Emailed notes for a potential Pentecost Sermon ---------- On Palm Sunday the local Moravians play acted a version of the story of Jesus entering the city. For obscure reasons the 3 people playing Pharisees were given yellow stoles to set them apart (rather than trying to costume them in fringes and phylacteries). These 3 people consist of 1 "elder" (who is actually elder to me, though not by much) and 2 half brothers who are part of the current confirmation class. I said, "One of the positive things about Pharisees was that they actually read the Bible." The part that had been written at the time. I said, "I have been looking for the local church to do more reading the Bible. I think having the 3 of you forming the core of a Bible reading group would be really good for the people who gather here." They looked at me slightly askance. --- Now it is Pentecost and the members of the confirmation class are being confirmed. I had trouble getting to sleep last Saturday evening because my mind kept imagining what I would say if I walked in and was asked to take over the sermon. The result was a bit discursive, built primarily off the beginning of Ephesians. ("The church in its fullness is the entire cosmos coming together in Jesus.") "What then do we mean" I would ask "by saying Pentecost is the birthday of the church? The birth of the church was God's act of creation, because everything that exists is the church -- including our brothers and sisters the whitetail deer, our sibs Timm's Hill, Rib Mountain, and Denali, our bacterial cousins who make our cheese" and so on. "Then" I would have said "there is the Pentecost at Sinai with the mountain shaking and volcanic gasses escaping like a shrieking calliope when God provided some explicit instructions on how to live as the church in the cosmos. And third there is the dark little upstairs room probably packed with people who know that Jesus lives but have not figured out what that means for a group who were 'called out' to be the church." Or to travel God's good road as the First Nations Version would have it. Another week, reading another book (in the First Nations Version) and now I think the conclusion to that Pentecost message should include some words from Second Corinthians. "Jesus is our headman dancer" I would add "and we should dance in step with him. We ourselves are the wafting smoke of the cedar and the sweetgrass." Just like the Bible says. But you have to read to know what the Bible says. So far my hints have not borne fruit on that front. --- The closest experience in waking life to that rumbling half dream was a couple weeks ago when I got a call from our minister late Thursday. The minister was away somewhere and her substitute is in the hospital. Oh, and worship is Saturday morning because of the marathon encircling the building on Sunday. "Do you have any plans for Saturday?" "When I got the call, on Thursday, I wondered what sermon I could have ready for Saturday morning. Then I noticed that there is a potluck dinner scheduled for today and so I decided to preach on fasting." Well. It wasn't just me. The headman dancer had some suggestions too. You can read it on my website. But it is a joy to be part of a gathering with such depth on the bench that when the substitute preacher is unable to perform we have 2 or 3 substitute substitutes ready to stand up. All of us reading to learn what the Bible says. Even between sermons. --- But I know that my experience of reading does not exactly match that of many others. For example, this afternoon I was reading a article in which the author was attempting to do some exigesis. I was not happy with the result; I thought she was imputing a meaning Jeremiah 38 that is not well supported by the actual text. Since it is Jeremiah being cited I pulled out John Bright's volume in the Anchor Bible. It was such a relief to be reading a translation which is so expert and which is accompanied by a full apparatus. Our emulative Pharisees might not experience that same mitigation from that same source. ---------- June 2025 Peter Cardinal