The Perfect Space

Acts 2:1-21     When Pentecost Day arrived, they were all together in one place. Suddenly a sound from heaven like the howling of a fierce wind filled the entire house where they were sitting. They saw what seemed to be individual flames of fire alighting on each one of them. They were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages as the Spirit enabled them to speak. There were pious Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. When they heard this sound, a crowd gathered. They were mystified because everyone heard them speaking in their native languages. They were surprised and amazed, saying, “Look, aren’t all the people who are speaking Galileans, every one of them? How then can each of us hear them speaking in our native language? Parthians, Medes, and Elamites; as well as residents of Mesopotamia, Judea, and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the regions of Libya bordering Cyrene; and visitors from Rome (both Jews and converts to Judaism), Cretans and Arabs—we hear them declaring the mighty works of God in our own languages!” They were all surprised and bewildered. Some asked each other, “What does this mean?” Others jeered at them, saying, “They’re full of new wine!”

Peter stood with the other eleven apostles. He raised his voice and declared, “Judeans and everyone living in Jerusalem! Know this! Listen carefully to my words! These people aren’t drunk, as you suspect; after all, it’s only nine o’clock in the morning! Rather, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel:

In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people.  Your sons and daughters will prophesy. Your young will see visions.  Your elders will dream dreams.  Even upon my servants, men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days, and they will prophesy.  I will cause wonders to occur in the heavens above and signs on the earth below, blood and fire and a cloud of smoke.  The sun will be changed into darkness, and the moon will be changed into blood, before the great and spectacular day of the Lord comes.  And everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.

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When I took the position as Campus Minister at Bloomsburg University, I knew that there was no church.  There was no campus church where I could gather students together for worship and Bible study.  It wasn’t like the campus ministry experience I had when I was a college student, when I walked down to the Lutheran Student Center every Sunday, and sometimes on an evening during the week for a Bible study or a book study.  Nice building with a sign out front, right across the street from the Quad.  We had a real sanctuary, a fellowship hall, a classroom – all of it dedicated to our particular brand of Lutheranism, ELCA.  The Missouri Synod Lutherans had their own building next door, with their own sanctuary, fellowship hall, and classroom. 

I knew that the ministry at Bloomsburg would be different – no building, no church.  We had a small office in the student union, for which we were grateful.  And we had access to meeting rooms we could use for all our activities – worship, study, social.  There was one room, called the Multicultural Center, that was sort of “our room,” and it worked pretty well for our needs.

My first semester I went down to reserve the room for the weekly activities I was looking forward to offering and I discovered I was late – about 8 months late.  The Multicultural Center was already booked up for most of the year.  So we had to make do; move around here, there, and everywhere each week, wherever there was space available.  We were vagabonds.

This wasn’t an ideal situation.  Some weeks we were in a tiny windowless room with a big conference table taking up all the space.  Other weeks we were in a cavernous ballroom with nothing.  Every week we would have to leave a trail of breadcrumbs for anyone to find us.  I was discouraged before I even began. 

I began to have a feeling that I would experience many times over the years – I call it building-envy.  I would look at other campus ministries that had their own place and turn green with jealousy, thinking, “I could do so much if I had a building like they have!” 

It has become the equivalent of church in our minds – the building.  When we think of church we think of structures, often with steeples and crosses on top – the cross in particular is how we identify it as church, much as the golden arches say McDonalds.  Big or small, doesn’t matter, but if it’s a church it’s a building.

When I was in seminary, I traveled with my class to Cuba for a three-week cross-cultural experience.  We visited lots of churches.  There were some beautiful and grand old Roman Catholic cathedrals.  They had been there for centuries.  And there were tiny storefronts, with bars over the windows, and a bunch of chairs and a podium crammed in, a cross on the wall and this was church, too.  The cathedrals and the storefronts looked nothing alike but they were both church.

There is a line in the movie, Field of Dreams, “If you build it they will come.”  And this has been the mantra of the church of Jesus Christ for centuries.  If you build it – build a church – the people will come.  It happened right here a little over 50 years ago.  Some people came together and organized and built this church, and then the families came pouring through the door. 

It has happened all over the world.  Churches with resources build big glorious structures and churches with little or nothing borrow old shopping centers or movie theatres, or put up prefab buildings.  They open their doors and wait for the people to come.

Those built with stone or brick have cornerstones, with the dates engraved on them to tell the world how long we have been here. And we remember the people who laid the foundation of the building, the people who bought the chairs we are sitting in.  We remember the people who had a vision of a church and they built it.

But then we come back to 2015 and we remember that it’s been a while since anyone could say with much confidence, “If you build it they will come.” 

The buildings haven’t been filled for a long while.  I know one church with a dwindling, aging congregation that gathers every Sunday in a sanctuary large enough to hold about five times as many as there are.  And they now say to one another, frequently, how sad they feel when they come to church.  How inadequate they are to fill the space they have, and that makes them sad.

We come to our buildings Sunday after Sunday and spread ourselves out, because that’s what we are accustomed to doing over long habit, although anymore it can make us lonely worshipers, isolated from one another.  We sit where our families have sat for years, maybe even generations.  I preached in a church once that was built for four hundred but had fewer than two dozen regular worshipers.  There was a man who sat in the second from the last pew every week because that’s where his family had always sat, even though there were now 20 empty pews in front of him. 

Sundays when we fill the seats with children and adults of all ages are rare.  They are exhilarating but also disorienting because we have almost forgotten how to worship with noisy and boisterous little ones. 

We speak to each other quietly about our insecurities, about not wanting to be the last one left, the one who has to turn out the lights and shut the place down.  We occasionally utter the words, “The church is dying … the church is dying … the church is dying …”

Today we hear the words Peter quoted from the prophet Joel – your young will see visions and your elders will dream dreams.  We wonder: where are the young with their visions?  And our elders have stopped dreaming dreams.

We are at risk.  But it is not because the people have stopped coming to our buildings.  That is not the cause.  We are at risk only because we seem to have forgotten what it is to be church.

On that day of Pentecost the apostles didn’t have a building.  They had a borrowed room; they huddled in this room – their hiding place – waiting for something to happen.  They didn’t know yet what would happen or who they would be or where they would go.  Promises had been made, which they didn’t really understand.  They were waiting for something, but didn’t know what they were waiting for. 

Then the Holy Spirit broke in and changed everything.  They were enlivened and empowered to speak and to hear.  The Spirit gave them ability to communicate with others and make the gospel known far and wide.  Peter opened the window and began to speak to the people of all nations down in the streets of Jerusalem and this was the beginning of the church.

There was no building.  There was no fellowship hall or Sunday school wing.  There were men and women and the Holy Spirit.  Somehow this was enough, and the text tells us 3,000 were added to their numbers that day, and each day thereafter their numbers increased.

They did not have a building, but no one could deny they had church.

Back in those early days of my campus ministry a wise mentor said to me, “I know you feel bad because you don’t have your own space.  But do you have a chalice and a plate?  Do you have the bread and the wine?  If you have the sacrament, wherever you go, this is your space.  This is church.”

We have all we need – we have the word, the sacrament.  We are also fortunate enough to have a really nice building, but in some ways this is the least of what we have.  We have the Holy Spirit and the promise of God and God does not go back on God’s promise. 

It took the power of the Holy Spirit to move those 12 men out of that little room, their comfort zone, and out into the world.  It took those fiery tongues and a powerful wind to open that window and open their mouths to speak the gospel, the good news.  That same Spirit will move us out of our comfort zone to meet the world that is waiting for some good news, a world badly in need of some good news. 

By the power of this Spirit we may be sent out to meet the young where they are and listen to their visions.

And our elders will once again dream dreams.