Acts 2:1-21
I learned a long time ago that the reason people say they are upset is not always the real reason they are upset. If you haven’t heard my “It’s not about the coffee” story yet, don’t worry… you will.
Unfortunately, sometimes what people say they are upset about is exactly what they are upset about. For example, when a new Star Wars film, The Phantom Menace, was released in 1999, sixteen years after the original trilogy, you would have thought fans would be pleased. This was not one more lame remake. It was an entirely new film set within the franchise canon. You’ve heard that term, canon, before for works that are authorized, accepted as part of the “true” story, even if that true story is itself a work of fiction. We have the canon of Jewish Scripture, the canon of Christian scripture, and large collections of works that were not accepted as part of the “true” story in either tradition. There is a Star Wars canon, with the new film placing many written works out of the “true” timeline. As a comic book fan, I know which Batman stories are canonical, and which fictions are fictional, if that makes a bit of sense.
That some film critics panned The Phantom Menace was not surprising. There are those critics whose every review essentially says “I could have written / cast /directed / acted in this film better than the people who were actually paid to do so.” I always knew exactly which films I’d love by reading A.O. Scott, chief film critic for the New York Times for almost twenty years. Whatever he thought, I was certain to think the opposite.
But many devoted Star Wars fans were also hostile. Though the films had always offered comic relief in the middle of the hero arc, people took exception to the character Jar Jar Binks. Cultural advances had made it easier to map various alien characters in the film to racial stereotypes, a problem still across the world of fantasy and science fiction in books, films, and games. Many fans hated Jake Lloyd, the boy actor who played young Anakin, though for no reason I’ve ever understood.
Then there are the midi-chlorians.
In the original three films, the Jedi Order was a quasi-religious knighthood. In The Phantom Menace, it was revealed that a high count of midi-chlorians in a person’s cells made them more susceptible to The Force, and hence, more likely to be a Jedi. And while the Force itself remained mysterious and mystical, the Way of the Jedi became somewhat mundane, not unlike the genetics that makes a great baseball player, given their introduction to a Knuckleball Yoda. At worse, with genetic predisposition we get a sort of Jedi eugenics, like the pseudo-science that was used to justify racism in the United States and Nazi Germany.
There is, in this real galaxy not so far, far away, an actual class of bacteria called Midichloriaceae. What George Lucas seemed to be thinking about was actually mitochondria, an organelle in the cells of all eukaryotes, a biological category that includes all plants and animals, including us. Mitochondria evolved independently and have their own genome apart from the rest of the cell. They, along with plastids, were incorporated into the cell in a process scientists call symbiogenesis. Without this sub-cellular cooperation, we’d have no orchids, red pandas, or you. Evolved life requires cooperation.
In our universe, we’ve all got mitochondria, nicknamed the powerhouse of the cell in the 1950’s, and responsible for producing chemical energy. In the Star Wars Universe, creatures have varying amounts of midi-chlorians. It feels like a betrayal, that in this otherwise egalitarian setting, some are born more capable than others. Realistic, but a betrayal. I want Jedi Chewbacca. Or at least Chewbacca on first base. Nothing would get by him, no matter how wild the throw…
If you are already wondering why we are talking about cellular biology and Star Wars, don’t worry. It is about to get even more confusing.
As we gather this morning, another group of Christians is gathering in Horseheads and at their satellite campus in Ithaca. Their understanding of scripture and faith is very different than ours. For example, they sued the State of New York to overturn the ban on bringing firearms into a house of worship, and won, with a significant financial award. Their leader has a doctorate from an institution we would consider unaccredited and started his own degree-granting institution that we’d also consider unaccredited. It is the standard mix of Christian populist capitalism and imaginary victimization, the anti-gospel so common today.
While I’m generally the live and let live sort, often hard when the other side does not, in fact, want to let me live, I must admit that I was taken aback when I recently read that our County Executive was attending a service that was making the pastor of this non-denominational church a bishop. Don’t get me wrong. I remind you frequently that Jesus did not have the credentials recognized in his time for religious leaders. But he never pretended to be a priest or even a Levite. His ministry of teaching and healing was the only credential he needed.
Centuries of tradition says you need three bishops to create a bishop, and you need a bishop to create a priest, or the equivalent depending on your denomination. I didn’t make these rules!
Some churches had three or more bishops when they split with Rome, like the Church of England and the Lutherans, so they are considered to be part of the Apostolic Succession, theoretically able to trace their authority all the way back to Jesus telling Peter he was in charge. It is the Christian equivalent of the Buddhist’s dharma lineage, the equally theoretical history of master and teacher stretching back across eons.
The main Lutheran movement in America, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, wears the apostolic succession lightly, and we are in full communion with them. If Bethany Lutheran, on the other side of the river, was in a pinch, I could celebrate communion there, and it would count. If Grace Episcopal, just down the street, found themselves short a priest, I could not cover. The Episcopal Church takes the apostolic succession literally, and I don’t have the required mojo.
We do not do bishops. The only authority in the Congregational and United Church of Christ traditions is the members, and not at some national level or regional body, but right here, this people, those of you who have promised to keep covenant with one another.
And finally, scripture, which provides two different accounts of the disciples receiving the Holy Spirit. We read the lesser known account from the Gospel traditionally attributed to John the Sunday after Easter, when Jesus breathes the Holy Spirit into ten apostles, Judas being long gone and Thomas out, possibly moving the donkey leftover from Palm Sunday to avoid a parking ticket.
The more familiar account is the one we read today, in which the Spirit’s arrival is marked by tongues of fire above the twelve disciples, and tongues of many nations flowing from their lips. While it is a Christian story, it is a reminder that pre-Rabbinic Judaism was already multi-cultural, the result of centuries of diaspora. Twelve disciples here because in Acts, they have already selected a replacement for Judas in order to have the number of completeness in Hebrew numerology, and Thomas is actually in the room where it happened.
It becomes clear in later texts that the Holy Spirit is not restricted to this small group of men, but that it is a gift to the entire church.
Think back to our reading from the Book of Numbers in the Torah. Moses has gathered the authorized leaders, and God shares with them the Spirit of leadership that She had given to that great liberator. But while this is going on, the Spirit also falls on Eldad and Medad, who are back in the camp. And Moses is not bothered. In fact, he expresses his desire that all of God’s people be prophetic, filled with the Spirit.
I am not interested in how the math of the Holy Trinity maths. I am interested in the fact that the early Christians constructed a religion that places something divine and powerful in ordinary people. Mitochondria not midi-chlorians, no Jedi bishops or Jedi pastors, but just you and I together trying to call out all that is thriving and holy in one another, like Jesus, to announce the kin-dom of God that is already in the world. And even as the Empire Strikes Back, there is always a New Hope, always a Force ready to awaken. This is The Way. Amen.
PRAYERS OF THE PEOPLE concluding with the Lord’s Prayer
Let us pray.
Most Amazing God,
though the weather has been wacky,
it is that time of year when we clean-up,
turnover the soil,
sow seeds and plant what we have started indoors,
flowers, fruits, and vegetables
that nourish our bodies and our spirits.
Scripture and science call for sabbath years,
when fields are left fallow,
for “never enough” ultimately leads to never enough.
In the same way, we are called to sabbath,
to savor what is simple and wholesome and good,
to know when enough is actually enough,
to break bread together,
to laugh,
but…
everything in our culture is about more.
It is destroying us
and this creation.
Even in the midst of his ministry
of teaching and healing,
even with the urgency of your in-breaking kin-dom
and souls to be saved,
Jesus took time to rest and to pray,
to eat and to laugh with friends.
Slow us down.
Let us to listen for your Holy Spirit.
Remind us, as we say, that yours is the kingdom,
as we pray the prayer that Jesus taught us, saying:
Our Father…
COMMISSION AND BENEDICTION
There is the Dark Side that is obvious… racism, misogyny, greed, the sinful messaging of Madison Avenue that tells you that you never have enough, that you are never enough, but if you just buy the next new thing… We rightly resist these things. But there is another Dark Side, when our rage and bitterness consumes us, when we become joyless. That is the Dark Side that fails to see the Force of the holy and good in the world, of life and serendipitous creativity. Like a Jedi be you, Hrmmm. Amen.