Scripture: Acts 2:1-4; John 15:26-27; Acts 2:42-45; Acts 4:32-37; Acts 5:1-5; Acts 10:9-16; 1 Corinthians 13:1; Genesis 11:1-9 Series: After Pentecost
A Pentecost Sunday sermon arguing that the Holy Spirit births the church as a community saved by faith, not by keeping a reduced moral code. Wilson contrasts the popular elevation of the Ten Commandments with the whole of Torah and with Jesus, who fulfills the law. Pentecost is the reverse of Babel: many languages gathered to form a temple of flesh. The early church’s radical sharing of everything is held up as a neglected biblical witness, with Ananias and Sapphira’s sin shown to be withholding rather than giving all. Drawing on Wesley’s ‘Almost Christian’ and 1 Corinthians 13, he insists no amount of outward obedience saves; only faith and the Spirit’s love do. He rejects the idea of ‘biblical values’ (progressive or traditional), naming the resurrection of Christ as the only value, and calls the congregation to empty themselves of expectations and share the Spirit’s fire.
Illustrations: ten-commandments-capitol-monument, maimonides-613-commandments, ananias-sapphira-withholding, liquidate-401k-give-away, reverse-tower-of-babel, wesley-almost-christian, general-conference-media-presentation
May 19
Pentecost
Acts 2:1-4
John 15:26-27
When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability. - Acts 2:1-4
“When the Advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who comes from the Father, he will testify on my behalf. You also are to testify, because you have been with me from the beginning.” - John 15:26-27
Why is there a copy of the 10 commandments on the state capitol lawn and not a copy of the beatitudes? Why have schools and churches and other government institutions had copies of the 10 Commandments printed and posted and not the beatitudes? Jesus never once cites all the 10 commandments in any of the Gospels. He’s never like, the commandments shall be 10. The reason why they’ve been lifted up is strange if you understand what the first two commandments are. Usually, when you think of the 10 commandments, you think about: you shall not kill, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not lie, the prohibitions of this sort. In this way, they’re seen as almost this universal natural law that all people in all societies hold in some sort of way. All of us understand that you shouldn’t kill. All of us understand that you shouldn’t commit adultery. You shouldn’t break a vow that you’ve made to another person. All of us understand that you shouldn’t steal another person’s property or covet another person’s property. It makes sense. And yet those are only half of what’s going on in the 2 commandments.
The first commandment is not even a commandment or a prohibition. It is: I am the lord your God. There’s no grammatical way you can construe that into a command; nor is it a universal law. It may seem strange on Pentecost Sunday why I start with the 10 commandments, but it’s one of those aspects of both Christianity and Judaism that has often been presented broadly to the world. It doesn’t take long for a non-Christian to think about Christianity and until they get to the 10 commandments. And yet again, these commandments have very little to do with Jesus Christ. In one of the stories in the gospels, when the rich young ruler comes to Jesus, he quotes a few of them: Have you ever lied or murdered or committed adultery? And he says no. But the law, the Torah, the way of God inscribed in the 5 Books of Moses, are by no means limited to the 10 Commandments. No Jew in history would ever think that the law is limited to the 10 commandments. There actually have been great debates in Judaism over whether you can count up the law at all. Maimonides, the great thinker in the middle ages, counted out 613 individual commandments in the 5 books of Moses. Other rabbis have argued continually against him throughout tradition saying, you cannot number the law of God. The law of God is singular as God is singular and one.
A lot of Christians have held tight to the 10 commandments because it’s a way to hold on to the law and not all the other things, the rest of it. Not the ceremonial things. Not blending fabrics. Sure. We believe in the 10 commandments, but we don’t think blending fabrics is a sin or eating pork is a sin. Yet in acts 10, when Peter sees the vision of the angel that allows him to eat even nonkosher animals, this transgression is not just against the dietary restrictions of the Torah. There is no differentiation in ancient Israel between dietary, cultural, ethnic, and moral restrictions in Torah. From Genesis to Deuteronomy, there is no difference. It’s all law. It’s all Torah. Jesus said the law is fulfilled in him, but yet not one jot or tittle, not one iota would go away. The law has not gone away. We do not fill any aspect of the law: Jesus fulfills the law. Jesus is the culmination of the law.
From early on in the book of acts, which means early on in the history of the church, there has been conflict over interpretation of what is commanded. The early church shared everything together and they felt God commanding them to share everything. Ananias and Sapphira sold some land. They weren’t entirely honest with the church and they secretly kept some money for themselves. They didn’t bring it all to God.
I think about that today and how many churches commit the sins of Ananias and Sapphira. And it was a sin. People do it and churches do it. We all put limits on what we can give. I think it’s important to read this story as if Ananias and Sapphira had good reasons. They were being fiscally responsible. They’re trying to think long term, and they were struck down.
Conflict in the church today gets back to how we read the commands of God.
And this, my brothers and sisters, gets us to Pentecost. Pentecost is the birthday of the church. It is when the church is founded through the power of the Holy Spirit given to the people gathered in Jerusalem to celebrate a feast day, a holiday. Jews from all over the world had gathered. People of many different languages. People filling the streets. It had been many weeks since Passover, since the death of Jesus and resurrection of Jesus. Last week, we celebrated the Ascension. What is important to remember is that Jesus didn’t do a lot of public ministry after he was resurrected. He served his friends, his disciples. He didn’t go out to the countryside and preach and teach and heal as he had done before. He didn’t reveal miracles as he had done before. He didn’t even reveal the miracle of his own resurrection to many people. No. He saved that for his disciples. Before his ascension, Jesus said that he was leaving so that the spirit of truth could come and bring power, and that, my friends, is what happens at Pentecost. The spirit of truth brings power: the power to forgive sins, the power to unite people around who God is. Who God is for us. To unite people around what we should now do because of who God is for us. Pentecost is the reverse tower of Babel. At Babel in Genesis, the people are of one language, and they come together. And in their coming together, they see themselves as competing with God. And so God crushes their vanity and sends them around the world. At Pentecost, people of many languages come together and God offers to build a temple of their heart in order to praise God. The new temple is not made with stone but flesh. It is freely offered at Pentecost because of how Jesus offered himself on the altar of the cross for us, and this satisfied all offerings. And made us holy and just. This is by faith. For you have been saved by faith. As Paul says, it is not your own doing. It is not based on your following of the law. It is not based on your language or culture. You have been saved by faith. Salvation by faith reminds us it’s not about us. There’s this amazing displacement that goes on in scripture where in finding God, we find ourselves, but in finding ourselves, we move beyond ourselves. We can no longer be centered on ourselves if we have found God. If we follow the biblical trajectory, we can never rest in ourselves. We must always move outward. The people at Pentecost found God through the spirit. They found each other, and they acted. They built the church. They shared everything with one another. They shared everything.
Luke writes in Acts
“The believers devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching, to the community, to their shared meals, and to their prayers. A sense of awe came over everyone. God performed many wonders and signs through the apostles. All the believers were united and shared everything. They would sell pieces of property and possessions and distribute the proceeds to everyone who needed them.” Acts of the Apostles 2:42-45 CEB
They didn’t hold anything back, and this was a witness for Jesus. Luke continues in Acts 4.
“The community of believers was one in heart and mind. None of them would say, “This is mine!” about any of their possessions, but held everything in common. The apostles continued to bear powerful witness to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and an abundance of grace was at work among them all. There were no needy persons among them. Those who owned properties or houses would sell them, bring the proceeds from the sales, and place them in the care and under the authority of the apostles. Then it was distributed to anyone who was in need. Joseph, whom the apostles nicknamed Barnabas (that is, “one who encourages”), was a Levite from Cyprus. He owned a field, sold it, brought the money, and placed it in the care and under the authority of the apostles.” Acts of the Apostles 4:32-37 CEB
All this was so until Ananias and Sapphira started holding things back.
“However, a man named Ananias, along with his wife Sapphira, sold a piece of property. With his wife’s knowledge, he withheld some of the proceeds from the sale. He brought the rest and placed it in the care and under the authority of the apostles. Peter asked, “Ananias, how is it that Satan has influenced you to lie to the Holy Spirit by withholding some of the proceeds from the sale of your land? Wasn’t that property yours to keep? After you sold it, wasn’t the money yours to do with whatever you wanted? What made you think of such a thing? You haven’t lied to other people but to God!” When Ananias heard these words, he dropped dead. Everyone who heard this conversation was terrified.” Acts of the Apostles 5:1-5 CEB
Their sin was not sharing enough. They gave, but not everything. Why is this not listed up as a sin in the church today? Why isn’t Acts 5 put on monuments to remind us to give everything to God? Why aren’t Christians known for this? It’s impractical. Right? It’s impractical. Not enough people would do it, so we shouldn’t promote it. That’s it. The Bible says share everything and God will be glorified. Don’t share and you will die. The Bible directly says it right here. The people shared everything, and it was good. This is a challenge even to our modern conception of property which goes against scripture. Modern ideas of property go against the Bible. But it would be impractical to challenge contemporary economics by taking Acts literally, so we don’t follow it. Right? I mean, I don’t know what would happen if I liquidated my 401k and gave it to someone who needed it more than me.
There’s nothing in the 10 commandments about giving anything of ourselves. If the law of God to us is limited to the 10 Commandments, it just stays with us. We follow them all to stay clean. And if we look through all of Torah from Genesis to Deuteronomy. If we look through the whole bible and all the words of God simply as guidelines of personal behavior, as ways to act in the world, we are a clanging gong and a clashing symbol. As Paul says in 1st Corinthians 13, if we follow every little thing.
John Wesley, in his sermon, the almost Christian, goes even further than Paul.
A second thing implied in the being almost a Christian, is, the having a form of godliness; of that godliness which is prescribed in the gospel of Christ; the having the outside of a real Christian. Accordingly, the almost Christian does nothing which the gospel forbids. He taketh not the name of God in vain; he blesseth, and curseth not; he sweareth not at all, but his communication is, yea, yea; nay, nay. He profanes not the day of the Lord, nor suffers it to be profaned, even by the stranger that is within his gates. He not only avoids all actual adultery, fornication, and uncleanness, but every word or look that either directly or indirectly tends thereto; nay, and all idle words, abstaining both from detraction, backbiting, talebearing, evil speaking, and from “all foolish talking and jesting”—eutrapelia, a kind of virtue in the heathen moralist”s account;—briefly, from all conversation that is not “good to the use of edifying,” and that, consequently, “grieves the Holy Spirit of God, whereby we are sealed to the day of redemption.”
This is an almost Christian. This person is not there yet. All the things they do is not enough. What is missing is the love of God shed abroad in his heart. If we do all the things, we clang for no reason. There is no thing that can save us. Even doing all the things, everything, it isn’t enough. Only by faith can we be saved and only through the love of Jesus revealed to us in the Holy Spirit can we follow faithfully.
God saves us in this love together. The Bible isn’t filled with individuals coming to the faith one by one. People are saved in community and for community. The people at Pentecost enter a new community of people transformed by grace thanks to the blood of Jesus Christ.
After the service today, I am going to give a presentation about the general conference of United Methodist Church: some changes that happened, some changes that didn’t happen in ways that it was presented in the media. What really happened. And I want us to hold on throughout that to the way God calls us to be in the world and to the power of Pentecost. That if we are going to read the Bible, to take it seriously, To take it as the absolute truth of what the world is, who God is, who God is for us, we need to read it together. We need to read it humbly. We need to read it with the spirit. We need to not read it with cultural expectations of what a Christian is, of how to read the Bible is. There are no values in the Bible. There are no biblical values. It’s one of those things that really bothers me about modern Christian culture. Even if you take away political sides because it happens all over the spectrum. People talk about progressive values of scripture or traditional values of scripture. There are no values. Save for Jesus Christ who was incarnated in a person, the second person of the Trinity who became human, who did not see equality with God something to be held, but emptied himself, taking the form of a human, putting on mortality, descending even to death, but non stopping there. After that, rising again. The resurrection of Jesus Christ is the only value. Everything else fails. Every church, every leader, every pastor, every Internet article, every news story, pales next to the life-giving power of Jesus Christ. Jesus offers you life this day. You can commit to Jesus this day. On this Pentecost Sunday, let us center our whole lives on that power revealed. Let us empty ourselves of our expectations, all of us of our expectations. Let us empty ourselves and live by faith. Living by faith means letting go of certainty, letting go of expectation, letting go of our 401ks as the center of our life, letting go of our traditions, letting go of our revolutions. Letting go of our social justice. Letting it all go. So that all that is left is the love shared within us by the Holy Spirit, by that fire that burned on that Pentecost so long ago and still burns today. There may be days when that fire looks dim, but it is not dim. We are just blind with sin, sometimes the sin of Ananias and Sapphira who could not see past themselves. May we take off the blinders. May we feel the warmth of God’s power and may we share that fire, not our expectations, not our preconceptions, that fire of mercy and love for this world. Let us pray, God of fire, flaring on gathered disciples and burning away their stubborn pride, pour out your Spirit upon us. God of miraculous speaking and hearing, amazing the faithful and riveting their attention to what is about to happen, pour out your Spirit upon us. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.