Sermon on Pentecost: How can We Build that Great Tomorrow?
Acts 2: 1-21
1 Corinthians 3b-13
John 20: 19-23
Today is of course the feast of the Pentecost. Hence the gospel reading is so short, since the story of Pentecost is in none of the gospels. And the gospelnotes a small theological mystery, the Holy Spirit came to the disciples, weeks before the masses.
The reading of Paul’s first epistle to the Corinthians offers more about the Holy Spirit and its universality. For that is the point of the Holy Spirit: “the body is one with many members,” all essentially the same, even if they speak different languages, belong to different cultures such as Jewish or Greek, and different legal social status, such as slave or free.
These sentiments are declared on that day of the Pentecost, described in the reading from Acts. People who speak many different languages (especially the strange dialect of Galileans); people who come from so many nations from Europe, Asia, and Africa, intersecting in what we now call the Middle East; people of different status, of slaves, of men, of women: all who call “on the name of the Lord shall be saved.”
This attitude of equality of human beings and denial of ethnic and national differences has always been one of my favorite proclamations of Christianity. It radically breaks with common cultural practices (as does, I will note, that right after the Pentecost, comes the oft-ignored story that “All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need. Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people.” (Acts 2: 43-47).
How horrible then, that our social and cultural divisions still continue in a country that dares to call itself Christian. The tragic death and destruction of the past week sparked in Minneapolis, a place I have visited often and lived in briefly, show how little progress has been made toward equality. More than half a century ago, Dr. Martin Luther King Junior identified what was wrong and what could be right:
“Many in moments of anger, many in moments of deep bitterness, engage in riots. … Let me say as I've always said, and I will always continue to say, that riots are socially destructive and self-defeating. I'm still convinced that nonviolence is the most potent weapon available to oppressed people in their struggle for freedom and justice. …
But at the same time, it is as necessary for me to be as vigorous in condemning the conditions which cause persons to feel that they must engage in riotous activities as it is for me to condemn riots. I think America must see that riots do not develop out of thin air. Certain conditions continue to exist in our society which must be condemned as vigorously as we condemn riots. But in the final analysis, a riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it that America has failed to hear? It has failed to hear that the plight of the Negro poor has worsened over the last few years. It has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met. And it has failed to hear that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice, equality, and humanity. …
With [the Christian] faith, we will be able to transform the jangling discourse of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith, we will be able to speed up the day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and live together as brothers and sisters, all over this great nation. That will be a great day, that will be a great tomorrow.”
That tomorrow did not come for Dr. King, whose life ended with a bullet a few months after this speech, about fifty years ago. As for now, how can we build that great tomorrow?
Selection from one version of “The Other America Speech,” ©1967 Martin Luther King, Jr., <https://www.crmvet.org/docs/otheram.htm>
Written for the parish of St. James & St. George 2020 May 31
URL: <http://therev.brianpavlac.org/srms/20200523.html