sermon message
Walter Coleman
PENTECOST GIVES US COURAGE TO SPEAK BOLDLY
What Direction Does it Give us in the Struggle Today?
Third Week in the Time of the Pentecost
“Sovereign Lord,” they said, “you made the heavens and the earth and the sea, and everything in them. You spoke by the Holy Spirit through the mouth of your servant, our father David: “‘Why do the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth rise up and the rulers band together against the Lord and against his anointed one… After they prayed, the place where they were meeting was shaken. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God boldly. Acts 4: 25-34
In our historic struggles – the struggle against the deportations and family separations, the struggle against the brutal injustice of the police, the struggle to provide our next generation with a relevant truthful education and the struggle for a living wage – we have sought and still seek a spiritual path, a path lit by the Spirit of Pentecost.
Today, the Way of Scripture leads us once again to sanctuary – to discern and to experience what sanctuary truly is and what the true sanctuary calls us to do, to speak the Word of God Boldly.
I want you to remember - or just imagine, if you were not with us then – when a congregation put before a mother the idea, the alternative, to take sanctuary in a little storefront church – and she accepted. For reasons we cannot explain, that first sanctuary captured the attention of the nation and the international media. The news continued to report on it, on Elvira and Saul, and the nation debated about it for months – some for and some against. Nevertheless, the government watched but did not come in for a year.
We took the call to sanctuary to the Chicago City Council – and in time Chicago and many cities and states across the nation declared themselves “Sanctuaries.” The true meaning of that sanctuary, however, was not political. It’s meaning for us lay in a spiritual power, a revelation, an inspiration to speak boldly.
The Spirit of Pentecost was born in the proclamation that an innocent man, Jesus of Nazareth, had been unjustly convicted and crucified – and in the call for those who had remained silent to repent and atone for their acquiescence to this injustice. Spiritually, the one who was unjustly crucified, held within him the keys to the Kingdom of God! The scripture explains that “The stone the builders threw away became the cornerstone” of the new and powerful faith of the people.
On the third day of Pentecost, the disciples were arrested for proclaiming this injustice and threatened to make them be silent. They refused silence and were released to gather together in the Holy Spirit. We say today that the disciples spoke and acted with HOLY BOLDNESS! – and were protected by the Holy Spirit.
What we have learned from the spiritual movement of sanctuary is this: We establish a just position and we mobilize support for that position. We don’t back down; we don’t compromise on principle. We bear witness to what we can plainly see and plainly know!
This is not a democratic party position – it is a Christian position, a position of faith. We grow in strength if we stay consistent with the spirit of truth, the spirit of Pentecost; the spirit of justice for innocence!
In the first sanctuary, with Elvira, we announced to the world that it was unjust in the eyes of God to separate a mother from her young son. Elvira did not say she wanted to be a U.S. citizen. She said only that she wanted to fulfil her role, her responsibility, to raise her son – but that he was a U.S. citizen with all the rights of other citizens. We honored her faith, her faith that staying to raise her son, as was just in God’s eyes, was possible in spite of the law and the power of the government.
We were right in interpreting the signs of sanctuary. We were right not only because of the year Elvira spent safely in sanctuary but because she has been able to return, to work and to support and see her son begin college – and exercise his right to vote. Surely, her sanctuary was an indictment of a government which would destroy families. Surely, like the disciples, they tried to intimidate us, to threaten us with prison. Just as surely, when we continued, the government was afraid to come into sanctuary because the masses of people had seen and heard that this mother and son were living in and according to the Kingdom of God!
That sanctuary was visited many times by the Holy Spirit. We – and many others - were inspired to speak boldly. Not only did the sanctuary movement grow across the country – but President Obama finally agreed to a series of executive orders which protected young dreamers and their parents as well as the parents of U.S. citizen children. No new immigration law was passed through the divided congress. Instead, the actions won by the sanctuary movement protected millions of parents through the orders which established Prosecutorial discretion. If arrested, undocumented parents, like Francisca, were allowed to stay to raise and support their children. It was a kind of national sanctuary.
The legislation which we have brought to Congress does not call for a road to citizenship for the undocumented. Instead, it calls for legalization for the parents of seven million children born as US citizens and two million dreamers who have earned their citizenship. We call for this nation to recognize the human rights to family of those have had to leave their own countries.
When it comes to the education of our next generation, Chicago factions are about to throw the “baby out with the bathwater” In the 1980’s, under the leadership of Mayor Harold Washington, a parent and community council was organized and a new structure of local school councils was created. A parent did not have to be a citizen to vote or serve on these councils. Then, from the local school councils representatives were elected to district and a city-wide leadership. This followed the principle that parents – whether documented or not – had the right to work with teachers to determine the direction of the schools. It was a just solution that sprang from the witness of parents and students and teachers.
When it comes to the situation we face with police murder and injustice, here too there is a HUMAN RIGHT to fair treatment for all residents of our towns and cities. For too long, police have been employed as an occupying force in communities of color. They existed to prevent people of color from gaining access to white neighborhoods. There exists a mentality among police forces that they must be organized in sufficient numbers with sufficient firing power to “hold the line” against a perceived black and brown invasion.
As with the schools, we support local community structures that control. hire and direct police. For the most part, police should not be armed. Successful community policing resolves conflicts without guns or violence and reduced crime through organized community pressure and dialogue.
No one should live without basic necessities while working a full time job. Through solidarity we can achieve a just minimum wage!
So, there you have it! Our program for the organization of our communities is from the bottom up, based on the human rights of the people. Therefore, we speak boldly against the deportations and family separations, against the miseducation of our next generations and against the racist intimidation, brutality and murder by police. We speak from our faith, from our Spiritual experience of what is just and what is right.
The communities we build through our faith, the Pentecost communities, have a great power because they have this foundation in the Spirit of Truth! Yet we must see that we must bring our position, case by case, until we achieve justice. Elvira’s sanctuary was successful because we made the nation see and feel the human right of a mother for her son. We have won some small justice when we have made the nation see the 9 minutes of the murder of big Floyd, the fleeting seconds of the young life of Adam Toledo. It is the Spirit of Truth that provides light in the darkness – a spirit of truth that has special importance during this time in history.
Against this Spirit of Truth we see the forces that have paralyzed the congress of the United States. From the mad statements of the former president in Florida to predictions that the last election was fraudulent and would be thrown out to mob/armies that assaulted the capitol, there is a Spirit of Untruth unleashed in the nation which it seems has captured one of the two main political parties. Paranoid, conspiracy theories abound and our already imperfect and racialized democracy is in danger of collapse. Yet we have nothing to fear for we are in God’s hands if we just stay on the course given us in the Word of God. So on this third week in Pentecost let us gather as the disciples did in prayer, feel the presence of the Holy Spirit and speak the Word of God Boldly!
The Holy Scriptures for the Third Week in the Time of Pentecost
L. Once, on being asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come,
P. Jesus replied, “The coming of the kingdom of God is not something that can be observed,
L. nor will people say, ‘Here it is,’ or ‘There it is,’
P. because the kingdom of God is in among you.”
Acts 4: 4-11 Peter and John Before the Sanhedrin
The priests and the captain of the temple guard and the Sadducees came up to Peter and John while they were speaking to the people. They were greatly disturbed because the apostles were teaching the people, proclaiming in Jesus the resurrection of the dead. 3They seized Peter and John and, because it was evening, they put them in jail until the next day. But many who heard the message believed; so the number of men who believed grew to about five thousand. The next day the rulers, the elders and the teachers of the law met in Jerusalem. They had Peter and John brought before them and began to question them: “By what power or what name did you do this?” Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them: “Rulers and elders of the people! If we are being called to account today for an act of kindness shown to a man who was lame and are being asked how he was healed, then know this, you and all the people of Israel: It is by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified but whom God raised from the dead, that this man stands before you healed. Jesus is “‘the stone you builders rejected, which has become the cornerstone.’
Acts 4: 13-22 The Courage of Peter and John
When they saw the courage of Peter and John and realized that they were unschooled, ordinary men, they were astonished and they took note that these men had been with Jesus. But since they could see the man who had been healed standing there with them, there was nothing they could say. So they ordered them to withdraw from the Sanhedrin and then conferred together. “What are we going to do with these men?” they asked. “Everyone living in Jerusalem knows they have performed a notable sign, and we cannot deny it. But to stop this thing from spreading any further among the people, we must warn them to speak no longer to anyone in this name.” Then they called them in again and commanded them not to speak or teach at all in the name of Jesus. But Peter and John replied, “Which is right in God’s eyes: to listen to you, or to him? You be the judges! As for us, we cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard.”
Acts 4: 23-31 The Believers Pray
On their release, Peter and John went back to their own people and reported all that the chief priests and the elders had said to them. When they heard this, they raised their voices together in prayer to God. “Sovereign Lord,” they said, “you made the heavens and the earth and the sea, and everything in them. You spoke by the Holy Spirit through the mouth of your servant, our father David: “‘Why do the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth rise up and the rulers band together against the Lord and against his anointed one… After they prayed, the place where they were meeting was shaken. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God boldly.
