The Sacrament of Holy Communion

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Do you remember what happened on September 11, 2001? Of course you do except that I am not referring to airplanes flying into buildings in New York and Washington and a grassy field in western Pennsylvania . I am recalling the explosion of church services held that evening and in the days that followed. When things get strange or scary in the world, we seek out religion that is comforting and familiar. When things are new or threatening, we invoke the God who is old and established. When change seems rampant, we sing songs about an unchanging Divinity…

Change and decay all around I see,

O Thou who changest not, abide with me.

That is what makes Pentecost so difficult for us to understand because, at Pentecost, God is the author of the deconstruction of the old and the architect of the new. Walter Brueggemann, the Old Testament theologian, puts it this way: “The world for which you have been so carefully preparing is being taken away from you, by the grace of God.” The Spirit of Christ blowing through church and world is the herald and harbinger of a profoundly new world being shaped by the gospel of love. Pentecost is the church’s affirmation that the Spirit of Christ that we saw so clearly in Jesus is also pervasively and perilously present in the world today. Perilous, that is, to any who in any way stand against the dream of God for the world. Perilous, that is, to those who dismiss prophets and visionaries as “drunkards filled with new wine.”

The Spirit of the radical and reforming Christ who makes all things new is blowing across the face of the earth and among the stars and into our souls and too often we resist it. That is why the church sometimes seems tepid and irrelevant these days. That is why the church has trouble holding its young people. That is why the church needs poets and seers. It is why Peter, in trying to tell the story of Pentecost and the early days of the Christian church, appealed to a little passage in the Old Testament Book of Joel, that says:

There will be portents in the heavens above

and signs on the earth beneath,

blood, fire, and smoky mist.

The sun will be turned to darkness

and the moon to blood,

before the coming of the Lord’s great and glorious day.

(Acts 2:19-20 in reference to Joel 2:30)

These grotesque and grandiose images were used by Joel and then by Peter and now by us to announce that the world is at risk of calamity. And that things may get worse before they get better.

Only poets talk of moons turning to blood, but we all notice the deepening brutality and violence of life today. Only poets speak of smoky mists and of the sun turning to darkness, but many of us suspect that our nation is losing its way and sway in the world. In strange and anxious times, like those of the early Christians and like ours, it is the poets who tell us most profoundly the truth we may not want to hear but know is so.

How do we respond to bloody moons and darkened suns and precarious times like ours? We can put on blinders and pretend that nothing is wrong in the world that a war on terror can’t fix. We can try to create for ourselves an oasis of personal escape with an illusion of safety amid the tumult. We can appeal to nostalgia and try to recover the way things were. Or we can seek to discern the Spirit of Christ and commit ourselves to following wherever the Spirit leads us and however the Spirit needs us.

Here is where the story about the woman in our gospel reading today is so helpful, I think. I do not like it that Mark does not give us her name. Even the owner of the home in which the story takes place, a minor detail in the story, is identified. But such was the lowly status of women in those days that even women of means often were relegated to anonymity. Maybe that was a contributing reason for her doing what she did. What she did was to barge into a dinner in Simon the leper’s home where Jesus was eating, break open an alabaster jar of expensive perfume, and pour it on Jesus.

Immediately the disciples and the other guests condemned the woman. She should have sold the exquisite perfume, they complained to Jesus, and used the proceeds to help the poor. But Jesus refused to take their bait. Instead, he said to them, “You always have the poor with you and you can show kindness to them whenever you wish.” Jesus was not suggesting that the disciples and dinner guests not be concerned about the poor. Rather he was telling them that he and the woman were after something bigger than almsgiving and charity.

The disciples complained that the woman should have sold the perfume and then, with the earnings, written a check to the soup kitchen and the homeless shelter. But frankly, neither that unnamed woman nor Jesus had any interest in trying to make a little difference in the world as the disciples were suggesting. They were seeking a whole new world in which love reigns and justice rolls down like an ever-flowing stream and no one lives in want of food or health care or education or dignity or opportunity or joy.

We are mistaken if as Christian people our desire is to make a difference in the world. Sure, our gifts to helping agencies in our community are important. But they are not enough. More is required. Wanting simply to make a difference in the world is tantamount to parceling out our gifts in measuring cups so as to leave our lives and the world mostly unchanged. Prodded and guided by the Spirit of God, Jesus wanted and wants to inaugurate a whole new world in which the ways that we as individuals, communities, and nations relate to each other and all others and even to the natural world create harmony, hope, and peace.

Jesus is gospel in the flesh, good news, to all people for he helps us to become more fully human, but he was good news especially to those whom society consigns to the margins, the edges, the periphery of life for he does not simply want to sprinkle the present world with charity that would leave it largely unchanged. He wants the proud to be humbled, the lowly to be lifted, the races to be reconciled, the poor to be prosperous, the lonely to be loved, the lost to be found, the hungry to be filled, the bored to become passionate again. He wants people to love God because he knows that to really love God whom we cannot see means that we shall love our brothers and sisters whom we can see. We will love our neighbors as ourselves. And the old world will pass away and the new one of which prophets spoke and speak will come.

We cannot as Christian people settle for wanting to make a difference in the world. Rather, we are invited, even commanded, to pray and to live, as Jesus did, toward a new world in which it is well for everyone and all. Pentecost celebrates the unleashing, the loosing, the lavishing of the Spirit of Christ on all who will receive it and on the church, the Spirit whose passion and power is love.

The church of Jesus Christ that is living in the power of his Spirit will not simply seek to make a difference in peoples’ lives and in the community. It will live in the community as an embodiment of Christ no matter how costly it is for us to do so. It means that those of us who are the church will break open our lives as the woman broke open the perfume and as Jesus allowed his life to be broken open, an act we remember in our celebration of the sacrament today, so that a new world may be birthed into being. It is not nearly as important for us to have crosses mounted on the tops of our steeples as it is to live the cross from our hearts, for anything less is simply playing church instead of being church.

Be not afraid. God is with us. In every change, in every fear that confronts us, in all our moments of uncertainty and transition, God is with us by the presence and power of God’s Pentecost Spirit.

The moon is getting bloodier these days. The sun is getting darker. There is nothing more important for you to do than to receive the Spirit of Christ into your life with all of its attendant and renewing power…for your sake, for God’s sake, for the world’s sake.

Amen.

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