From Susan’s sermons for Pentecost, May 11, 2008 and Fifth
Pentecost, June 15, 2008
Pentecost
May 11, 2008
Today is Pentecost, the great feast of the Holy Spirit
and our “patronal feast” at Church of the Holy Spirit. Red! Red! Red!
But
what—who—is the Holy Spirit?
Some bad ideas: “Holy Ghost”-- the image many of us grew up with of
the “Holy Ghost.” (I can’t tell you how many people I’ve met who’ve told me
that they hear the words “Holy Ghost” they still feel a little spooky!).
Holy Bird.
Hints of who the Holy Spirit is in Scripture: Genesis: “while a wind
from God swept over the face of the waters”—the word for “wind” is the same
as the word for “Spirit”—at the first moment of Creation.
The Holy Spirit came down upon Jesus at his baptism, and then, in the
words of the Gospel of Mark, drove him into the wilderness to be tested.
Then, when Jesus was preparing his disciples—and us—for the time when
he would leave his bodily life on this earth, he promised to send the Holy
Spirit as inspiration and defender and comforter.
So we now are living in the “Age of the Holy Spirit.”
Centuries of Christians’ direct experience of the power
of the Holy Spirit and theological speculation have identified the Holy
Spirit is a Person, one of three persons of the Trinity.
The Holy Spirit is not a Star War “may the Force be with you” energy
field An energy field acts and reacts blindly but
a person wills, works, and loves.
How do we come to know what this odd divine Person is
about? What does the Holy Spirit choose and will and work for and love? And
what does it have to do with us, in this age of the Holy Spirit? Today’s
lessons give us three revelations of the work of the Holy Spirit among us.
First, the Pentecost story in Acts:
The Spirit Jesus promised doesn’t just appear: the
promised Holy Spirit rushes, surges,
burns its way inside that upper room. And what does it do? That breath
that fire drives the disciples holed up there to the windows. Suddenly
they’re yelling words out the window about “God’s deeds of power,” words in
other languages that the disciples, simple people of Galilee,
didn’t know how to speak.
That breath that fire issuing forth in native languages
of the whole known earth—what did it do? Blew down, burned down the barriers
of language. United people.
Many of you are travelers. You know how utterly
powerless you can feel when you’re set down in a situation where you don’t
not speak the language, especially if you’re not on a tour or with someone
else, but really alone. It’s dizzying to be surrounded by words you don’t
understand, and having no one to share your own words with. Hannah on the
ferry coming from France
. . .
On that first Pentecost, the first act of the Holy
Spirit was to blow down the walls of languages that divide people so that
they could all hear, equally, the Word of God.
This is how the Holy Spirit works—translates (“carries
across”) blows down the barriers between people. What are these barriers? So
many, alas--languages, yes, but also nations, races, tribes, religions,
economic differences: everything that isolates one child of God from
another.
Breaking down barriers—that’s one work of the Holy
Spirit among us!
But breaking down barriers is not enough. The
wounds of separation still remain
and need healing.
In the Gospel, when Jesus breathes the Holy Spirit into
the disciples in the upper room, what does he tell them to do?—To forgive
others, just as Christ has just forgiven them.
The Holy Spirit acts in us to spread the balm of
forgiveness in our own relationships in marriages, families, churches, work
places. Moves us to reach out to heal the rifts between people, heal the
sorrows of enmity, hatred, resentment, and bitterness.
I tuned in by chance to a discussion on NPR the other day—maybe you
heard it too— about groups of people, black and white, who meet over months
and years to tell each other their stories.
For example, a black man talked about walking into a store and
catching out of the corner of his eye white women clutching their purses
closer. A white woman in the group said, “Oh Lord, yeah. I never thought I
was racist but I’ve done that!”
It looks more and more as if the Spirit is blowing this nation into a
remarkable opportunity to talk about the wounds of separation between whites
and blacks over the next seven months and beyond. (And no, I don’t mean that
Barack Obama was sent by God—just that the Spirit’s reconciling power can
enter into any and every situation).
Are we being blown into the work of breaking down barriers and
forgiving and being forgiven?
Yikes! This sounds too hard!
I sometimes feel like one of the disciples in the upper room before
all heaven breaks out with the coming of the Spirit. Just like the disciples
I feel like hiding out here in the church while the really exciting stuff is
happening outside in the street.
But we shouldn’t worry. God makes a promise in the lesson from First
Corinthians— the Holy Spirit will give us just the gifts we need—different
gifts to you and me and you and you—to be the Holy Spirit’s instruments. The
Holy Spirit gives us just what we need to break down barriers and become
agents of reconciliation.
We’ll know when it’s
happening: we’ll open the windows and walk out the doors and you’ll open
your mouth and—whoa! where did those just right words come from?!! Or reach
out your hands----why was I afraid before? And open ourselves bravely and
humbly to forgive and be forgiven.
Come now, spirit of integrity,
of tenderness, judgment, and dance;
heal our speechlessness,
kindle our longing,
reach into our silence,
and fire our words with your truth;
that each may hear in their own language
the mighty words of God.
The Rev. Susan Ackley, Rector
Fifth Pentecost
June 15, 2008
What if . . . ? The bishop showed up at the door this
morning, strides forward in full vestments, and while we’re still trying to
catch our breath and figure out what’s going on, he calls the choir down and
shoos them and the LEM and acolyte and me to sit down with you all.
Then he says to us all: “There’s a world out there of people, even people
in comfortable circumstances like us are starving, starving for something to
give their lives meaning, who are asking “Why am I here?”,
or “does anyone really care for me?” or “How can I possibly deal with
this tragedy in my life.
“Think of them, bring up their faces in your mind’s eye—they are your
friends, your co-workers, your sons and daughters and mothers and fathers, your
second cousins twice removed, your coworkers, the people in your town. Aren’t
they often (and we too, a lot of the time) just how Jesus describes the crowds
that followed him—‘like sheep without a shepherd’? Madly hurtling from one
direction to another. never content, never at rest.
“So don’t dawdle, get on out there!
Today I am appointing you and you and you and you—all of you—as missionaries!”
Phew! My first thought would be—has he lost his mind??
My second thought would be—he’s completely sane—and this is scary!!
Jesus’ heart ached with compassion as he walked around
Galilee
and Judah. At
every turn, another crowd rushed to him, filled with men and women, sick,
grieving, possessed (what today we might call addicted), people sure that their
God had abandoned them. Too many people . . . .
So in today’s Gospel Jesus turned his “disciples,” which means
“students,” into “apostles,” which means “sent out.” That day Jesus told them,
in effect, “You aren’t spiritual children anymore. You’re grownups. Go out,
proclaim the good news!”
What did he give them to help them out, give them a little
boost?
Cheat sheets of sample approaches, like apprentice car salesmen (If it’s
a woman she’ll probably prefer an automatic transmission—I
hate that!)? Nope. Study Bibles? Nope.
Uh uh. He didn’t give them a thing. Instead he
took away anything that might help
them out: “Take no gold or silver, or copper in your belts, no bag for your
journey, or two tunics, or sandals, or a staff . . .”
And Jesus didn’t tell them to rehearse it, to try out the show on the
road, in Samaria, say, or some
distant pagan town to work out the kinks before they hit the big time in
Jerusalem. Nope, they were simply to start out from where
they were, go to people they knew. If they made fools of themselves,
everyone would know.
So back to here and now, at least the imaginary here and
now we started out with.
Here’s the bishop, right here. Now it’s the end of the service and we’re
standing up, ready to go out the door.
Does the bishop give us any kind of certificate before we go forth as new
missionaries? No. Does he give out handy pocket-sized Books of Common Prayer or
tiny bibles with an emergency phone number written on the flyleaf? No. Does he
pay any attention to our whining that we’re Episcopalians, we don’t do that kind
of thing? No! “Out!,” he says.
Although he’ll say it in words we’re more familiar with, “Go forth into
the world.” And then he points to one of the only two things we’ll need on our
missionary journey: “rejoicing in the power of the Spirit”!
The second thing we need in order to be missionaries is ourselves. After
all, we have spent some time in training. We’ve been following Christ for
varying lengths of time. We’ve come to church, some for our whole lives, others
just recently. We’ve all gradually become more mature
Christians as we’ve lived the joys, triumphs, sorrows, challenges of our
lives.
You, you, you, you---you don’t need special training to be a missionary.
You don’t have to go to seminary. You just need to let the beautiful self you
are shine through. Your faithful self and the power of the Holy Spirit-- nothing
else is needed to tell others the story of God’s presence in our lives!
Where do we go as missionaries? A plane to
Nairobi
or Hanoi or
Jakarta?
Well, you 8 o’clockers to breakfast at the diner or to Hannaford’s to
shop or home. So at the diner, Hannaford’s, in our own homes—be a missionary! If
people ask where you’ve been—tell them you’ve been to church and maybe mention
something that happened here today that especially touched you. Be sure to act
out the good news of patience and understanding to the waitress or check out
person.
10 o’clockers to coffee hour. For most of us, coffee hour is our first
missionary stop on Sundays (before we expand out to the diner, Hannaford’s, or
home)! Deliberately look around to see who is new among us—or new to you, who is
standing alone and apart?—even longtime members of the parish can feel lonely
sometimes. Be a missionary! Go up to them, smile, ask them about themselves,
beam forth on them.the good news of your presence.
Just like Jesus’ first apostles, Christ calls us to be missionaries
at home—in Capernaum
and Nazareth, in Rumney and Campton
and Plymouth.
Of course the bishop didn’t storm through our doors this
morning to commission us all as missionary. But at the 2020/New Member Committee
meeting the other night, Bob Cochran made a brilliant suggestion: a missionary
challenge to all of us.
The
challenge is this—that each of us this year sets him or herself a goal of 1 or 2
or 3 or more individuals or families to invite into relationship with God.
Listen to their hunger for meaning and community. Talk to them about what your
faith means to you. Ask them how God is working in their lives. Invite them to
church—here on Sunday, or the less “churchy” service on Saturday evenings.
Remember what Jesus said, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are
few.” We’ve been recruited as God’s farm workers, so “let us go forth into our
worlds, rejoicing in the power of the Holy Spirit”!
The Rev. Susan Ackley, Rector
