Pentecost
May 28, 2023

A Slow Burn

Shannon J. Kershner
Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 104:24–34
John 14:8–17; 20:19–22

Today is the third biggest holiday celebration in the church year! It is the kickoff to the beginning of the season of Pentecost, Pentecost Sunday. Now, we should forgive ourselves if we came to worship not realizing what a big day it is. After all, as a friend once pointed out, there are no “Happy Pentecost” Hallmark cards. Few people have been out doing special shopping for Pentecost treats. Some of us remember to wear red, the color for the Holy Spirit, but I only saw one of us in a Pentecost church hat. My guess is that those of you with children did not experience them waking you up early to go and figure out what Pentecost gifts were hidden somewhere in the house, waiting to be unwrapped.

Of course, here at the church we are indeed wearing red stoles, and the red paraments are hanging from this pulpit and from the lectern. Pastor Nancy did use the Hypno Twister in our processional, to symbolize the free-wheeling, goes-where-it-wants, blowing and conspiring movement of the Holy Spirit in our midst. And the liturgy we speak and the songs we sing feature the power and the presence of God’s Spirit in our lives and in this world.

For today is indeed known in the Christian world as the birthday of the Church, capital C. But as I was once gently taught by a rabbi, the festival of Pentecost is a Jewish festival at its roots — the festival of Shavuot, the festival of the harvest. It is important for us to remember that lineage and honor it. We call today the Church’s birthday, however, because it is when those of us who follow God in the way of Jesus both received and recognized the power of the Spirit, just as Jesus had promised.

And like the stories of Jesus’ birth in three of the four Gospels, the Church’s birth story also comes to us from two very different perspectives. We normally hear the perspective spoken in Acts — the rather loud and dramatic story of our coming into being. It is the story in which the disciples are all in the house when suddenly the force and power of the Spirit’s power symbolically blows the roof off and the windows and doors open. The disciples are all grasped by a power they do not understand, cannot explain, and simply must only receive.

Scripture speaks of tongues like fire dancing above their heads as they all begin to testify to the good news of Jesus Christ in a whole variety of languages — languages understood by the wide diversity of God’s people who had gathered in Jerusalem that day for the Festival of Pentecost, of Shavuot. The disciples’ excited testimony felt so unwieldy and chaotic to those in the crowd that some of them accused Peter and the others of being drunk. “It’s only nine o’clock in the morning,” he replied, making me wonder if it would be different if it were closer to five? Who knows! Yet it is that boundary-breaking, chaos-causing, fire-of-justice flaming, testimony-shouting story of our birth that we usually hear on this birthday day.

This morning, though, we heard a different story of our birth — a quieter, just as unexpected, yet much more discreet beginning of our Church’s story. We heard John’s version. And in John’s version, all we have is a group of scared, locked-in-a-room, anxious group of disciples who thought all was lost and could not imagine what their future held. Even though we overheard Jesus telling them back in chapter 14 that the Spirit, the Advocate, would come to them when God was ready, at this point of the story in John chapter 20, it is only Easter evening. And despite Mary of Magdala’s powerful testimony to them about meeting the risen Jesus in the garden that very morning, they were still terribly frightened.

Nevertheless, John tells us that the risen Christ came into their presence anyway and stood among them. "Peace be with you," he told them. And then, as Barbara Brown Taylor once preached, Jesus

“showed them his ID — the wounds in his hands and his side — and peace was with them, as the word became flesh once again [in] their sight. Then he did something very creepy and mystical that none of them would ever forget. He commissioned them by breathing on them, opening his mouth and pouring what was inside of him into them so that their bangs blew and their eyelashes fluttered and they could smell where he had come from — not just Golgotha and Galilee, but way before that — back when the world itself was being born.”

Taylor continued,

“Anyone standing there that evening with any memory at all could smell Eden on his breath: salt brine, river mud, calla lilies. They could feel their own lungs fill as they breathed in what he breathed out. What their fear had killed in them, his breath brought back to life. It was Genesis Redux, as they were created all over again by the power of the Spirit that was coming out of his mouth. ‘Receive the Holy Spirit,’ Jesus said, and that was how it happened. With a gentle breath, he conferred his spirit on his disciples, who became the guardians of that spirit through the ministry of Christ’s church.” (Barbara Brown Taylor, “Pentecost,” Journal for Preaching, 2003)

That is John’s version of our collective birth story, one I call a slow burn (with gratitude to Rebecca Messman for helping me see this). For Jesus’ gift of the Spirit through a slow breath did not set the disciples’ hair on fire. It did not bring instant love and light and unity for all the world to see. It did not even seem to convince them of its power to transform both their lives and the life of the world. After all, those disciples in John 20 stayed in the same room that whole week, trying to bring Thomas up to speed, and Jesus ended up having to do the whole meeting all over again. It does not exactly sound like inspiring ministry. But this seems to have been enough Pentecost for John.

A friend of mine named Becca once told a story to my preaching group that illustrated the power of something like a slow burn, and she gave me permission to tell it to you. About ten years ago, she and her husband took a trip to Guatemala. She wanted to introduce him to the community who had acted like a burning bush of call that ignited her life and sent her into ordained ministry. Her husband, though, while he was glad to meet her friends, was much more excited about doing a nighttime volcano tour. Thus, against her better judgment, she agreed to go with him and the rest of the tourist group.

She told us that as they trekked up the side of a volcano by night, it was much more terrifying than they thought it would be. They could not see their leaders, who were somewhere in front of them. The wind was blowing 80 mph, so they could not hear their leaders either. What they could see clearly was the glowing red lava straight ahead. At that point, someone else in the group gave her a stick and made the universal sign for “use this stick to bang the ground.”

After a few moments of confusion, she finally understood what he was telling her. “This is how you will know the ground is solid,” he yelled. “You don’t want your shoe to go into the lava!” Needless to say, she did not find this comforting, and yet she banged the stick ahead of her the rest of the journey. At one point, when they reached the high point of the volcano, all she knew to do was cling to a rock and shout, “The earth does not want us here!” Finally, though, they stared into the pot of fire, proof that — as she said — demonstrated to her that the cool ground we always stand on has a molten heart at its center, slowly and continually burning, even though we rarely see it.

As they walked back down, everyone in the group moved much more slowly. Some of them moved that way because, indeed, they were wearing melted shoes. She moved that way, though, because she was just glad to be alive. Yet when Pentecost came around for her that year, she could not escape what she had experienced that night at the volcano. Here is how she stated it: “[It reminded me that] there is an igneous love at the center of this earth and also at the center of everything that God has made. The Spirit can warm lakes, and it can move nations. It makes a way where there was no way. And, thanks be to God, it can still be there without burning visibly all the time. That does not make it less powerful. That makes it patient. That makes it kind. It has all the time in the world, because it made and continues to remake the world” (Rebecca Messman, sermon for the Well preaching group). To me, that sounds like the power of a slow burn.

And yes, as our other birth story reminds us, the Spirit can definitely be more like a flash of fire and a roaring wind when it needs to be. But it can also resemble that gentle breath of power Jesus exhaled on the disciples that night. A gentle breath of power that remakes and transforms, even when it goes unnoticed for a long time. A gentle breath of power that ignites a passion for justice and mercy in the hearts of those previously numbed by apathy, even when they don’t recognize from whom that longing has come. A gentle breath of power that shows up in congregational long-range planning listening sessions, and around sandwich-making tables, and in the water of a baby’s baptism, and at a time of commissioning fellow church members to go and testify to God’s love in both word and deed as they travel together.

Maybe that sense of the Spirit’s slow burn is what the theologian John Wesley felt when he said his heart felt “strangely warmed.” Maybe that sense of the Spirit’s slow burn is what Presbyterian author Fred Buechner experienced when he described the moment when a deep need in the world intersects with something in you that offers a deep gladness. Maybe that sense of the Spirit’s slow burn is what Mother Teresa described as the “call within a call.”

The Spirit does not always blow with gale force winds. Sometimes it comes as a gentle breath of power, a slow burn that stokes the fireplace of the soul and helps you do the hard work of letting pain or shame or righteous anger become the fuel for what God calls us to do next. In this passage from John, his version of our birth story, Jesus does not say I will send the lightning bolt. Rather, he says, “I will send you the Advocate.” Another word is Paraclete — which translates as “one who comes aside.” One who is an encourager, a power who somehow fills you with the courage you need to keep being a disciple for another day.

So perhaps today, on the Church’s birthday, as we all gather together, we might think of the Spirit as a slow burn, a gentle breath of power that keeps any of our quivering hearts from feeling alone. A slow burn, a gentle breath of power who reminds us we are in the middle of or connected to a whole group of people with shared breaths and shared wounds and shared fears and shared joys, so we can remember that none of us is ever truly alone.

For the Spirit of God Jesus promised would come has indeed moved into our midst. It has blown into our lives. It abides with us and in us and among us at all times and in all places. It is a slow burn of holy creative power that on some days will have us raising our voices to the rooftops and blowing out the windows with our Spirit-fueled passion as we call and act for justice and mercy. Yet on other days, the slow burn of holy creative power will encourage us to do the little bit of ministry that is ours to do at that moment.

Here is what I know: this slow burn, this gentle breath of power, this holy creative, freely blowing Spirit is alive and well at Fourth Church. It is the molten heart of all that you do as a congregation. It will continue to give you the courage and the openness and the vision you need as you move into this next season of your life together. It is always, continually present, even in those moments when the ground just feels cool and you cannot see or hear where you are going next. But that slow burn Spirit is present, regardless of fear, regardless of change, regardless of anything we do or don’t do.

So as we take our leave from each other today, my prayer is that we will each take a deep breath in and catch a whiff of some of the Eden on Jesus’ breath — the smell of salt brine, river mud, and calla lilies. And we will remember the power of the slow burn of God’s Spirit, who resides in us and among us, making us part of Christ’s body together, from now until forever. Thank you all for being conduits of that power of the Spirit for me all these years. Thank you. Amen.

Sermon © Fourth Presbyterian Church