It’s Never Not Nine
Pentecost and Disability Inclusion
*The following is an adapted manuscript of a sermon I was privileged to preach at a chapel service at Princeton Theological Seminary earlier this year.
I’m not a huge baseball fan but there’s An interesting story about Hank Aaron and Yoga Berra that has always intrigued me. Now I’m not sure if it’s a true story but let’s not let the truth get in the way of a good story!
Hank Aaron, was a power hitter for the Milwaukee Braves and it was 1957. As usual Yogi Berra was trying to distract the batters at the plate.
As Hank Aaron came to the plate, Yogi tried to distract him by saying: “Henry, you’re holding your bat wrong. You’re supposed to hold it so you can read the trademark.”
Hank said nothing and when the first pitch came he hit it deep into the left-field bleachers. After rounding the bases and tagging up at home, Hank looked at Yogi and said “I didn’t come here to read!”
My hope is that you don’t just come here to this newsletter to read, but to learn and to act on issues of ableism and racism that still plague our culture. With that being said Pentecost Sunday is June 5th (also my 44th birthday) and I think we can learn something from reading the accounts recorded in Acts about the birthday of the church.
“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 sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams. Even upon my slaves, both men and women, in those days I will pour out my Spirit; and they shall prophesy.” Acts 2:15-18 NRSV
Peter’s response to questions about the activity of the Spirit was to emphasize that this moment was not a reading of Joel but rather a revealing of all that the prophet had predicted.
It’s Nine o’clock in the morning.
Think of the things that Nine o’clock brings. There are beds and bedrooms, baths, breakfast, and busses to school or work. These are all aspects of the business and the busyness of beginning a new day.
Nine o’clock is the beginning of a brand-new day filled with both new obstacles and new opportunities. Nine is actually mid-morning. With a few hours passed and only two hours until mid-day, nine is the boundary between the past and the potential of a new beginning.
There have been billions of nines since the beginning of the church. Time has kept ticking. The church has kept moving. The church kept growing. The church kept learning. Technology brought advances. The church became modern. Time kept moving.
But in the continual advancement of time let’s be careful not to let time take from us what the text is trying to teach us. Construction commands community and building requires belonging.
All genders- (sons and daughters)
All generations-(young and old)
All classes-(servants and free)
All cultures and conditions- (All flesh/body types)
This is the work of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit facilitates the inaugural moments of the church by providing the supernatural ability to break down barriers and bias and to deepen our sense of belief in God’s radical plan for belonging.
The Spirit delivers on God’s plan and Jesus’ prediction that his church will be built and that the gates of hell will not prevail because God’s plan and the spirit’s prompting push back the hellish horrors of racism, ableism, and patriarchy that have often sought to attach itself to the church and its mission and message.
A few months ago, an op-ed article for a major media outlet featured a piece written by a pastor about the need to move on and move away from offering online worship services because it was competing with the ability to get people to return to in-turn worship.
The piece posited that it was time to move on. To move forward. The pandemic is waning, and worship services once again needed to be filled with bodies. What was most troublesome about the article is that there was a conscious acknowledgment of the potential negative impact this would have on those with disabilities many of whom have always been unable to access the physical buildings of our churches.
61 million people in the US live with a disability. This number only represents those between the ages of 18-65. This number doesn’t include children or those who are elderly and considered to have age-related disabilities.
The distance that Covid created between pastors and parishioners is analogous to the distance that has always existed between the disability community and the church.
Still, it is time to move on. Time keeps ticking. Seconds, minutes, and hours have gone by, and it is no longer Nine. We now longer need Nine. Nine is not necessary. Now is the only thing that matters even if it leaves behind the most vulnerable.
This story is a modern-day parallel to the story of the Good Samaritan.
The Levite and the priest weren’t bad so much as they were privileged. They weren’t bad they simply had the benefit of being in a social class that was so privileged and protected that not stopping was not a threat to their social standing. Doing nothing to help and doing nothing to hear his story did not jeopardize their standing as good people.
This is why nine is necessary. Nine is necessary because the practice of Western Christianity has taught us how to be good people without actually having to be good to people.
But on the opening day of the church, the Spirit lays claim to our cause, to our community, and to the construction project. The Spirit is our guide, and the spirit guards us against being exclusive. The spirit guides us away from the protected privilege of being good people and guides us toward the commitment of laying down our own protected status in order to build a community that is broader and bolder, and that requires us to take holy risks.
It’s never not nine and we are to never stop needing each other, naming inequality, inequity, and injustice, and noticing those who are missing from the construction site.
It’s at nine when we discover that the church is NOT at full strength when it does not include all. That the church is NOT working when it is not actively working with everyone.
Time is moving on. Sanctuaries are reopening. Churches are rebuilding. Buildings are refurbishing. But in our haste to move to a time beyond covid, in our construction of the new, remember that it is never Not nine.
Don’t let time take from us what the text is trying to teach us. Construction commands community and building requires belonging. As we seek to rebuild our lives and our churches let’s not leave behind those who are first.
All genders- (sons and daughters)
All generations-(young and old)
All classes-(servants and free)
All cultures and conditions- (All flesh/body types)
The Word of God For the People of God.
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