Facing Fearful Threats
Acts 2: 1-14 and 37-42
June 8, 2025 (Dialogue Script with Liturgist)
What do you do when your people are under attack?
Today is Pentecost Sunday. It’s the day we celebrate the birth of the church. At that time, the followers of Jesus are being threatened by the Roman and Jewish leaders. Those leaders recently crucified Jesus. Now these same Roman and Jewish leaders seem prepared to stop the Jesus movement at all costs. Peter heads up this small group of Jesus followers at this time.
What do you do when your people are under attack?
June is Indigenous People’s month. Today, we celebrate and recognize the indigenous people who have lived in this area of southwest Michigan for a couple hundred years: the Pokagon Band of the Potawatomi. We will take a look at one of the founding fathers of this band – Leopold Pokagon.
The year is 1830. Andrew Jackson has been recently elected President. He quickly gets the Indian Removal Act passed through Congress. This means that all indigenous peoples east of the Mississippi are threatened with deportation or death. They will be deported west of the Mississippi River or they will face genocide. Leopold Pokagon is the tribal leader, the chief, of a Potawatomi band living in this area at the time.
What do you do when your people are under attack?
Almost 200 years later, it seems that many people in the United States are under attack in our day. What are we to do?
What do you do when your people are under attack?
Let’s imagine a conversation that Leopold Pokagon might have had with the tribal officials in 1830. I will play the role of Leopold Pokagon and our liturgist will play the role of the tribal officials.
Mike/Pokagon: Friends, we are faced with dire circumstances. Our band of the Potawatomi is threatened by the national government.
Liturgist/Tribal officials: Is it really that bad? We have survived and done well since we moved to this area hundreds of years ago. Even with the presence of the Europeans in the past couple centuries. We’ll be fine.
Mike/Pokagon: It’s a different time in the country these days. Andrew Jackson was recently elected President. Have you heard about the things he said on the campaign trail and since? He said things like: “Those heathens pose a threat to our good American people. If you vote for me, I’ll save our country from those predators, those criminals, those murderers. I’ll make sure every one of those redskins are removed or killed.”
Liturgist/Tribal officials: Wasn’t that just campaign rhetoric to get elected? He couldn’t be serious about trying to get rid of all of us. There are over a half million of us in this country.
Mike/Pokagon: I had hoped so myself. But unfortunately, he was serious. One of the first pieces of legislation he got through Congress was the Indian Removal Act. It was just passed a month ago. It’s goal is to get every last Indian to move west of the Mississippi River where there are very few Europeans.
Liturgist/Tribal officials: I heard that President Jackson and his Secretary of War Lewis Cass are authorized to give us land and money if we’ll give up our lands around here and move west. Doesn’t it make sense for us to make a treaty with them and move away from here?
Mike/Pokagon: These are our lands. We’ve lived here for centuries now. The land and the animals and the fish and the vegetation are a part of who we are as a people. This is home.
Liturgist/Tribal officials: But they have the military might to crush us. We’ve lost most every battle we’ve fought against them in the past fifty years. And they’ve only gotten stronger. And we’ve gotten weaker. We have no choice but to agree to whatever terms they offer us.
Mike/Pokagon: I disagree. I have a plan for us to keep our land and stay here. But it will require courage on our part and some cunning. We might not be able to defeat them with our weapons, but we can outsmart them if we have the guts and the commitment.
Liturgist/Tribal officials: What’s your plan?
Mike/Pokagon: We’re always being accused of being uncivilized and unchristian. My plan is to go to Detroit and meet with the Roman Catholic priest there. We’ll tell him we want to convert to Catholicism and encourage him to set up a Catholic Mission here.
As a result the Church will protect us and vouchsafe for us as we engage in treaty negotiations. I believe we can successfully fight to stay on our land this way.
Liturgist/Tribal officials: O’kay. We will stand with you and your plan, Chief Pokagon.
In July of 1830, about two months after the passage of the Indian Removal Act, Chief Pokagon traveled to Detroit to meet with Father Gabriel Richard. Pokagon was soon baptized into the Roman Catholic church. The next month Father Stephen Badin arrived to establish a mission to serve the Pokagon Potawatomi. Three years later Chief Pokagon went to Chicago to be a part of the negotiations with the US government. Every other Indian tribe and band in the Great Lakes Area agreed to cede their land and move west, except for the Pokagon Band of the Potawatomi.
As a result of the courage and cunning of Leopold Pokagon, they were able to secure a special provision in the 1833 Treaty of Chicago that allowed the band to remain in Michigan. Pokagon took the monies paid related to that same treaty and other funds to purchase land for his people in Silver Creek Township near Dowagiac.
As a result, they were able to survive as the Pokagon Band of the Potawatomi here in southwest Michigan. Unfortunately, it took another 160 years for the band to finally receive official recognition by the United States government. That happened in 1994, just thirty one years ago. Today the tribe that bears Leopold Pokagon’s name continues as a federally recognized Tribal Nation with over 5000 citizens and a 10 county service area in northwest Indiana and southwest Michigan. Tribal headquarters are located near Dowagiac, Michigan with a satellite office in South Bend, Indiana.
What do you do when your people are under attack?
Leopold Pokagon turned to courage, cunning and the church.
Let’s return back to our Scripture story. The followers of Jesus are threatened by the Roman and Jewish leaders in the Jerusalem area. They spend most of their days in hiding, behind closed doors. But they engage in prayer and worship despite the odds they face.
It was on a Jewish festival day, the day of Pentecost when something very unusual happened in their midst. It sounded like a mighty wind. It felt like a fire was sweeping through their group. Their prayers became something more – almost like they were speaking different languages.
They couldn’t keep quiet. It was like the Spirit of God was instilling inside each of them a courage to speak out, even to start shouting. It was a cacophony of noise as they expressed what they were feeling in their hearts.
Somehow the voices were used by God in some special way to communicate with the crowds outside their little room. People started asking what was going on. They initially thought that maybe these Jesus followers might be drunk. Accusations started flying. It was moving toward the possibility of an angry mob.
Peter remembered what happened with the angry mob at the trial of Jesus. He found the courage and the cunning to speak up before it got out of hand.
Peter said, “Friends and everyone else living in Jerusalem, listen carefully to what I have to say. You are wrong to think that these people are drunk. After all, it’s only 9:00 in the morning. But this is what God had the prophet Joel say, ‘When the last days come, I will give my Spirit to everyone. Your sons and daughters will prophesy. Your young men will see visions and your old men will have dreams. In those days I will give my Spirit to my servants, both men and women, and they will prophesy….That is what you see going on here: The Spirit of God is present as a result of Jesus the Christ.”
When the people heard this, they asked Peter, “What shall we do?”
Peter said, “Turn back to God. Be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ.”
It is reported in the book of Acts that over 3000 people believed the message, were baptized and joined the church.
What do you do when your people are under attack?
For Peter, it was all about courage, cunning and the church.
Almost 2000 years later, it seems that many people in the United States are under attack in our day. What are we to do?
What do you do when your people are under attack?
God give us wisdom to discern what courage and cunning and the church looks like as we respond. I assume that the answer might be different for each of us.
Let’s together pray for an outpouring of the Spirit – to give us that courage, to give us that discerning wisdom and to guide our way forward through these days.
