From Right Here 5.31.20

From Right Here
for Pentecost Sunday

by Jared Slack

May 31, 2020

Acts 2:1-8

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? 

So on Fridays, I have a Skype call with this task force called the EAT Initiative with the City of Austin. That’s E-A-T eat.

It’s this really diverse group of around 15 people coming from all these different aspects of our local government and social service agencies downtown. It also has my new friend Sarah from the Sunrise Center and my old friends Irit and Emily from down at Trinity center, and then there’s myself… this Baptist pastor… who if you let me talk long enough…. you’ll quickly find out that I have no idea what I’m doing on this phone call.

Because the entire time they keep talking about stuff like “statistical analysis” and “data tracking”  - all things that never came up in seminary - and skillfully brainstorming ways this task force - that began only a few weeks ago in response to COVID - is going to continue confronting the extreme food scarcity in our city that this pandemic has exposed.

It’s come to our attention that even before this outbreak, service providers in Austin weren’t able to effectively communicate with one another, and it’s not really anyone’s fault… Sure some of us had an idea, but it came to light that there are thousands of people, housed, barely housed, and unhoused who have been patch working together how they go about scrambling to get their daily bread.

And when this pandemic hit, all those places got stopped right in their tracks, leaving 1,000’s and 1,000’s of Austin’s citizens in the lurch while the patch work nature of how they sustained their health and housing was obliterated. 

And so much of the time that I’m sitting right here on my couch, listening to everyone go back and forth through my AirPods - I feel quite a bit out of my depth and more like dead weight than actual help… and after a while it all kind of starts sounding like Charlie Brown’s mom is talking to me from the other end of the house.

But then all of the sudden my friend, Irit, you know the one who I mentioned just a second ago… she’s the Executive director down at the Trinity Center and she’s from Israel…

She has this very thick and incredibly wonder-woman like accent and anytime I hear it come through on the call it immediately snatches my attention…

It’s like this ball of energy begins building in my stomach because Irit is one of those people - where every time she says anything she somehow stumbles into brilliance.

She tells the task force that this weekend - in Israel  - her relatives will be celebrating the Festival of Shavout… which for you history geeks watching at home -  this is the same exact festival that was bumping about in the streets during our very first Pentecost… It’s another one of those church calendar crossover moments where we piggyback along with the jewish tradition.

So she goes on to tell us that the Shavout Festival is the annual celebration in which the Jewish people for hundreds and hundreds of years have come and offered the first fruits of their harvest on the alter to God. 

Which of course is a really moving image in many ways, already.

But then - after a slight pause she says… “I hope this pandemic has helped my people to realize that we should have been offering our first fruits to the presence of God that has always been found in our unhoused neighbors…”

Now Irit, knows that I’m a preacher type, so she was well aware that she was boxing me out of the one place that I happen to have any semblance of expertise in…

But if my friend Irit can take a second swipe at a familiar story and a familiar tradition then so can I.

Now, I’m going to address the elephant in the room, or living room, or whatever room you’re in right now…  This story about how the early church got it’s kickstart is just a bit on the other side of bonkers. 

You’ve got a rushing wind - which sounds kind of nice…

But that’s not where the story leaves off…

It goes on to talk about tongues of fire…

And how those tongues of fire somehow find resting places on people’s heads -  igniting IN them a miraculous ability to speak other languages…..

I’ll be honest, I’m kinda glad I managed to keep my mouth shut and not offer up any of my unsolicited insight to the city task force about our Pentecost Tradition here at First Austin.

Because I have no idea how I would have explained any of it to them.

But wouldn’t you know, that even boxed-in as I was by my own worrisome tendencies to assimilate and understand all these spectacular events of that first Pentecost…. Something like a stiff breeze on a stifling and still Summer day caught me unprepared and revived something in me that I needed to be reminded of.

It says that “suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting.”

Now, I know that may not seem like much, and it may seem a bit of a precarious perch to put one’s message on, but hear me out.

This Sunday, after so many Sundays in a row,  where by now we’ve become quite acquainted with the facsimile nature of all of this worship from right where we are on the couch stuff.

A day like today really sort of piles on to the already hefty emotional burden of adjusting to these new and needed social norms.

And then you set that next to the church’s attraction to the more incendiary plot points of Pentecost, you have all the ingredients necessary for a whole lot of rightfully lowered expectations.

On a typical Pentecost Sunday, Ross along with the other artists and musicians in our community would have tastefully and aesthetically adorned our sanctuaries and our souls with colors of Pentecost reminding us of the fire of God. And we would have faithfully called upon all we have to bring about a moment that honored the presence and power of God in and all around us.

But the gift of today is the blank slate, the proverbial ground zero.

I think at some point I gave in to the temptation that I was supposed to be doing most of the work on Pentecost. 

But friends we don’t supply the fire… God supplies the fire.

It seems that amongst all the most basic and unconstrained purposes of God that we often struggle to comprehend and often overlook…

From right here… where we are today, wherever we are in this world, the fiery and primal desire that pulses through God to bring about the redemption and remaking of the world - regardless of any barriers thats stand in it’s way - is being given a better canvas to put on a show.

Anyone who’s spent any significant time around me in the past year knows that I have developed a rather unhealthy obsession with noodles. 

Yes, noodles.

And let me be clear, Im not talking about just any old bowl of noodles you can find around town.

I’m talking about real deal… authentic and original… kind of noodles, like the kind you can only find in places like Sezchuan region of China where our friends Casey and Brittany live and serve. 

And let me say this before any of you hit up my email box with suggestions of places here in our beloved foodie city of Austin….

…you should know that Sezchuan noodles exist in a realm all their own. Any of you familiar with classical philosophy will understand me when I say that food coming out of these these teeny-tiny Mom and Pop noodle shops all over Chengdu are the true sources behind the shadows in Plato’s cave.

 They are the reason all other bowls of noodles exist and inevitably fall short in our world…

And for the last year, ever since Pancho Francovich and I went over  to spend a week with Brittany and Casey, I have every single day longed to recreate that real and authentic experience with so many of you who are my friends here…

But’s isn’t this precisely the gift of today?

In all my worries that Pentecost wouldn’t be Pentecost….

We actually all might have stumbled into the most Pentecosty - Pentecost, that any of us ever did get to Pentecost.

Our tradition teaches us that the spirit found them in the house where they were sitting. 

I don’t know about you, but that hits different today.

This Pentecost during a Pandemic, isn’t something we have to settle for - it’s something we get to savor.

Celebrating Pentecost from right here is a gift.… this is the OG Sezchuan bowl of noodles of Pentecosts.

And there’s something about being reminded of this today that absolutely sets me on fire.

I hope it does the same for you. Amem.

*artwork: "The Coming of the Holy Spirit" (1996) by  Soichi Watanabe (b. 1949, Japan)