Acts 2:1-21
Rev. Dr. David A. Davis
May 24, 2015
It is the Day of Pentecost. Fifty days after Easter. A day of celebrating God’s gift of the Holy Spirit to the church. Pentecost. Worship on the Lord’s Day that marks the occasion recorded in the Book of Acts, that occasion of the Holy Spirit coming with a rush of mighty wind and tongues of fire. A day to celebrate the church, the presence of the Spirit, the gifts of the Spirit, the fruit of the Spirit. Pentecost. What has been called the birthday celebration of the church. Happy birthday, Church!
In the days leading up to our celebration, the Church (not Nassau Church, but the Church) received quite a birthday card from the Pew Research Center. It came in the form of the their newest data released entitled “America’s Changing Religious Landscape.” The data isn’t all that great for the home team. Don’t worry if you missed the press release, or the various editorials, op-eds, and reports that picked up the release of information because the hand-wringing, anxiety, and blame is no doubt on the way. According to the study, the population of Christians in the United States has dropped in number and by percentage, down in seven years to now just above 70% of the US population. The data also indicates a steady increase of the “nones,” non-affiliated, religiously leaning adults, who, when combined with self-identifying agnostics and atheists, are almost 23% of the adult population. Both percentages have changed significantly in the last five years. “Happy birthday, Church,” from the Pew Research Center.
To borrow from the movie Casablanca, “I am shocked — shocked, I say — shocked that the numbers would be dropping in this establishment.” Who could be shocked or surprised by that research? To put it another way, “Tell us something we don’t already know, Pew Research Center.” Those numbers have been trending since the 1950s. So here it comes again, people lamenting the death of the church and the nation and the world as we know it! Some try to respond by pointing out that data can be misleading or can be interpreted differently. Others worry about self-fulfilling prophecy and folks like you reading the newspaper and saying, “Oh, well I am not going to go either.” Still others look for the right response or opportunity in evangelism or different kinds of worship or church re-invented, like there’s an answer out there toward a next Great Awakening we are all missing… and then there’s the story of Pentecost in the second chapter of Acts.
As recorded in the witness of the New Testament: When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place… and then came the violent wind and the divided tongues of fire and the abundance of language… in response to that cacophony of sound; the wind, the fire, the languages, the crowd gathered… everyone heard them speaking in their own languages… all were amazed and perplexed, but others sneered… Peter, standing with the eleven other apostles, he starts to preach… these people are not drunk, it’s only 9 o’clock in the morning… Peter quotes from the prophet Joel… God pouring our God’s Spirit on all flesh… sons, daughters, young men, old men, slaves, both men and women… signs on earth below; blood, fired, smoky mist, the sun turned dark, the moon turned to blood… the Lord’s great and glorious day… everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved!
Peter’s sermon goes on then beyond what I read to you. Peter preaches to the crowds about Jesus of Nazareth, telling of his life, his death, his resurrection. In the sermon Peter puts Jesus in the context of Israel, King David, and the yearning for a Messiah… concluding with this: Therefore let the entire house of Israel know with certainty that God has made him both Lord and Messiah, this Jesus whom you crucified.
You will remember something of the description of what happened in the crowd when Peter finished. How the Spirit moved in the crowd as Peter finished: They were cut to the heart, the Bible says, and they asked what to do. Repent and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ so that your sins will be forgiven and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit… For the Promise is for you, and for your children, and for all who are far away, everyone whom the Lord our God calls… Three thousand people were added to the church that day. They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and then prayers… all who believed were together and had all things in common, they would sell their possessions and good and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need… Day by day, as they spent time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people… day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.
Whenever I read articles or hear lectures or have discussions about “the death of the church,” I find myself thinking about Alma Ward. Alma was one of the saints in my first congregation. She raised five boys in that congregation long before I arrived. Her youngest was older than me when I became her pastor. She told how those boys sat in birth order in the pew every Sunday. One evening over dinner at their house, Alma shared her disappointment about her adult children and their absence from the church. “David, we raised our boys all exactly the same when it came to church. Now, they are grown and all have their own families and only one of them goes to church. And that’s the one that lives next door to me. One in 5 isn’t going to win any prizes,” Alma lamented. She wasn’t looking for answers, she wanted me to know she did her best. She wasn’t looking to blame, she reminded me of what the church meant to her, what the church had done for her. When their youngest son Timmy was killed in a car accident, it was that congregation that carried them. And a generation before when her husband Walt was captured at the Battle of the Bulge, it was that congregation that watched over her and cared for her until he came home. That’s what the church does, she said.
They devoted themselves to the apostles teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and then prayers… all who believed were together and had all things in common, they would sell their possessions and good and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need… Day by day, as they spent time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people.
On that first day of Pentecost, after the miraculous, almost indescribable experience of the Spirit, and after Peter stood to preach a sermon that told of God’s plan of salvation revealed in Jesus of Nazareth, that sermon that pulled from the prophet Joel on the Spirit’s work in the last of days, you can’t miss how those first Christians responded, how the Bible describes the earliest days of the church. When Peter stopped preaching and called them all to repentance and baptism, they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and prayer. All who believed, they had things in common, cared for any in need, spent time together, broke bread in each other’s homes, had glad and generous hearts and praise God. Yes, the apostles were doing great and wondrous signs. And undoubtedly days later folks started to pick apart Peter’s sermon on “the Lord’s great and glorious day.” And scripture attests that it did not take long for disagreements to arise. But the response on Pentecost, the response was teaching and fellowship and breaking bread and prayer and worship and caring for one another and being generous. “Tell us something we don’t know, Book of Acts.” The response on Pentecost was to be the church and do what the church does. The Spirit-driven church was the church in all of its extraordinary ordinariness.
Almost ten years ago Nassau Presbyterian Church and Witherspoon Presbyterian Street shared in a yearlong celebration of Presbyterians in Princeton. Lectures were given during that year on the history and impact of the Presbyterian witness in this community. One lecture was delivered by our own Professor Jim Moorhead and it was entitled, “Princeton and the Warring Twenties.” Moorhead charted the impact of rapid and massive change in the nation and in the culture, impact on the University, the Seminary, and the Presbyterian churches in Princeton. As he moved to consider congregational life, Dr. Moorhead offered this statement which I haven’t forgotten: “…[C]ongregations do not always directly mirror the issues being addressed or fought out either in denominations or in the larger culture. Part of the charm of congregational life is that, through its enduring patterns of worship and devotion, it allows people to look beyond temporary issues and connects them with the rhythms of the eternal.” The charm of congregational life. I don’t take that as a negative from an every Sunday worshiping Doctor of the church. The charm of congregational life. The reality of congregational life. The faithfulness of congregational life. The church’s enduring pattern of worship and devotion. The church’s enduring pattern of teaching and fellowship and breaking bread and prayer and worship and caring for one another and being generous. The church doing what the church does. A Spirit-driven Church.
I am not naïve to the sinfulness and shortcoming of the church throughout history and in our lifetime. Neither am I unaware of the present challenges and realities. I live them and manage them every day. It’s the cognitive dissonance, the spiritual dissonance, that comes when I read about the data or sense the anxiety in a denominational leader or listen to a lecture from a professor or hear from a seminary student about how the church gets it so wrong… the dissonance between the “death of the church’ movement and the congregation I experience, the dissonance between the nostalgic lament for yesteryear and the God-given promise of the Holy Spirit and a future for God’s people, a future for the followers of Jesus defined by teaching and fellowship and breaking bread and prayer and worship and caring for another and being generous.
Last weekend was an incredible one in the life of Nassau Church, incredible and typical. Sunday afternoon I go home to put my feet up and read the paper. Two opinion pieces try to bring me down. One was an essay about the previously mentioned Pew data. The other cited Harvard sociologist Robert Putnam and a comment he made in an interview about the church taking its focus away from poverty and instead obsessing about morality for the last decade. “You’ve got to be kidding me!” I said out loud to no one but myself. Here on the editorial pages of the New York Times, the church is being told its dying up here and being blamed for poverty down here. There was this dissonance…
And the only thing to do, the only response, the most faith-filled response we can muster is do what those first Christians did on Pentecost. They devoted themselves to the apostles teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and then prayers… all who believed were together and had all things in common, they would sell their possessions and good and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need… Day by day, as they spent time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people.
That’s what the church does.
Happy birthday, Church.
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