Well, happy birthday to you. No, it is not the birthday of this church in particular, but it is the birth of THE church. The Holy Spirit fell like fire from heaven on the community of Jesus’ followers, empowering them for life and work together.
I’m not proud of this. But I used to hate birthdays. Just another date for me to forget. Just another excuse to stuff my face with cake. And birthdays are often so disappointing. I particularly hated them in college. Grand plans would be hatched. This big group of twenty people would go to a restaurant at 7:00 on a Friday night. Surely it won’t be busy, and we’ll be seated quickly. Plans are made for after dinner, the whole evening mapped out. Everyone will have a great time.
Well, I did not have a great time. We’d wait at the restaurant, get seated late; the other plans are ruined, one person gets in a bad mood, people are angry with the one person in the bad mood. The person with the birthday wishes, as he blows out the candles, that none of this had ever happened. There can be so much pressure to have a great time that no one has a good time.
Then I heard someone say that birthdays are important because they are a chance to be singularly grateful for a person. It is a chance to say, “I am glad you’re here. You are special to me. It wouldn’t be the same without you.” It is a day to celebrate this single person as a gift from God.
So today we say happy birthday to the church. It is a day to be grateful for this community and all the other ones throughout the world that worship and serve Jesus Christ. It is a day to be bold, to bring out the red, the boldest-color paraments we have. That’s why we had Joel march in here with this strange-looking cross. It is a day to celebrate because God sent the Spirit.
But on this day when we celebrate God’s Spirit forming the church of Jesus Christ, I can’t help thinking that for many people, the church is nothing to celebrate. Think about all the evil that the church has participated in, in the past. You know the list. The Crusades, the Inquisition, Christian support of the slave trade, apartheid, Jim Crow, the oppression of women on biblical grounds. And if you forget all of that and just think about today, you’ve got enough sexual-abuse scandals, church splits and clergy talking heads to make anyone think twice about celebrating the church’s birthday.
It shouldn’t be news to you that interest in so-called organized religion is on the wane in this country. That includes the church. But why do people stay away? Recent research done by the Barna Group suggests that four in 10 unchurched people stay away from churches because they have been hurt in the past. The research doesn’t tell us why they were hurt, just that they were hurt. But you can probably imagine some reasons why. You probably know some of these people. There are stories of betrayal, manipulation and personal bad blood. People are haunted by painful memories that don’t seem to go away. So they stay away from the sanctuaries and the worship centers. Folks stay home. It is hard for some people to celebrate a day like Pentecost.
You can just imagine what people who are suspicious of the church, who have a hunch that the world might be a better place without us … just imagine what they might think if they heard verse 12 from today’s Gospel lesson. In that verse Jesus says, “Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father.” Did you hear it? Greater works than the works that Jesus does.
Even to Christians this might sound a little odd. If we read about the works that Jesus does and compare them to the actual performance of the church, we would all notice a gap. Don’t we Christians usually talk more about the freedom of God’s grace than we do about striving to do what Jesus did? Non-Christians would agree that we fall short of Christ’s example. Mahatma Gandhi famously said, “I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.”
Even though Jesus says, “You will do greater works than these,” most of us inside and especially outside the church have a suspicion that the church’s work has been lesser, so much less than the work of Jesus.
But it all depends on how you understand the word greater. If Jesus meant you will do “better” works, then we might have a problem. Because we don’t always seem to do better. As just one example, think of all the people Jesus healed; then think of all the people who die every day in Christian hospitals around the world. Our work of healing seems lesser than, not better than, Jesus’ work. We seem to be falling short of, rather than improving upon, Jesus’ works.
But greater doesn’t have to mean “better.” It can also be about numbers. Greater can mean “many more than.” When Jesus says to the disciples, “You will do greater works than these,” he means you will do many more works than these. During his ministry, Jesus’ body was limited like ours are. He could be in one place at a time. But the church, as the body of Christ, extends the world over and is capable of doing a greater number of works than Jesus could obviously do in his ministry. So when Jesus tells the disciples, “You will do greater works than these,” he is not burdening them or us, saying that we’ve got to improve upon Jesus. Rather it is a description of how the work of Christ continues after Jesus has ascended. Because Jesus still works through the Spirit, to equip the church to do works of love and mercy.
A retired woman was interviewed by her town’s local newspaper. The paper ran a brief biographical piece on people in the town, kind of like our “I Am Wilshire” column in the Tapestry. This woman was well known for her role as a foster parent. Though she never married and did not have much money, she gave quality, long-term foster care to 12 children, all of whom were doing well in life and called this lady mom.
The reporter said to her, “Looking back on your life, did it turn out like you hoped it would? You must have always wanted children and you ended up with twelve.” The lady said, “No, I wanted to be a singer. I wanted to travel the world and meet famous people. Now I’ve only left our county a dozen times as an adult.” The reporter said, “Well, how did you end up being a foster parent?” She said, “Well, I am a Christian. I try my best to follow Jesus. And somehow I ended up doing this.”
She didn’t know how she ended up as a foster parent, but she saw the connection between being a Christian and doing that good work of foster parenting. Like Jesus says in verse 12, “The one who believes in me will also do the works that I do.” You know the works Jesus did: forgiving sins, befriending the outsider and outcast, feeding the poor, loving enemies, healing the sick, binding up the broken-hearted and so many more. It is true that if we believe in Jesus, the works that Jesus did will show up in our lives. They might even be things we never dreamed we would do. All because Jesus sends the Holy Spirit upon the disciples. And it is the Spirit who works in the church to bring these works out of it.
God does not call the church to do the works of Jesus by our own power. Instead, we do them in the power of the Spirit. That’s why Pentecost, with the descending of the Spirit, is the birthday of the church. Because that is the day when God equipped the church with the Spirit to praise and work, to do the work of Christ all over the world.
It happens all over the world, and it even happens in this church. Think about all the works of Christ done in this place called Wilshire. Every time a Stephen minister spends time with someone who is hurting, every time a child is welcomed with a smile, every time people work through their differences, every time someone serves at Stewpot or Cornerstone or Healing Hands, every time money pours into the offering for world hunger, every time a prayer is prayed someone in trouble, every time a word of encouragement is uttered to someone with a heavy heart, every word of blessing offered to a newborn child or a high school graduate, the work of Christ is done, because the Spirit sent from God stirs us up to do these things. We get caught up in something bigger than we are—that Spirit of God which blows around the world begins to blow in us.
But because the Spirit blows in human beings, and humans make up the church, churches can struggle to live out this vision. And it is easy to be critical. A friend of mine was frustrated by his home church and its problems. We talked about it, and I, being a smart-aleck, know-it-all seminary student, helped diagnose what was going on. The congregation has been plagued by scandals and divisions. It has no relationship with the neighborhood it is in, because while the neighborhood “changed” over the years, the congregation has not. It is a homogenous group; everyone seems to be the same, thinking alike and looking alike. They do very little for the relief of the poor; they don’t seek relationships with other churches outside their own; they don’t attract any young people and have no observable spiritual vitality.
This church seemed to be an example of everything wrong with the Christian church in America today. Then I actually had occasion to go there one Sunday. But when I was there, I noticed something I did not expect. There was a big group of mentally disabled men sitting on one pew near the front of the sanctuary. Apparently there were a couple of nearby group homes for mentally disabled adult men. Some church member invited them one day, and now this was their church. Everyone who entered the room walked right up to the pew and exchanged greetings, handshakes—even hugs. I asked around and found out all the ways the church had served these men and found ways for them to serve in the church. People did not avoid these men, like they might do in public, but they welcomed them as family.
When I saw that sight, I wondered where else in our society would such a group be welcomed and blessed. Where else but the church? In that church, where there was so much struggle and so much wrong, those Christians welcomed in their midst and into their hearts this group of men. And you know, that day, all the difficulties of that church faded away for me. I didn’t notice them, because I saw the work of Jesus of being done, empowered by the Holy Spirit.
Recognizing this is not to excuse that church from its other genuine faults. Of course all churches can and should strive to do more, to be more faithful and more open to the Spirit of God. We all can be more welcoming, kinder and more generous. There’s a time for us to be critical.
But today, on this Pentecost Sunday, this birthday of the church, let’s be grateful. The Spirit works through the churches so that we can do the works of Jesus with our own hands. The body of Christ is doing greater works. Not better, but many more works. Let’s be grateful for these works and the churches that do them. So maybe we say to each other, maybe we say to these walls and pews, and to the churches you drive by on your way home … maybe today you say to the church, “Happy birthday. I’m glad you’re here. It wouldn’t be the same without you.” Amen.
