June 3, 2007 First Sunday after Pentecost, Trinity Sunday
Home, Mother’s Day Sunday, Blanket Sunday
First Congregational Church in Thetford, Vermont, UCC
Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-34; Romans 12:1-2; I Corinthians 12:4-7; John 14: 15-17; 16:12-13
The making of a counter-culture is the way that the New Testament gives
us to heal and transform both ourselves and the world around us. Too often
though, the church conforms to the un-Christ-like dominant culture around it. It
professes to believe in Jesus Christ, but it does not live what it believes. Last
week I preached on the reason why it is important for churches today to create a
culture in opposition to the dominant culture in which we live. This sermon will
talk about how a church could go about that.
Before we get heady and analytical about this we should spend a few
minutes looking at it from the heart’s point of view. Counter-culture is a painful
subject to many people, and with good reason.
Those of us who remember the 1960s associate the term counter-culture
with the revolutionary, liberating spirit of those times. We may admire those
movements for social justice and peace, but we may also still ache from the
conflict that divided our country. The Ohio National Guard’s killing of four
protesting students at Kent State may have been the emotional low-point of the
clash of the two cultures. But the conflict took place in homes, too. Some of us
still feel old wounds from the shrapnel of intergenerational explosions at our
family’s supper table.
Pain is a part of every counter-culture. Jesus warned that his would be no
different. He said his, too, would cause division.
Imagine the pain of division and alienation from dominant society that the
followers of Christ were feeling on Pentecost before the Holy Spirit came upon
them. For three years they had been part of a small but growing counter-culture
following Jesus. Jesus taught compassion for those the dominant culture
oppressed. He taught a universal love, extending even to enemies. He taught
nonviolence. He taught what the realm of God was like, and he showed them how
to live in it, then and there. What he did and said was beautiful and powerful and
good. It transformed them as individuals and as a community.
But as they grew and came into contact with society, Jesus and his
community began to attract hatred and violence.
Imagine how they felt on the day of Pentecost. Jesus was gone now, and
they were left to go on alone. Meanwhile the same society that crucified Jesus
was all around them, unchanged. When they looked at what that culture had done
to Jesus, and when they saw how its actions were so opposed to what they
believed and had experienced of God’s realm, how could they resume their former
life conforming to society’s ways? That would be too painful. Yet if they kept
their counter-culture going, they faced the pain of conflict with the powerful
Roman/Jewish society, and all the punishment it could impose.
Today many of us are to some degree in a similar position. We love the
teachings and life of Christ and the society like God’s realm that he calls us to
create. We look with horror and revulsion at the greedy, violent culture around us.
Yet like the disciples we are uncertain and afraid. We do not see exactly how we
could create a counter-culture, but we see enough to know that it could threaten
our physical comfort, our financial security and our reputation. Pain seems
inevitable in either direction.
That is the situation the disciples found themselves in before the second
chapter of Acts. But then on the day of Pentecost when they were all together in
one place the Holy Spirit came with a tremendous rush like wind and fire and
filled them with so much enthusiasm and so much to say and do that their
uncertainties and fears were swept and burned away, and courage and commitment
surged within them.
They struggled as time went on, and after a few centuries the majority of
the church caved in to compromise, but that first church has left us a model and
the reassurance that if we dare follow Christ, if we dare create a counter-culture
modeled on God’s realm, we can expect excitement and joy and miraculous
transformation to wipe away both fears and tears.
Overnight the first church grew from about the size of our congregation’s
membership to thirty times that size. New people joined every day. Amazing
things were being done by these ordinary, spirit filled people—the kinds of
healing and justice work we long to see today.
What is it that goes into the making of a counter-culture like that? How
could it happen in response to modern American society? Here are several steps
or elements that we can see by looking at the Pentecost story and today’s
scriptures.
We have already seen the first thing a Christian counter-culture needs—to
face the truth and feel deeply in response to it. It needs people who love God’s
nonviolent, just and merciful realm, and at the same time feel the pain of watching
the society around them carry out violence and oppression in their name, and even
in God’s name. These feelings of love and revulsion need to be so strong that
people are willing to rise out of their respectable, safe conformity and choose the
risks and discomforts of creating a counter-culture that follows Christ’s way.
It can take a long time for enough people to feel strongly enough to change
the status quo. The Declaration of Independence says, “mankind are more
disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, that to right themselves by abolishing
the forms to which they are accustomed.” That is why it took decades for
Gandhi’s nonviolent movement in India to rise up and become strong. Ultimate
success may not come without a small group of people who feel deeply who come
together and stay together through long, painful years of opposition.
The next important feature is expressed in the first lines of the Pentecost
story. “When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place.”
Then at the end of the story it says, “Day by day, as they spent time together in the
temple, they broke bread from house to house.” A counter-culture needs to gather
together. Gandhi said, “Be the change that you wish to see in the world.” If
Christians want to change society, they have to be a society themselves made in
the image of God’s realm.
Gathering once a week for a fifty-nine minute worship service was the
norm for mainline Protestants for the past few generations, and that was fine
because they identified Christianity with the dominant American culture. They
considered American society to be Christian. But a counter-culture opposing
society needs to be together far more than that, with longer services to do the
needed sharing and educating and encouraging, and with frequent gatherings at
other times, both formal and informal, to build the culture and be the culture.
Another thing that Gandhi said was that if you do not have youth, you do
not have a movement. A counter-culture cannot succeed without the energy,
creativity and idealism of youth. In the Pentecost story Peter quoted the prophet
Joel who said that in the days of transformation, “Your sons and your daughters
shall prophesy.” The prophet Isaiah said, “And a little child shall lead them.”
Jesus said, “Let the little children come to me, and do not stop them; for it is to
such as these that the realm of God belongs.” Another time he said that unless we
become like children we will not enter the realm of God.
Children need what the church has to offer, but if the church wants to
become a counter-culture—a model of the realm of God on earth—the church
needs children and youth as much as they need it. In an age when children are
becoming as busy and overscheduled as adults, it will take commitment and
sacrifice for all to be together in one place. This may be one of the most counter-
cultural things people today can do—placing limits on their busyness and their
children’s so that they can have time for their spiritual life and their community.
A third important ingredient for a successful counter-culture is a common
purpose and goal. Partly this is defined in opposition to the dominant culture.
Peter preached on that first Pentecost, “Save yourself from this corrupt
generation.” Jesus gave a more positive expression of a goal in today’s passage
from John: “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” Another goal
could be “promoting understanding and compassion, justice and peace.”
No matter how a counter-culture finds its unity, diversity within that unity
is equally important. Paul said in I Corinthians that there are varieties of gifts but
the same Spirit, variety of activities, but the same God. “To each is given the
manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.” An effective counter-culture
will unite freely diverse people within a common purpose with mutual love and
respect.
Another crucial ingredient is the working of the Holy Spirit. There is a
paradox here. It was the Holy Spirit that made the followers of Jesus able to do all
the miraculous things they did in the first church. On the one hand, this is all up to
the Spirit. On the other hand, there is much people can do in order to have the
Holy Spirit guide and empower them.
Jesus said in the gospel of John, “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will
guide you into all truth…and he will declare to you the things that are to come.”
And, “You know him, because he abides with you and he will be in and among
you.” But as we all know, it is not always easy to hear the Spirit’s voice or find its
presence. It helps to have some know-how, some practiced skills and disciplines.
So developing the spiritual lives of individuals is an important part of a Christ-
centered counter-culture. The end may be the transformation of the world, but one
of the essential means is the transformation of the individual. Paul was talking
about this when he said, ”Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed
by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God.”
People in a Christian counter-culture would take on the project of not
conforming and of renewing their minds and being transformed so that they know
God’s will. Their community would have at its core the teaching and practicing
together of the spiritual arts.
Out of this kind of work not only do the Spirit’s wisdom and power arise in
people, but also the Spirit’s peace and joy. A counter-culture with spiritual
renewal at its heart will experience what happened at the first Pentecost. Each
person will praise God in his or her own creative way—including by protesting
and confronting social wrongs of greed and violence that violate God’s way. The
expressions of love and power that come out of such people in such a counter-
culture will not only draw attack, but also draw other people to it. They will
recognize the culture they have been longing for, and they will join it, and, as
happened in the first church, day by day people will be added to their number.
Such a counter-culture begins in pain as the dominant culture strikes back
with rejection, ridicule or persecution, but as Jesus said just a few verses after
today’s passage in the gospel of John, “You will have pain, but your pain will turn
into joy…and no one will take your joy from you.” He was talking about the joy
of seeing him again. Those who are part of such a counter-culture have the joy of
seeing Christ. He is alive among them in his body—the body of his faithful
church.
Let us pray in silence…
Sermon 06/03/2007