coercive. They are weak, so they have to rely on violence and terror to get their way.

If you have been following the national news this week, you may sense where I am going with this.

Our world has been in lockdown because of a pandemic for three long months now, and whether we admit it or not, we’re all anxious, uncertain, on edge. Several events have tipped us over the edge.

On February 23, a black man named Ahmaud Arbery was jogging in a suburban neighborhood in Georgia when he was gunned down by two white men.

On March 13, a black woman named Breonna Taylor was gunned down when plainclothes police broke into her Louisville apartment in the middle of the night.

On May 25, Memorial Day, in New York’s Central Park, a black birdwatcher named Christian Cooper got into an argument with a white woman who said she was going to call police and report that a black man was threatening her. Happily, he caught it all on video.

That same evening in Minneapolis, a black man named George Floyd bought a pack of cigarettes with a $20 bill that store employees suspected was fake. They called police, who arrested Floyd. He was apparently drunk; he may have resisted. What’s crystal clear is that one officer kept Floyd handcuffed face-down on the pavement with a knee on his throat for more than eight minutes. Floyd died on the scene.

We’ve all seen the video. It’s horrifying. Why didn’t anyone do something? Well, they did. They pleaded with the officer to let Floyd breathe. What more could they have done? Even white folks know better than to argue with a cop carrying a gun.

Call it the last straw, or a cauldron of despair boiling over. You can hold people down for only so long before the rage explodes. Maybe if the timing had been different, the explosion would not have been so large. On top of a pandemic and mass unemployment and great discontent in an election year when the incumbent president seems to grow more unhinged every day, we witness the murder of a black man by a white cop. It’s the perfect storm.

Protests erupt in many cities. Some protests turn into riots. And the backlash begins. In the minds of some, the bad overshadows the good. The actions of a few troublemakers taint the whole enterprise. But if you condemn all protesters for the actions of a few, you also must condemn all police officers for the actions of a few. You can’t have it both ways.

Some politicians want to have it both ways, of course. They blame the protesters, ignoring the injustice they’re protesting. They’re lowlifes and losers, Donald Trump says.

Everybody chatters about their rights. Let’s talk about rights for a minute. As an American, you have a fundamental right to peacefully gather and protest. Protests may be a nuisance to others. You have a right to be a nuisance.

You do not have a right to deface or destroy or loot anyone’s property. You do not have a right to act in ways that endanger others. You do not have a right to threaten or harm police.

Similarly, authorities are obligated to allow and even encourage peaceful protests. They also have the right to maintain order to protect people and property. They do not have a right to use intimidation or violence to infringe on anyone’s right to protest.

Last Monday, we witnessed one of the most bizarre moments in American history.

Late Sunday night, when protests in Washington got way out of hand, Trump was hustled to safety in a bunker in the White House. He later explained that he was only “inspecting” the bunker – something every president does in the middle of the night, right?

He decided that the episode made him look weak, so he needed to make himself look strong. On Monday night, at a Rose Garden press conference, he proclaimed himself “an ally of all peaceful protesters” but claimed that protests in Washington were the work of domestic terrorists.

At that moment, National Guard troops were clearing a nearby peaceful protest in Lafayette Square using flash-bang shells, rubber bullets, and pepper or tear gas. It was still a half hour before curfew. The protesters had every right to be where they were, but they were forcibly removed so that Trump could parade over to a nearby church and pose for photos holding a Bible.

This atrocity brought quick and sharp reaction from mainstream Christians. It’s desecration, they said, blasphemy, idolatry. On the other hand, brown-nose evangelicals like Franklin Graham thought it was great.

Think about it: Peaceful protesters were cleared so that Trump could stage a photo op using a Bible as a prop. This is typical behavior for a reality TV celebrity. For him, everything is a prop for a photo op. Nothing is sacred, certainly not the Bible, or the Constitution, neither of which he appears to have ever read – or if he did, nothing stuck.

What happened to “Blessed are the poor in spirit”? What happened to “Blessed are the peacemakers”? What happened to “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness”? What about “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake”? (Matthew 5:3-10)

Let’s circle back now to the two kind of social systems, the way of domination and the way of humility, and the two conceptions of power, coercive and persuasive. On the one hand is the way of the world and the way of empire. On the other hand is the way of Jesus and the way of God’s kingdom.

Trump’s way is the world’s way. It is not the Jesus way. Trump is obsessed with not looking weak. The Apostle Paul tells us, “God chose what the world considers weak to shame the strong” (1 Corinthians 1:27 CEB). If Christ is with me, Paul says, “when I’m weak, then I’m strong” (2 Corinthians 12:10 CEB).

Telling the nation’s governors that they’d better get tough, Trump says: “If you don’t dominate, you’re wasting your time.” Sadly, the dominant conception of power in Trump’s head is domination. But that is the demonic way, not the way of God.

It’s true that many evangelicals are in love with domination and power. Writer Katherine Stewart calls it Authoritarian Christianity. It’s the worship of control, the worship of power. It’s not the worship of God. It’s far from the way of Jesus.

We are in a volatile moment in our country’s history, maybe in human history as well. This is a moral crisis. We need a moral revival. What we need, black pastor William Barber Jr. says, is a moral revolution.

Lafayette Square in Washington is only steps away from Tiananmen Square in Beijing. Thirty-one years ago Chinese authorities stormed Tiananmen Square to stop pro-democracy protests. Troops fired into the crowds, killing hundreds.

We think that can’t happen here. If National Guardsmen can brutally sweep peaceful protesters out of a park without provocation just so a politician who admires brutal dictators can stage a photo op with a Bible, why can’t it happen here?

Some people have noted that when Trump holds up that Bible in that photo op, it’s upside-down. No matter how he holds it, his understanding of humanity and power and God and goodness are upside-down.

We are a people in need today. We need leaders who will unify us, not divide us. We need leaders who seek not to dominate but to persuade; leaders who want to make peace, not war; leaders who stand with the oppressed, not the oppressor; leaders who are humble, not proud; leaders who thirst and hunger for righteousness; leaders who understand that real strength comes only from God.

We need leaders who can bring us together as a society to create real and lasting change so that the American dream can finally become a reality for all.

What I’ve said may have upset some of you. You’re messing with politics, preacher. Truly, I am. As I’ve said before, Christianity is inevitably political because it’s about our society, our polis, the Greek word behind the word “political.”

Christianity is political because it deals with the way we try to live together under the reign of Christ in a society that does not recognize Christ as king. But as political as my comments may be, they are not partisan. I don’t care what party Trump belongs to. I do care that his conception of power is demonic, not Christlike, and because he has such influence, the truth matters, and the truth must be told.

Some observers suggest that there are two viruses in our midst – the coronavirus and the virus of racism. I maintain that there are three viruses – coronavirus, racism, and authoritarianism. These three form an unholy trinity that mocks our three-in-one God.

Events have lit a fire in us. It may be both a destructive and a refining fire. I believe it’s the fire of God telling us that it’s time to get our act together. It’s time to turn away from our racist, power-mad, plague-prone ways, and turn toward a God-shaped life.

I hope you can say Amen to that.

This message was delivered to Edgerton United Methodist Church, live in an outdoor service, and online, June 7, 2020, Trinity Sunday.

Together Apart

“When Pentecost Day arrived, they were all together in one place.”

Well, isn’t that special? It sure seems special to us, who have not been all together in one place for 11 weeks now.

How we would love to be gathered all together in one place, cheek by jowl, hugging and laughing, drinking coffee and munching breakfast sweets, singing and clapping and shouting and smiling and crying and carrying on in ways we might get away only with in church. How we would love to be able to do those things again!

One day – perhaps sooner than we think, most likely far later than we would want – we will be able to be all together again in once place. So the big question is this: When next we gather, will the Holy Spirit fall on us the way it did on this crowd of Jesus followers on that first Pentecost long ago?

Will the Spirit fall on us, and will we be enthusiastic witnesses to the world that Christ is risen, Christ is king and Christ reigns over all things and someday will return to wrap up his rescue mission and restore all things to their original goodness?

What will it look like for us to be a Spirit-filled church when we come back together in the shadow of this deadly virus?

Before we go there, let’s talk about Pentecost. I’ll be making 10 points, and because I can’t put them on a screen for you, I’ll number the subtitles so you can keep track.

1. Pentecost is an ancient holy day for both Jews and Christians.

Then as now, the day is known among Jews as Shavuot, or the Feast of Weeks. It comes on the 50th day after Passover. It’s called the Feast of Weeks because it comes seven weeks after Passover – a week of weeks, get it? Christians call it by its Greek name, Pentecost.

Shavuot celebrates completion of the grain harvest started at Passover. It’s also a celebration of the giving of the Torah, God’s instruction to Israel, at Mount Sinai. At the time of our story, it is the second most important religious celebration in Judaism, second only to Passover, and Jerusalem is crowded with pilgrims from around the world.

Pentecost is the earliest known Christian holiday. The Apostle Paul mentions it in his first letter to the church at Corinth (1 Cor 16.8). That was written only 20 years after the death of Jesus, so Christians must have celebrated Pentecost almost from the start.

2. Today, Pentecost is the least celebrated of Christian holy days.

That is partly because of its nature. We have seasons of preparation for both Christmas and Easter, our two other big holidays, but there is no time of preparation leading up to Pentecost. It just happens. One week, we are talking about the Ascension of Jesus, and the next week – bang! – hey, it’s Pentecost!

But, of course, that’s how it happened to the first followers of Jesus, too. Jesus told them that something big was coming, but it still came a surprise.

There’s another reason that we fail to celebrate Pentecost more fully. We lack a robust sense of what it’s all about. As much as we do or don’t talk about the Holy Spirit, the Spirit remains a mystery to many of us. Sometimes, when we talk about Father, Son and Holy Ghost, the Spirit might as well be a ghost.

3. Pentecost is the birthday of the church.

It’s often said that Pentecost celebrates the birth of the church. The book of Acts tells us that at 9 that morning, there are 120 followers of Jesus (Acts 1:15), and by nightfall, there are more than 3,000 (Acts 2:41). Talk about church growth!

All members of the church for the first several years are Jews, but a wave of persecution centered in Jerusalem forces believers to flee in all directions, and they take their faith with them. One of the early persecutors, Saul of Tarsus, flips sides. Known by the Greek form of his name, Paul, he becomes the premiere Christian apostle to non-Jews throughout the Roman Empire.

4. Pentecost is the promise of the ages.

The outpouring of the Spirit at Pentecost was dreamed of for centuries. Numbers 11 tells us that when Moses is old and tired, God’s Spirit burns in him so brightly that the fire threatens to burn him out, so God decides to divide some of the Spirit that rests on him among 70 elders of the people.

But God’s Spirit sort of slops over onto two others, too, named Eldad and Medad. Someone complains to Moses: “God’s Spirit has fallen on the wrong people!”

And Moses says, “I wish God’s Spirit would fall on all of God’s people.”

Later, other prophets are assured that it will happen. God promises Ezekiel that Israel will be renewed. “A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you,” God says (Ezekiel 36:26). God also tells Joel: “I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh” (Joel 2:28).

John the Baptizer sees it coming, too. While dunking people in the Jordan River, he announces, “I baptize you with water, but the one coming after me will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire” (Matthew 3.11, Luke 3.16).

5. Pentecost is the promise of Jesus.

Jesus tells his disciples: “John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit” (Acts 1:5)

“I will not leave you orphaned,” he assures them (John 14:18). I will ask the Father and he will send you the Holy Spirit, the Advocate, your Helper, Counselor and Companion, who will remind you of everything I’ve told you and teach you everything (John 14:15-26).

6. Pentecost is the promise of the future.

The coming of the Spirit is a guarantee, Paul tells us. It’s like a deposit or down payment toward God’s promise. It’s an assurance that we belong to the Lord. It’s the seal of God that marks us forever as God’s own and not followers of Satan (2 Corinthians 5.5, Ephesians 1.13, Revelation 7:3, 14:9).

7. Pentecost is about overcoming barriers.

With the rush of a mighty wind and individual flames of fire, the Holy Spirit comes upon the disciples in such a powerful way that language barriers fall. Somehow they can speak directly to those who are gathered for the Feast of Weeks from many nations around the world. No wonder everyone is amazed.

At the least, this is a powerful metaphor for the way the good news of Jesus can speak to people from anywhere, whatever their language or national origin or cultural background. The gospel knows no barriers.

The barriers we have erected, to God and to one another, have to come down.

As a deadly virus continues to spread among us, we also are suffering in the wake of yet another murder of a black man by a white police officer. Regrettably, riots have erupted in several cities. As a nation, we must find a way to stop this vicious cycle of institutional violence and outraged response.

This has to be more than individual pledges to renounce racism. It has to be a social effort, something we engage in as a people. It would surely be the greatest national undertaking of our lifetime, something that would make ours the “greatest generation.”

It will take a powerful movement of the Spirit to make it happen. We pray for that today.

8. Pentecost is about the coming of the Holy Spirit.

“You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you,” Jesus tells his followers (Acts 1.8).

There’s a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and something like tongues of fire appear among them. The sound of wind is easy for us to understand. We live in Kansas, after all. But those tongues of fire are harder to imagine. Most efforts to illustrate them verge on the cartoonish.

When you look through a gallery of art portraying the event, as we did earlier, you may notice that the more stylized or abstract the depiction is, the more convincing it actually is, and the more woodenly literal the depiction, the less convincing it is.

We can’t quite imagine what it would have been like. Luke, who wasn’t there, can’t quite imagine it either, so his language is stilted and tentative. Maybe he couldn’t have done much better even if he had been there. It’s said that a picture is worth a thousand words. I’m not sure how many thousand words it would take to produce a clear picture of this event. Maybe, like the speaking in different languages, it’s a wonder beyond explanation.

Something happened. We know that much. Something happened, and these 120 Jesus followers were not the same as they were before.

9. The Holy Spirit is alive and well in us.

The primary mission of the Holy Spirit is to make you more like Jesus, which is to say, more the person God created you to be. In this way, the Spirit works for the restoration of God’s good creation, one person at a time.

“Be filled with the Spirit,” Ephesians 5:18 tells us. How we demonstrate that we are depends a lot on which faith tradition we follow. Some stress outward signs, such as speaking in tongues. Others suggest that we look at the fruit of the Spirit listed in Galatians 5.

I think the most important sign of the Spirit, the true seal of the Spirit on our lives, is loving action. Without it, Paul tells us, everything we do is just random noise, like a noisy gong or a clashing cymbal (1 Corinthians 13.1).

Every act we make, every decision we make, is either loving or it is not. We can disagree on whether a certain action is the best loving choice, but love remains the gold standard that we use to evaluate everything.

10. We remain apart, but we are still together.

“We are one in the Spirit,” the song says.

That’s what keeps us connected as a church. I have tried to provide regular updates by email and postal service, plus an online presence every Sunday morning – hardly a full-fledged worship service, but at least some prayer time and a message – plus online communion and most recently Zoom Coffee, and occasional phone calls and notes or cards.

These efforts try to overcome the barriers of distance between us. But what really keeps us together is the presence of the Holy Spirit. Without that presence, nothing I or anyone else could do would keep us connected in the ways we need and want to be connected.

Because of the presence of the Holy Spirit, none of us is alone. Each of us is connected with all others, through the Holy Spirit. Yes, the Spirit works mysteriously. We know the Spirit is there when we are physically present to one another. We also have experienced the reality that the Spirit works when we are not physically present to one another – when we are present only digitally, through a computer or telephone link.

If the Spirit lives and works in us, we are one when separate as much as we are one when together. That won’t change when we come back together physically. But it does raise the question: How will we be different?

Things will not be the same as they once were. As it is said, too much water has flowed under the bridge. How will we have grown in the Spirit because of our experience of being apart? How can we share that with others? How can we say, “Spirit of the living God, fall afresh on us”?

This message was delivered online on Pentecost Sunday, May 31, 2020, for Edgerton United Methodist Church, from Acts 2:1-21.

Eternal Hope

For the last four weeks, we’ve been speaking of the hope we have for the future – hope that is not grounded in optimism or wishful thinking but in the steadfast love of God that has been most clearly revealed to us in Jesus Christ.

This is the last of our series of messages on hope. It’s not that we’ve run out of hope, but today we are speaking about the end of hope – that is, the purpose of hope. We’re talking about eternal hope, our hope for what happens after this life.

It’s especially appropriate that we should talk about this today. Today is Ascension Sunday, when we celebrate Jesus’ return to heaven. It’s also the Sunday of Memorial Day weekend, when we remember those who have given their lives in service to our country, and when families often visit the graves of loved ones.

This is a time when we often think of what comes after death. This year our thinking is especially fraught with uncertainty because of the coronavirus pandemic. More than 90,000 Americans have died so far, and there’s no end in sight. We can’t live on the self-serving promises of those in power. We’ve got to live on real hope, and that comes only from God.

This morning I want to talk about several dimensions of our eternal hope and also dispel some common illusions, misconceptions and downright lies about that hope. Most of these distortions come from what I call pop religion. In times of uncertainty, these untruths are trumpeted especially loudly by fundamentalists and evangelicals.

You’ve probably heard a lot of speculation about whether we are living in “the last days.”

In one sense, we most certainly are. First-century Jews commonly spoke of two ages: this age and the age to come, the present evil age and the last days. (Galatians 1:4, Ephesians 1:21) The hinge between them is the coming of the Messiah.

God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets, the book of Hebrews says, “but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son” (Hebrews 1:1-2). At Pentecost, which we’ll celebrate next Sunday, the Apostle Peter quotes the prophet Joel as saying: “In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people” (Acts 2:17 CEB).

So, yes, we’ve been living in the last days since the time of Jesus.

But those aren’t the last days that most people worry about. What they’re wondering is, are we living in the “last days” before the end of the world? The answer to that question is, no, not very likely. In the King James version of the Bible, Jesus and others do speak about “the end of the world.” But that is a serious mistranslation. In all cases, they’re not talking about the end of the world but the end of the age – the end of the present age and the beginning of the coming age.

God does not intend to destroy this world, but to renew it. That’s how the book of Revelation ends, with the renewal of heaven and earth and God bringing heaven down to earth. “Look!” God says. “I’m making all things new!” (Revelation 21:5 CEB)

Still others wonder, are these the last days before the Second Coming of Christ? About that we cannot know, nor are we meant to know. A lot of people have made a lot of money speculating about the timing of the Second Coming, and it’s nothing but speculation. In times of crisis such as we are living in today, some people may find comfort in such speculation. Some also find comfort in kooky conspiracy theories. I wouldn’t put much stock in any of it.

Next question: Is God using the coronavirus to punish us for our sins? No. That’s not the way God works. The Bible speaks frequently of the “wrath” of God, but it always comes down to God allowing us to suffer the consequences of our own stupidity. If God were to punish us for our sins, how could any of us survive?

(And, hey, incidentally, didn’t Jesus take care of that for us on the cross? Just asking.)

God is not in the punishing business, but a lot of people are, and they would like to think that their penchant for cruelty is a godly thing, except that it’s not. They dishonor God when they make God out to be the monster they see in the mirror every day.

Psalm 7 says, “God has deadly weapons in store for those who won’t change; he gets his flaming arrows ready!” But they turn out to be metaphorical arrows, not real ones. The Psalm goes on: “See how the wicked hatch evil… They make a pit, dig it all out, and then fall right into the hole they’ve made! The trouble they cause comes back on their own heads” (Psalm 7:13-16). In other words, as Galatians 6:7 says, they reap what they sow.

But let’s not ignore those flaming arrows. They may be metaphors, but we need to take them seriously. Notice who they are for. They are for those who won’t change, for those who won’t repent. Again, understand that the arrows are not punishment. They are warnings that you need to change your ways. They are encouragement to change. In other words, God uses “flaming arrows” to motivate us to turn our lives around and start living right.

Hold that thought as we turn back to the book of Revelation. Understand that the popular understanding of it is quite twisted. Revelation is not a blueprint for the end of time. It is not a pack of Tarot cards, or a Quija board, or a crystal ball that peers into the future. It is a testament of hope to seven churches in Asia Minor near the close of the first century.

Only one of the churches has faced persecution for their faith in Christ, but fear of persecution is beginning to gnaw at all of them. The message that John of Patmos brings to these churches is simple: Endure, he says. Tough times may be ahead. Stay faithful, and you will inherit the best that God has to offer.

Revelation is full of truly bizarre imagery and awful accounts of environmental catastrophe and millions of deaths. But imagery is all it is. These are symbols, not literal descriptions. Whenever you take a symbol literally, you always get it wrong. Revelation is not predicting catastrophe. But it is warning us that awful things will happen if we don’t change our ways.

Those Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are not predictions of the future. They’re descriptions of human history: war, slaughter, famine, death. As Jesus said: You’ll hear about wars and rumors or wars, but don’t be alarmed. These things happen all the time. They’re not signs of the end. (Mark 13:7 and parallels).

I invite you to carefully read three chapters of Revelation, chapters 8 and 9 and 16. These describe John’s visions of the seven trumpet calls and the seven bowls of the wrath of God. Read them, and then consider what you have heard will happen to us if we do not reverse the course of global warming. Now convince me that Revelation and scientists are not issuing a similar warning.

Now consider how the coronavirus outbreak fits into what you’ve just read. Revelation doesn’t “predict” this plague. It does suggest that plagues like it are the inevitable result of human irresponsibility.

Oh, we don’t have to worry, some say. We’ll be raptured away before all that happens. No, we won’t. Christians will not be secretly whisked away in the night so we won’t have to endure “the great tribulation.” Believers as well as unbelievers will endure it, because “the great tribulation” is human history itself.

As for the so-called Rapture, it’s a cruel hoax, an escapist fantasy, a monstrous misrepresentation of truth. Try to find the Rapture in Revelation. Keep looking. Take all the time you need. People have been looking for it since John Nelson Darby invented it in 1830, and they still haven’t found it in there. Because it’s not there.

When Jesus returns to earth, his arrival will not be a secret. There won’t be anybody “left behind” wondering what just happened. Jesus says his return will be like a flash of lightning that lights up the sky (Luke 17:14). It will be a day so bright that it will be remembered forever.

Some people call the Rapture our “blessed hope,” and that is a breathlessly ridiculous claim. The notion of a “blessed hope” comes from the letter to Titus. It says, “we wait for the blessed hope and the glorious appearance of our great God and savior Jesus Christ” (Titus 2:13).

It doesn’t say that we wait for the secret arrival of our great God and Savior. We wait for his glorious appearance. We wait for his glorious epiphany. That’s the word that’s used in Titus: epiphany.

That’s what the book of Revelation points to – the glorious epiphany of Christ. But there’s more. What is the end of our hope – that is, what is the purpose of our hope? What, ultimately, are we waiting for?

Sure, we all want to go to heaven when we die. Heaven is where God is. And wherever that is now, Revelation tells us that God intends to bring heaven down to earth. So heaven is not our final destination. Our final destination, the Apostle Paul assures us, is bodily resurrection in a renewed earth.

We could spend a long time working out the implications of that. It’s a mind-boggling assertion. But finally we believe, as 1 Peter 1:3 assures us, that we “have been born anew into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.”

It’s not about going to heaven. It’s not just about getting to be with loved ones again. It’s about living with God and loved ones – and maybe a few folks we never really got along with in this life – in a new life that is so wonderful and so much beyond the limits of our imagination that we might as well stop trying to imagine it and just trust God that it will be good.

That’s the end of our hope. That’s the blessed hope that gives spring to our steps and meaning to our lives. We have lived lives of significance. We have loved greatly. We have had successes and failures, but we’ve also had one great accomplishment, and that is that we have shared God’s grace with others. We have let God’s love shine through us. We have been beacons of hope to others. That accomplishment is truly something worth hoping for!

Amen.

This message was delivered online on May 24, 2020, to Edgerton United Methodist Church in Edgerton, Kansas. It’s the 7th Sunday of Easter, and the text is Acts 1:6-9.