A sermon for Pentecost

Given at the Church of St. John the Evangelist, Izmir, June 4

In my old parish we used to have an elderly Englishwoman named Freda. Freda didn't have much formal education, but she was wise and faithful and often quite funny. I loved to hear her read in her cockney accent; she often cast new light on the scriptures with her fresh point of view.

One Pentecost it was her turn to read. She got to the Acts reading and, although I know she'd done her homework; she always did, the list of countries and nationalities threw her. “And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of a whole lot of other places” she said. And most of us thought that was really quite good enough.

Over the last year my Ron and I have been to an awful lot of the places those first hearers of the Holy Spirit came from: Parthia, near Lake Van; Media, the home of the Kurds; Mesopotamia, between Diyarbakır and Gaziantep; Cappadocia; Pontus – the Karadeniz; Phyrigia, near Eskişehir; and Pamphyllia, near Şanlıurfa; not to mention Asia, the whole rest of Anatolia. I'd had no real understanding until this year exactly how important Anatolia was in the history of Christianity. There were just these names in the New Testament that I mentally translated as “a whole lot of other places.”

So this year has been quite instructive. And one thing has struck me in particular: except for Smyrna – our city of Izmir – there's hardly a trace of the Christian church left in those places where it began its life.

I think the place where that knowledge really hit was the mound that's what's left of Colossae. That's all it is – a hill, with a poppy field on its side. And Laodicea, just down the road – just a few ruins.

But you know what? That's all right. Because the Christian church is more than buildings, more even than scattered communities of believers. The Christian church is bigger and stronger and stranger than any of us can imagine.

The Church was born that day in Jerusalem when faithful people from all over the known world heard Jesus' followers telling the story of Christ's life and death and resurrection. And the most amazing thing: they all understood. They heard it told in ways that made sense to them. Jesus' friends found themselves speaking in languages and in ways they'd never used before, and it worked.

That was the first time the Holy Spirit went public. She'd been at work for untold ages before, of course, since the very beginning of the universe: breathing order into chaos, life into dry bones, words into prophets' mouths. But finally she burst into the world in a huge way, kicking reluctant disciples out of their comfy upper room into the streets, and creating a whole new way for God to be present in the world.

And she hasn't stopped. Every time we get comfortable in our safe, predictable ways of doing things she gets to work again. Every time we hit a dead end in our ways of being the Body of Christ in the world, look out, here she comes.

And so I'm not sad that Christianity is not in control in this country anymore. We had our chance and we blew it. Constantine co-opted our faith and made it a route to power. But that's not what Christianity is about. It's about love; it's about the little ones who are the ones who really matter to God. It's about not getting comfortable in our pews or in our daily lives.

So the Christian church got it wrong when it sided with the powerful ones of this world. But that's okay. The Spirit isn't finished with us yet. There's still a church, and there always will be a church. It's just not always going to look the same, that's all. The church here is very different from what it was in Byzantine times, but it's still the Body of Christ, still one of the ways God acts in our world. And it will keep on doing that in one way or another until the Kingdom comes.

The Holy Spirit can do some unusual things. I'm sure that's what pushed me to be ordained; it's also, I think, what pushed me to come here. It works within us and among us to strengthen us and give us the courage to do things we'd never dream of doing.

This is the last time I'm going to be with you for awhile. But no matter how far apart we are, we'll still be together in this strange and wounded miracle, the Church. And I hope before too long we'll be together in the same city again. So until then, thanks for your goodness and kindness to me, thanks for the help you've given me to understand this wonderful country – and Görüşürüz!