Come Spirit Come by Pastor Gabrielle Martone-Corbett at Pearl River United Methodist Church on Sunday 31 May 2020
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Acts 2:1-21 NRSV
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.
Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. Amazed and astonished, they asked, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs—in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.” All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “What does this mean?” But others sneered and said, “They are filled with new wine.”
But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them, “Men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to what I say. Indeed, these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o’clock in the morning. No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel: ‘In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams. Even upon my slaves, both men and women, in those days I will pour out my Spirit; and they shall prophesy. And I will show portents in the heaven above and signs on the earth below, blood, and fire, and smoky mist. The sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood, before the coming of the Lord’s great and glorious day. Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.’
Good morning and welcome to Pentecost Sunday. Normally Pentecost for me is always filled with elaborate alter designs. And there's normally a cake that I bring in for the kids. And there's normally much more celebration and excitement happening in the building than there is today. And in many ways it's another reminder of how many things COVID has taken. And we can look at that bitterly and be angry about the fact that COVID has taken not just a hundred thousand plus lives, but taken a lot more. And there are times where I'm frustrated and angry about it, but I always try and remember that we are doing the best for one another by doing all of the things that we've been called to do. To stay home, to wear face masks, to limit our exposure to people, to be smart about how we do things.
The reopening process is going to be a long and arduous one, with a lot of questions that need to be asked and a lot of grounding in the idea of what makes us the most faithful responders to the way that God has called us to live our lives. So how do we love God and love our neighbor while figuring out what comes next?
There's been a lot for me personally, of conversations and decisions and my brain being on overdrive, trying to think about all of the things I thought would be happening. Many of us believed that we would be back in worship by now and how hard it is. And then as I was preparing for Pentecost, I remembered the beauty and the majesty of this story of the disciples who were so worried and so concerned about what it meant that Jesus died and was resurrected and had now ascended back into heaven. They spent a lot of time in the upper room, a lot of time being gathered together with the door shut, not leaving. Waiting for God to do something, waiting for God to speak to them, waiting for Jesus to give them more instruction. And they waited and they waited and they waited and they did not leave until the spirit descended upon them. And when they did leave, they came out and they spoke many languages.
And it wasn't that all of the hearers who were gathered there were able to hear the disciples speak as Galileans. No, it was that the disciples learned new languages. They had new ways of speaking and they were able to communicate in profoundly different ways. They went and they spoke in the way that their people needed to hear the gospel message. That for me is always the reminder and the truth about Pentecost, is it is not about making everybody else like us. It is about going to people where they are, meeting them where God calls us that God does not make everyone else understand us, but that we change ourselves. We adapt ourselves so that others might hear God's message through their own tongue.
If any of you have ever studied another language, or if you speak multiple languages, especially if English is not your first language, you begin to really realize how complicated English is and how many words really don't make sense, like read and read. Same word, spelled the same way, but read has a lot of different meanings if you spell it a different way. And it's all very confusing, okay? English makes no sense to me, and I studied Latin and Ancient Greek for most of my life. So if English, just saying, but it's difficult. And there are a lot of things that come across differently if somebody is speaking in a language that is not your native tongue. And so your brain is constantly having to process and translate midstream and you're navigating through how do you listen and hear when the words being used are not words that you would use?
So much gets lost in translation, that we miss the fullness of what someone is trying to say. And that's what the spirit lifts in Pentecost. So now all of a sudden people are hearing the message of God in their language, with their nuances and their understandings and their dialect and all of the things that makes language beautiful and unique to each culture, to each place, to each person, the Lord's message is being spread even through that. So if God can use the spirit, right, if the spirit can help us to translate and to speak new languages, what else can the spirit do in our lives?
And I know it's really difficult in the midst of COVID-19 to start thinking about new things that could have profound meaning, right? Because we want to go back to the way that things were, but what does it look like for us to see the spirit breathe, even in this? What does it look like for us to believe that God is on the move? Even when we can't necessarily see God on the move, but we can feel God on the move. What does it look like for us to trust that God will make a new thing even out of this, that God will do the work that God has been doing since the very dawn of creation, even when we are all stuck at home, by being safe at home. What does it look like for us to trust that the spirit, although we do not understand it and we cannot always see it, is at work?
This stole, which somebody described this afternoon, this morning as being gaudy is perhaps my favorite stole. And I'm going to tell you the story behind it, because for me, it breathes of Pentecost and this movement of the spirit in our lives. So this was the stole that I was ordained with. So when you are ordained in the United Methodist Church, the process of the actual ordination itself is that you get to bring up two mentors with you and you get a stole and normally your mentor or somebody close to you buys your stole. And then you kneel before the Bishop and the Bishop places it over your neck and reminds you of the yoke upon which that you are taking. And he tugs it around her neck and he looks into your eyes and he says, "Take thou authority, Gabrielle."
And he does this whole other Bishop dumb and there's laying on of hands. And it is a really profound and beautiful moment. And this stole was handmade for me by a beloved mentor in my life. And so each one of these pieces was hand-sewn and hand painted and they tell a different part of my story. So you will see that it's red, which is the Pentecost color, which is the color for ordination. And it is a reminder of the spirit and that the spirit has descended upon us. And they are filled with red birds, which are reminiscent of doves, which is also a sign of the spirit descending, but also of the cardinal that it represents the Red Bird mission that has so thoroughly shaped my call and my existence in 100,000 ways.
So inside each belly of the cardinal is a different scene. So the first appears the very first church that I served. And then we have the imagery of sail camp. I went to Camp Aldersgate for years and years and years and years, and I was a sail camper. And so there are pictures of sailboats and the dock and our goose, who was named Professor, who was there for many, many years, the hogans that we stayed in, there's a picture of the church, Montville where I grew up, the church that bore me and raised me and affirmed my call to ministry. And there is a T shirt remnant that was quilted. And it's the first T shirt of the trip that I went on for Red Bird. So this is 2006, it was the first T shirt that we wore for that trip. And it marks the moment and the week that my life changed in many different ways.
And then there is an image of people eating and a table that is set, and the words here I am. So Here I Am, Lord is my favorite hymn. It is the hymn that speaks to me in the most profound way. And she's super imposed those lyrics over feeding ministry, which is how I feel this spirit even more than I do in Sunday morning is when people are fed. And Dot, the woman who made this stole, and I used to serve at a feeding ministry in Easton together. And it was a profound way to be able to feed people's spirits and their bodies.
And then she has a chalice and a loaf of bread as a sign and a symbol of how deeply rooted in my spirituality communion is, and how important community is for me. And then she quilted a banner that hung in the Cardinal House of Red Bird Mission that says love, laugh, and serve with an image of the Methodist cross and flame, which I think if you were to sum my ministry up in three words, it would be love, laugh, and serve. So it is absolutely my favorite piece. And I remember it hanging in the Cardinal house and being so deeply drawn to it.
And then the top one over here is a picture of a tree with a baby basket in it. And the words that godmother's are both blessing and blessed. And it was that that circle is for my goddaughter, Maddie, who in many ways taught me about loving somebody that does not belong to you, right? Maddie taught me so much about love and grace and motherhood, and not really motherhood, that that is a symbol and a reminder of how deeply impacted I am because of her. So each one of these circles, each one of these moments is a sign of the way that the spirit has moved in my life. So when I was a kid and I was going to camp, it was a reminder and it taught me that there are other people out there who were also Christians and who were also kids. And it gave me a whole slew of counselors to look up to. It taught me how to sail.
And some of my best memories from summers as a kid are from Swartswood Lake up in Newton, New Jersey, and a place that really grounded me in spirituality and in fun, right? So the best part about summer camp is how much fun you have. And we sang silly songs and we used to do things like we would have dinners in a cup. And so we would take everything that was being served for dinner and put it in a cup and eat it that way. It was disgusting, but a lot of fun. We used to have jello races about who could eat jello fastest without using their hands. I have lots of silly prayers and silly songs and silly moments that I've used throughout my ministry as a ways to be able to connect folks back to spirituality and the Christian faith. It is directly what has I think impacted my ability to laugh throughout ministry.
We have the church that raised me on there because there is nothing quite like the church that you call home. The church that nurtured me and fed me for many years, the church that affirmed my call to ministry for the first time. It's also the place where I experienced communion for the first time, and I will never forget when I used to serve communion as part of this communion stewardship team, my pastor would often just serve himself at the end of the communion time, which is fairly normal for us. And I remember the first time that Mike looked at me and asked me to serve him communion. It was this profound moment of grace and a reminder of being called to serve at the table. And there are countless communion stories that I could tell you about feeling the power and the movement of the spirit by presiding at the table or over the table, or just being simply with the table and being present in receiving that communion.
My Red Bird mission trip is probably the most important thing to me in case you haven't figured that out yet. It is the place in which I saw God and learned more about service than I learned anywhere else. It is the place that taught me about poverty and the profound movement of God's grace in places that feel hopeless and taught me more about mission and what it means to love your neighbor than any short term mission trip I have ever been on. When I was interning there over the summer, when I was in college, it was this beautiful nexus of life and hope and joy and frustration, and taught me about ministry being both wildly meaningful and substantial, but also ministry being wildly frustrating. It taught me about business. It taught me about marketing. It taught me about relationship and how important it is to have relationships in communities.
So one of the things that I often hear when I talk about Red Bird is, well, if that mission has been there for 90 some odd years, how come there's still extreme poverty in the area? And I wrestled with that question for a really long time, until I was reminded of the fact that cycles are not broken in one generation, they're not broken in two generations. And as Jesus says, "The poor will always be with you." It's how you treat people. And do you treat people with dignity and respect and as equal partners, or do you look down on people because they do not have the same sort of resources that you do? There are a lot of deeply troubling parts of ministry that I got to experience and start to work out while I was at Red Bird. And it continues to be the place where I feel and see God move the most.
I have a reminder of my first church who, I will always be indebted to Frankford Plains for being my first church, because I made a lot of mistakes there. And it's not that I haven't made mistakes time and time and time and time and time and time again, I've made lots of mistakes even in the last week, and I will continue to make mistakes for my whole life. But the first place that was home, that called me pastor, that nurtured me in my experience of doing it all for the first time, has had a profoundly deep experience on how I have felt the spirit move. And so every time I wear this stole with all of its buttons on it, it reminds me that the spirit moves in ways we understand and ways we don't understand. The spirit moves at different moments in our lives that give us the tools to be able to speak languages far beyond what we ever imagined, right?
I can speak a whole level of camp to campers now and to children now that I wouldn't have been able to do, if I hadn't been a camper, right? So I learned a language being a camper at Aldersgate that has helped me be able to speak a language differently now. And so I can sit here and I can teach you a whole bunch of different, weird, camp grace, but I will tell you that there was a sail camp grace that we do. It's very easy. Some of you know this, because I've used it before, but you put your hand on your tummy and you go in a circle and you go, "Rub a dub dub, thanks for the grub. Yay, God." And that was the first grace that I taught Jesse. And now Jesse does not let us have a meal before we pray. And he used to only do the sail camp grace, the rub a dub dub, but now he's praying over our meals before we are allowed to even start eating. Because I will confess sometimes we forget, but Jesse always reminds us.
And I was able to speak that language. I was able to teach Jesse that prayer because I was a camper. There's lots of songs that I know that I will not terrorize you right now by singing to you that I learned as a camper, that's helped me connect in different ways now. Because of the church that I grew up in, because of the ministry experiences that I had, because of the deep connection to a feeding program we had while I was a kid growing up in Montville, that has impacted and changed the way that I do ministry and allowed me to be able to speak another language.
So much of our lives are about learning to use the gifts that God has given to us to speak to people in ways that we never expected or intended to, or didn't know that we could, because the spirit has been breathing life into us our entire lives. Giving us the tools to be able to speak anew, to be able to breathe freshly and newly upon people, to be able to connect with folks in a way that we never would have expected to before. My favorite moments is when God uses things in my past or things that I've experienced to speak with new people so that we can look at each other and say, "Oh, hey, me too. Remember when?" Or, "Yeah, I went through something really similar to that." So God gives me a new way to be able to speak a new breath of air into people's lives. To tell the story of God anew.
I know God's been at work in your life in 100,000 different ways. If you were to put together a timeline, if you were to pick out your most important images, you'd be able to use them to show all of the ways that God has moved and breathed in your life. And then you might be able to start making connections, for the way that the spirit moved when you were a child has now brought you to speaking another language in a different place. About how the spirit breathed into your life when you just thought you were being a normal kid. And now that experience allows you to be able to connect with other people.
God has been trying to teach you a new language your whole life. And maybe what we're looking for now is the people who are ready to hear our language. But we can never share that, we can never translate that, we can never have those conversations, until we're ready to speak the movement of God in our own lives to a stranger, or to someone we've never told our story to before. So while I wish that there were big streamers and we were having a birthday cake and we were doing something together, I know that God is breathing on us even now. And that the spirit of God is descending upon us in every moment, in every place, in every way. And I know for a fact that God has been pouring God's spirit out on you since the very day you came to be. And your story and the language you speak is just as important as anybody else's.
And just like the disciples used the language that God gave them to spread the good news of Jesus Christ's, life, death, and resurrection, so two are you called to use the language that God has placed on your heart to preach the good news. To tell the story of Jesus's life, death, and resurrection, and the everlasting freedom and eternal life that we gain by finding our hope and our trust and our place in God. Your story has created a language within you. May the spirit embolden you to speak it today and every day. Amen.
