Is Pentecost really the Birthday of the Church?

 

Sermon. The Day of Pentecost. 5 June 2022.

I hope you have had and are continuing to have a joy-full extra-long weekend. It has been time off for many us, but a busy time for many involved in Church and village life. It has been as busy for the commentators. So much commentary on HM Queen, and all that she means, all that she stands for, and on the wider idea of the British monarchy. Few have managed to “avoid clichés like the plague”. Whether it’s been folk saying:

“Ain’t she wonderful?”

or – the same point in a different register –

“What an impressive example of dedicated service and dignity in all circumstances!”

the clichés have “grown like topsy”!

So be it! I will be saying a little more on our Queen later in the service.

 

But we may as well say this: today, the Day of Pentecost, is, year in, year out, a day of cliché within the Church. I am thinking of that great cliché – and I’d be surprised if it had never been uttered here – that today is the birthday of the Church. The birthday of the Church. So today I will bring some controversy into this weekend of near-national-consensus, and ask: Is today the birthday of the Church? Who says that Pentecost is the birthday of the Church?

 

Don’t get me wrong. I can see how the claim arises. We have heard how, after days of empty waiting, the Spirit descends on the followers of Jesus, gathered in unity, and enables them to speak the words people need to hear, and enables them to be – no longer distressed mourners, nor people bamboozled by certain encounters with the risen Jesus – but properly confident and heartened world missionaries. Baptisms abound, then and there.

So from this fire,

the fires of the Church throughout the centuries,

big and small, bold and gentle,

have come. Yes. I understand that.

But is that really the birth of the Church?

I say that it is one option, among perhaps 100 others.

 

Surely we are an Easter people, and Alleluia is our song. Surely the Easter stories of empty tomb and the risen Lord – forgiveness rising from the grave - these mark the birthday of the Church.

 

Surely it is when divine self-giving love and human hate and indifference meet on the Cross that the Church is born. From his side flow blood and water, mystical signs of the sacraments, which keep the Church alive and make the Church life-giving. And when Jesus, precisely then, brings together his mother and the beloved disciple, here is a community formed by Jesus from the cross, – namely, the Church.

 

Surely when Jesus as a young man calls his disciples to him, to be with him and to be sent out by him to teach and to heal, here is a community brought together to do simply what the Church does. Surely this meeting is the birth of the Church. “The time has been fulfilled” Jesus says [Mk 1.15]

 

Surely those communities of family and shepherds and astrologers, who responded to the birth of the Christ-child, who acknowledged the New Thing Gd has done in this birth, which New Thing we (but maybe not they) would call the very incarnation of Gd, surely, they were already the Church, the Church of the Incarnate One.

 

Surely, if Gd becoming matter, stuff, and flesh is what changes everything for us, then it is Mary’s prophetic Yes at the annunciation (and Jesus’ conception) which is the very birthday of the Church.

 

But (there is more)… but surely if Gd is one, is faithful, is consistent, then Gd calling out a community, (a qahal, an ek-klesia – a called-out body) did not begin with Mary, but with the Prophets, and the sages, and the people and their ancestors, who trusted in Gd in community, the community known as Israel, long before the New Testament.

 

If you think that last point is too radical and new, I had better worn you that it is an ancient idea. The Church Fathers would sometimes speak of “the Church… from Abel”. Abel, the person way back in Genesis, who is the first to offer right sacrifice, right formally intentional worship, who indeed suffered for his faith.

 

I am not quite saying you can stick a pin in the Bible, and whatever account you find there might arguably be the birthday of the Church.

 

I am saying it is too narrow a view to limit the birth of the Church to one occasion,

an occasion of evident power and persuasion and brightness and miracle and glorious, luscious success.

We make a rod for our own backs if we think that, if only we were true to our authentic spiritual birth,

what we’d see is evident power and persuasion and brightness and miracle and glorious, luscious success.

 

To be clear: the Bible does not promise this.

 

Permit me, if you will, just two more contenders for the birthday of the Church.

 

[Not preached on the day, due to times constraints.]

One is solely from me, I think. It comes from my reflections over the years on Jewish-Christian relations. The only Church we know identifies as gentile. That just means it does not identify as Jewish. I don’t think that happened on the Day of Pentecost (where most were Jewish). Rather than happened later.

 

In Acts 15, Luke tells us of a Council of Church leaders, in Jerusalem, where it is discussed how gentiles who want to follow in the way of the Apostles, are to be welcomed in as members. Which – if any - of the commandments given through Moses at Sinai must they, as non-Jews obey? Or must they indeed become Jewish first? All of that complex of questions (which was as painful to them then as our debates about sex and gender can be to us, now).

 

They agreed on a letter to the gentile believers saying [Acts 15.28]: “It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to impose on you no further burden than these essentials…” and then there’s a short list of what they considered core decent behaviour. That was a momentous decision.

 

I say it was a defining decision.

 

From then on, it was likely that the majority and soon the vast majority of the Church would not identify as Jewish. A historian may well say: the Church as we know it was born at this moment.

 

My final suggestion (is not just me but) relates to a phrase which recurs, and which I don’t think is attributable. It says:

Be converted every day!

Be converted. Every day.

It means that we all have a choice

to turn to or from the love to Gd, every day.

In every encounter, including moments of solitude.

So most certainly every day.

If this is right, that truly today can be the birthday of the Church for you.

Not because it is the Day of Pentecost, but because it is today.

Today you can take your place in the Church of Jesus Christ,

by turning from what is now holding you back from trusting in Gd’s love,

and turning now to the gentle power of the Spirit of new birth.

 

I have said little on the Queen. I will say more later.

But, for now, I invite you to contemplate this invitation to be converted today,

and do so right royally. Amen.

Father Patrick Morrow

 

Introducing the Rite of Solemn Extinguishing of the Paschal Candle

 

I normally do not explain symbolic acts.

If the acts don’t show what they do, why do them?

But this time I do want to make two points.

Today is the 50th day after Easter, and the last day of Eastertide.

It is not the end of the spirit or truth of Easter.

Rather, though the rite which follows in a moment

we will extinguish the central light here (the Paschal candle),

but that same light will be dispersed into

your hands, your lives, all that we consider ordinary,

as we enter “Ordinary Time”.

 

What I want to add is that in taking the light to ourselves (in our hands)

we of course have the light we need to see.

But we also help lighten the way for others.

This is because, well, light travels.

But it is also because our holding our light can be

an example and encouragement to others, to those around us.

And in these days it is right and proper

that we have been thinking about how our Queen

-         and our Church’s Supreme Governor -

has been a light and an example and an encouragement

to us as a national Church, and to many, many others.

If, as you enjoy the light of the candles,

and reflect on Easter now dispersed throughout lives,

you also add that note of thanksgiving for the Queen,

that is fitting.