[0:00] I wanted to spend some time talking about Pentecost. We talked about it a little bit last time. And one of the things that we talked about, which after doing some research looked a little bit different, which was in the beginning of Chapter Two, when the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place.
[0:26] We talked about the fact that we we kind of figured out that that was the Jesus followers, you know, the disciples and not everybody. And that it wasn't until the the the actual occurrence of Pentecost that they went running out.
[0:48] The people, the disciples went running out. And so we I talked about the fact that there was this festival and that it was the festival of 50 days from Passover.
[1:02] To promise land. Right. Yes. Yes. So I'm saying it. Today's one of those days where I say it and I'm like, is that what I mean?
[1:14] And I have those days. Yeah. Yeah. The. But what some of the studies say about that particular time is that the people most likely wandering around the street were were probably more likely immigrants.
[1:36] They were not there for the festival. They were there as a part of the diaspora of Jews finding moving on and finding places after the Babylonian exile.
[1:48] And because of that, they would have been Jews that spoke all kinds of different languages.
[2:00] Right. Because they had been all different places because they had come from different places. And I just thought that that was an interesting perspective to kind of shift that a little bit from it's not like Mary and Joseph in Bethlehem, where everybody went to be registered and everybody was there for the same reason.
[2:22] And so I think that this was a very multicultural time and not nearly the the single purpose of coming for the festival.
[2:36] OK, so I just thought that was interesting. I am going to do an experiment and try to show a video. And so we'll see. We'll see how it works.
[2:48] And we ask anybody that's watching online to be patient. So just I have to change the settings. This is a video that that's about Pentecost.
[3:00] The music is just a little bit frenetic. So if you can't stand it, you can always. Well, you can't mute me, but no turn your volume down if it gets too, too troublesome.
[3:14] OK. Not going to work, but it's the reason I wanted to show it is because. It talks about. It just kind of speaks into Pentecost that in a way that is.
[3:31] Kind of the state of our world. Like looking. Think about the disciples. They're in a new place.
[3:43] They're in a new chapter of ministry. They're kind of all alone in that space and wondering like, what do we do? Like there's all these. Yeah.
[3:54] These conflicting things out here. Why do we have? You know, what are we supposed to do and how are we supposed to do it?
[4:07] And and so it starts to make some of the parallels about anxiety. Indecision conflict.
[4:17] Some of the things we see in our culture right now that. Even that no matter how the election might have gone. We're not seeing the resolution that we thought we would see in terms of the beginning of a process of transitioning.
[4:36] And of course, we don't know what it would have been like if the election hadn't turned out the way it is, but it's kind of.
[4:47] Hi again, Debbie. You're fine. At least don't worry about it. If it works, let it be. Yeah. Welcome. So I was just telling Linda, are you frozen again?
[5:04] I think she is. I did. Poor Debbie. It says connection lost. Okay. Well, so anyway, there's that. So then it goes along and goes along and goes along until then it there's this description of the experience of Pentecost is enough to kind of ideally unite everyone.
[5:33] One voice. One voice. Everybody can is kind of speaks the same language and can understand the disciples can go and preach wherever they are called to go preach and the people will understand them, even if it's not a place that they're going that's in their own language.
[5:50] And so the the the the there was a sense that this breaking in of the Holy Spirit was not only for the purpose of.
[6:03] The arrival of the Holy Spirit, but it was also for the purpose of all of these drastically different people that that act of God could possibly bring them together in one space.
[6:18] Kind of like the hopes that we read about in the epistles in terms of being of one mind and being all people of faith and didn't quite go that way.
[6:31] Because people made fun of the disciples when they went to preach people made fun of them when they shared about their experience of the Holy Spirit. Some people were very moved and brought to faith.
[6:43] Others just didn't believe them. They just simply didn't believe they thought it was too, because. One of the things that. That I was.
[6:56] That I was. Let me see if I have it. I have it written down here. The idea is that in that space that we might think about the Holy Spirit.
[7:12] As we talked a little bit last week about the Holy Spirit being comforter, guide, director kind of pushing possibly from the back.
[7:24] and this one this one Bible study person I turned too many pages he says that he says I've written three or four introductions to this letter now none of it seems quite adequate so I'll just come out and say it I think we've misnamed the Holy Spirit the word Jesus used in John's gospel is paraclete which we've you've probably heard that the Holy Spirit from that perspective right no I have I don't remember okay the name paraclete which is often translated as advocate so in John the Holy Spirit if in the language is called paraclete and that is translated as advocate and often translated as comforter and he says it's this second name in particular I'm calling into question is I just don't think it's the Holy Spirit's job just to make us feel better so then which kind of goes along with some of what you were saying about being that kind of conviction yeah like get get yourself right lane right yeah and so he goes on to say yes I know it's not that simple the Holy Spirit as comforter eases our distress encourages us and comes to us in times of trouble to remind us of Jesus presence and promises and it's just that kind of comfort I imagine that is at the heart of Jesus discourse to his disciples in the fourth gospel they were distressed feeling orphaned and abandoned and stone needed that kind of comfort and advocacy and then he says well why do you think then that I think that the Holy Spirit is misnamed in that particular description he says because when he looks at the Pentecost scriptures he's like what is calm and comforting about a violent wind right where does anybody find comfort in the experience of a of a wind blowing that you're thinking is gonna blow your house up and the fire coming down on your head you don't know if you're gonna burn on fire and if you can see them on each other then that's scary enough and then to think that there's one on you has to be and then there's their own physiological experience of language the disorientation of the language thing so he says in the Pentecost text the Holy Spirit isn't comforting anyone or anything but it's shaking things up so it's you know in in John it's kind of different looking but at the same time Jesus testimony throughout the Gospels started all kinds of trouble you know Jesus way of teaching turned everything upside down right yeah very very different and what he says the Holy Spirit comes to prompt the disciples to make the same disturbing disruptive and world-changing testimony that calls into question the values of the world and he goes on to say I mean goodness there's nothing particularly comforting about the rush of a violent wind the descending tongues of flame and once the disciples take their new multilingual ability into the streets of Jerusalem pretty much everyone who witnessed their activity described it as bewildered and amazed and astonished
[11:30] so the spirit didn't comfort anyone but instead prompted the disciples to make a very public scene with the troubling good news that the person the crowds had put to death was alive through the power of God so he goes on to talk about the Holy Spirit as agitator instead of just as advocate and nicely what he comes around to is that it's really both that to some extent the Holy Spirit may be comforter in time of trouble but may call us to be agitators or agitate us into being agitators about the status quo that's how pastor Tom always described an apostle but apostle is the one that comes in and shakes things up uh-huh and this person is saying that the way that happened is through Pentecost because Pentecost did it to the disciples or the apostles and then and so on and so on so on so it's kind of you know we talked about this lineage thing but that goes back to that same kind of reference
[12:41] Jesus agitated the Holy Spirit agitated the apostles agitated um I don't know how many of us are still really gifted at that um I guess it depends on your idea of agitating yeah yeah yeah so what would you describe as an example of either a place where agitation needs to happen or we've seen it happen we've seen it happen in a good way like what do you wish the world where do you wish the Holy Spirit would stir up some trouble stir for the for the gospel in our in our in our in our young people to in in terms of kind of agitating them to do what
[13:42] I think just let me think a minute like a revival for for young people um and because I know I was one of them that when they got to the age of college kind of stepped away you know you go away to college and you kind of forget your roots and and and I just think there's so much so many questions and so much out there I'd love to see the Holy Spirit shake up some of the younger I'm talking even 20 to 30 year olds um but also um but also a lot of churches um preach the nicey nice they preach what they think you want to hear not what we need to hear that just because you're sitting in this pew on a Sunday morning yeah you may believe in God but like we said last week do you believe God right you may be here to worship God but do you take that out with you and how does it change your life I think that's right um for
[15:20] I don't know the second half of my career in preaching I've been a little bit more um I not always but I try to be mindful of somewhere towards the end of sermon preparation what difference does it make yes if this doesn't if this doesn't invite me to do anything different or the people in the pews to do anything different which okay that might be the case but then what is it what is it because in some seasons what you know the there are times and places where people just need a sense and a spirit as an experience of just belonging like just true you are here you are not by yourself we're in this together and so the the the change part of that would be if you believe that on Sunday also believe it on Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday so there is an agitating component to it because if this is where you belong then try to belong here all the days of your life and not just the of your life and not just on Sundays right and sorry they need to a lot of people need to realize it doesn't matter how young you are or how old you are there's something that God wants you to be doing right and I think that's what I was going to say is that when I think about when you talked about young people I think if I if I could if I were to think about the Holy Spirit from that perspective it would be to call people call for them kids past high school and young adults to an understanding that they really can be the change in the world they are not the future they are the right now because I never really like to say that that there are future because they're not there are right now still kids and youth and young adults but that if if they could if if they could somehow the Holy Spirit could move in some way for the world.
[17:41] if if they could somehow the holy spirit could move in such a way that they could see and hear the difference that they could make in the world if they put legs on their faith you know we've seen that in some of the movements around gun violence and racism over the last number of years where um teenagers across the land have risen up and said we're not doing this anymore yeah and so i think there's a little bit of a a flame out there for that even though they can't get together right now um but i would like to see that from the perspective of my sense that every person is called to serve and that looks different for every single person but even when i look at my own children while i think there's been some changes over the years to some extent um i don't see in them and in some of their friends the drive to make the world a better place they're not selfish my children and their friends are not selfish but i i just don't see them um feeling a sense being compelled to in the places where they live to get out and be sort of missionaries not necessarily rebuilding houses but there's just always something that people can do right and some of it may be nostalgia the fact that when i was in high school and then through college um i i just believed that was part of my place in this world even before faith to make the world a better place to fight racism to fight injustice to um to do those kinds of things i kind of took it personally and then i found out that it fit with my faith um and um so i don't know i think there's also a lot of adults who feel like they can't really do anything and they can't make a difference and they can't right and and i think that i'd love to see the holy spirit turn that upside down and if people could really really see themselves they could see there they can do something and i don't even like to say things like that because people have enough to do people right but you list um but if if it's holy spirit driven then people feel compelled and passionate about it yes yeah not like a to-do list and and of course you get a lot of that with the older congregations that are just coming to church every not not pendleton but the older congregations and smaller churches where they're coming to church every week just waiting for it to die off right or they come to church every week um with sometimes a sense of defeat like i've done all i can i can't do anymore yeah yes and then i i look him in the face i'm like are you dead because if you're not dead god's not done that's what the whole 18 months i was at galanda that was my message for them you're not dead yet and i would in in other churches it was usually when there would be two services it would be the one where more older people attended um and in some ways it was kind of a code for don't tell me that somebody else has got to take it on if you physically can't do it then i believe it but don't give me this i've done my part because if people give up thinking there's no more part for them then they're then they feel defeated by their age or their inability and just like covet i think it's not a matter of giving up what they
[21:49] bring it's looking at how can they do it differently how can you still serve and be so important even if you can't do all the things you used to do so that's kind of my like you're not dead yet and if you're not dead yet then god's out for you and um so um so this this guy goes on he says paraclete is a compound greek word that literally means to come alongside another in this sense the paraclete can be an advocate to come alongside to defend or counsel or comfort to come alongside to provide comfort and encouragement but the one who comes alongside might also do so to strengthen you for work or to muster your courage or to prompt or evoke or even provoke you to action that's why i think the paraclete as the one who comes alongside of us to encourage and equip us for ministry is a better name for the holy spirit than comforter or advocate as you were reading that what popped into my head was the pictures you'd show during the service on sunday of the the runners coming alongside and right helping equip you to finish the race yep and it's um i saw one uh in a race it was a video where the person didn't need physical help but i think and i think it was further back in the race where someone recognized that this person was in the process of kind of giving up and the person took it upon themselves to be like come on don't give up don't sit down because as soon as you sit down then you're out of the race and you know so that was the kind of that's kind of the other part of that right that holy spirit thing which is not giving up on something and pushing and pushing and pushing until they get to where they're going um so i thought that was um i just find the conversations around the holy spirit to be fascinating mysterious and i'm i'm pretty sure i hope that never will i feel like i understand it all that i figured it out because no i don't think we're meant to understand that i don't think we are either the other part of this was that you know the pentecost experience is often put together with speaking in tongues whereas speaking in tongues comes later in acts it's not now it's like 12 or something like that what they call glossolalia um understand as the gift of speaking in tongues and i think there are people who believe that that's what happened at pentecost that all of a sudden everybody was speaking in tongues but that's not what happened and that's a completely different um and we don't know if the people that were filled with the holy spirit were speaking a different language or if they were speaking their language and other people were able to understand it in their own language and it's in some ways does it matter it doesn't that's because because i can go either way did the did the apostles were they the ones who when they spoke everyone understood or did they could they speak other people's languages so that other people could understand right and it makes me think of general conference when you've got different people with different languages and one person's talking but everyone's hearing it in their own language that is an amazing amazing experience um in terms of we
[25:52] can't hear into their earpiece but when you see these whole delegations with their their translator things in and you see the people in the boxes who are doing that work um doing doing some of that translating and how fast they have to go and the vocabulary that they have to have to go to uh you know this page this paragraph this line you know under this head subtitle and um i have had experiences of being in a place where um where i had the translator because i was in a non-english speaking environment um and it's a little disconcerting because you can hear the person but you can hear this person and so in some ways you have to kind of tune out the speaker even though you want to watch their face because otherwise you don't pay attention to the person who's talking in your ear yeah but and be amazed by it all at the same time um so do you speak any other languages no i took spanish in high school but i remember very little i took france and france french and nice but then uh in seminary when i found myself in france all i did was stand behind my husband we were engaged at the time and he was in france studying french french civilization he'd been a french major in college and so we had he met our seminary group in zurich switzerland and traveled with us to italy where we were doing a marxist christian dialogue um trip with one of our seminary professors but then after that was all done i went to paris with him to see where he lived and to meet the woman that whose house or apartment he lived in and oh my gosh i was like whatever i ever thought i knew and since matt was fluent i just stood sort of slightly behind him and like don't not no not gonna happen no well tom crosby's daughter speaks spanish and she teaches overseas english i think she teaches other language speaking kids how to speak english so pretty cool yeah yeah um i one of the other uh things that i came across when i was there's a a website that has a lot of um writers and biblical commentary that's ancient and modern and different comes from different perspective you can read john wesley you can read calvin but you also can read um things that are more like a blog or a sermon on on something and this um this one person so as i was kind of kind of just taking a look taking a look and you click on what i don't know whether it was i don't remember who it was i clicked on not wesley and it was 47 pages i'm like man no no no not no not going to do it i'm not going to read 47 pages of ancient english yeah so but one of the things i did come across was a man who was a man who talks about he's he's talking about language and that the need for pentecost and the need for it to keep happening um and he talks about so he tells a story about when he was going through college he over the summer worked in a vegetable packing plant and his job um was let's see what
[29:55] did he call it he my job late that summer season was to work the cutters before that he'd been doing the corn packing when he got to the cutters what that meant is once the cobs have all the kernels off some of those cobs jam up they don't jam up but they get stuck in the machines um and so somebody has to go in and cut them out and so that's what the cutter does and so that was his job and when he first got into that section they put him on the fastest moving the machine that had the most corn cobs getting miss misled and the other people he said i carried a wooden stick for poking into the machines to dislodge the ears of corn every worker was assigned to three machines it was not exciting work and it was uncomfortable because it was sweltering hot in all the protective gear and the noise of the machines was deafening so it wasn't like there was going to be much conversation still i was on a line with six other women of various ages the other six were latino members of families of immigrant of migrant workers who traveled through for seasonal work and they only spoke spanish so he says and this is where it gets interesting now of course it was not only our spoken languages that separated us from each other we were also separated by the languages of our past our education and our future i was there as a college student working in between years of college they were working this is to survive um this was their food this was how they were going to live um and so uh uh he says one day when he he though there was a woman let's see one woman called in sick and he was excited because he got to move down which meant he got to go to an easier machine and a new person was put on the hard machine and um i took her up on it and a half an hour into our shift the new worker was getting frustrated with the machines and before i knew it she and all the others ganged up on me and language differences or not they told me i was going to switch places with her and go back to that machine i did not argue and so he said i had to smile i that i smiled even then to realize that probably for the first time in my life in that moment i was not the one who was privileged and for the first time i think i knew the impact of the difference of language to separate and divide i knew even then that all sorts of other languages separated me from them ones which would take me out of that plant and temporary jobs and carry on through other places um so he he goes on to talk about how languages divide us and not just people who speak um what we could consider a foreign language people speak a different language for just in the words that they use yeah um so does that does that make sense to you like what comes to mind do you think it does and because what comes to mind is i was in third grade when we moved to north tawanda and i lived in wisconsin and in wisconsin a water fountain was called a bubbler because the water bubbled up from the middle of the middle of it and it was within my first few weeks at school and i raised my hand and i asked if i could go to the bubbler and all the kids started laughing and making fun of me and my teacher stopped in the middle of what she was teaching at the moment and used it to teach that
[33:57] different parts of the united states have different words for things she wasn't being stupid she wasn't being silly she came here from wisconsin and that's what they call it there that's why the teacher and she was my favorite teacher i think about things like there are different languages across um educational levels you know that people who um are at least college educated often speak differently than people who were not privy to having an education um and it's not like one is smart and the other one's not smart because like matt's father didn't go to college but oh my gosh he was one of the smartest men that i knew and he's the one that taught all of their kids go look it up if you don't know what it is you know i'm glad to hear what you find but go look it up i'm not going to tell you and who watched pbs and all this stuff for forever and ever um but there's and some of that some of that education may come with what's specialized like if you have a specialized education right like a doctor you want to speak english yeah but for doctors among doctors they speak a different language they speak right it's you know when i'm when i am once or twice a week down at roswell and i'm in a meeting with the palliative care doctors and fellows if they're there are parts of their conversations that you can't make any sense of because they're talking about measurements of medication and pain levels and scales and all kinds of stuff and we often struggle people often struggle with their physicians to talk to them as though um they're smart enough to understand but don't expect me to have the clinical skills exactly right like you know you have cardiomyopathy okay what's that right what does that mean you get it but i don't um and and there's regional you know people people in boston talk differently than people in new york city and chicago you just take all the major cities and people in south boston talk differently than people who are not in south boston and i'm picking some of the what we would consider from upstate new york to be pretty specialized because there's the their accent is so significant right alabama um wisconsin you know the the some of the dakotas where things are far more um swedish or danish or something like that in terms of the terminology um it's but i think that part of where he was going in this is how language separates people because it's not just the language that we speak it's what that language where that language comes from so for these immigrants or these migrants that he's talking about the fact that they can't speak english kind of puts them over into a different category and so he's like the college guy so there probably could be a sense of him thinking he's better or they think he thinks he's better or them thinking less um the the languages when we first when jordan and sarah first started dating um
[38:09] um they one of the things that that was shared was that while jordan and sarah had traveled some in college they were still in college um that sarah's parents had not had an extensive life of travel that they had not traveled like uh jordan and our family had traveled and we were just very fortunate and so there was a sense of there was a sense of in his suite and innocence asking us to be careful about how we presented ourselves and that the conversation wasn't about um the trip to majorca and the trip to saipan and the trip to here and whatever because there's a sense that it gives a sense of better than right um and so i wonder how do we put that into this place in the history of what was going on in this time in terms of um how how might the the different groups of people the different backgrounds of people um how might that have been a right time for god to send the holy spirit does that question make sense um kind of like with everything going on here within our country yep really ripe for god just holy spirit and i could see if they were going through i'm sure they didn't have possibly probably the uh politics but you know you talk about them being immigrants and i think about everything the immigrants here are going through and you know the whole daca upheaval that was going to be happening and and the whole 600 kids whose parents we don't know where they are right yeah um and our own division around some of that um perceptions of right and wrong percent perceptions of right faith and bad faith you know yes that they're that in some of the i'm increasingly reading that that we are at religious odds almost as much as we're at political odds right now yes yes we are i i that's that why i put that on facebook that day i just felt like god was nudging me jesus isn't right or left he's our center right he's not a donkey or an elephant he's our lamb right and we're trying to put him on one side or the other yeah and there's i think there's been some memes over the years that showed or cartoons that with the statue of liberty being kind of pulled pulled yeah art or trying to be pulled in a variety of directions and i think that i think we're we're experiencing that happening in our um in the religious world and when i say religious i mean across religions not just christian right right and um a number of years ago because my my mom passed away in um nine years ago and my dad was in 2007 but um before i think it was even before my dad passed away they were talking to somebody from their church and um my younger sister and her husband are democrats
[42:19] and someone from my mother's church and someone from my mother's church actually said to her well then she can't be a christian it's like really yeah and that's um it's it's hard to understand it's hard to understand the power of division and how the power of division turns into statements and expressions that are sort of um expressions of hate yeah that that that sense of because and essentially what that is is it's ignorance that you can't be a democrat and a christian at the same time right and or that for some people that being a catholic is also a christian because a lot of people there's a lot of people that are like oh no no they're not christian oh yes they are you know one one woman well i used to be catholic and now i'm a christian really um and i understand what they're talking about but at the end of the day um christian is christian and yes we're losing losing a little bit of sight coming from a person who's i'm not prone to cynicism so i don't like to i don't like to be like the sky is falling the ship is sinking can't do it it's more um there's a a deep anxiety and trouble rumbling in our um and it's gotten right into our not into our churches as much but into the religious world of conversation yeah i remember talking to somebody once and their father was lutheran and they were raised catholic and her father um had had a stroke and wasn't doing well and mind you she knows that my father was a lutheran pastor and she says i am just praying for my father's conversion i said why don't you pray for salvation like if he doesn't convert to catholic he's not going to go to heaven so i'm praying for his conversion it's like right yeah and it's um i was with a patient once and they were talking about how how and this is a little bit different but it's um the sense of how we look at our faith next to our religion and that was this person attended mass every day and um didn't care so much about in-person confession um but that that it's his religion that was going to keep him safe not his faith that going to church every week was what was going to save him um because if you didn't attend church it was a mortal sin and you know i was with him for a while and then i was like i i didn't say anything i just talked with him but in my head i'm going where's the believing in jesus part because yeah not like catholics don't live a life of believing in jesus um right i didn't quite understand that other than he had been raised from the day he was born catholic schools catholic training and um literally went to mass every single day yeah and he did it out of fear of hell um and a really nice man but just kind of um i think that so this idea about pentecost um i think that i mean i personally when i was looking at this i'm thinking wow we are really in the need of
[46:26] pentecost yeah we are and some of the some of the people that i was looking at they were talking about the fact that that really that that this this may be what we're reading about even though there's mention of the of pentecost back in joel and in other places this particular description of pentecost is kind of stands on its own um and but the invitation is to consider the fact that it wasn't the last one that there may have been places where something like this has happened um on a much smaller not i won't say smaller because the reality is we're not talking about a big city and thousands right um but it's a big event in scripture and so the um if we think about places where there have been dramatic breakthroughs and people finally being able to see and hear each other who disagree or who are from different cultures and we're finding common ground who's to say that that's there's not a pentecost that's there's not a pentecost in that um yeah i like to think of that i like to think about sort of mini pentecost um and it's um um so the other thing in my research that i found interesting was that the description is that paul had done really well in converting gentiles he was very successful he did very badly at converting jews which and that that was where when he talks about some of his struggles that that that was one of those and that also even though when we read hebrews it wasn't about paul um it kind of was another reinforcement that some of the focus was on keeping the jews who had converted and getting jews to convert um because that was a very difficult crowd of people right and you think about it and what reason paul might have had problems converting jews is because he was the jew going around killing the christians so yeah i could see where he might be better off trying to get the gentiles yeah get the people that don't know that story yeah right and next to that i think that because even my own experience experience in the in in growing and familiarity with people who are jewish and practice their religion is that it is it is not just their religion um it's not just their faith in god it is a complete and i don't mean just because they might be conservative jews who practice all of the sabbath rules and all of that it's more that if you go to a synagogue you are very likely to hear commentary on the state of the world if you um some of the the the rites and rituals and holidays and holy days in the jewish tradition religion have some level of justice or um things about them that are not it's like you can they can put the news and the scriptures of the old testament together and have a um a service at the synagogue of that that
[50:31] and incorporates all of that you would very rarely hear that decisions about how to live um there's just it's just a different kind of culture of course there are jewish communities like the hasidics who separate themselves entirely from the news and the global culture but right um it's far more of a lifestyle than i think that in terms of overall belief system about the world and things in it as opposed to in the christian um communities we tend to kind of put it in here like it's not all the way around it's not that that's not how it's meant it's just that from a verbal presentation um we're not going to bring the morning news into the pulpit we're not going to um discuss the state of israel um israeli u.s relationships in from the pulpit um and so to and they're historically with the everything rules about everything from eating to worship to how you dress to where you can go to the role of women and children and what a temple would look like that is a deeply ingrained culture kind of goes back actually to what i was saying about a roman catholic um but jews have been around longer than catholic yeah it's not it's not as simple as just believing in jesus because their religion is so tied up with the whole way they live their life right it's a way of life one of my sister's best friends who grew up around the corner from us um met and fell in love love with a jewish man and she ended up converting and she lives over in tel aviv i think she's in tel aviv now yeah once in a while i'll message her and say what are they saying about us and what does she say anything interesting oh it's been a while i don't remember what she said but um it's it's interesting to um read some of the authors that i follow who one of whom is in canadia canadia she's canadian and she's a duke professor but because of covid and not teaching in person um she went back to manitoba where her family is and she's has um cancer and has been on special treatment for several years that keeps her going keeps her alive um but she can't be exposed you know that would be pretty devastating to her so she chose to go to outer mongolia of manitoba canada and stay safe um and but talking about what it's like from a canadian perspective to watch the united states is um they pray for us a lot i can imagine of course one of the memes was you wonder if canada feels like their downstairs neighbors in math lab i hadn't heard that but yeah there is some truth to that that kind of terminology um oh my golly it's it's crazy who would have ever thought i know so let's look at peter starting in verse 14 of chapter 2 um and he's trying to explain um what's going on and so um how about do you want to read the first
[54:46] it's 21 verses but it's not really that long no it's not then peter stood up with the 11 raised his voice and addressed the crowd fellow jews and all of you who live in jerusalem let me explain this to you listen carefully to what i say these people are not drunk as you suppose it's only nine in the morning no this is what was spoken by the prophet joel in the last days god says i will pour out my spirit on all people all people your sons and daughters will prophesy your young men will see visions your old men will dream dreams even on my servants both men and women i will pour out my spirit in those days and they will prophesy i will show wonders in the heavens above and signs on the earth below flood and fire and billows of smoke the sun will be turned to darkness and the moon to blood before the coming of the great and glorious day of the lord and everyone who calls on the name of the lord will be saved so what do you think that where is he where is he trying to take them do you have commentary that talks about it um yes it says peter told the people that they should listen to the testimony of the believers because the old testament prophesies concerning jesus and it had been completely fulfilled and that jesus is the messiah um the day this was peter both bold and humble no matter what sins you've committed god promises to forgive you and make you useful for his kingdom the um part of what um mine talks about is that the in 17 verse 17 in the last days and that sense of you know that this is the second coming that we are near the second coming and that these are in fact the last days um and so the visitation the the references from joel when you now read about the fact that joel talked about blood and fire and smokey mine says smoky mist um sun darkness and the moon to blood before the coming of the lord lord's great and glorious day and then everyone who calls in the name of the lord shall be saved is kind of a second coming kind of a description so it's not um most people think that find that the it's he's not referencing uh um joel like um so it's not like per word but the overall message is that the day of justice the day of reckoning um is coming very soon um one of the really unusual things is that talks about um he talks about the outpouring the pouring out of my spirit upon all flesh sons and daughters slaves both men and women um that's a kind of an unusual privilege position of privilege to put women in in that yeah and in in
[58:54] my commentary down at the bottom it says at pentecost the holy spirit was released throughout the entire world to men women sons daughters jews and genitals now everyone can receive the spirit this was a revolutionary thought for first century yes and it's interesting that in pentecostal churches and some assembly of god churches can fall into that kind of wider care category um they people are often surprised that in the pentecostal background that there are women clergy i don't know that they call them clergy but women pastors yeah because they have they have believed in um this partly this particular scripture that says it's everybody it's not just men it's not just the apostles the 12 men um it's everyone and yeah so the the other thing is that essentially what where peter's going is that he's he's being prophetic he's talking about what's going to happen um and which is you know how we look at the prophets and how we look at prophecy um and now he's going to go back to the most recent past in 22.
[60:20] you are the is our israelites listen to what i have to say jesus of nazareth a man attested to you by god with deeds of power wonders and signs that god did through him among you as you yourselves know this man handed over to you according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of god you now this is very interesting you crucified and killed by the hands of those outside the law so it kind of is does make it kind of pointed that he's talking to jews you did it right um but god raised him up having freed him from death because it was impossible for him to be held in his power for david says concerning him i saw the lord always before me for he is at my right hand so that i will not be shaken therefore my heart was glad and my tongue rejoiced moreover my flesh will live in hope for you will not abandon my soul to hades or let your holy one experience corruption you have made known to me the ways of life and you will make me full of gladness with your presence um and my my particular um commentary doesn't say much about those particular parts of this this reading about the what david said do you hear yours mine says everything that happened to jesus was under god's control his plans were never disrupted by the roman government or the jewish officials it was especially comforting to those facing oppression during the time of the early christian church and then it says um peter spoke forthrightly about the resurrection as he preached the events of jesus death and resurrection were still hot news less than two months old so his ex jesus execution had been carried out in public before many witnesses the empty tomb was available for inspection just a short distance away that's interesting i don't have you have you heard before that timeline of two months no but we know it couldn't have been so very long because that they were all still there and well because jesus had been around with them hanging hanging out again for 40 days right that's true so and we don't know he told him to go wait but we don't know about how long between his ascension and pentecost it was right yep so i mean two months two months in our calendar might have been about right yeah mine says the heart of peter's message is that god raised jesus from the dead and made him humanity's rightful lord and savior throughout the rest of acts as well the holy spirit empowered apostolic message continues to narrate jesus resurrection and announce that he is lord breaking off joel's quote with everyone who calls on the name of the lord will be saved he later picks up in later in chapter two as many as the lord our god invites we'll get to that peter explained what it means to call on the lord's name the one at god's side is the risen one um and although some jewish people may have expected gentiles to enter new lives in judaism through baptism peter summoned his
[64:21] hearers to turn and embrace the lord's name by baptism to be baptized um and so what does he say peter recognized that one cannot depend on ancestry or ethnicity for salvation that goes back to some of what we talked about the jewish how the jewish people and they how they do their lineage and um where the lines are of faith um and that's that's quite an interesting because then it goes on to say as the saying go today goes god has no grandchildren yeah have you heard that yes i have not heard that yeah i've heard that before and how would you interpret it that we are all god's children right nobody gets the second hand i mean for for grandparents there's nothing better than being a grandchild right and what what what he's saying is that no one gets secondhand salvation we all get it firsthand but also if you think about it grandparents don't do the nurturing and raising like appearance right and we don't give birth to them so right if spiritual birth comes through baptism and redemption as um the experience of a personal experience of faith or however we describe it then then that's god's doing and god does the raising just like a parent right as opposed to a grandparent um and so it's quite um how does let's see 29 through 31 can you read that fellow israelites i can tell you confidently that the patriarch david died and was buried in his tomb is here to this day but he was a prophet and knew that god had promised him an oath that he would place one of his descendants on his throne seeing what was to come he spoke of the resurrection of the messiah that he was not abandoned to the realm of the dead nor did his body see decay and a lot of people don't realize that yes david's earthly throne did die off but through jesus the throne is again filled for eternity right through david's lineage right the lineage thing we keep coming back to that how important that lineage is yeah um and then one of the other things as we go on that that speaks to the fact of this proximity of time this jesus god raised up and of that all of us are witnesses so we know the apostles were and we know that matthias the new one was because that was the criteria for picking him was that he had to have witnessed the death and resurrection so is is is peter talking to the general public or is he talking to the people that lingered around the campfire after all the
[68:27] excitement died off that night um i'm not really sure um because i'm sure jesus didn't just hang out what did he just hang out with them for those 40 days or was he out and about well i think that they're talking about even before that because they're talking about the you know that in general so much of jesus life happened around jerusalem right a very big place it's still not but it sure wasn't back then um i mean it's very big comparatively speaking so if people there's a good chance that most people who were around jerusalem would have heard of jesus and certainly the crowds that were drawn that they talk about on palm sunday leading up to the the crucifixion would have been known by a lot of people right um so being therefore exalted at the right hand of god and having received from the father the promise of the holy spirit he has poured out this that you both see and hear for david did not ascend into the heavens but he himself says the lord said to my lord sit at my right hand until i make your enemies your footstool therefore let the entire house of israel know with certainty that god has made him both lord and messiah this jesus whom you crucified does yours say that you you crucified no it doesn't what does yours say it did earlier um but in 36 how does yours end therefore just therefore all israel be assured of this god has made this jesus oh yeah it does this jesus whom you crucified both lord and messiah just put it i just love i love bible study because i i don't think i've ever read that and noticed that before how pointed it is you you did that i mean he there's an acknowledgement that this was meant to be it's not like they are he's not acting like the people he's talking to are terrible awful people but not hiding any thoughts about what had happened the romans might have been the one to do the action but you're the ones that said that it should be done you were the ones calling crucify him crucify him well and in the um the role that that judas had the role that some of the pharisees and sadducees had um and he wasn't handed over to the romans right away right he first was tried sort of by faith and then and then by law and so very definitely the the jewish hierarchy one was herod right who said i'm done i'm i'm not yeah can't help you anymore so you're going over here where the romans had no problem following through on the execution um let's look at 37 to 42 how about if you read that when the people heard this they were cut to the heart and said to peter and the other apostles brothers what shall we do peter replied repent
[72:35] and be baptized every one of you in the name of jesus christ for the forgiveness of your sins and you will receive the gift of the holy spirit the promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off for all whom are the lord for all whom the lord our god will call with many other words he warned them and pleaded with them save yourselves from this corrupt generation those who accepted his message were baptized and about 3 000 were added to their number that day they were just coming in groves yeah and so obviously the audience that he was preaching to was big yeah if there were 3 000 converts um in this first first round right and so would our perception be that uh when he says when they first heard this they were cut to the heart and said to peter you know what do we do do you think that is their sense of taking responsibility for what happened to jesus that's how i read it that's how i read it too that he's being so pointed about you did this you know you're the ones who crucified him and i mean if i was boy if i was sitting there i would be cut to the heart to think that while they physically didn't lay hands on him they participated in him dying which would have been a terrible right experience um and it's um it's also the the message of forgiveness right yeah and that that is also a pretty foreign concept because i think that historically the jews there they struggled they struggled with understanding that god let him try again and again and again um but there was no no sense of anybody saying um if you do this if you believe and be baptized and repent you'll be forgiven um you don't have to go get a goat and sacrifice it you don't have to go get a goat and it doesn't they don't even they're kind of moving into a place where they're they don't even say that in this particular um they typically do talk about you know animals and sacrifices right um and but i think the sense of a community who collectively owns the death of jesus understanding as i said none of them had any personal hand in it um and they're accepting the responsibility they're calling themselves guilty um and to be offered baptism as a sign of that forgiveness i i can imagine that why there would be all those converts oh yeah they um they hadn't known forgiveness for murder before eye for an eye there it's you know a breaking of the commandments and and historically breaking the
[76:36] commandments is not i know you didn't mean it so it's okay which is not what repentance is either but it there wasn't a sense of if you break the ten commandments if you come back to the temple and you're sorry then you'll be forgiven we don't really hear that um god never takes away love and never and never stops um caring about and for people but here we are with a brand new realization repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of jesus christ your sins will be forgiven and you will receive the gift of the holy spirit because the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far away from far away everyone whom the lord our god calls to him so if it's everyone our lord calls to him how do we connect that who does god call to him i mean if we translate that into our sense of is it who god calls to him that are saved by baptism and are there people god does call and doesn't call well that brings up the whole if you're baptized as an infant but you turn away from god and it's just mind-boggling sometimes when you think of all that it is mind-boggling um and you know while these stories are um pretty much all the stories in the bible are baptism of adults right the power to and the ability to repent and right accept and be forgiven um and the baptism of infants came from a completely different place in a different era um um and what baptism became more of a protection than a conversion right experience and you know we know that if someone's converted whether they're baptized or not if someone's converted and professes their belief in the trinity then um um there's a not much clarity in the bible about what you would have to do to lose that right um and because people wander away all the time i mean that's that happens it doesn't mean that they give up their faith right um um maybe they have a temporary crisis of faith and honestly we don't even know people we maybe even had heard i've never heard anybody say something deeply a statement that that is a statement of deep conviction in terms of rejecting um god people i've heard people say i don't even know if i believe or i'm not sure or i might have stopped believing but if they talk long enough it they often have not stopped believing they've stopped being connected they've been connected and if somewhere lost come under seen either false
[80:40] preaching or people not living up to what there's all kinds of reasons why people right um and the thing we'll never know is are they truly turning away or are they turning away from the practice a religion fortunately it's not my job above our pay grade to be in the business of shaking people by the shoulders and really really are you sure though you want to so sometimes sometimes i would more want to be like don't you remember don't you remember that you know this is this is what you this is where you found hope and faith and because most people find themselves in a place of professed disbelief or often pretty hurt there's a lot of anger in there i think it's covered up with a sort of a bravado of the heck with that you know i can't be bothered um um they um so it's um so we'll when we go on we'll go on next week with well actually we're not going to meet next week okay that we're not meeting next week um and um but when we come back back then we'll be looking at what that what that conversion how they grew in their faith what that community looked like after all of those conversions and how they kind of stuck together um and some of the patterns that were developed in terms of what a new church looked like that we we would love well we would especially love it now that we're experiencing covet yeah the the ability to sit around and share a meal or coffee or things like that um how are you feeling about the changes that we're seeing going on around us with covid with the numbers going up people just do what you're supposed to do yeah and that's um frustrated you know wondering if any day now they're going to say well pack up your stuff and work from home again right and that's you know in the city of buffalo they've moved to orange which means right that um a lot of the a lot of the personal care businesses uh barbers and things have to close right well our office is in the city of tonawanda which is also the orange so yeah and i think myself and sarah who's the other woman in the office are the only ones that don't live in an orange zone oh okay so yes tom tom they all live in orange zones so like scott lives in an orange zone and he his church is in an orange zone right the size of their church they're not greatly affected by it they can only have 25 in worship that's his church is really small yeah i know i've seen it it's beautiful but but they the building is not small but the con right small there are other two congregations that meet there are bigger than 25 and he said that's there's a there's a fairly good chance that those other two congregations may have to go virtual yeah because they they wouldn't be
[84:44] able to oh and we talked about well what would we do if pendleton went to orange and we would only be allowed 25 well we would have to close the building we can't we can't pick 25 people that are allowed to come although i said for those of us who have to preach it would be nice to have 25 people there but that that 25 would include you and pastor scott and pastor sherry and sue and adrian so now you're down to 20. right but we were we were kind of saying in a somewhat of a light way that it sure would be better to have those 15 because it really would be like 15 to 18 people in the sanctuary when we're preaching than having nobody yeah because most of the time what happened over the summer was that the um the band practiced and then they left and then sometimes sue sayowicz would stay and sometimes she and sherry sometimes it would be she and sherry and scott and then um adrian but then i think that their history had been that when they were recording prior to scott's and my arrival that there were many times where they had to start over um because whoever was preaching might not have been happy with how it went and they would stop and go back and so the audience so to speak gave some of that feedback once it was stopped then you talk then you start over and um scott and i are both sort of a one-shot deal you know we're gonna the we're not likely to start and stop and so we then gave um sue and sherry the choice you can stay or you can go and just depended on what they had to do as to whether they did stay or go so there were a couple of times when it was me and scott and adrian um and you know i think we did the best we could given the circumstances and that i think you all did great i think you did great it will be i think helpful for some people that if that happens again at least we're not strangers anymore right yeah but uh louis says that the numbers um that even in some of the places that have gone to orange that the numbers he said what he saw was that the numbers were stabilizing over the last few days doesn't mean they're going to stay they've still in that zone but they haven't they haven't done this they're oh from what i saw they were doing this well what he meant was that this increase had been dramatic and that just this week these monday tuesday wednesday that it stayed level it's still staying level at a bad level right but thanksgiving hasn't hit yet yeah that's what scares me what are you going to do for thanksgiving well in the past it's always been my husband and myself and either one of my sons or both my sons depending um but this year it'll probably just be the three of us and i told my younger son i'll leave it up to your discretion because he's a nurse i said if you want i'll pack you a to-go meal and you can pick it up or you can come over and we can wear masks and you can um visit for a while but he's out at niagara county jail and they haven't had any cases there interesting yeah he's a nurse out there right kind of like
[88:47] like almost like a petri dish you would expect and then it would be terrible yeah well so far none of the other employees have picked it up none of the guards or anything so no inmates and no they test i believe they give all the inmates a test as soon as they come so but he said there hasn't been any so far in the back of forever yeah let's see but it's it's um i only have one sibling in town and we haven't gotten together for i know it's sad to say but we haven't gotten together for holidays in a while so and my other siblings i have two down on the eastern shore and my brother lives in texas we're going to do zoom this year and and maybe we will do something like that they um we're supposed to be having our just matt and i and our son and his significant other on sunday doing thanksgiving um and partly that was because on thanksgiving day i volunteered to be on call at roswell because their their chaplain chaplain was taking thanksgiving off and yeah um and i wasn't going to take christmas so i was willing to take thanksgiving which doesn't mean i have to be at the hospital it just means i have to stay within driving range um so i couldn't be in rochester on thanksgiving day and so then it's possible that matt and the dog will come out on thanksgiving day we'll see you know part of it is he he will have to make the decision about whether he wants to come given the fact that i could be called away right it even if i were it would take a couple of hours probably and he could watch football or something but yeah we'll see i hope it's not all lost because you know unlike some people we're doing stuff that's really safe um and it would be nice to be able to do that but we can't until um marty's uh till jules gets her covet test back okay so it's um it's a journey and marty and jules were supposed to go out to cleveland and meet charlie this past weekend but because then charlie was exposed um ohio has pretty loose and go loosey goosey rules right katie in arizona as soon as she was exposed and knew she'd been exposed she told the school you automatically go on two weeks of quarantine and test out it doesn't matter if you get a positive test you have to stay out her husband had to get out of work um and quarantine for two weeks whether he's positive or not in cleveland where jordan was exposed and he had a cold the um he basically only had to go home until the symptoms went away it's positive negative gosh wow it is amazing and and then of course when you look at ohio ohio's like a lot of red a lot in ohio and some of this is probably why sure you can come back soon as you're soon as you can smell and taste again come on back yeah right oh my gosh wow yep anyway so as long as i'm like i'm having thanksgiving food i don't care if i have to make it i don't have any problems making it myself and enjoying it i'm gonna have
[92:52] bean stuffing and mashed potatoes and maybe vegetables and leftovers and leftovers and some kind of pie there you go um december 9th i will not be at bible study because the bishop is meeting with laity so do you think that do you think that the other laity from our church know like the clms and stuff like that do they know about that if they get the newsletter they do but maybe i'll maybe i'll um send a an email to all of the um clms and lay servants in our district and make sure they know i think that might be a good idea because they might get them but they might not read them they because you have to kind of look down to see and you have to figure out which which group you're in and um stuff like that so it wouldn't hurt to send them out send out a quick email saying just want you to be aware yeah because i figure since i'm conference director now i better attend it i would say that that's true yeah if it's anything like the clergy one that we had um it was really nice it was really wonderful yeah i really like our bishop i i think he's good but he's also the only bishop i've known so and and he they're they're they each have had their own gifts and things that are wonderful about them and one of the things that one of the reasons it was so wonderful when he did the clergy one was that he he came acknowledging that he himself did not he did not know what what we had to do i mean he wasn't he didn't have right so therefore he he wanted to offer the um sort of devotional was about finding joy and there was conversation about finding joy in the midst of of what we've been through but there was also this kind of um quietness openness um on his part um he didn't he didn't come with an agenda um other than offering a pastoral presence um and i think that is not that's not sometimes his typical style he he reaches out right and is a is a close-up kind of bishop when you're with him um but you'd have to be like sitting around a a fireplace but even then he'd be thinking up new ideas when we were in the cabinet and becky sweet who's at kenmore yeah the um extended cabinet minutes and i was the appointed cabinet minutes and when he first came meeting after meeting after meeting becky had to these lists you know talk about this and talk about this and talk about this it was things and things and things and this came from here and this came from here and my job with the appointive cabinet wasn't was rarely like that except for during appointment season yeah because he's just an idea generator he's an apostle he's a shaker upper and um so this was so it was just very kind and i don't know what it'll be like with the laity but i'm sure the kindness will be there whatever it is that he does you mentioned becky um it was i think it was august of 2018 i did my first in church funeral at kendleton or one of the members there um pastor tom was
[97:03] going to be on way on vacation so um her family asked if not one of the other pastors that asked if i could do it because ellie was part of my bible my monday bible studies like i said it was my very first in church funeral and it's really crowded and in walked becky and i i'm like oh no because really how did she be connected to ellie um ellie's used to belong to kenmore and ellie's sister and brother-in-law still attend there so she came in support of cindy and mike turner oh so yeah i don't know if you know their names but um i know they're pretty active but and then katie was there katie was because katie was knew ellie from kenmore so katie zettel was there and yeah bill and ed jean edmister were there and it's like oh man but it went okay that's a good thing and that's that's great affirmation if if they felt it went well and you felt it went well then hey you're off to a great start yeah when i family yeah when i came to rush there was um three retired united methodist church pastors who attended that church and their spouses and then there were um a few people the clergy on the team and it was but it was the first time that i had more than one retired pastor in the congregation and it was like okay no pressure here some of these people are people i've known for a really long time but never was i in a role to kind of be their pastor um yeah so they were it was wonderful they were great um very supportive that's awesome so all right well let's pray all right oh lord the needs are many both in our congregation and those dealing with um and those dealing with death by car accidents and um just these these deaths where people are just like gone from people's lives and so many people need your comfort and lord we need your comfort and encouragement as we look around at people getting sick and cases rising and and lord we're also kind of grieving that thanksgiving has to be different that so many families won't be able to be together and so we we pray that people will make safe choices and that thanksgiving will be a time of really giving thanks for life and for shelter and for being able to even have our families in the room with us in some new and different way keep us and hold us and be with dan tonight as he's recovering we pray and give thanks in jesus name amen amen amen amen thanks thank you enjoy the rest of your night thank you you too thanks thanks all right gotta wave bye bye bye name is
[101:02] Thank you.