Indivisible

 

Acts 2: 1-21 (see below)
New Ark United Church of Christ, Newark, DE
June 8, 2025 – Pentecost

A B&W photo of a person's forearm with a tattoo of "We the People" in the original script/font as in the preamble to the U.S. Constitution.

We, the United States of America, are an empire of individuals. If you’re not convinced we are an empire, first, we have a military presence in over 80 countries with about 750 military bases and a budget of $850 billion. Second, the average net worth of US Congress members is about $1.6 million and over half are millionaires. Currently, approximately 813 billionaires in this country control a collective fortune in the neighborhood of $6.72 trillion, monopolizing 1 in every 25 dollars of American wealth.



We are an empire of individuals. In the past, most empires relied on some kind of uniformity for cohesion and control: race, ethnicity, language, religion, or all of these or a combination. Even though the Roman Empire was diverse, occupying the British Isles, eastern and western Europe, northern Africa, and the Middle East, everyone was required to worship the emperor as a god, followed then by compulsory Christianity. On the other hand, the United States evolved as a melting pot of different cultures, ethnicities, races, languages, and religions.



Which is pretty close to who was gathered on the day of Pentecost in the book of Acts. The disciples of Jesus, now called apostles, were gathered in one place for the Jewish festival of Pentecost or Shavuot. The festival celebrates the giving of the Torah, the first five books of Hebrew scripture, to Moses on Mt. Sinai, which established a covenant between God and God’s people. It takes place 50 days after Passover and marks the end of the wheat harvest. Pilgrims from all over the Mediterranean region and the Middle East, as well as settled migrants from those areas were in Jerusalem for the festival when they witnessed something absolutely astonishing.



Most of us have heard the story before but try to imagine it. Today it would be something like New Year’s Eve in New York City or the Pride parade in Los Angeles – some place where a very large diverse group of people have gathered for a common celebration. A violent wind rushes through and over the people, with a sound so loud everyone cannot help but pay attention. And then the most bizarre thing of all: tongues of fire dancing above the heads of the organizers who then begin to speak in other languages. Suddenly the whole crowd is bewildered because they can hear what everyone is saying in their own native language: Japanese and Chinese, Ghanian and Nigerian, Portuguese and French, Spanish and Italian, Hebrew and Arabic, Urdu and Hindi, Russian and Ukrainian.



We too would be amazed and ask what does this mean? Others might assume everyone is high or on something. Then the lead organizer gets everyone’s attention and says “No, this isn’t some weird trip but a sign that people are ready for change, real and lasting change for good.”



That’s what both the prophet Joel and Peter were talking about when they said, “the last days”. The last days of the way things are, the end of empire, to the first days of the way things could be, the world to come, the kin-dom of God. The last days aren’t on any calendar – it’s state of mind and heart, a shared state of mind and heart, a shared, collective way of being. Ready for change, real and lasting change for good.



If you were here last Sunday for our conversation about faith and housing, you were present to a group of people who to all appearances are ready for change, real and lasting change for good. After we had some time together in small groups to answer questions such as “Why is affordable housing important to you and how is it connected to your faith?” we gathered in one large group to report out what we had talked about.



The words, the values I heard most often not only in the large group but throughout the day were community, everyone, safe place to live, loving our neighbor, helping each other, the least of these, hope, compassion, equity, inclusion, public identity and witness, advocacy, action, justice, living one’s values, setting an example, journey, and Jesus. As chills ran up and down my body, I said to you all, “This is what it means to be of the same mind that was in Christ.”



But we need more than to feel solidarity with each other. I believe that what we were experiencing on a deeper level was solidarity with those who need affordable housing, realizing that our lives and the life of this church is connected to their lives. To put it in churchy language, we’re beginning to understand that the salvation of those who need housing is also our salvation. Not our salvation as individuals or an institution or a building, but our salvation as the living, breathing body of Christ, who counted himself as one of the least of these. Our saving lies on the same path as liberating those Christ came to save.



If we are truly to be Church, we cannot be divided from or against those struggling and suffering in a system that was designed to enslave people in poverty. To preface Christianity with the word “progressive” is repetitive – it already is. Feed the hungry, care for the sick, free all prisoners, liberate the poor and oppressed, love your neighbor. If our faith, if our life together isn’t doing these things but actually working against them, it is toxic Christianity, empire Christianity, convenient Christianity.



The words “individual” and “indivisible” have the same Latin root: dividere, which means “to divide”. The prefix “in-” means “not” or “the opposite of”. So “indivisible” means “not divisible” and “individual” means “one that cannot easily be divided from others”. It wasn’t until the 16th century that “individual” came to mean a single member of a species – around the same time that human beings started dividing people into distinct races and labeling those with darker skin as savages who needed to be enslaved to be saved.



There have been times when we thought we were a nation of what it used to mean to be an individual – those who are not easily divided from each other, indivisible. But when greed, wealth, and power are extremely disproportionate to the working class, individuals are pitted against each other to distract us from the rich amassing even more wealth and power. The oldest imperial strategy: divide and conquer. The last thing empire wants is for the bottom majority to be in solidarity with one another, to understand and have compassion for each other, to be indivisible.



Another word for indivisible is covenant and right now we don’t have a covenant of the minimum basic responsibility we have for each other. Which is why it is incumbent upon communities like ours to go above and beyond what is expected to show what is possible. I don’t know if we can’t make the powerful care but we can make partnerships with those who do care and who want to make a material difference in the lives of others.



We are an empire of individuals in its last days, on a journey toward becoming a new thing, something we really have not yet achieved before: one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. This church is on its journey to becoming a new thing, a more visible sign of the kin-dom of God. Are we ready for change, real and lasting change, to live the most basic of covenants: the unbreakable, unshakeable covenant of everyone being human together? May it be so. Amen.

*Scripture: Acts 2: 1-21 - from The Message by Eugene Peterson (edited for inclusive language)

When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.

Now there were devout Jews from every people under heaven living in Jerusalem. And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. Amazed and astonished, they asked, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs—in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.”

All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “What does this mean?” But others sneered and said, “They are filled with new wine.”

But Peter, standing with the eleven, spoke up and addressed them: “Fellow Jews and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to what I say. Indeed, these are not drunk as you suppose, for it is only nine o’clock in the morning. No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel:


‘In the last days it will be, God declares,
That I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh,
And your children shall prophesy,
And your young people shall see visions,
And your elders shall dream dreams.
Even upon the most insignificant of my people,
Those of all genders,
In those days I will pour out my Spirit,
And they shall prophesy.
And I will show portents in the heaven above
And signs on the earth below,
Blood, and fire, and smoky mist.
The sun shall be turned to darkness
And the moon to blood,
Before the coming of the Lord’s
great and glorious day.
Then everyone who calls on the name
of the Lord shall be saved.’”

Benediction – enfleshed.com (adapted)

Even amidst bewilderment—
go in mysterious peace,
attuned to wisdom from unlikely places,
open to impossible possibility,
speaking the language of compassion,
burning with Radical Love—
indivisible.