PEAKLAND BAPTIST CHURCH,
LYNCHBURG, VIRGINIA
Article for the Religion Column, The News and Advance
Everyone Speaks!
As I order my steps by the pace of the Christian calendar, I see that Pentecost is fast approaching – May 11. Or is that Mother’s Day? It may discomfit some assumptions to read that a Baptist Christian observes the church calendar and celebrates Pentecost. One of the great gains of the world in which we now live is that people do not have to be bound by a particular heritage but can draw from the well of other traditions to water the ground of their spiritual lives and bring forth a more abundant harvest. Whatever one’s denominational flavor, it does not make good sense to allow a secular calendar to order the days for those who have been embraced by a sacred relationship with God in Christ. May the story of God triumph over Hallmark and calendar the story of our lives!
Pentecost is fast approaching – my favorite day of the Christian Year after Easter. “Why do I love Pentecost?” you ask. Pentecost is an event abounding with power, purpose, presence, and possibility, but let me limit myself to one reason. I love Pentecost because it is the day when everyone speaks. Remember the story in Acts 2? One hundred and twenty of Jesus’ disciples have been meeting together for ten days – breaking bread and praying together as they try to figure out what comes next now that Jesus is no longer in their midst. Then Pentecost arrives, bringing with it the spirit/breath/wind of God, filling the lungs of everyone present with such grace and boldness that they go out and speak God’s Good News to all whom they meet. Everyone speaks! All one hundred and twenty. And many listen. For people are always hoping to hear good news, else why would the fantasy of the lottery ever be viable. The breath of God flows from the lungs of the speakers into the nostrils of the hearers as they too are filled with the marvelous hope of the transforming Good News of God. At the end of the day, God’s hope becomes the breath of life for three thousand people, because everyone speaks what is real to them in the manifold accents that communicate to a diverse parade of people.
But who will speak this Pentecost Sunday? Probably only one. The picture will be the same for most congregations – one voice speaks and everyone else listens (or naps). Since I am one of those voices that speaks most every Sunday, I am grateful for those who listen. I am honored by those who attend to what I say. Your listening sometimes makes me think that I am following a worthwhile calling. However, when I stand back and think about the pattern I am endorsing by being the one who speaks while everyone else listens, I conclude that we have departed from the divine plan in which everyone speaks. We are training people to be listeners, while God’s plan is to pour out the Spirit upon people so that men and women, young and old, will announce the Good News of God in the accents of their own experience and vocabulary.
May we claim the divine plan of Pentecost where everyone speaks, for we do not know what we believe until we speak it. When one takes a college class, the test of knowledge lies not in the ability to sit and listen to a lecture but in the ability to write one’s own essay, expressing the content of the lecture. Until I can say what I know, I do not really know what I know. Christians often do not know what we believe because we have been trained to sit and listen to the professionals explain what they believe. But the best way to know one’s faith is to verbalize it, to express it in a give-and-take in which words give substance to one’s distinctive experience with God in Christ. If we wish to grow informed and confident Christians, for our own sakes, we must recover Pentecost, where everyone is equipped to speak the hope that is within them.
May we claim the divine plan of Pentecost where everyone speaks, for some people will not hear the Good News until everyone speaks. Not everyone can hear my voice, the voice of a pale, male, fifty-something Baptist. But they may be able to hear your voice. Communication is always a customized process, in which one person connects with those who are deaf to the voice of another. When we identify and articulate our own faith and experience, we are uniquely equipped to communicate with some folk who are especially tuned to the frequency of our accent. This is the power of testimony, of customized communication in the manifold accents of Christian witness. You may find this concept hard to accept until you try to share your experience of the Good News with another. Some people will look uncomfortable or clueless, while others will lean forward to listen, for your account of the way in which God’s hope has become real for you is language that touches their own experience and desire. Your voice and story will connect with some people with whom no one else may connect. Therefore, your voice is an essential part of God’s plan to become the breath of hope for everyone. Maybe you have trouble believing this until you try it. I doubt that the one hundred and twenty would have believed it possible either . . . before Pentecost arrived.
This is a bold essay, for it challenges me to re-imagine how we normally do church according to the radical plan of Pentecost. In the eight days until Pentecost arrives may we pray together that the breath of God will fill all the people of God to speak the peace of God as it has graced each one. May everyone speak God’s peace, so that we will know more fully the substance of the Good News, so that others will breathe God’s peace along with us.
Steve McNeely
Peakland Baptist Church
4018 Peakland Place
Lynchburg, VA 24503
434-384-2031
April 28, 2008
Last Update 05/02/2008
www.peaklandbaptistchurch.org