Come Sunday

Come Sunday

What happens when the Spirit moves within us and among us? That’s really the question that lies at the center of all the New Testament Scriptures. That’s the question that was in the hearts and minds of those who knew and who followed Jesus. And often what happens is that things once considered settled are up-ended and made new. Old orthodoxies are challenged as the Spirit reveals new things, new ways of being human; new ways of living life in the Spirit; new ways of understanding and living in the broadness and boldness of God’s love – a love which we say surpasses all understanding, and yet. And yet, in our institutions, in our lives, in our churches, we codify and fossilize our understandings of God’s love and God’s will. This only makes us immune to the ongoing unfolding of the Spirit of God’s love and God’s will and God’s purpose.

Just ask The Reverend Carlton Pearson, an evangelist hand-picked by Oral Roberts to preach and teach the Word of God. Pearson started small and over time pastored one of the largest churches in Tulsa, OK. Higher Dimensions Family Church grew to an average attendance of 6,000! Then as he continued to read and meditate on God’s Word he felt the Spirit moving him to question and challenge what he found to be fear-based dogmas and theologies that run counter to the stories of radical inclusion found in the gospels and most especially the Book of the Acts of the Apostles. He wrote a book called The Gospel of Inclusion and began to question the concept of Hell as being not a place, but more of a condition, even part of the human condition, and perhaps what one might pass through on our way back to God’s all-inclusive heart of love. People began to leave his church, and his peers at the Joint College of African-American Pentecostal Bishops branded him a heretic. I heard him on NPR’s This American Life, and a new movie, Come Sunday, documents his rise, his fall, and finally his new ministry, the Expanding Consciousness Network.

The Tenth Chapter of the Book of the Acts finds Peter summoned to leave Joppa to meet with one Cornelius, a soldier in the Imperial Roman Army, and his family. Cornelius is described as a “devout man who feared God….gave alms generously to the people and prayed daily.” The Spirit visits Cornelius in a vision and urges him to call for Peter. Peter, who three times betrayed even knowing Jesus. Peter, a fisherman who was devout in the ways of Israelite religion. On his way to the home of this centurion of the Italian cohort, Peter has a dream in which he sees something like a large sheet with all kinds of non-kosher animals which he is told to eat. His tradition tells him to refuse, but he is told, “‘What God has made clean, you must not call profane.’ This happened three times, and the thing was suddenly taken up to heaven.”

He arrives at the home of Cornelius with companions from Joppa. They go inside where the household is assembled. Peter says, ‘You know as a Jew I ought not meet or eat with Gentiles, but God has shown me I should not call anyone profane or unclean.’ Then he taught them all he knew about God and Jesus, beginning with these words: “I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him. You know the message he sent to the people of Israel, preaching peace by Jesus Christ—he is Lord of all.”

Then it happened. A new Pentecost. “While Peter was still speaking, the Holy Spirit fell upon all who heard the word. The circumcised believers who had come with Peter were astounded that the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on the Gentiles, for they heard them speaking in tongues and extolling God.” His companions cannot believe it. The Spirit was moving among Gentiles. Not just Gentiles, but those affiliated with the very Imperial forces that were already persecuting the new community of God’s people. Peter had been prepared by his dream for all of this, but his companions could not believe what was happening: the Spirit was moving beyond the old boundaries and orthodoxies. This was truly new and no doubt disturbing. Yet, this is the work of the Spirit. As with Carlton Pearson, there were councils and courts who were not happy with this new thing being done. Yet, this is the nature of the Spirit.

“It is the nature of the Spirit to remain unbridled, bringing to bear the intentionality of God in the most astonishing and unexpected ways. If those who were the bearers of the gospel then were unprepared for the Spirit’s fresh initiatives, how much less prepared are we? If Peter and Peter’s friends could be astounded, what—we may ask— might the Spirit have in store for us?” [Texts For Preaching, CD Rom Edition, John Knox/Westminster Press, Brueggemann, et. al.]

Carlton Pearson makes clear, as the new thing the Spirit was working in and through him began to unfold, it was terrifying. New understandings and situations often are. Ultimately, however, it was freeing. If we are to learn anything from the Book of the Acts, it is this: the seeming unpredictability of the Spirit is, in the end, faithful and predictable! Like Peter’s companions, or Bishop Pearson’s congregation and peers, we may not be prepared for what the Spirit has in store for us. Yet, our constant reading and meditating on God’s Word assures us that “the Spirit is motivated only by the same love for humankind for which Christ died. So that the Spirit’s seemingly astonishing movements are all quite consistent, expressing God’s love for this world in ways that we, limited by our own frail powers, could never do. And so, our astonishment at the Spirit’s power is accompanied by joy over the Spirit’s love.” [Ibid] As Jesus says, “I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.”

The documentary about Carlton Pearson is named after a song by Edward Kennedy “Duke” Ellington, Come Sunday. It is a song for our time and place even today:

Oh, dear Lord of love, God almighty, God above,

Please look down and see my people through.

I believe the sun and moon will shine up in the sky

When the day is grey it's just clouds passing by.

He'll give peace and comfort/ To every troubled mind

Come Sunday, oh come Sunday, That´s the day!

Often we feel weary / But he knows our every care

Go to him in secret / He will hear your every prayer

Lillies of the valley / They neither toll nor spin

And flowers bloom / and spring time Birds sing

Often we feel weary / But he knows our every care

Go to him in secret / He will hear your every prayer

Up from dawn till sunset / Man work hard all the day

Come Sunday, oh come Sunday, That´s the day!