Pentecost – Acts 2:1-21 – Confirmation Sunday
This is not a graduation sermon. I’ve said that before on Confirmation Sundays but it’s important to say it again. We may dress up our teenagers in red and white gowns with flowers and call them forward to receive—well, not a diploma, though they will receive certificates later on today. It may look a graduation, and it may feel like a graduation, but it isn’t a graduation.
Although, I have to say, with this group, I kind of wish it was. Graduation is a time when things come to an end, when a class of students leave the school, they GO AWAY, and I have to admit, in some ways, I have been looking forward to that all year long. Which—let me be clear—it’s not to say I don’t like this group of young people, I do, very much so in fact. But to pretend that I’ve had an easy time with this bunch would be to lie to you, dear people, and I don’t intend to do that. In fact, I told them yesterday that they’ve been the hardest, most challenging class of students I’ve had since I started teaching middle school Sunday school back in 2003. With maybe the exception of that one year I taught first graders—I don’t know how Sue and Jeff Swanberg do it year after year—but that’s only a maybe.
Every single member of this group of teens has tested me in some way over the past two years of class with them, and given me a run for my money. They’re like a whirlwind. Rachel comes to every class session loaded with questions—I almost think she spends her month dreaming up things to ask about—and for the first time I’ve had to spend confirmation classes admitting I have no idea whatsoever what the answers are. Over and over again. Eve delights in asking questions that I think are deliberately designed to trip me up. I may falter for answers, but Evan always has some of his own, and is immensely proud of being right all the time, which he is. Danielle assumes naturally that I will be right all the time, and she gets this look on her face when it’s clear that I’m not, letting me know I should know better. For Kaylie, it’s my behavior that is exasperating, and she’ll throw her hands in the air and say “Pastor Aaron” to let me know. For Jake, it’s not my behavior that’s the problem; it’s his, as he pushes hard against every barrier and boundary I set, mostly to see if I’ll stick to my guns or not—and the times that I haven’t, I know I’ve let him down. Jeffrey, on the other hand, leaps full-body over the boundaries I set, and then looks back to see what I’ll do about; the problem is, he lets me know at the same time that he’s fully engaged with the material so I can’t get mad at him. Hannah is engaged too, deeper than most, but she’s quiet most of the time, which means that when she opens her mouth and pours forth a brilliant question or bit of wisdom, I’m always taken aback. Nina has equal measures of worry and grace in her, and I’m never quite sure how things I have say will come across to her, so I always feel like I have to keep an eye on her to measure how well I’m doing. That’s everyone, thanks be to God, because I couldn’t handle any more at the same time! I’m tired, worn out, stretched to the limit with this group of students. I love them, very much, but now that confirmation classes with them are over maybe I’ll be able to get to sleep at night.
I wonder how much the disciples slept on the night of that first Pentecost, described in our reading from Acts today. They were gathered together in the upper room, minding their own business, wondering what would come next, and then suddenly the Holy Spirit comes like a whirlwind into their gathering, and stirs everything up. The Spirit comes to them with POWER, and turns their whole lives upside down. And suddenly they find themselves out on the streets, praising God and proclaiming the Good News of Jesus Christ to people whose language they don’t even know.
Stop and think about that for a minute. What does it take to communicate a message clearly—just to someone you know well? You have to shape the way you say things, the way you describe whatever it is you’re talking about, so that the person will understand you clearly. It’s harder when you’re talking to someone you don’t know. Harder still to do it in another language. And then, we’re not just talking about a conversation between friends. We’re talking about the communication of the Gospel message, the death and resurrection of Jesus, lumped in with all of his teachings! This is hardly a simple message to get across!
The writer, David Sedaris, tells an uproariously funny story about attending a French class where the students were tasked, in French, to describe what Easter is all about. Here are some excerpts: “[Easter] is a party for the little boy of God who calls his self Jesus…and then he die one day on two…morsels of…lumber. He die one day, and then he go above of my head to live with your father. He weared the long hair, and after he died, the first day he come back here for to say hello to the peoples. He nice, the Jesus. He make the good things, and on the Easter we be sad because somebody makes him dead today.”* Problematic.
The Gospel IS a complex message. And that’s before you start piling on things like eating Christ’s body and drinking his blood. No wonder we mainline Christians have a reluctance to share it. We don’t have any idea what to say.
And yet, listen to the words that Peter speaks to the crowd that first Pentecost: He quotes from the prophet Joel, who says, “In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon ALL FLESH, and your sons and your daughters will prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams. Even upon my slaves, both men and women, in those days I will pour out my Spirit, and they shall prophesy.” Peter isn’t talking about just pastors proclaiming the Gospel. This is everyone, young and old, men and women, slave and free, everyone, calling out God’s message of salvation to all the peoples of the world.
And we do. We do proclaim God’s good news. Sometimes we do it in spite of ourselves. We do it in myriad languages in myriad ways in myriad times and places in our world. I’m not talking about Spanish and German and French. I’m talking about every time people prepare a tray of lasagna to go down to the John Street Soup Kitchen, giving their clients dignity and a hot meal, you’re proclaiming the Gospel of the Lord. I’m talking about every time a person who works as a nurse behaves toward his patients with compassion and love, you’re proclaiming the Gospel of the Lord. I’m talking about every time a businesswoman works an extra few hours to be able to better provide for her family, you’re proclaiming the Gospel of the Lord. I’m talking about every time you—that you, young people, yes, I read your service reports yesterday, every word of them—coach a soccer game for disabled children or work to clean up a playground or participate in an MS walk or babysit for neighbors or work as a camp counselor—you are proclaiming the word of the Lord.
The Holy Spirit turned the lives of those first disciples upside-down when she came upon them at the first Pentecost, and it drove them out into the world to proclaim the Good News of Jesus Christ in new and exciting ways. And that’s why I’m worn out from this confirmation class, too. Because these young people have, over the past two years, turned my life upside-down with their questions and cajoling and testing and worrying and LIVING! Living abundantly! It is SO CLEAR the Holy Spirit is working in and through each one of them. And whenever you tangle with the Holy Spirit, you end up tired, and worn out, and so much better for the wear. These people have taught me far more about God then I could ever hope to teach them. They’ve made me think about God in new and exciting ways, made me question and refine my faith, and they are STILL working at me, making me rethink the ways I live out my faith in the world. I’ll let you know how that rethinking turns out.
Which is why this is not a graduation sermon. Because nobody’s graduating today. Instead, we’re celebrating the incredible work that the Holy Spirit is doing in and through them, and will continue to do in and through them in the days and years to come. For some of them, I fear, this will be treated like a graduation, a time when they have fulfilled their church commitment and can, in fact, “leave school,” never to come back. It will break my heart if they do, not so much because of what they will be missing, but because of what the rest of us will miss. Because of the ways the Holy Spirit talks to us through them. Because of the connection we have to God through them. That’s what this Church, this Christian community thing is all about, you know. It’s not about caring for each other, or doing good works of charity, or raising our children in the faith, or any of those kind of things that we usually think about in the Church, though those are all good and important functions of our congregation. No, the Church is about finding our connection to God through the presence of one another. About seeing that Holy Spirit hanging out in our relationship with one another, bringing a whirlwind through our lives and turning everything upside-down, and so much the better. May God unsettle you, and may you come to know him deeper through all the languages spoken by the Holy Spirit in your life. And may you then go proclaim the word of the Lord to others through everything you do. Amen.
From David Sedaris, “Jesus Shaves,” Me Talk Pretty One Day. Back Bay Books, 2001.