Gloria Dei Lutheran Church

Texts: Acts 2:1-21; 1 Corinthians 12:3b-13; John 20:19-23

Dear Friends in Christ, God’s grace and peace be with you.  Amen

Artist Barnett Newman’s Stations of the Cross, hangs in the National Gallery of Art in the Smithsonian[i]. Stations of the Cross are normally series of 14 pieces of art inviting us to reflect on stops along Jesus’s final walk to his crucifixion. They might include a depiction of Jesus being sentenced to death, one where he picks up the cross, a few where he stumbles, some when he interacts with his mother and others, and finally a set showing as he is crucified, dies and is buried.

But the display in the Smithsonian doesn’t look like those traditional portrayals at all. Barnett Newman doesn’t claim a Christian faith, and the works are so abstract it’s hard to imagine that they convey any of the specific events of Jesus’ final walk through Jerusalem.

A description in the gallery explains that for Newman, more than focusing on the specific events along the via Delarosa, he wants the work to pull us toward Jesus’ haunting question from the cross, My God, My God, why have you forsaken me? Newman calls it the “one question that has no answer.”

It’s not only a question Jesus asks, of course, but one all of us are left with, at least at some point in our lives. Dear God, why have you forsaken us? When yet another mass shooter destroys the peace of a community, when the cancer returns, when the relationship falls apart, when the perfect job opportunity goes to the other candidate, when the loved one sinks deeper into despair, when we remember a neighbor dying under the knee of injustice, crying out for breath. Why have you abandoned us, God?

Certainly the disciples must have asked that question as they watched Jesus suffer and die. Perhaps they asked it again on that Ascension Day as he was taken from them yet again. “Are you deserting us for good this time? Will we no longer be able to turn to you with our questions and our hopes? Why have you forsaken us?”

In spite of their fears and bewilderment, the disciples hung on to the one thing they still had – each other. They huddled together for those first 50 days, sensing that what one of them lacked, the others might offer, and that where two or three or eleven were gathered, they were stronger off than when they were alone.

And then, on that 50^th day, they receive the answer to that seemingly unanswerable question. Pentecost is God’s response to the way of the cross.

Jesus’ friends discover that they are left not just with memories and lessons of their leader and teacher, but are filled with his very spirit, his breath. He hasn’t abandoned them at all, but fills their lives with power and purpose. The Spirit, the living presence of God which Jesus embodied is as close to them as it has been from the beginning, as near as our very breath.

With a gust of overwhelming love, God claims us again, saying, I have not ever, and will not ever abandon you, my people. On the day when you feel lost, alone or afraid, I will once again pour out my Spirit, so that you will be filled with power from on high. On that day I will breathe into you peace that passes understanding, power to speak to forces of despair, willingness to forgive the unforgivable, and insight into the most perplexing agonies of life, so that you will work for the common good of all.

On that day you will each recognize that every person I have made has a gift to offer, whether it be knowledge or healing, cheerfulness or diligence, compassion, beauty, humor, clarity, or the passion to persevere for justice.

You are not abandoned. To the contrary: You have never been more fully alive with the power of God in your life.

Dear friends, can you feel it? Can you believe it? Can you trust that we are the answer to the unanswered question? We are the church the Spirit breathed back into life that day. We still dance under ribbons of grace in the warmth of fire, singing songs of courage and confidence, because the Spirit is still poured out into our lives, into this gathering, into this church.

Like those first disciples in the early church, there are disagreements and divisions among God’s people. There are those who find our message too abstract or irrelevant. We face challenges of leadership and transition. We worry about those who seem to have stepped away. We wonder about what future generations will carry with them.

I suspect it has always been this way. But as Paul reminded the church in Corinth nearly 2000 years ago, and the prophet Joel reminded God’s people 800 years before then, we are the ones God calls into service.

Regardless of age, or gender, or pronoun, regardless of training or political affiliation, regardless of whether we have great faith, or wish we had more, we are the ones.

There still are those who experience this as a God-forsaken world. They witness so much suffering on their way, they can’t hear the voices of hope around them.

It is our job to find a new language to use to help them hear it, our job to be the community of grace and compassion that huddles together in the recognition that we’re better off when we’re gathered with one another. We are the ones who are empowered to be, as one pastor writes, “wordsmiths of love and listeners to the unlovely[ii].” We are the ones equipped to prophecy against injustice, and to dream the dreams of a new day. We are the ones God is calling to blow onto the embers of hope, to sit with the lonely, to feed the hungry and tend the garden, to offer our time and our heart, to marvel at mystery, and to sing with the breath of God in service to our neighbor.

But be prepared. It is all likely to amaze and bewilder us. There’s a welcome in this Spiriting that might perplex us. You heard it, right? All those extra voices, confusing us as we listened. This is where the church begins. Jodi Hauge calls it our Origin Story, our roots.

From the beginning God included everyone: Parthians and Medes, Galileans and people of Jerusalem. Immigrants from parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, Germans and Swedes and those of us who grew up in Missouri or Nebraska or Northern Minnesota. Folks from Peru and Afghanistan, people from the other side of town, people in the aisles and in the choir loft, and out on Snelling Avenue. Faithful and frustrating. People who look like us, and those who are clearly different. Everyone is included.

As Pastor Jodi adds, “Family members who you debated all week with about gun control and trans rights? They’re in. You who don’t want to commit to any system of belief but needed to be around other humans today? In. You who have doggedly pursued Jesus for years? Yes.” You who have wrestled with the Spirit’s call? You, too. “The church began in wide-open generosity, with God meeting every single person where they were at[iii].”

It hasn’t changed. So we’re going to have to listen to one another, to discover how God speaks in voices that are unfamiliar, but still declares good news. Pentecost empowers us to listen to the voices of those who suffer, and those who have new ideas of how to respond. It stirs within us the openness to use the gifts of the newest to the faith, and those who have been here for a long time. God’s breathes powerful transformation and living hope into the whole world through us.

When George Floyd was dying under the knee of a world that had forsaken him, he cried out for breath.

Today, the Spirit breathes into every place that cries, through us, responding to the way of the cross, with grace and love unbounded. We are the answer to the pain of the world. We, the Resurrected Body of Christ, are the response to the unanswerable questions: a community of openness, a song of diversity and joy, a breath of power, a gift of peace.

Thanks be to God.

 

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[i] Valerie Hellstein, Mavcor Center for the Study of Visual and Material Cultures of Religion, Barnett Newman, The Stations of the Cross: Lema Sabachtani, Yale, 2023.  https://mavcor.yale.edu/conversations/object-narratives/barnett-newman-stations-cross-lema-sabachtani.

[ii] Rev. Sue.  Companions on the Way Blog. 5/23/2023. https://www.companionsontheway.com/post/pentecost-we-are-given-the-spirit-for-the-common-good

[iii] Pastor Jodi Hauge. Humble Walk Facebook post. 5/25/2023. https://www.facebook.com/groups/Humblewalkchurch.