May 30, 2004
Rev. Dr. C. DiNovo
PENTECOST SUNDAY — "If God Hates Religion,
Why Come to Church?"
Scriptures: Genesis 11:1-9, Psalm 104:24-34, John 14:8-17, 25-27,
Acts 2:1-21
So there’s this little group of people sitting frightened for
their lives in a room where all the doors were closed and all the
windows were closed because after all they were being persecuted not
only by the religious authorities of their time, but they were also
being persecuted by the world of empire of their time which was in
those days the Roman Empire. And so, needless to say, they were frightened,
then something happened. We don’t know what it was exactly that
happened to them, but something so incredibly dramatic happened that
they ran from that room proclaiming the love that they knew and the
community that they shared to everyone who would listen. They knew
of course what would follow and it did follow. Each of the people
in that room were eventually hunted down, tortured, imprisoned and
killed, but they didn’t care. They were no longer afraid, they
weren’t afraid of anything. They weren’t afraid of what
people thought, even if people thought they were crazy or drunk. They
didn’t care that they might be the only ones in the world saying
those things. They didn’t care about torture and they didn’t
care about death. They didn’t fear anything because of that
something that happened in that room that day and what happened was
the very birth of the church. The church means the community of the
godly. Now sometimes we get a little confused about when church started,
was it on Pentecost or was it in about 312 when Constantine officiated
over the institutionalization of church. But no, Pentecost reminds
us it wasn’t when the church as a institution was born, it was
when that small group of disciples got together proclaimed love and
were no longer afraid of anything.
When I was first ordained, I was thinking of a story this week, it’s
been plaguing me and Damien, my son, gave me the okay to share it
with you. But when I ordained, I was sent like my ordinands to the
country far away from my home, about two and half hours away and that
meant that my kids (if they came) were going to have to change schools,
leave their friends behind, etc. Now for my daughter, that was fine
because she was graduating from high school and she was going into
University, so no biggie. But for my son, who was just going into
high school, it was huge and he flatly refused to come. He said there’s
no way I’m to this hick town from my town of Toronto. And I
said, well listen you know, I’m a single parent, we don’t
have a lot choice, where are you going to stay? You’re going
to have to come with me and he said, well mom if you make me come,
I’m going to stay in my room and lock the door. And I said,
well you know, it will be a little quieter around, but I can live
with that, okay. And then when he decided to get a rise out of me
for that, he said, okay I’m not only going to lock the door
of my room, I’m going to paint the entire room black. You know
that was pretty gothic of him, but I thought okay, black room, your
room, it’s not my room, fine I can live with that. And then
he said, and remember this was a little country 2 point charge, a
little country town, he said and if you still make me go, I’m
going to go to church and on the first Sunday, I’m going to
wear a dress. And I thought about it because in my country church,
they would have no doubt lost it if Damien had shown up wearing a
dress. But then, here I am, six years later and if somebody comes
(a man) walks into this place and wears a dress, it’s like another
Sunday, right?
Fear not, said Jesus, fear not. Last week I talked about why God Hates
Religion and there’s lots of good reasons why God and Christ,
if Christ walked in to any religious establishment these days would
be more than a little disappointed. Why would they be disappointed
and why might I even use the word "Hate", it’s a strong
word. Well when we look at the wars in our world of course, when we
look at the hatred in our world and we look at the divisions in our
world and we look at the divisions in our pews and we look at the
divisions between us, it would seem that that early gift and promise
of Pentecost has been not only lost, but that organized religion has
been doing exactly the opposite of that. Instead of recognizing the
joy and diversity, the absolute gift and blessing of all the languages
including languages about God, that is other religions in the world,
instead of recognizing this as a gift of God in Pentecost, organized
religion has acted as if the gift of all these languages is indeed
a curse. So what does that have to do with you though here this Sunday
morning and me here dressed in this weird thing on Sunday morning
officiating over rituals that are almost 2,000 years old on Sunday
morning when we really could have been doing something else. You know
we could have slept in, that would have been good. I was up late watching
Queer Eye on the Straight Guy and could have slept in. We could have
gone for brunch, we could have done that. We could washed the car,
cleaned the house, we could have visited friends, we could have taken
our kids to the park, but instead we all came here.
Might I suggest
that you did not come here on your own volition, might I suggest that
you, each one of you, were called here by God. Now to even think that
thought takes us out of our little ego and takes as out of our little
lives and really makes us about this big in relationship to this huge
universe and to this awesome and powerful and wise and loving God.
About this big which is exactly the opposite of what the world tells
you, you are. It tells you you’re huge and that everything is
in your control, but here you come to hear a different message, you
hear that you are powerless here. You might even hear a message about
your own life the other six days of the week, you might even hear
that your powerless over some of your own life. For some of you, some
of your own life has become unmanageable. Some of you might be suffering,
some of you might have struggles that the rest of us aren’t
aware of. Here is where you come to acknowledge that the answers to
all of that aren’t within you, but are without you, are with
God.
And what is God
after all? God, the one that we call God, the source of all love might
not even be a noun, think about it. God might be a verb. God, that
one who Jesus referred to as daddy "Abba", my daddy, who
he said existed within him as well as without him, that God gifted
to us and called the Holy Spirit. You know, we Christians, can’t
come up with one name for God, we need three, just the bare minimum
to describe the indescribable. We say God is both Christ, God is both
the source of all love, the creator of the universe, the first principle
and God is also the advocate. That still small voice in us, that power
that exists between us and around us without us, that allows us to
have our being and that is what’s really in control that things
happen for a reason and that we need not fear. We should really repeat
that mentor to ourselves every minute of every day. I need not fear
because this source of all love is in control.
Might I suggest
to you, you came to hear this message that there is absolutely nothing
to be afraid of, nothing that you don’t need to fear failure,
aloneness, addiction, mental illness, hatred. You don’t need
to fear poverty. You don’t need to fear disease. You don’t
even need to fear death. Imagine what that might actually feel like
if you actually felt that every moment, if you could lift that off
your own shoulders and place them upon the mighty shoulders of this
source of all love. Imagine if we could say for sure there is nothing
to fear and here you know is a crucible where we learn to put that
into action because it’s not enough just not to be afraid. I
suggest you came here for another reason as well, and that is to learn
how to create a whole new world. We start here and there’s just
a few of us. There’s always only just a few of us because we
start this world in the face of organized religion as well as in the
face of empire. We start this new world here.
I interviewed somebody in my radio show last week and he was phenomenal
and one of the things he said about Christians and Christianity because
I said, don’t you ever get discouraged. Here are you and I and
we’re preaching this holistic and welcoming and inclusive message
and there is so few of us. And there is so many of them, whoever them
is at that moment. And he said, but Christians were always meant to
be salt of the earth and you only put about I have high blood pressure,
so very little, a quarter of a teaspoon, a half of a teaspoon, a tablespoon
at most in the recipe. There’s only few of you ever in the whole
world, only very few ever. There were only every few that day at Pentecost,
only very few. And yet they went out into that world and they changed
not only the world, they changed the universe, not only the Universe,
they changed their own lives. So might I suggest to you that you came
today to learn how to change your life and to change the world because,
my goodness, it needs changing.
Why are we in
this mess? Because we didn’t get that message of Pentecost,
we didn’t the message of diversity and powerlessness, power
in our powerlessness. We didn’t get it and so trusted in our
minds in a rational reason, we trusted in our own ability and our
own power and what did we get, we got the 20th Century. Thank God
it’s over. We got wars and we got better ways of killing each
other, that comes out of reason. That comes out of humanism, that
comes out of setting ourselves up as if we were God. So the prayer
of Pentecost is this one, that you go out and with the diversity of
all your incredible languages, that you learn how to tell the truth
about your life and the truth is that you are called by God as Christians
to spread this message of Christ, to spread this message throughout
a world than hungers for it, that here there’s some place different,
that this place is a community of love and reconciliation and forgiveness.
This a place where you’ll sit next to your enemy in the pew
and you’ll learn to love them. This is a place where if your
sane, you’ll sit next to somebody crazy and if you’re
crazy, you’ll sit next to somebody crazier. This is a place
where you’ll sit if you’re sober next to somebody addicted
and if you’re addicted, next to somebody sober. And this is
a place if you’re old, next to somebody young, and if you’re
young, next to somebody old. And if you’re black, next to somebody
white. If you’re white, next to somebody black. And if you’re
Polish, next to somebody Ukrainian and, and, and, and, and.
I’ll just close with another story because it’s one that
I thought of as well. At an Annual Meeting not too long ago, somebody
was worried about the crack addition. Remember Jesus’ word,
fear do not fear. And the crack addicts in our neighbourhood and how
they were using the church, blah, blah, blah. And just at that moment,
a crack addict walked into the room and sat down at the General Meeting,
one of our evening service, lots of them are addicts. Many of them
addicted to crack and for that second, we got this isn’t the
enemy, this is a brother. This is a member of our family who suffers
from a problem just like we suffer from problems.
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