Pentecost, Prejudice, and Pandemic

A sermon for Pentecost,
May 31, 2020

Ahmaud Arbery

George Floyd

1,000 names

100,000 dead

(Silence)

Pentecost is the noisiest of all Christian holy days—a party, the “birthday of the church,” celebrated with banners, red balloons, and cake. We hear rushing wind, tongues of fire, and cacophonous crowds. We re-enact Acts 2 in multiple languages, reminding us that God sent all humankind a gift—the spirit with its promise of peace and portents of salvus for the healing of the earth.

Alleluia! The long awaited day of the Lord is here!

But this week, names:

A man, panting, running, and fighting for his life.
“I can’t breathe; I can’t breathe…” and, then, no breath.
A thousand names in print takes our breath away.
100,000 stopped breathing.

A celebration, a birthday?

No thank you.

I feel like we are being strangled, the life choked from us—disbelief, sorrow, fear, rage. Violence in the streets, jails, and cages at our border, targeting black and brown men, women, and children; a virus stalking us all, turning familiar comforts into threats. We are hunted and haunted by guns and germs, prejudice and plague. And the victims mount. Each with a name, many known, some known only to God. From a single name to the many to myriads, this unholy litany of grief.

Pentecost is no party this year. Indeed, this feast falls on the eve of a National Day of Prayer and Remembrance, June 1, to be marked with silence at noon. Silence, more than shouting this year. Mourning, not celebration.

This discomforting Pentecost drew my attention away from the traditional readings. (Although I confess it would be tempting to preach on fire, myself wanting to call down the fire of heaven on this whole, unjust, unfair, unwelcome mess!) Of all the alternatives offered by the lectionary, a single verse—1 Corinthians 12:13—spoke to most deeply my heart:

For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and we were all made to drink of one Spirit.

Pentecost is, of course, not only about birth but baptism. And here, in First Corinthians, Paul speaks about what it means to be baptized and to live in the Spirit. We are in one Spirit, with one body, he insists. And then, in words that sound familiar—he reminds of that oneness, whether we are “Jews or Greeks, slaves or free,” we all drink the same Spirit.

That short clause echoes Paul’s other (and more extended) use of those words, found in an older letter, in Galatians 3:27-28 —

“As many of you are were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female: for you are one in Christ Jesus.”

Galatians 3:27-28 has long been one of my favorite bits of Paul. And I’m not alone in that. The words have been referred to as Paul’s finest writing, his best religious vision and poetry, and the lens through which the whole of Pauline theology should be read. For centuries, Christians have drawn inspiration from them for causes of justice including abolition, economic reform, and women’s rights. Galatians 3:28 is Paul’s rallying cry to overcome divisions of race, class, and gender, poetically and theologically interwoven with baptism, proclaiming justice as heart of life in Christ.

Like most readers, I have attributed their lyrical and political power to Paul. However, New Testament scholar Stephen Patterson has recently offered a far more provocative understanding of the origin of these words. Paul, he insists, was not their author. Paul was quoting them from an older source. With close historical detail, reconstructing and comparing texts, Patterson argues that these words were the very first Christian creed. Paul was quoting an ancient liturgy dating from the earliest years of the Jesus movement, said by the first baptized, a credo that probably went something like this:

For you are all children of God in the Spirit.
There is no Jew or Greek,
There is no slave or free,
There is no male and female;
For you are all one in the Spirit.

This forgotten baptismal creed, with its powerful words, was perhaps shouted by some baptized on that very first day, the day of fire, wind, and water.

Patterson goes on to say: “If you are interested in the origins of Christianity, in those first ten to twenty years when the memory of Jesus was still fresh, before Paul came along and made his distinctive impact on the Jesus movement… In the earliest years of the Jesus movement it was repeated again and again by people who were baptized as followers of Jesus.”

And he continues, pointing out that this forgotten creed:

…is a statement of convictions of the Jesus people. It is not a statement about God, or about the mysteries of Christ. It is about people and who they are, really. In baptism, they were committed to giving up old identities falsely acquired on the basis of baseless assumptions—Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female—and declared themselves to be children of God. [1]

Of course, it is our “baseless assumptions” that made this week, these weeks, all the sorrows of human history, so unbearable. We assume we are better because, as our own president recently said, that “good bloodlines” make some smarter, more deserving. That breeding and wealth and blood entail status, naming some as superior and consigning others to less-than, less than privileged, less than human. This is the baseless assumption of Cain, that his offering was better than his brother’s, that he deserved more than Abel. Our baseless assumptions have dogged us since exile from Eden, we have almost forgotten how baseless they are.

Pentecost burns away those baseless assumptions in a fire from heaven. The Spirit incinerates our old identities—inherited status from our ancestors, our senses of innate superiority or inferiority, our privilege or poverty, freedom or bondage, the roles assigned to us by biology. Yet, this baptism leaves us not as ash. For the baptism of fire is followed by the more mundane one, the baptism of water. Fire is quickly followed by the flow, the pouring out of Spirit, the living water. We are washed, refreshed, and remade. We drink of one Spirit and find a new identity: Child of God.

We are named, each with our individual names, and with that familial name: Child of God. We have names. We share a name. We are fully ourselves; we are fully one with each other.

The ancient baptismal creed marked that new identity as neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female. As Patterson points out, it proclaimed “a world in which...female slaves could be leaders of free men, where foreigners and native born stood with equal power and equal rights. ‘You are all one’ signifies solidarity.”

Our names are our individual beauty, uniqueness. And our Name is our solidarity.

Pentecost this year is not as much party as protest. To name is to mourn the loss of individuals with gifts and loves. But Pentecost calls us to take another step beyond our personal laments and to be found together in a shared name – child of God. In this relation, Pentecost emerges as human solidarity. We stand together, in the same family, the same name, with and for and (even) as victims of the violence sadly endemic in this broken world. We are all Ahmaud, we are all George, we are all the thousand, we all the 100,000. What happens to one, happens to us all. We are not separate, not really. The fire of God has burned into the world, reducing to ash all division. A new human family has been born: sons and daughters dare to prophesy; old and young dream dreams; and slaves, men and women alike, announce God’s justice in the world.

The great and glorious day is truly here: You are all children of God.

May we live in the reality of Pentecost. Even now. Especially now, children of God.

* * * *

A Prayer for Pentecost:

Spirit of truth:
guide us into all the truth;
consume the lies
that shroud the world in hate;
pray in us
with sighs too deep for words;
and let the victim’s voice ring out
with hope for a new world;
through Jesus Christ, who goes to the right hand of God.
Amen.

(from Steven Shakespeare, Prayers for an Inclusive Church)

[1] Stephen Patterson, The Forgotten Creed: Christianity’s Original Struggle against Bigotry, Slavery, and Sexism (Oxford, 2018), quotes from page 29. Patterson’s book won the 2019 Louisville Grawemeyer Award in Religion.

Diana Butler Bass

Diana Butler Bass, Ph.D., is a multiple award-winning author, popular speaker, inspiring preacher, and one of America’s most trusted commentators on religion and contemporary spirituality. She holds a doctorate in religious studies from Duke University and is the author of ten books, including Christianity After Religion and Grounded: Finding God in the World, A Spiritual Revolution. For more information on Diana and her work, see http://www.chaffeemanagement.com/dianabutlerbass

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Church Anew is dedicated to igniting faithful imagination and sustaining inspired innovation by offering transformative learning opportunities for church leaders and faithful people.

As an ecumenical and inclusive ministry of St. Andrew Lutheran Church, the content of each Church Anew blog represents the voice of the individual writer and does not necessarily reflect the position of Church Anew or St. Andrew Lutheran Church on any specific topic.

On Hoarding Eucharist in a Hungry World

In this time of COVID-19 lockdowns and churches moving to virtual communion, Diana Butler Bass reflects on a conversation she had with Phyllis Tickle.

A decade or so ago, about five years before she passed away, Phyllis Tickle and I were talking about how technology would change the church. She was enthusiastic about the Internet, her imagination opened by the possibilities of virtual reality to form new sorts of community. She had recently joined a church in the online world of Second Life, and told me about her avatar (I had no idea what an avatar was!). I remember how excitedly she spoke about how “virtuality” would expand our sense of “reality,” and how that would, in turn, foster a new reformation in Christianity. This technology would be, she assured me, as radical as the invention of the printing press—and this emerging sense of space and time would be as revolutionary for faith as were the first widely available vernacular Bibles.

“It raises so many theological questions!” she exclaimed. “For instance, if an avatar priest consecrates elements online, is Christ really present? Is the liturgy valid?”

“I don’t know,” I replied.

“No one knows yet,” she said. “Because we haven’t thought about it. But pretty soon, we’re going to be arguing over these things. Maybe not about avatar church. But the first time a priest or bishop offers the Eucharist online, it will be like Luther nailing the 95 Theses on the door.”

Phyllis threw her head back, with the laugh for which she was justly famous—half joy, half a sort of gleeful anticipation of how the future was at hand.

I’ve rehearsed this conversation a hundred times in my mind over the last two months. Since the coronavirus lockdowns. Since real-life churches have moved online. The argument she anticipated has started in earnest: Can Christians celebrate the Eucharist—the Lord’s Supper, Holy Communion —through technology? Is the sacrament valid if it happens virtually?

The answers to these questions are intertwined with the diverse theologies of polity and sacraments of different Christian traditions. Indeed, Baptists, Congregationalists, Disciples, free churches, and many Methodists have no problem with online communion. Their beliefs about the priesthood of all believers and (generally) memorialist ideas of the Lord’s Supper have made possible online communion with few theological questions. But more liturgical churches—many Lutherans, Episcopalians, Catholics, and Orthodox—have restricted or denied the possibility of online Eucharist. They say that “online community isn’t real community,” that “physical presence” of a congregation is necessary for the sacrament to be valid, that laity cannot be trusted with appropriate reverence of the elements, and that a priest (or duly ordained minister) must consecrate the elements in person. Indeed, some leaders in these churches have forbidden all virtual communion, warning against any form of lay presidency or consecration, instituting forced Eucharistic fasts, substituting “spiritual communion” for partaking bread and wine, or insisting that priests can celebrate the mass privately for the whole of the church.

Oddly enough, much of the argument against online communion has taken place online. Self-identified “traditionalists” have ridiculed and attacked those who see this moment as a time when churches might experiment with liturgies, including offering bread and wine virtually. On Twitter, I posted about my conversation with Phyllis Tickle, suggesting that online liturgy was not, in effect, very different than the sorts of liturgical innovations of the Reformation, and that this moment of virtual church was a perfect time to imagine church anew—to open ourselves a future where technology reshapes Christian practice as much as it was reshaped 500 years ago.

I’ve worried that in withholding communion, the church has been, in effect, hoarding the bread and wine, restraining the healing beauty of Eucharist when hungry people most need to feast. A forced fast is no fast—it is an expression of institutional power over and against God’s people in a time of emergency. And I can’t help but think the lack of theological imagination at this moment will give people already wary of church another reason to consign Christianity to historical irrelevance. The pandemic, however, has been a sort of Pandora’s box for churches and technology, letting loose the theological questions Phyllis Tickle once predicted with the fierce urgency of suffering and death. The lid is open and can’t be shut. Sadly, some denominations seem incapable of seeing this as gift and possibility, preferring instead to give into controlling impulses and fear.  

Despite overall institutional reluctance to engage these questions, some clergy have been hoping their denominations would provide for online Eucharistic celebration—and have been worried and even cowed by pressure coming from those who insist that God cannot use “virtuality” as a vehicle for the sacraments. While online argument might be expected, a chilling episode moved from social media to an “in real life” space. After Easter, a bishop in the Episcopal Church gave permission for his diocese to celebrate virtual Eucharist in an attempt to meet pastoral needs and address some of these issues. He appears to have been pressed by the denomination—the same denomination of which Phyllis Tickle had been a member—to rescind the option he had given to congregations in his care.

Over the last weeks, I've been agitating for better, more creative theological thinking about the Eucharist, virtual community, and new forms of liturgical celebration—all of this in line with two decades of my own research and writing. The questions that were once speculative have arrived, and religious groups are going to have to face them with courage and creativity. The pandemic has forced the issue: God’s presence is uncontained by time and space. We are in need of the healing beauty of bread and wine, to sit at the table that exists at the hinge of time, the first feast of the Age-That-is-to-Come. All of this already exists in virtual time—the virtual reality that is the cosmic presence of God. The last thing we need right now—in a time of food shortages, lockdown, isolation, and separation—is the church shutting the people out of the banquet, unable to recognize that we live in the virtual reign of Christ. Virtuality isn’t just technology; it is theology.

A clerical-friend (who wishes to remain anonymous) shares my concerns for the bread and wine to be freed into the world, however that happens in this time of crisis. On a day after a particularly strained Twitter argument, my friend wrote this poem and sent it to me. The words capture the sense of urgency and power of Eucharist far better than my halting prose. Sometimes when the church can’t hear even the most loving critique, my hope is that it can still hear poetry. 

* * * *

An Order for Communing in a Pandemic

by Anonymous

She took a loaf of bread, 
broke it and gave it,
half to the hungry, the poor, the millions
whose gap-toothed pantries 
are emptying,
dwindling sand racing 
through the widening neck of an hourglass 
and she felt the weight 
of a sacrament pressing
into her soul
as the body and blood of Christ
spilled out of doors,
into streets,
into homes,
flowing as freely, 
as slick and messy,
as uncontrolled, 
as it did from his own tortured body,
as if God really could be present 
everywhere and in everything.

Church Anew has closely followed the conversation around sharing communion through digital media. Following this blog post, Diana Butler Bass was interviewed by Religious News Service for their article, “Online Communion should be celebrated, not shunned, says Diana Butler Bass.”

Church Anew’s first blog post on virtual communion featured an interview with Deanna A. Thompson, Director of the St. Olaf Lutheran Center for Faith, Values, and Community. St. Olaf published Deanna’s first and second blog posts engaging conversation with Christians across the globe around about Holy Communion during online worship.

Both Diana Butler Bass and Deanna A. Thompson participated in a May, 19, 2020 video conversation, “Being the Church in This Time of Pandemic,” which also features Joshua Case, an Episcopal priest in North Carolina, and Kelvin Holdsworth, an Episcopal Provost and Rector from Glasgow, Scotland. This is posted on Church Anew with express permission from the authors.

Diana Butler Bass

Diana Butler Bass, Ph.D., is a multiple award-winning author, popular speaker, inspiring preacher, and one of America’s most trusted commentators on religion and contemporary spirituality. She holds a doctorate in religious studies from Duke University and is the author of ten books, including Christianity After Religion and Grounded: Finding God in the World, A Spiritual Revolution. For more information on Diana and her work, see http://www.chaffeemanagement.com/dianabutlerbass

https://www.facebook.com/d.butler.bass/
https://twitter.com/dianabutlerbass

Church Anew is dedicated to igniting faithful imagination and sustaining inspired innovation by offering transformative learning opportunities for church leaders and faithful people.

As an ecumenical and inclusive ministry of St. Andrew Lutheran Church, the content of each Church Anew blog represents the voice of the individual writer and does not necessarily reflect the position of Church Anew or St. Andrew Lutheran Church on any specific topic.