The Conspiracy (Day of Pentecost)

Sermon, 5/23/10 (Day of Pentecost). The earliest church was a conspiracy – a “breathing with” – though, unlike most conspiracies, it was by no means kept a secret. Our challenge: Publicly be the Church (ekklesia, “called out”), when secretive state and institutional violence would suck the breath out of us …

Scripture:  Acts of the Apostles 2:1-21

The Conspiracy

Jesus is risen, O God. He has departed. His train has left the station.

Where do we look now?

Better yet: How?

For as long as there have been heresies, the pious and the privileged in our world have counseled the following: “Religion and politics don’t mix.”

It’s a great idea, in concept. That is, until we open our scriptures …

After reading of countless political shenanigans in Genesis, we turn to the face-off between Moses and Pharaoh in Exodus. Perhaps it is fitting, among the Beltway faithful, to describe Moses as the world’s first great political lobbyist. Negative connotations notwithstanding.

Then we turn to the tribal judges, the peoples’ cry for a king, and finally the kingmakers known as the Hebrew prophets. These prophets – and their name is legion – were considered powerful primarily for their recognized role of appointing, humbling, and even dethroning the rulers of Judah and Israel.

And of course Jesus, counseling his minions to bear their cross as he bore his – the punishment the Romans reserved for those considered political traitors …

Yet, still we hear it: “Religion and politics don’t mix.” “The Word of the Lord has nothing to do with the world of the Lord.”

One has to wonder.

Easter is over. Jesus has come – and, Jesus has gone. And now we find ourselves with the first disciples, as the scripture tells us today, “all together in one place … sitting.”

All together … in one place. Sitting. (Gesture to the congregation.)

The Word of the Lord having nothing to do with the world of the Lord …

Then, a sound: a rushing wind – “violent”, we are told. A sign of doom –for like all Jews in Caesar’s world, reverberating from the catastrophe of the First Jewish-Roman War, these disciples intimately knew that onrushing sound of Caesar’s total-war forces.

But then, a searing: tongues of fire on their heads. A sign of hope! – for these disciples had seen these tongues before. A tongue of fire sat on the head of Caesar on the coinage of the day. It was the sign of divine blessing.

They had been forced, with the rest, to pledge allegiance to Caesar … but now, divinely blessed, there was no looking back. From now, their allegiance will be solely to the Christ. From that day forth, these disciples would cry the well-known imperial victory cry no more: “Hail, Caesar – Divine, Lord, Son of God, God, God from God, Redeemer, Liberator, Savior of the World!”

All those titles for your Roman Caesar, we now claim for our Jewish – and soon-to-be Gentile – Christ. A costly claim, as they would discover. A life-changing claim. A cross-bearing claim.

When we hear of the attempted violent overthrow of powers and principalities in God’s world today, we often use the word conspiracy. The dictionary I use defines conspiracy in this way: “a secret plan or agreement between two or more people to commit an illegal or subversive act.”

Much of this definition certainly applies to the disciples today. For here, we encounter an agreement between two or more people – yes. And here, we encounter the commission of an illegal and subversive act. Anytime people gathered in the Empire to pledge allegiance other than to the flag of Caesar, so it was considered both.

One part of the dictionary definition of conspiracy, though, does not apply to the Pentecost story. It was in no way a secret plan. It was anything but: A crowd gathered. All languages understood. All nations communicated. No CIA or even foreign service officers or international attorneys or translators of any kind needed. No State Department.

And no Department of Defense. For this was no secret plan, this conspiracy. And – because there was no secrecy involved – there was no violence from within. There was violence from without, certainly: First, that onrushing wind, and as Peter later foresaw, darkness and blood and fire and smoky mist – and plenty of it, courtesy of the affairs of state! Violence from without, yes! –

… yet – as we shall see in the Acts of the Apostles to come – there existed a complete absence of hostility or bloodshed from the hands of those doing the prophesying and the envisioning and the dreaming.

Only a frightening – then, curious – then, ecstatic – outbreak of peace. Only Spirit poured on all flesh. “Even,” Peter proclaims, channeling the prophet Joel – even freedom “upon (the) slaves”!

A most un-secret conspiracy. Contrary to the dictionary definition of the word, they had nothing to hide and they weren’t violent Consistent with the dictionary definition: To use Jesus’ words, “Where two or three are gathered … there I am subversive, always.”

Subversively in agreement – across the nations. A Spirit-suffused compulsion, a breathing upon and within – the Greek word for Spirit being the same word for breath and wind. It was – and still is – a conspiracy in the most literal meaning of the word con-spire: “to breathe with”.

Breathe with me for a moment, if you would. Inhale … exhale. Spirit in – Spirit out. Breathe with me. Sitting here, together in one place, and doing this as one amounts to a communal, transparent, and subversive act midst the forces of radical individualism and separation in the world. Everything is changed when the church breathes together as one. God’s holy conspiracy.

Today, we celebrate the birthday of God’s holy conspiracy – also known as church. Today we are reminded that the Resurrection is ours!

Might it be our holy conspiracy, here at BPC?

This Wednesday, our congregation’s best administrative minds come together as part of a grand and necessary plan to balance our church’s budget two years from now. No small task, this. Every expenditure, out on the table. And, at a later meeting, every possible source of revenue, too. No action to be taken for quite some yet – and yet, an exhaustive inventory of what we expend and what we receive.

Your pastor will be present as your hired spiritual leader to oversee the vision that guides the entire process. A vision, I pray – and I invite you today to pray – that is not about how we can first and foremost serve the property and the personnel of our church. But how we, first and foremost, can empower this property and our personnel and this very congregation to serve the world.

A vision of ekklesia. It’s the Greek word used for church throughout the Acts of the Apostles, ek-klesia – meaning, “called out.”

A vision of being called out, of breathing with the world. In the world, but not of it: committing acts of outreach that might be considered subversive of the status quo. Witnessing – and the Bible is eminently clear on this imperative – to state-run violence found in its injustice toward the poor and the oppressed.

A vision of being called out, of breathing with the world. A vision … of conspiracy.

Yet, how can we breathe with God’s world – much less with one another – if we allow our breath to be sucked out of us by anxiety over the material perpetuation of our church as-is? How can we conspire in the business of being the church of Jesus Christ in the world – not the church as a business, but the business of being ek-klesia?

The arm of our Administrative Ministry meeting this week known as the Financial Planning Group needs and covets your prayers. For this represents a momentous time – and exciting time – for being Bethesda Presbyterian Church. And dare we say it – but we must first let go of doing violence to our calling and let God do the violence to our complacency in order to say it: This is a Spirit-filled time.

In a spiritual formation exercise last month, session rediscovered that we are an intellectual bunch, here. No surprise to many – though this pastor left the meeting a bit vexed. Spiritual? Intellectual? How could the two possibly co-exist?

It took me until the next day to realize what a silly question that really is. What a Spirit-filled gift our intellects are! As long as we bring our intellects into agreement with God’s desires for us. As long as we harness our thinking to the Communion of Christ. As long as we practice a communion of conspiracy, to be the urban and urbane people of outreach called out to the world. – as our mission signposts put it: “Personal, Passionate, Progressive.”

All that this world may know, as Peter ends his message today – and in a fully kingdom-on-earth way – that “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved!”

Whoever has ears to hear, let them hear.