Sprit's Song

Dear friends in Christ, grace to you and peace, from God our Father, and His Son, our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

On Thursday, I got my hair cut, and as I sat in the chair, the stylist asked me if I had any exciting plans for summer. “Actually, I do” I answered. And then I continued “I don’t know how much you know about the Reformation, but on Tuesday I am leaving for Witterberg, Germany, where I will preach in Martin Luther’s churches.” And she said “Oh, how exciting, and is he coming here to preach?” “No” I said. “But he has been here a couple of times!”

Well, I am excited to leave, and I thank you for the opportunity you have afforded me to have this experience. I don’t tweet on Twitter, but I will be sending regular reports to post on our congregation’s website, and I invite you to share this journey with me. You have been so gracious and generous in allowing your pastors to be refreshed, and I speak for both Linda and me in saying thank you.

I have to tell you that when I spent a month in Wittenberg on my sabbatical six years ago, I found myself being quite lonely. I didn’t have a role there, a formal function, and I was there all alone. Wittenberg is in former East Germany so there is very little English spoken there, especially among the adults. There are no English newspapers or magazines, no English TV or radio. It was pretty much just me and a whole bunch of Germans, and my German is not so good! After about two weeks, I found myself listening in on conversations at the market, and if I heard someone speaking English, I would run up to them and say “Will you talk to me?” It was a sort of a relational vacuum that I had never experienced in my life.

One afternoon, a bus showed up in Wittenberg and 40 college-aged kids poured out of it. Turns out, it was the choir from Concordia University in St. Paul, my alma mater. I walked with them through the streets of Wittenberg, speaking English, of course. I had lunch with them, and then followed them to The Castle Church and sat in the back pew as they sang Luther’s “A Mighty Fortress is Our God”, a cappella, in four part harmony. I didn’t sing; I listened, as they sang those powerful words in a language I could understand:

God’s Word forever shall abide, no thanks to foes, who fear it
For God himself fights by our side with weapons of the Spirit
Were they to take our house; goods, honor, child or spouse
Though life be wrenched away, they cannot with the day
The Kingdom’s ours forever!

That Pentecost Sunday in Wittenberg, I gained a new appreciation of what actually happened on the first Day of Pentecost 2000 years ago. Jerusalem was a cosmopolitan city, with travelers from all over the world passing through every day. The common language in Jerusalem, the lingua franca, was Hebrew, or perhaps Greek or Aramaic. But the locals rarely spoke French, or German, or Italian, or Egyptian, or Latin, or Sanskrit in Jerusalem. So the message of the gospel of Jesus Christ was locked up inside of those who could only understand the languages that the disciples spoke. How would the news of Jesus Christ ever make its way out of Israel unless God crafted a miracle for it to happen? Because that’s what occured on Pentecost Day; a miracle that day launched the Christian Church, and propelled the story of Christ’s love to every corner of the world. And here’s how it happened….

The disciples had been told to wait in Jerusalem because Jesus was sending a helper for them. They didn’t know what to expect; Jesus wasn’t that specific, so they wondered how they would recognize this helper Jesus was sending. They waited, and waited. On a Sunday, fifty days after Easter, while they were all still gathered in one place, the sound of a rushing wind arrived. Unexplainably, what appeared to be tongues of fire landed on the shoulders of the disciples. And then this; the disciples began to speak in foreign languages! They were all Jews, these disciples. The only language they knew was their mother tongue, but were now speaking languages that they had never learned before; Egyptian, Latin, German, Sanskrit; everything but Norwegian! And in the street below, travelers now cried out “How can this be? These are Jews speaking fluently about Jesus in a language that we can understand?” And then they asked another question, a very Lutheran question: “But what does it mean?”

Pentecost was not just proof of the Spirit’s arrival. It was also the arrival of a new mission for the followers of Jesus Christ. The mission now was to tell the world, in a language they could understand, this amazing story of redemption. Tell everyone. Not just the men. Not just the adults. Not just the people of Israel. Tell the world. Perhaps the disciples now recalled Jesus saying to them “When the Holy Spirit comes you will receive power; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in Judea and Samaria, and to the very ends of the earth.”

This was now their mission: To tell the world about Jesus. It’s a lofty goal, is it not? To tell the whole world? But then, we have always been intrigued by lofty goals. Henry Ford’s mission was that every American family would one day drive one of his cars. When Millard Fuller, the founder of Habitat for Humanity, was asked what his organization’s ultimate purpose was, it made people laugh: “The goal of Habitat” he said “is to eliminate sub-standard housing from the face of the earth.” Young Life states their mission in the most basic of human terms: “All kids, everywhere.” So when the Holy Spirit finally arrived, those first Christians understood that their new mission was just beginning. And the disciples all agreed. They were of one mind and one voice that their only purpose was to tell of God’s love; “all kids, everywhere” so to speak. And the early Church was one; they ate together, they prayed together, they shared their belongings, and they chose to love one another even when they disagreed with one another.

But 2000 years is a long time. And over those years, the Church has found ways to divide itself; created ways to divide itself. We are divided about mission, we have disagreed about purpose, we have argued about baptism, about Holy Communion, about who’s in the Kingdom and who isn’t. We have, at times, circled our wagons and pronounced that our denomination is right and yours is wrong. We have taken our eye off the ball; we have lost sight of our essential purpose in this world. We have taken issue with St. Augustine’s appraisal of the Church when he said “The Church is the only club on earth that exists for those who are not yet members of it.”

And meanwhile, the world is becoming more and more diverse. Communication technology has made the world seem smaller, but it has magnified the differences among our many nations, languages, cultures, religions, ideologies and traditions, even within this country. And in case you haven’t noticed, the Christian Church is losing ground. In this country, the fastest growing religion is “the nones.” Not the Roman Catholic sisters, but rather, those who, when asked their religious preference, respond “none.” People, it is as if we’ve never left first century Jerusalem. There are people in our midst who don’t understand the language of “Lutheran.” They don’t get our worship music, or our worship seasons, or our complicated liturgies. Our faith is a mystery to them. I’m not suggesting that we dumb it down…I am suggesting that we live it out! In short, I am suggesting that we sing the Spirit’s Song, and not our own.

In the coming days of this season of Pentecost, may God give you uncommon boldness to speak and to live the gospel of Jesus Christ. We are living in a mission field, and you are the preachers. In the words of St. Francis of Assissi: “Always preach Christ; when necessary, use words!” Thanks be to God. Amen.

©2010 Steven Molin