Why am I here? More important, why are you here? What blew you in through the red doors? Are you here because coming to church is what one does on Sunday? Are you here because you think that God expects you to come, and you want to please God? Do you want to be fed in the Eucharist? Do you hope that, if you take in Christ’s Body and Blood, you will become more like him? Do you seek strength for the journey, something to help you keep going in life? Or are you looking for a real community?
My friends, we are not here for any of these reasons. We are here because the Holy Spirit blew us here. Perhaps you didn’t even want to come. Certainly you have every good reason not to come. No one will look down on you for sleeping in, and no one will pat you on the back for waking up and actually getting here. We are here, because the Holy Spirit blew us in through the red doors – and for a reason.
Jesus is gone. We listened to Jesus. We prayed together, and we waited for him to make good on his promises. And then it happened! We crossed over the threshold, and discovered that God has let God’s Spirit loose in the world. But God’s Spirit is wily and changeable, and she has many ways of showing herself.
Some of us are inspired by the violent, life-changing experiences of the disciples in the Book of Acts. In Scripture a powerful wind is a sign of God’s presence. Remember the beginning of Genesis? “The earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.” Remember how Jesus tried to describe the Spirit to Nicodemus? “The wind blows where it chooses,” he said, “and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” For some of us, the Holy Spirit does feel like a great rushing wind, coming into our lives, carrying us along, even pushing us in unexpected directions.
Perhaps you are inspired by the disciples’ experience of being on fire. Fire in Scripture is also a sign of God’s presence. Remember the Pillar of Fire that followed the Israelites as they travelled through the Sinai? When the prophet Jeremiah could no longer keep from speaking God’s word, he said that God’s urging felt “like fire in the bones.” And when John Wesley felt himself come alive again spiritually at the Aldersgate meeting, he said his heart “felt strangely warmed.”
Or perhaps the Holy Spirit comes as a gentle breath, a quickening and an enlivening, a sense of being invisibly, yet inexorably, transformed. Although Elijah had expected God to come in thunder and fire, God spoke to Elijah in a whisper. After Jesus’ resurrection, the disciples in John’s Gospel felt Jesus breathe the Holy Spirit into them. “Breathe on me, breath of God,” says one of our hymns: gentle, easy, yet life-giving and utterly life-changing.
Still others of us feel the Spirit’s presence in a rush of deep emotion. Ricardo Avila lay prostrate on the floor of Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, waiting to be ordained a priest. As the congregation began to chant the Veni, Sancte Spiritus, “Come, Holy Spirit,” the traditional invocation of the Holy Spirit at ordinations, he felt tears gush from his eyes, and then he began to sob. Others of us experience that emotion as deep joy, joy that makes us so giddy that those around us may be sure that we are drunk – and we are, drunk with the “new wine” that old wineskins cannot contain.
For yet others, the Holy Spirit comes in extraordinary, inexplicable experiences. The fractious members of the Christian community at Corinth suddenly had the ability to speak ecstatically in other languages. St. Francis of Assisi heard the crucifix in a country church calling to him. A woman knelt at the altar of a strange church and suddenly knew she was home. Back in his pew after taking Christ into his body, a man knew that God’s Spirit was lodged deep in his own heart. A student sang in a church choir, and all his resistance to the workings of the Holy Spirit melted away.
However the Spirit brought you here, as a strong but invisible force, as a gentle tug on the sleeve, or through a moment in your life you still can’t explain, you are here because the Spirit has brought you here. We are all here because the Spirit has brought us here. As Paul told the Corinthians who thought their ability to speak in tongues made them special, “No one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except by the Spirit.” We are all here, because the Spirit needs us to be here. Paul reminded the Corinthian Christians that the Spirit had brought them together, because the community needed the abilities, talents, and gifts of many different people. All their various gifts had come from the same Spirit, and all were needed and important. Whatever the gifts were, whether they were teaching, administration, preaching, devotion, healing, or working miracles, all these gifts had been given to the community by the Spirit, distributed by the Spirit as the Spirit saw fit. Most important, the Spirit had given these gifts to the Corinthian Christians for a reason: “for the common good,” i.e. to build up the church in that place.
The Christian community at Corinth was just the beginning. The Spirit has given today’s church tons of gifts and talents, and the Spirit needs the church to use them all. In one sense, you could even say that the Spirit has given the churches different gifts. Perhaps the Spirit has intentionally scattered her gifts around. Perhaps every denomination, maybe even every faith community, has different God-given gifts and talents, and no denomination or faith has all the gifts necessary to bring God’s reign nearer. I love the Episcopal Church. I have been drinking from its deep well almost all my adult life. However, I know that we can learn from Lutherans and Roman Catholics, even Baptists and Pentecostals, even Muslims, Jews, and Hindus. In the same way, I believe that the Spirit has scattered her gifts around the various parishes in our diocese. All of us have God-given gifts, but none of us has all the gifts we need to bring the reign of God nearer. And the Spirit has certainly scattered her gifts here at St. Peter’s. All of us have different God-given gifts that this parish needs, and none of us, whatever our age, station, or life situation, is without gifts. The Spirit blew us here, the Spirit gave us all gifts and talents, and the Spirit empowers us to use our gifts.
My friends, there is both a mystery and a paradox here. The mystery is this: we don’t know how the Holy Spirit works. We say that the Spirit is the third person of the Trinity, with God the Creator and God the Redeemer. We reaffirm our faith in the Spirit every time we say the Nicene Creed: “We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life ….” But we don’t know how the Spirit helps us to let go of old, destructive ways of life, helps us to forgive and be forgiven, and helps us to live more compassionately. We don’t know how the Spirit transforms our lives and helps us to do more and more of what Jesus did. We don’t know how the Spirit grabs our hand and takes us down a path of ministry we had never before contemplated. We only know that something has changed, that we have experienced transforming grace, and that we have discovered gifts within ourselves that we never knew we possessed.
And here is the paradox. The Spirit doesn’t give these gifts so that we can feel proud of ourselves spiritually, nor so that we may feel peaceful, nor even so that we may be strengthened for the journey. As one writer has observed, the truth is that the Spirit has given us gifts and talents that create problems for us and that may make us profoundly uncomfortable. After the disciples were blown over by the Spirit, they could not go back to their old lives. In the very last chapter of John’s Gospel, Peter, James, and John tried to return to fishing. Jesus caught up with them, and told Peter to “Feed my sheep.” Celtic Christians still use the image of the wild goose as a symbol for the unfettered Spirit. They know that the Spirit, like a noisy and bothersome wild goose, often shakes us out of our complacency and leads us in new directions.
We too are living in this paradox. Having been blown here by the Spirit, perhaps having been blown over by the Spirit, we know there is no going back to what our lives were before, no going back to a life focused solely on ourselves and our own narrow needs. The Spirit calls each of to use our gifts to reach out to people of every language, ethnicity, and social station. The Spirit calls all of us, young and old, women and men, to prophesy. The Spirit calls all of us to use our gifts to care for this planet, to bring the reign of God nearer, and to partner with God in God’s work, wherever we discern it. The Spirit calls all of us to ask, “Who needs us?” As you begin a new chapter in the life of this parish, I invite you ask, “How can this parish use its diverse gifts and talents to share God’s love in this community?”
We are here, because the Spirit has brought us here. Come, Holy Spirit, Heavenly Dove: descend on us, reveal your love. Word of God and inward light, wake our spirits; clear our sight. Surround us now with all your glory; speak through us that sacred story. Take our lips and make them bold. Take hearts and minds and make them whole. Stir in us that sacred flame, then send us forth to spread your name. May it be so.
Showing posts with label Pentecost. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Pentecost. Show all posts
Sunday, June 4, 2017
Wednesday, May 27, 2015
Come Creator Spirit
Why is the priest wearing a hard hat? What am I expecting? What are you expecting? Jesus’ disciples were waiting and wondering. They didn’t know what to expect. What are you expecting? Same old, same old?
There they were, gathered in Jerusalem. There they were, waiting, waiting, patiently waiting. Jesus had told them to wait. Most of them had seen him after he’d been raised from the dead. Some of them had been with him ten days ago, when he was taken up from them, when he’d told them to go back to Jerusalem to wait. Just before leaving them, he’d reminded them that he would send them what the Father had promised them. He reminded them that John had baptized them with water, but that they would be baptized with the Holy Spirit. He told them that they would be his witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. They prayed in the temple, they chose another leader of their group to replace Judas, and they waited. Now it was fifty days after Passover. It was the day of Pentecost, one of the three great Jewish festivals. It was the day when, as Jews, they’d offered the first fruits of their harvest to God, and they’d celebrated God’s gift of the Law, the Torah, on Mt. Sinai. Now they were all together, perhaps 120 of them, the twelve and all those others, some women, some men, some younger, some older. Probably even some kids. Perhaps they were gathered in someone’s courtyard after their temple worship.
They were good Jews who knew their Scripture. They knew about the fire on Mt. Sinai when Moses received the law. Perhaps some of them remembered the other times God came to people in fire: when God sealed the covenant with Abraham; when God spoke to Moses out of the burning bush; when the Pillar of fire led the people through the desert; when the angel purified Isaiah’s lips with a burning coal as God commissioned Isaiah to be a prophet.
Perhaps some others remembered how God came to people as wind: how the east wind sent by God allowed the people to cross the Sea of Reeds from Egypt; how God spoke to Job out of the whirlwind; how Elijah was taken up to heaven in a whirlwind. Perhaps they remembered Ezekiel’s vision of how God commanded the four winds to breathe new life into the dry bones of the house of Israel. And they all knew the psalms. Perhaps they sang the psalm we said today. Perhaps they remembered that God sends forth God’s spirit and creates the entire world, that God’s breath is what gives every creature life, and that God continually renews the face of the earth. As they sat there waiting, perhaps they remembered the promise that Jesus made when he was at dinner with them for the last time, his promise that, because he was going away from them, he would send a counselor, an advocate, a helper, to guide them and lead them into all truth.
And then it happened! They felt something like a great rush of wind. As they looked at each other, they all seemed to be on fire! They knew that God was with them, and that Jesus’ promises had come true. They rushed out of the courtyard and starting addressing the people who had gathered round, people from all over the Jewish Diaspora, who had come to Jerusalem to worship on Pentecost. They were empowered! They were filled with the Holy Spirit! They were out there laughing and dancing, hugging, and singing. They spoke in new languages. They might have been Galileans, but they could talk about God’s mighty acts in Jesus to everyone, whoever they were! And then Peter gave a wonderful sermon, telling how they were all doing what the prophet Joel had promised they would, explaining that it was God’s Spirit through Jesus crucified and risen who was empowering them. After it was all over, 3,000 people believed Peter and were baptized!
Could such an event happen again? Did it ever happen again? It did, believe it! The Holy Spirit was there when St Francis heard Jesus’ command to rebuild his church, and when Julian had her visions, lying, as she thought, mortally ill. Don’t you think the Holy Spirit was there when John Wesley felt his heart “strangely warmed” at the Aldersgate meeting? The Holy Spirit was certainly present to Zilpha Elaw, an African American Methodist preacher. Zilpha was 27 when the Spirit literally knocked her down at a camp meeting in 1817. Lying on the ground she felt her own spirit ascend to heaven and a voice assuring her that she was sanctified. After she recovered from her vision, she began to lead those around her in prayer. The Holy Spirit was there when Mother Teresa picked up a dying person on the streets of Calcutta. The Holy Spirit was there when Martin Luther King, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, and countless other clergy people marched from Selma to Montgomery.
Could such an outpouring of the Spirit happen here? Like Jesus’ first disciples, we’re all gathered together. We’ve heard readings from Scripture. We’re singing songs and praying. We’ve been hearing all these fifty days how Jesus’ rising to life again changes our lives. We’ve heard Jesus’ promises. We know about the Holy Spirit. What are we waiting for? Annie Dillard warned us that we ought to wear hard hats to church, because the Holy Spirit is so dangerous. So are we sitting on our hands, still waiting for the Spirit, still waiting for throngs of new people to find their way through the red doors? Wait a minute. Suddenly we too feel something like a mighty wind blowing through us. In the sanctuary the light fixtures are beginning to shake, the wonderful old windows are starting to rattle, and we worry about the stained glass. The electric power flickers, and we feel caught up in something mighty and overpowering. We feel as if fire is coursing through us. We want to shout out loud. We want to dance and sing. We want to shout, “Hallelujah!” Then we rush out through the doors and run into the parking lot. There’s a crowd gathered out there, people from all over, black and white, rich and poor, young and old, native-born and immigrants. They’re just milling around, as if they’re waiting for something to happen. We start talking to them about Jesus! Some of them think we’re drunk – perhaps we’ve had too much of that Episcopal communion wine -- but others get it! The church is alive, and they want to join it! And they do, hundreds of them! We can’t baptize them fast enough!
Can’t happen here, you say? Not so. The Holy Spirit doesn’t work that way anymore? Yes, she does! Believe it! The Holy Spirit is still very much alive in our churches, in us who were sealed with the Spirit in baptism and born anew. She has changed our born flesh with her touch, and she is still leading us into all truth. She still comes to us in the depths of our hearts, when, in silence, we open our ears to God’s word. She still teaches us how to pray and what to pray for. She still calls us to be prophets. She still teaches us how to proclaim the good news of God’s love for us and God’s promises of renewal for all creation. She still sends us out into the world to tell everyone that God’s kingdom has come near, that God’s future has broken into our present, and that we glimpse that future in Jesus and in the communities gathered in Jesus’ name. She still sends us out to remind people that God is remaking the world. She still empowers us to share with God in God’s great work. She still reminds us of God’s great “nevertheless.” As we despair of the evils we see around us, she still whispers, “Nevertheless God will….” She still teaches us not to be “however” people: people who see, for example that children are hungry and say, “However, we can’t….” The Holy Spirit still teaches us to be “therefore” people: people who see that children are hungry and say, “Therefore, let’s….”
And our churches are reborn. Wherever we gather, to hear Scripture read, to pray with every fiber of our being, to sing with all the fullness of our hearts, to thank God for God’s great gifts to us, to share God’s love with those around us, whenever we trust God to do more than we can ask or imagine, there the Spirit joins with us, renewing and rebirthing us. And we cry out, O come, Holy Spirit, move us, blow us away, make us laugh, shout, dance, sing, speak, preach, make us joyfully seize your presence among us. Come, come, Holy Spirit! Come, come among us and change us!
There they were, gathered in Jerusalem. There they were, waiting, waiting, patiently waiting. Jesus had told them to wait. Most of them had seen him after he’d been raised from the dead. Some of them had been with him ten days ago, when he was taken up from them, when he’d told them to go back to Jerusalem to wait. Just before leaving them, he’d reminded them that he would send them what the Father had promised them. He reminded them that John had baptized them with water, but that they would be baptized with the Holy Spirit. He told them that they would be his witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. They prayed in the temple, they chose another leader of their group to replace Judas, and they waited. Now it was fifty days after Passover. It was the day of Pentecost, one of the three great Jewish festivals. It was the day when, as Jews, they’d offered the first fruits of their harvest to God, and they’d celebrated God’s gift of the Law, the Torah, on Mt. Sinai. Now they were all together, perhaps 120 of them, the twelve and all those others, some women, some men, some younger, some older. Probably even some kids. Perhaps they were gathered in someone’s courtyard after their temple worship.
They were good Jews who knew their Scripture. They knew about the fire on Mt. Sinai when Moses received the law. Perhaps some of them remembered the other times God came to people in fire: when God sealed the covenant with Abraham; when God spoke to Moses out of the burning bush; when the Pillar of fire led the people through the desert; when the angel purified Isaiah’s lips with a burning coal as God commissioned Isaiah to be a prophet.
Perhaps some others remembered how God came to people as wind: how the east wind sent by God allowed the people to cross the Sea of Reeds from Egypt; how God spoke to Job out of the whirlwind; how Elijah was taken up to heaven in a whirlwind. Perhaps they remembered Ezekiel’s vision of how God commanded the four winds to breathe new life into the dry bones of the house of Israel. And they all knew the psalms. Perhaps they sang the psalm we said today. Perhaps they remembered that God sends forth God’s spirit and creates the entire world, that God’s breath is what gives every creature life, and that God continually renews the face of the earth. As they sat there waiting, perhaps they remembered the promise that Jesus made when he was at dinner with them for the last time, his promise that, because he was going away from them, he would send a counselor, an advocate, a helper, to guide them and lead them into all truth.
And then it happened! They felt something like a great rush of wind. As they looked at each other, they all seemed to be on fire! They knew that God was with them, and that Jesus’ promises had come true. They rushed out of the courtyard and starting addressing the people who had gathered round, people from all over the Jewish Diaspora, who had come to Jerusalem to worship on Pentecost. They were empowered! They were filled with the Holy Spirit! They were out there laughing and dancing, hugging, and singing. They spoke in new languages. They might have been Galileans, but they could talk about God’s mighty acts in Jesus to everyone, whoever they were! And then Peter gave a wonderful sermon, telling how they were all doing what the prophet Joel had promised they would, explaining that it was God’s Spirit through Jesus crucified and risen who was empowering them. After it was all over, 3,000 people believed Peter and were baptized!
Could such an event happen again? Did it ever happen again? It did, believe it! The Holy Spirit was there when St Francis heard Jesus’ command to rebuild his church, and when Julian had her visions, lying, as she thought, mortally ill. Don’t you think the Holy Spirit was there when John Wesley felt his heart “strangely warmed” at the Aldersgate meeting? The Holy Spirit was certainly present to Zilpha Elaw, an African American Methodist preacher. Zilpha was 27 when the Spirit literally knocked her down at a camp meeting in 1817. Lying on the ground she felt her own spirit ascend to heaven and a voice assuring her that she was sanctified. After she recovered from her vision, she began to lead those around her in prayer. The Holy Spirit was there when Mother Teresa picked up a dying person on the streets of Calcutta. The Holy Spirit was there when Martin Luther King, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, and countless other clergy people marched from Selma to Montgomery.
Could such an outpouring of the Spirit happen here? Like Jesus’ first disciples, we’re all gathered together. We’ve heard readings from Scripture. We’re singing songs and praying. We’ve been hearing all these fifty days how Jesus’ rising to life again changes our lives. We’ve heard Jesus’ promises. We know about the Holy Spirit. What are we waiting for? Annie Dillard warned us that we ought to wear hard hats to church, because the Holy Spirit is so dangerous. So are we sitting on our hands, still waiting for the Spirit, still waiting for throngs of new people to find their way through the red doors? Wait a minute. Suddenly we too feel something like a mighty wind blowing through us. In the sanctuary the light fixtures are beginning to shake, the wonderful old windows are starting to rattle, and we worry about the stained glass. The electric power flickers, and we feel caught up in something mighty and overpowering. We feel as if fire is coursing through us. We want to shout out loud. We want to dance and sing. We want to shout, “Hallelujah!” Then we rush out through the doors and run into the parking lot. There’s a crowd gathered out there, people from all over, black and white, rich and poor, young and old, native-born and immigrants. They’re just milling around, as if they’re waiting for something to happen. We start talking to them about Jesus! Some of them think we’re drunk – perhaps we’ve had too much of that Episcopal communion wine -- but others get it! The church is alive, and they want to join it! And they do, hundreds of them! We can’t baptize them fast enough!
Can’t happen here, you say? Not so. The Holy Spirit doesn’t work that way anymore? Yes, she does! Believe it! The Holy Spirit is still very much alive in our churches, in us who were sealed with the Spirit in baptism and born anew. She has changed our born flesh with her touch, and she is still leading us into all truth. She still comes to us in the depths of our hearts, when, in silence, we open our ears to God’s word. She still teaches us how to pray and what to pray for. She still calls us to be prophets. She still teaches us how to proclaim the good news of God’s love for us and God’s promises of renewal for all creation. She still sends us out into the world to tell everyone that God’s kingdom has come near, that God’s future has broken into our present, and that we glimpse that future in Jesus and in the communities gathered in Jesus’ name. She still sends us out to remind people that God is remaking the world. She still empowers us to share with God in God’s great work. She still reminds us of God’s great “nevertheless.” As we despair of the evils we see around us, she still whispers, “Nevertheless God will….” She still teaches us not to be “however” people: people who see, for example that children are hungry and say, “However, we can’t….” The Holy Spirit still teaches us to be “therefore” people: people who see that children are hungry and say, “Therefore, let’s….”
And our churches are reborn. Wherever we gather, to hear Scripture read, to pray with every fiber of our being, to sing with all the fullness of our hearts, to thank God for God’s great gifts to us, to share God’s love with those around us, whenever we trust God to do more than we can ask or imagine, there the Spirit joins with us, renewing and rebirthing us. And we cry out, O come, Holy Spirit, move us, blow us away, make us laugh, shout, dance, sing, speak, preach, make us joyfully seize your presence among us. Come, come, Holy Spirit! Come, come among us and change us!
Wednesday, June 11, 2014
Transformed by the Spirit
Why are you here? What blew you in through the red doors? Are you here because coming to church is what one does on Sunday? Are you here because you think that God expects you to come, and you want to please and serve God? Do you seek weekly nourishment in the Eucharist? Do you hope that, if you take in Christ’s Body and Blood, you will become more like him? Do you seek strength for the journey, the sustenance you need to keep going in life? Or are you perhaps hoping to satisfy some deeply-felt need for authentic community?
My friends, you are not here for any of these reasons. You are here because the Holy Spirit brought you here. You may even be here against your will. Certainly you have every good reason not to be here. No one will look down on you for not being here, and no one will pat you on the back for rousing yourself and actually getting here. You are here, because the Holy Spirit blew you in through the red doors – for a reason.
Jesus has left us. We obeyed Jesus’ command. We prayed together, and we waited for him to make good on his promises. And then it happened! We crossed over the threshold, and discovered that God’s Spirit is now rampant in the world. But the Holy Spirit is wily and changeable, and she has many ways of making herself known.
Some of us resonate with the violent, life-changing experiences of the disciples in the Book of Acts. We know that in Scripture a powerful wind is often a signal for God’s presence. Remember the opening of the creation story in Genesis. “The earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.” Remember how Jesus tried to describe the Spirit to Nicodemus. “The wind blows where it chooses,” he said, “and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” For some of us, the Holy Spirit does feel like a great rushing wind, coming into our lives, carrying us along, even pushing us in unexpected directions.
Others of us resonate with the disciples’ experience of being on fire. Fire, too, in Scripture is a signal for God’s presence. Remember the Pillar of Fire that followed the Israelites in their journey through the Sinai. When the prophet Jeremiah felt so compelled to speak God’s word that he could no longer keep silent, he said that God’s urging felt “like fire in the bones.” And when John Wesley felt himself come alive again spiritually at the Aldersgate meeting, he said his heart “felt strangely warmed.”
To others of us, the Holy Spirit comes as a gentle breath, a quickening and an enlivening, a sense of being invisibly, yet inexorably, transformed. Although Elijah had expected God to come in thunder and fire, God spoke to Elijah in a whisper. After Jesus’ resurrection, the disciples in John’s Gospel felt Jesus breathe the Holy Spirit into them. “Breathe on me, breath of God,” says one of our hymns. Gentle, easy, yet life-giving and utterly life-changing.
Yet others of us feel the Spirit’s presence in a rush of deep emotion. Ricardo Avila lay prostrate on the floor of Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, waiting to be ordained a priest. As the congregation began to chant the Veni, Sancte Spiritus, the traditional invocation of the Holy Spirit at ordinations, he felt tears gush from his eyes, and then he began to sob.1 Others of us experience that emotion as deep joy, joy that makes us so giddy that those around us may be sure that we are drunk – and we are, with the “new wine” that old wineskins cannot contain.
For yet others, the Holy Spirit comes in extraordinary, inexplicable experiences. The fractious members of the Christian community at Corinth suddenly had the ability to speak ecstatically in another language. St. Francis of Assisi heard the crucifix in a country church calling to him. A woman knelt at the altar rail of a strange church and suddenly knew that she was home. Back in his pew after taking Christ into his body, a man knew that God’s Spirit was lodged deep in his own heart. A student sang in a church choir, and all his resistance to the workings of the Holy Spirit melted away.
However the Spirit brought you here, as a strong but invisible force, as a gentle tug on the sleeve, or through a moment in your life you still can’t explain, you are here because the Spirit has brought you here. We are all here because the Spirit has brought us here. As Paul told the Corinthians who thought their ability to speak in tongues made them special, “No one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except by the Spirit.” We are all here, because the Spirit needs us to be here. Paul reminded the Corinthian Christians that the Spirit had brought them together, because the community needed the abilities, talents, and gifts of many different people. All their various gifts had come from the same Spirit, and all were needed and important. Whatever the gifts were, whether they were teaching, administration, preaching, devotion, healing, or working miracles, all these gifts had been given to the community by the Spirit, distributed by the Spirit as the Spirit saw fit. Most important, the Spirit had given these gifts to the Corinthian Christians for a reason: “for the common good,” i.e. to build up the church in that place.
As with the Christian community at Corinth, the Spirit has given the church of our day diverse gifts and talents, all of which the Spirit needs the church to exercise. From a lofty perspective, you might even say that the Spirit has given diverse gifts to the churches. Perhaps the Spirit has intentionally scattered her gifts around. Perhaps every denomination, maybe even every faith community, has diverse God-given gifts and talents, and no denomination or community has all the gifts needed to bring God’s reign nearer. I love the Episcopal Church. I have spent almost all my adult life drinking from its deep well. Even so, I know that we can partner with and learn from Lutherans and Roman Catholics, even Baptists and Pentecostals. In the same way, I believe that the Spirit has scattered her gifts around the various parishes in our diocese. All of our parishes have God-given gifts, but perhaps none of them has all the gifts that are needed to bring the reign of God nearer. And the Spirit has certainly scattered her gifts here at St. Peter’s. All of us have different God-given gifts that this parish needs, and none of us, whatever our age, station, or life situation, is without gifts. The Spirit brought us here, the Spirit has distributed gifts and talents among us, and the Spirit calls on us to use our gifts.
My friends, there is both a mystery and a paradox here. The mystery is this: we don’t know the Holy Spirit works. We acknowledge the Spirit as the third person of the Trinity, with God the Creator and God the Redeemer. We reaffirm our faith in the existence of the Spirit every time we say the Nicene Creed: “We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life ….” But we don’t know how the Spirit enables us to let go of old, destructive ways of life, helping us forgive and be forgiven, helping us to put on new ways of living. We don’t know how the Spirit transforms our lives and enables us to do more and more of what Jesus did. We don’t know how we allow the Spirit to grab our hand and take us down a path of ministry we had never before contemplated. We only know that, something has changed, that we have experienced transforming grace, and that we have discovered gifts within ourselves that we never knew we possessed.
And here is the paradox. The Spirit has not given us these gifts for our own spiritual self-aggrandizement, nor so that we may feel at peace within ourselves, nor even as strength for the journey. As one writer has observed, the truth is that the Spirit has given us gifts and talents that create problems for us. In fact, the Spirit may make us profoundly uncomfortable. After the disciples were blown over by the Spirit, they could not go back to their old lives. In the very last chapter of John’s Gospel, Peter, James, and John tried to return to fishing. Jesus caught up with them, and told Peter to “Feed my sheep.” Celtic Christians still use the image of the wild goose as a symbol for the unfettered Spirit. They know that the Spirit, like a noisy and bothersome wild goose, often shakes us out of our complacency and leads us in new directions.
We too are living in this paradox. Having been blown here by the Spirit, perhaps having been blown over by the Spirit, we know there is no going back to what our lives were before, no going back to a life focused solely on ourselves and our own narrow needs. The Spirit calls each of to use our gifts to reach out to people of every language, ethnicity, and social station. The Spirit calls all of us, young and old, women and men, to prophesy. The Spirit calls all of us to use our gifts to bring the reign of God nearer, to partner with God in God’s work, wherever we discern it. The Spirit calls all of us to ask, “Who needs us?” and “How can this parish use its diverse gifts and talents to share God’s love in this community?”
We are here, because the Spirit has brought us here. Come, Holy Spirit, Heavenly Dove: descend on us, reveal your love. Word of God and inward light, wake our spirits; clear our sight. Surround us now with all your glory; speak through us that sacred story. Take our lips and make them bold. Take hearts and minds and make them whole. Stir in us that sacred flame, then send us forth to spread your name. Amen.
1. Pentecostal Praise,” Journey with Jesus, http://www.journeywithjesus.net/index.shtml , June 8, 2014.
My friends, you are not here for any of these reasons. You are here because the Holy Spirit brought you here. You may even be here against your will. Certainly you have every good reason not to be here. No one will look down on you for not being here, and no one will pat you on the back for rousing yourself and actually getting here. You are here, because the Holy Spirit blew you in through the red doors – for a reason.
Jesus has left us. We obeyed Jesus’ command. We prayed together, and we waited for him to make good on his promises. And then it happened! We crossed over the threshold, and discovered that God’s Spirit is now rampant in the world. But the Holy Spirit is wily and changeable, and she has many ways of making herself known.
Some of us resonate with the violent, life-changing experiences of the disciples in the Book of Acts. We know that in Scripture a powerful wind is often a signal for God’s presence. Remember the opening of the creation story in Genesis. “The earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.” Remember how Jesus tried to describe the Spirit to Nicodemus. “The wind blows where it chooses,” he said, “and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” For some of us, the Holy Spirit does feel like a great rushing wind, coming into our lives, carrying us along, even pushing us in unexpected directions.
Others of us resonate with the disciples’ experience of being on fire. Fire, too, in Scripture is a signal for God’s presence. Remember the Pillar of Fire that followed the Israelites in their journey through the Sinai. When the prophet Jeremiah felt so compelled to speak God’s word that he could no longer keep silent, he said that God’s urging felt “like fire in the bones.” And when John Wesley felt himself come alive again spiritually at the Aldersgate meeting, he said his heart “felt strangely warmed.”
To others of us, the Holy Spirit comes as a gentle breath, a quickening and an enlivening, a sense of being invisibly, yet inexorably, transformed. Although Elijah had expected God to come in thunder and fire, God spoke to Elijah in a whisper. After Jesus’ resurrection, the disciples in John’s Gospel felt Jesus breathe the Holy Spirit into them. “Breathe on me, breath of God,” says one of our hymns. Gentle, easy, yet life-giving and utterly life-changing.
Yet others of us feel the Spirit’s presence in a rush of deep emotion. Ricardo Avila lay prostrate on the floor of Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, waiting to be ordained a priest. As the congregation began to chant the Veni, Sancte Spiritus, the traditional invocation of the Holy Spirit at ordinations, he felt tears gush from his eyes, and then he began to sob.1 Others of us experience that emotion as deep joy, joy that makes us so giddy that those around us may be sure that we are drunk – and we are, with the “new wine” that old wineskins cannot contain.
For yet others, the Holy Spirit comes in extraordinary, inexplicable experiences. The fractious members of the Christian community at Corinth suddenly had the ability to speak ecstatically in another language. St. Francis of Assisi heard the crucifix in a country church calling to him. A woman knelt at the altar rail of a strange church and suddenly knew that she was home. Back in his pew after taking Christ into his body, a man knew that God’s Spirit was lodged deep in his own heart. A student sang in a church choir, and all his resistance to the workings of the Holy Spirit melted away.
However the Spirit brought you here, as a strong but invisible force, as a gentle tug on the sleeve, or through a moment in your life you still can’t explain, you are here because the Spirit has brought you here. We are all here because the Spirit has brought us here. As Paul told the Corinthians who thought their ability to speak in tongues made them special, “No one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except by the Spirit.” We are all here, because the Spirit needs us to be here. Paul reminded the Corinthian Christians that the Spirit had brought them together, because the community needed the abilities, talents, and gifts of many different people. All their various gifts had come from the same Spirit, and all were needed and important. Whatever the gifts were, whether they were teaching, administration, preaching, devotion, healing, or working miracles, all these gifts had been given to the community by the Spirit, distributed by the Spirit as the Spirit saw fit. Most important, the Spirit had given these gifts to the Corinthian Christians for a reason: “for the common good,” i.e. to build up the church in that place.
As with the Christian community at Corinth, the Spirit has given the church of our day diverse gifts and talents, all of which the Spirit needs the church to exercise. From a lofty perspective, you might even say that the Spirit has given diverse gifts to the churches. Perhaps the Spirit has intentionally scattered her gifts around. Perhaps every denomination, maybe even every faith community, has diverse God-given gifts and talents, and no denomination or community has all the gifts needed to bring God’s reign nearer. I love the Episcopal Church. I have spent almost all my adult life drinking from its deep well. Even so, I know that we can partner with and learn from Lutherans and Roman Catholics, even Baptists and Pentecostals. In the same way, I believe that the Spirit has scattered her gifts around the various parishes in our diocese. All of our parishes have God-given gifts, but perhaps none of them has all the gifts that are needed to bring the reign of God nearer. And the Spirit has certainly scattered her gifts here at St. Peter’s. All of us have different God-given gifts that this parish needs, and none of us, whatever our age, station, or life situation, is without gifts. The Spirit brought us here, the Spirit has distributed gifts and talents among us, and the Spirit calls on us to use our gifts.
My friends, there is both a mystery and a paradox here. The mystery is this: we don’t know the Holy Spirit works. We acknowledge the Spirit as the third person of the Trinity, with God the Creator and God the Redeemer. We reaffirm our faith in the existence of the Spirit every time we say the Nicene Creed: “We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life ….” But we don’t know how the Spirit enables us to let go of old, destructive ways of life, helping us forgive and be forgiven, helping us to put on new ways of living. We don’t know how the Spirit transforms our lives and enables us to do more and more of what Jesus did. We don’t know how we allow the Spirit to grab our hand and take us down a path of ministry we had never before contemplated. We only know that, something has changed, that we have experienced transforming grace, and that we have discovered gifts within ourselves that we never knew we possessed.
And here is the paradox. The Spirit has not given us these gifts for our own spiritual self-aggrandizement, nor so that we may feel at peace within ourselves, nor even as strength for the journey. As one writer has observed, the truth is that the Spirit has given us gifts and talents that create problems for us. In fact, the Spirit may make us profoundly uncomfortable. After the disciples were blown over by the Spirit, they could not go back to their old lives. In the very last chapter of John’s Gospel, Peter, James, and John tried to return to fishing. Jesus caught up with them, and told Peter to “Feed my sheep.” Celtic Christians still use the image of the wild goose as a symbol for the unfettered Spirit. They know that the Spirit, like a noisy and bothersome wild goose, often shakes us out of our complacency and leads us in new directions.
We too are living in this paradox. Having been blown here by the Spirit, perhaps having been blown over by the Spirit, we know there is no going back to what our lives were before, no going back to a life focused solely on ourselves and our own narrow needs. The Spirit calls each of to use our gifts to reach out to people of every language, ethnicity, and social station. The Spirit calls all of us, young and old, women and men, to prophesy. The Spirit calls all of us to use our gifts to bring the reign of God nearer, to partner with God in God’s work, wherever we discern it. The Spirit calls all of us to ask, “Who needs us?” and “How can this parish use its diverse gifts and talents to share God’s love in this community?”
We are here, because the Spirit has brought us here. Come, Holy Spirit, Heavenly Dove: descend on us, reveal your love. Word of God and inward light, wake our spirits; clear our sight. Surround us now with all your glory; speak through us that sacred story. Take our lips and make them bold. Take hearts and minds and make them whole. Stir in us that sacred flame, then send us forth to spread your name. Amen.
1. Pentecostal Praise,” Journey with Jesus, http://www.journeywithjesus.net/index.shtml , June 8, 2014.
Sunday, May 19, 2013
Come, Holy Spirit
(From the back of the Church) What are you waiting for? Jesus’ disciples were waiting and wondering. What are you waiting for?
There they were, gathered in Jerusalem. There they were, waiting, waiting, patiently waiting. Jesus had told them to wait. Most of them had seen him after he’d been raised from the dead. Some of them had been with him ten days ago, when he was taken up from them, when he’d told them to go back to Jerusalem to wait. Just before leaving them, he’d reminded them that he would send them what the Father had promised them. He reminded them that John had baptized them with water, but that they would be baptized with the Holy Spirit. He told them that they would be his witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. They prayed in the temple, they chose another leader of their group to replace Judas, and they waited. Now it was fifty days after Passover. It was the day of Pentecost, one of the three great Jewish festivals. It was the day when, as Jews, they’d offered the first fruits of their harvest to God, and they’d celebrated God’s gift of the Law, the Torah, on Mt. Sinai. Now they were all together, perhaps 120 of them, the twelve and all those others, some women, some men, some younger, some older. Probably even some kids. Perhaps they were gathered in someone’s courtyard after their temple worship.
They were good Jews who knew their Scripture. They knew about the fire on Mt. Sinai when Moses received the law. Perhaps some of them remembered the other times God came to people in fire: when God sealed the covenant with Abraham; when God spoke to Moses out of the burning bush; when the Pillar of fire led the people through the desert; when the angel purified Isaiah’s lips with a burning coal as God commissioned Isaiah to be a prophet.
Perhaps some others remembered how God came to people as wind: how the east wind sent by God allowed the people to cross the Sea of Reeds from Egypt; how God spoke to Job out of the whirlwind; how Elijah was taken up to heaven in a whirlwind. In their temple worship perhaps they had heard the lector read the passage telling of Ezekiel’s vision of how God commanded the four winds to breathe new life into the dry bones of the house of Israel. And they all knew the psalms. Perhaps they sang the psalm we said today. Perhaps they remembered that God sends forth God’s spirit and creates the entire world, that God continually renews the face of the earth. As they sat there, perhaps they remembered Jesus’ that he had made when he was at dinner with them for the last time, his promise that, because he was going away from them, he would send a Paraclete, a helper, to guide them and lead them into all truth.
And then it happened! They felt something like a great rush of wind. As they looked at each other, they all seemed to be on fire! They knew that God was with them, and that Jesus’ promises had come true. They rushed out of the courtyard and starting addressing the people who had gathered round, people from all over the Jewish Diaspora, who had come to Jerusalem to worship on Pentecost. They were empowered! They were filled with the Holy Spirit! They were out there laughing and dancing, hugging, and singing. They spoke in new languages. They might have been Galileans, but they could talk about God’s mighty acts in Jesus to everyone, whoever they were! And then Peter gave a wonderful sermon, telling how they were all doing what the prophet Joel had promised they would, explaining that it was God’s Spirit through Jesus crucified and risen who was empowering them. After it was all over, 3,000 people believed Peter and were baptized!
Could such an event happen again? Did it ever happen again? It did, believe it! The Holy Spirit was there when St Francis heard Jesus’ command to rebuild his church, and when Julian had her visions, lying, as she thought, mortally ill. Don’t you think the Holy Spirit was there when John Wesley felt his heart “strangely warmed” at the Aldersgate meeting? The Holy Spirit was certainly present to Zilpha Elaw, an African American Methodist preacher. Zilpha was 27 when the Spirit literally knocked her down at a camp meeting in 1817. Lying on the ground she felt her own spirit ascend to heaven and a voice assuring her that she was sanctified. After she recovered from her vision, she began to lead those around her in prayer.
Could such an outpouring of the Spirit happen here? Like the disciples, we’re all gathered together. We’ve heard readings from the Scripture. We’re singing songs and praying. We’ve been hearing all these fifty days again what it means to be disciples of a risen Lord. We’ve heard Jesus’ promises. We know about the Holy Spirit. What are we waiting for? Are we sitting on our hands waiting for throngs of new people to find their way through the red doors? Wait a minute. Suddenly we too feel something like a mighty wind blowing through us. In the sanctuary the light fixtures begin to shake, the wonderful old windows begin to rattle, and we worry about the stained glass. The electric power flickers, and we feel caught up in something mighty and overpowering. We feel as if fire is coursing through us. We want to shout out loud. We want to dance and sing. We want to shout, “Hallelujah!” Then we rush out through the doors and run down to the park. There’s a crowd gathered out there, people from all over, black and white, rich and poor, young and old, native-born and immigrants. They’re just milling around, as if they’re waiting for something to happen. We start talking to them about Jesus! Some of them think we’re drunk – perhaps we’ve had too much of that Episcopal communion wine -- but others get it! The church is alive, and they want to join it! And they do, hundreds of them! The pastors can’t keep up!
Can’t happen here, you say? Not so. The Holy Spirit doesn’t work that way anymore? Yes, she does! Believe it! The Holy Spirit is still very much alive in our churches, in us as the priesthood of all believers, in us who were sealed with the Spirit in baptism and born anew. She has changed our born flesh with her touch, and she is still leading us into all truth. She is still calling us to be prophets. She is still teaching us how to proclaim the good news of God’s love for us and God’s promises of renewal for all creation. She is still sending us out into the world to tell everyone that God’s kingdom has come near, that God’s future has broken into our present, and that we have a glimpse of that future in Jesus and in the communities gathered in Jesus’ name. She is still sending us out to remind people that God is remaking the world, and that we are empowered to share with God in God’s great work. She is still teaching us not to be “however” people: people who see, for example that children are hungry and say, “However, we can’t….” The Holy Spirit is teaching us to be “therefore” people: people who see that children are hungry and say, “Therefore, let’s….”
And our churches are reborn. Wherever we gather, to hear Scripture read, to pray with every fiber of our being, to sing with all the fullness of our hearts, to thank God for God’s great gifts to us, to share God’s love with those around us, whenever we trust God to do more than we can ask or imagine, there the Spirit joins with us, renewing and rebirthing us. And we cry out, O come, Holy Spirit, move us, blow us away, make us laugh, shout, dance, sing, speak, preach, make us joyfully seize your presence among us.
“We name you wind, power, force, and then,
Imaginatively, “Third Person.”
We name you and you blow…
blow hard,
blow cold,
blow hot,
blow strong,
blow gentle,
blow new…
Blowing the world out of nothing to abundance,
blowing the church out of despair to new life,
blowing little David from shepherd boy to messiah,
blowing to make things new that never were.
So blow this day, wind,
Blow here and there, power,
Blow even us, force,
Rush us beyond ourselves,
Rush us beyond our hopes,
Rush us beyond our fears, until we enact your newness in the world.
Come, come spirit. Amen.”1
1. Walter Brueggemann, Awed to Heaven, Rooted in Earth, (Minneapolis: Fortress Press), 2003, p.167.
There they were, gathered in Jerusalem. There they were, waiting, waiting, patiently waiting. Jesus had told them to wait. Most of them had seen him after he’d been raised from the dead. Some of them had been with him ten days ago, when he was taken up from them, when he’d told them to go back to Jerusalem to wait. Just before leaving them, he’d reminded them that he would send them what the Father had promised them. He reminded them that John had baptized them with water, but that they would be baptized with the Holy Spirit. He told them that they would be his witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. They prayed in the temple, they chose another leader of their group to replace Judas, and they waited. Now it was fifty days after Passover. It was the day of Pentecost, one of the three great Jewish festivals. It was the day when, as Jews, they’d offered the first fruits of their harvest to God, and they’d celebrated God’s gift of the Law, the Torah, on Mt. Sinai. Now they were all together, perhaps 120 of them, the twelve and all those others, some women, some men, some younger, some older. Probably even some kids. Perhaps they were gathered in someone’s courtyard after their temple worship.
They were good Jews who knew their Scripture. They knew about the fire on Mt. Sinai when Moses received the law. Perhaps some of them remembered the other times God came to people in fire: when God sealed the covenant with Abraham; when God spoke to Moses out of the burning bush; when the Pillar of fire led the people through the desert; when the angel purified Isaiah’s lips with a burning coal as God commissioned Isaiah to be a prophet.
Perhaps some others remembered how God came to people as wind: how the east wind sent by God allowed the people to cross the Sea of Reeds from Egypt; how God spoke to Job out of the whirlwind; how Elijah was taken up to heaven in a whirlwind. In their temple worship perhaps they had heard the lector read the passage telling of Ezekiel’s vision of how God commanded the four winds to breathe new life into the dry bones of the house of Israel. And they all knew the psalms. Perhaps they sang the psalm we said today. Perhaps they remembered that God sends forth God’s spirit and creates the entire world, that God continually renews the face of the earth. As they sat there, perhaps they remembered Jesus’ that he had made when he was at dinner with them for the last time, his promise that, because he was going away from them, he would send a Paraclete, a helper, to guide them and lead them into all truth.
And then it happened! They felt something like a great rush of wind. As they looked at each other, they all seemed to be on fire! They knew that God was with them, and that Jesus’ promises had come true. They rushed out of the courtyard and starting addressing the people who had gathered round, people from all over the Jewish Diaspora, who had come to Jerusalem to worship on Pentecost. They were empowered! They were filled with the Holy Spirit! They were out there laughing and dancing, hugging, and singing. They spoke in new languages. They might have been Galileans, but they could talk about God’s mighty acts in Jesus to everyone, whoever they were! And then Peter gave a wonderful sermon, telling how they were all doing what the prophet Joel had promised they would, explaining that it was God’s Spirit through Jesus crucified and risen who was empowering them. After it was all over, 3,000 people believed Peter and were baptized!
Could such an event happen again? Did it ever happen again? It did, believe it! The Holy Spirit was there when St Francis heard Jesus’ command to rebuild his church, and when Julian had her visions, lying, as she thought, mortally ill. Don’t you think the Holy Spirit was there when John Wesley felt his heart “strangely warmed” at the Aldersgate meeting? The Holy Spirit was certainly present to Zilpha Elaw, an African American Methodist preacher. Zilpha was 27 when the Spirit literally knocked her down at a camp meeting in 1817. Lying on the ground she felt her own spirit ascend to heaven and a voice assuring her that she was sanctified. After she recovered from her vision, she began to lead those around her in prayer.
Could such an outpouring of the Spirit happen here? Like the disciples, we’re all gathered together. We’ve heard readings from the Scripture. We’re singing songs and praying. We’ve been hearing all these fifty days again what it means to be disciples of a risen Lord. We’ve heard Jesus’ promises. We know about the Holy Spirit. What are we waiting for? Are we sitting on our hands waiting for throngs of new people to find their way through the red doors? Wait a minute. Suddenly we too feel something like a mighty wind blowing through us. In the sanctuary the light fixtures begin to shake, the wonderful old windows begin to rattle, and we worry about the stained glass. The electric power flickers, and we feel caught up in something mighty and overpowering. We feel as if fire is coursing through us. We want to shout out loud. We want to dance and sing. We want to shout, “Hallelujah!” Then we rush out through the doors and run down to the park. There’s a crowd gathered out there, people from all over, black and white, rich and poor, young and old, native-born and immigrants. They’re just milling around, as if they’re waiting for something to happen. We start talking to them about Jesus! Some of them think we’re drunk – perhaps we’ve had too much of that Episcopal communion wine -- but others get it! The church is alive, and they want to join it! And they do, hundreds of them! The pastors can’t keep up!
Can’t happen here, you say? Not so. The Holy Spirit doesn’t work that way anymore? Yes, she does! Believe it! The Holy Spirit is still very much alive in our churches, in us as the priesthood of all believers, in us who were sealed with the Spirit in baptism and born anew. She has changed our born flesh with her touch, and she is still leading us into all truth. She is still calling us to be prophets. She is still teaching us how to proclaim the good news of God’s love for us and God’s promises of renewal for all creation. She is still sending us out into the world to tell everyone that God’s kingdom has come near, that God’s future has broken into our present, and that we have a glimpse of that future in Jesus and in the communities gathered in Jesus’ name. She is still sending us out to remind people that God is remaking the world, and that we are empowered to share with God in God’s great work. She is still teaching us not to be “however” people: people who see, for example that children are hungry and say, “However, we can’t….” The Holy Spirit is teaching us to be “therefore” people: people who see that children are hungry and say, “Therefore, let’s….”
And our churches are reborn. Wherever we gather, to hear Scripture read, to pray with every fiber of our being, to sing with all the fullness of our hearts, to thank God for God’s great gifts to us, to share God’s love with those around us, whenever we trust God to do more than we can ask or imagine, there the Spirit joins with us, renewing and rebirthing us. And we cry out, O come, Holy Spirit, move us, blow us away, make us laugh, shout, dance, sing, speak, preach, make us joyfully seize your presence among us.
“We name you wind, power, force, and then,
Imaginatively, “Third Person.”
We name you and you blow…
blow hard,
blow cold,
blow hot,
blow strong,
blow gentle,
blow new…
Blowing the world out of nothing to abundance,
blowing the church out of despair to new life,
blowing little David from shepherd boy to messiah,
blowing to make things new that never were.
So blow this day, wind,
Blow here and there, power,
Blow even us, force,
Rush us beyond ourselves,
Rush us beyond our hopes,
Rush us beyond our fears, until we enact your newness in the world.
Come, come spirit. Amen.”1
1. Walter Brueggemann, Awed to Heaven, Rooted in Earth, (Minneapolis: Fortress Press), 2003, p.167.
Monday, May 28, 2012
Can These Bones Live?
“Ezekiel connected dem dry bones, Ezekiel connected dem dry bones, Ezekiel connected dem dry bones, I hear the word of the Lord…. Dem bones, dem bones gonna walk aroun’, dem bones gonna walk aroun’, dem bones gonna walk aroun’, I hear the word of the Lord!” [sung by the Delta Rhythm Boys and played on Ipod deck.] It’s a great song, a great spiritual, isn’t it? But, do you believe it? Are dem bones really gonna walk aroun’?
Did the exiled Israelites who heard Ezekiel’s prophecy believe it? It was the sixth century BC. Ezekiel, a prominent priest and prophet, was in exile in Babylon, along with the king and the elite of his people. Jerusalem and the temple had been destroyed by the Babylonians. Along with his people, Ezekiel was in deep mourning. Episcopalians don’t hear much from the prophecy of Ezekiel. In our three-year lectionary this passage occurs in Lent in Year A, and here as an alternative on Pentecost. Another closely related passage from Ezekiel can be heard at the Easter Vigil. That’s it. But Ezekiel is an unusual, even exciting book. Traditionally one had to be a seasoned scholar to be allowed to read it. Why? Because the book – and I commend it to you for your own reading – is filled with arresting images that turn up again and again in later visionary writing. Blown about and lifted up by the Spirit, Ezekiel begins the book with stunning visions of angels, of wheels within wheels, and of God’s glory. He then goes on to catalogue the many ways in which the Israelites have broken their covenant with God. Finally, in the last third of the book, Ezekiel offers a stunning vision of the renewal and restoration of Israel, and of a return from Babylon that would be nothing short of a second Exodus.
Perhaps drawing on the vision of a bone-littered battlefield, Ezekiel suggests for the first time ever in history that resurrection might be possible. Is Ezekiel talking about physical, bodily resurrection? Probably not. Rather, it is the renewal and restoration of the people of Israel that Ezekiel is describing here. As captives of the Babylonians, deprived of the sacred temple, the people who heard this prophecy had every right to say, “Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are cut off completely.” When God asks Ezekiel, “Can these bones live?” Ezekiel surely thinks, “No way.” But face to face with God, he gives the only – and the truest – answer he can give, “O Lord God, you know.” Only God can make or create new life, so God takes the initiative and orders Ezekiel to prophesy to the dry bones. God tells Ezekiel to call the bones back to life and assure them that bone would join with bone (“Your toe bone connected to your foot bone, your foot bone connected to your ankle bone….”), and that muscles and skin would grow on them.
The Hebrew word ruach means breath, spirit, and wind, all three. So, we have here a wonderful play on words that calls to mind the creation stories of Genesis (“a wind from God swept over the waters” and “then the Lord formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life”). Using this play on words, God further commands Ezekiel to bring the breath from the four winds and “breathe upon these slain, that they may live.” And the newly restored house of Israel clatters to its feet and stands there, “a great multitude,” eager to hear the promises that God offers to the people, to bring them back to the land of Israel, to their own soil, forgiven, restored, and renewed.
Though the prophet uttered the commands, the miracle, of course, was all God’s doing. The agent of the miracle was God’s Spirit. It was a new outpouring of this same spirit that Jesus promised to his disciples on the night before he died. It was a new outpouring of this same spirit, complete with what felt to them like a “rushing wind,” that the gathered disciples experienced on Pentecost. It was the same spirit that equipped them for mission and blew them out into the squares and synagogues of Jerusalem to proclaim new life in Jesus’ name. It was the same spirit that led to the gathering together of the writings we call the New Testament and that has continued to inspire, renew, and empower the community created through the spirit.
Can these bones live? As we look around at the church today, our answer might be the same as that of Ezekiel. We too might want to say, “No way.” However, if God is doing the asking, we just might have the humility to say, “O Lord, you know.” There is no question that we have reason for despair. Although we have tended to see the swelling of church membership in the post-World War II period as the norm, it is more likely that that influx of members was a blip in the long history of the church. Now it is clear that church membership is declining again in North America and Europe. There are fewer and fewer full-time clergy, clergy sexual abuse in parishes and religious orders is coming to light, every level of the church is struggling to make ends meet, parishes are closing, and most members of the current younger generation couldn’t care less about organized religion. They claim to be “spiritual but not religious,” and the vast majority of them claim no religious affiliation whatsoever. Doesn’t Ezekiel’s vision of the valley of the dry bones describe us too? Where is God’s miraculous life-giving spirit?
Perhaps we need to take the long view. Church historians, most recently Phyllis Tickle and Diana Butler Bass, tell us that the church seems to have experienced a major shift about every 500 years. The fifth century saw the beginning of several centuries of a stagnating church, as the Roman Empire declined, classical learning diminished, the eastern and western churches drew apart, and the torch of learning burned feebly in Europe, mostly in monasteries and convents. At the turn of the first millennium the church experienced a renewal of scholarship, mysticism, and devotion. The great cathedrals were built, and many historic religious orders were founded. Five hundred years later the Reformation fractured the western church yet again. But it also engendered a great upsurge in learning, translations of the Bible, and liturgies in the common languages. Ordinary people were able to have more direct and deeper direct access to God. Following the Reformation, in much of Europe, and even in North America until the American Revolution, church and state were tightly intertwined, and religious diversity was rare. Even with the rise of science, secular culture largely supported church membership. Now it is clear that we are entering a new phase of church life and identity. God is doing a new thing, and we are struggling to find new ways of being church. New spiritual groups are arising: intentional communities, storefront churches, street church for the homeless, groups gathering for worship at times other than Sunday morning. We may not know what’s coming next, but we continue to trust God to breathe life into “these slain,” to restore and renew the church that the Spirit birthed on Pentecost.
Can these bones live here at St. Peter’s? Don’t we have some of the same reasons to ask that question about our parish as we do for the wider church? Our congregation is smaller than it was a generation ago, our budget perhaps half of what it was, your priest is half-time, and there isn’t a single twenty-something whom we can say belongs to this church community. Are the bones of this limb of the Body of Christ dried up? Have we lost hope? God willing, the answer to both those questions, is at least, “O Lord, you know.” Hear again God’s promise: “I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live … then you will know that I, the Lord, have spoken and will act.” Hear again Jesus’ promise to his friends: “When the spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all truth,… he will declare to you the things that are to come.” As surely as God is doing a new thing in the wider church, I believe that God is doing a new thing at St. Peter’s.
Are we open to what God might be doing here? Ezekiel’s vision reminds us that God alone restores life. Our psalm reminds us that God creates and renews all. Can we give up our preoccupation with the church as it was, and begin to consider the church as it might be? Can we begin to see with God’s eyes and seek out those new paths to which God might be calling us, both in the wider church, and at the parish level? Can we pray that, just like the prophet Ezekiel, we too can be instruments of God’s life-giving power, and we too can say to those who are dispirited and who have lost hope, “I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live?” And finally, can we answer with the Psalmist, “I will sing to the Lord as long as I live; I will praise my God while I have my being?”
Sing one more time with me: “Spirit of the living God, fall fresh on me, Spirit of the living God, fall fresh on me; melt me, mold me, fill me, use me; Spirit of the living God, fall fresh on me.” [Sung by congregation.] Spirit of the living God, fall fresh on us.
Did the exiled Israelites who heard Ezekiel’s prophecy believe it? It was the sixth century BC. Ezekiel, a prominent priest and prophet, was in exile in Babylon, along with the king and the elite of his people. Jerusalem and the temple had been destroyed by the Babylonians. Along with his people, Ezekiel was in deep mourning. Episcopalians don’t hear much from the prophecy of Ezekiel. In our three-year lectionary this passage occurs in Lent in Year A, and here as an alternative on Pentecost. Another closely related passage from Ezekiel can be heard at the Easter Vigil. That’s it. But Ezekiel is an unusual, even exciting book. Traditionally one had to be a seasoned scholar to be allowed to read it. Why? Because the book – and I commend it to you for your own reading – is filled with arresting images that turn up again and again in later visionary writing. Blown about and lifted up by the Spirit, Ezekiel begins the book with stunning visions of angels, of wheels within wheels, and of God’s glory. He then goes on to catalogue the many ways in which the Israelites have broken their covenant with God. Finally, in the last third of the book, Ezekiel offers a stunning vision of the renewal and restoration of Israel, and of a return from Babylon that would be nothing short of a second Exodus.
Perhaps drawing on the vision of a bone-littered battlefield, Ezekiel suggests for the first time ever in history that resurrection might be possible. Is Ezekiel talking about physical, bodily resurrection? Probably not. Rather, it is the renewal and restoration of the people of Israel that Ezekiel is describing here. As captives of the Babylonians, deprived of the sacred temple, the people who heard this prophecy had every right to say, “Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are cut off completely.” When God asks Ezekiel, “Can these bones live?” Ezekiel surely thinks, “No way.” But face to face with God, he gives the only – and the truest – answer he can give, “O Lord God, you know.” Only God can make or create new life, so God takes the initiative and orders Ezekiel to prophesy to the dry bones. God tells Ezekiel to call the bones back to life and assure them that bone would join with bone (“Your toe bone connected to your foot bone, your foot bone connected to your ankle bone….”), and that muscles and skin would grow on them.
The Hebrew word ruach means breath, spirit, and wind, all three. So, we have here a wonderful play on words that calls to mind the creation stories of Genesis (“a wind from God swept over the waters” and “then the Lord formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life”). Using this play on words, God further commands Ezekiel to bring the breath from the four winds and “breathe upon these slain, that they may live.” And the newly restored house of Israel clatters to its feet and stands there, “a great multitude,” eager to hear the promises that God offers to the people, to bring them back to the land of Israel, to their own soil, forgiven, restored, and renewed.
Though the prophet uttered the commands, the miracle, of course, was all God’s doing. The agent of the miracle was God’s Spirit. It was a new outpouring of this same spirit that Jesus promised to his disciples on the night before he died. It was a new outpouring of this same spirit, complete with what felt to them like a “rushing wind,” that the gathered disciples experienced on Pentecost. It was the same spirit that equipped them for mission and blew them out into the squares and synagogues of Jerusalem to proclaim new life in Jesus’ name. It was the same spirit that led to the gathering together of the writings we call the New Testament and that has continued to inspire, renew, and empower the community created through the spirit.
Can these bones live? As we look around at the church today, our answer might be the same as that of Ezekiel. We too might want to say, “No way.” However, if God is doing the asking, we just might have the humility to say, “O Lord, you know.” There is no question that we have reason for despair. Although we have tended to see the swelling of church membership in the post-World War II period as the norm, it is more likely that that influx of members was a blip in the long history of the church. Now it is clear that church membership is declining again in North America and Europe. There are fewer and fewer full-time clergy, clergy sexual abuse in parishes and religious orders is coming to light, every level of the church is struggling to make ends meet, parishes are closing, and most members of the current younger generation couldn’t care less about organized religion. They claim to be “spiritual but not religious,” and the vast majority of them claim no religious affiliation whatsoever. Doesn’t Ezekiel’s vision of the valley of the dry bones describe us too? Where is God’s miraculous life-giving spirit?
Perhaps we need to take the long view. Church historians, most recently Phyllis Tickle and Diana Butler Bass, tell us that the church seems to have experienced a major shift about every 500 years. The fifth century saw the beginning of several centuries of a stagnating church, as the Roman Empire declined, classical learning diminished, the eastern and western churches drew apart, and the torch of learning burned feebly in Europe, mostly in monasteries and convents. At the turn of the first millennium the church experienced a renewal of scholarship, mysticism, and devotion. The great cathedrals were built, and many historic religious orders were founded. Five hundred years later the Reformation fractured the western church yet again. But it also engendered a great upsurge in learning, translations of the Bible, and liturgies in the common languages. Ordinary people were able to have more direct and deeper direct access to God. Following the Reformation, in much of Europe, and even in North America until the American Revolution, church and state were tightly intertwined, and religious diversity was rare. Even with the rise of science, secular culture largely supported church membership. Now it is clear that we are entering a new phase of church life and identity. God is doing a new thing, and we are struggling to find new ways of being church. New spiritual groups are arising: intentional communities, storefront churches, street church for the homeless, groups gathering for worship at times other than Sunday morning. We may not know what’s coming next, but we continue to trust God to breathe life into “these slain,” to restore and renew the church that the Spirit birthed on Pentecost.
Can these bones live here at St. Peter’s? Don’t we have some of the same reasons to ask that question about our parish as we do for the wider church? Our congregation is smaller than it was a generation ago, our budget perhaps half of what it was, your priest is half-time, and there isn’t a single twenty-something whom we can say belongs to this church community. Are the bones of this limb of the Body of Christ dried up? Have we lost hope? God willing, the answer to both those questions, is at least, “O Lord, you know.” Hear again God’s promise: “I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live … then you will know that I, the Lord, have spoken and will act.” Hear again Jesus’ promise to his friends: “When the spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all truth,… he will declare to you the things that are to come.” As surely as God is doing a new thing in the wider church, I believe that God is doing a new thing at St. Peter’s.
Are we open to what God might be doing here? Ezekiel’s vision reminds us that God alone restores life. Our psalm reminds us that God creates and renews all. Can we give up our preoccupation with the church as it was, and begin to consider the church as it might be? Can we begin to see with God’s eyes and seek out those new paths to which God might be calling us, both in the wider church, and at the parish level? Can we pray that, just like the prophet Ezekiel, we too can be instruments of God’s life-giving power, and we too can say to those who are dispirited and who have lost hope, “I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live?” And finally, can we answer with the Psalmist, “I will sing to the Lord as long as I live; I will praise my God while I have my being?”
Sing one more time with me: “Spirit of the living God, fall fresh on me, Spirit of the living God, fall fresh on me; melt me, mold me, fill me, use me; Spirit of the living God, fall fresh on me.” [Sung by congregation.] Spirit of the living God, fall fresh on us.
Sunday, June 12, 2011
Blown by the Spirit
Why are you here? What blew you in through the red doors? [Query a few people.] Is it because coming to church is what one does on Sunday? Is it because coming is what God expects of me, and I want to please and serve God? Do you seek weekly nourishment in the Eucharist? Do you hope thereby to become more like Jesus? Do you seek strength for the journey, the sustenance you need to keep going in life? Or are you perhaps looking to satisfy some deeply-felt need for authentic community? What brought you here?
My friends, none of these reasons is why you are here. You are here because the Holy Spirit brought you here. You may even be here against your will. Certainly you have every good reason not to be here, and no longer any social approbation for rousing yourselves and actually getting here. You are here, because the Holy Spirit blew you in through the red doors – for a reason.
Jesus’ disappearance is behind us, we’ve crossed over the threshold, and the Holy Spirit is rampant in the world. But the Holy is wily and changeable, and she has many ways of making herself known. Some of us can really resonate with the violent, life-changing experiences of the disciples in the Book of Acts. We know that in Scripture a powerful wind is often a signal for God’s presence. Remember how Jesus tried to describe the Spirit to Nicodemus? “The wind blows where it chooses,” he said, “and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” For some of us, the Holy Spirit does feel like a great rushing wind, coming into our lives, carrying us along, even pushing us in unexpected directions. We know too that in Scripture fire is also a signal of God’s presence. Remember the Pillar of Fire that followed the Israelites in their journey through the Sinai? When Jeremiah felt so compelled to speak God’s word that he could no longer keep silent, he said that God’s urging felt “like fire in the bones.” And when John Wesley felt himself come alive again spiritually at the Aldersgate meeting, he said his heart “felt strangely warmed.”
To others of us, the Holy Spirit comes as a gentle breath, a quickening and enlivening. Although Elijah had expected God to come in thunder and fire, God spoke to Elijah in a whisper. After Jesus’ resurrection, the disciples in John’s Gospel felt Jesus breathe the Holy Spirit into them. “Breathe on me, breath of God,” says one of our hymns. Gentle, easy, yet life-giving and utterly life-changing. For yet others, the Holy Spirit comes in extraordinary, inexplicable experiences. The fractious members of the Christian community at Corinth suddenly had the ability to speak ecstatically in another language. St. Francis of Assisi heard the crucifix in a country church calling to him. A woman knelt at the altar of a strange church and suddenly knew she was home. A student sang in a church choir, and all his resistance to the workings of the Holy Spirit melted away.
However the Spirit brought you here, as a strong but invisible force, as a gentle tug on the sleeve, or through a moment in your life you still can’t explain, you are here because the Spirit has brought you here. We are all here because the Spirit has brought us here. As Paul told the Corinthians who thought their ability to speak in tongues made them special, “No one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except by the Spirit.” Paul went on to remind the Corinthian Christians that collectively their community possessed many different kinds of gifts, not just that of speaking in tongues, and that all their gifts had come from the same Spirit. Whatever the gifts were, whether they were teaching, administration, preaching, devotion, healing, or working miracles, all these gifts had been given to the community by the Spirit, distributed by the Spirit as the Spirit saw fit. Most important, the Spirit had given these gifts to the Corinthian Christians for a reason: “for the common good,” i.e. to build up the church in that place.
As with the Christian community at Corinth, the Spirit has given the church of our day diverse gifts and talents, all of which the Spirit needs the church to exercise. From a lofty perspective, you might even say that the Spirit has given diverse gifts to the churches. Perhaps the Spirit has intentionally scattered her gifts around. Perhaps every denomination, maybe even every faith community, has diverse God-given gifts and talents, and no denomination or community has all the gifts needed to bring God’s reign nearer. Much as we love the Episcopal Church, perhaps we can learn from Lutherans, or Roman Catholics, or even Baptists and Pentecostals. In the same way, I believe that the Spirit has scattered her gifts around the various parishes in our diocese. All of our parishes have God-given gifts, but perhaps none of them has all the gifts needed to build the kingdom of God. We have a lot to learn from each other. And the Spirit has certainly scattered her gifts here at St. Peter’s. All of us have different God-given gifts that this parish needs, and none of us, whatever our age, station, or life situation, is without gifts. The Spirit has distributed gifts and talents among us all, and the Spirit calls on us to use our gifts.
My friends, there’s kind of a paradox here. The Spirit has not given us these gifts for our own spiritual self-aggrandizement, nor solely to enable us to feel at peace with ourselves, valuable as that may be, or at ease with the world. Strength for the journey, maybe. But, as one writer observed, the real truth is that the Spirit has given us gifts and talents that create problems for us, that, in fact, may make us profoundly uncomfortable. After they stepped over that threshold, there was no going back to the old life for the disciples. In the very last chapter of John’s Gospel, Peter, James, and John tried to return to fishing. Jesus caught up with them, and told Peter to “Feed my sheep.” Celtic Christians still use the image of the wild goose as a symbol for the unfettered Spirit. They know that the Spirit, like a noisy and bothersome wild goose, often shakes us out of our complacency and leads us in unexpected directions.
And so too for us. Having stepped over that same threshold, we know there is no going back to what this parish once was. There is no going back to a life focused solely on ourselves and our own narrow needs. In a recent speech, New York Times columnist David Brooks challenged his listeners to give up our American pre-occupation with self-fulfillment and instead make a “sacred commitment” to service to others. “Most successful young people,” he wrote, “don’t look inside and then plan a life. They look outside and find a problem which summons their life…. They are called by a problem which then helps them create self-identity.” Isn’t that true for us as well? The Spirit calls each of to use our gifts to reach out to people of every language, ethnicity, and social station. The Spirit calls all of us, young or old, women or men, to prophesy. The Spirit calls all of us to use our gifts to bring the reign of God nearer, to partner with God in God’s work, wherever we can discern it. The Spirit calls us to ask, “Who needs us?” and “What can we do with our diverse gifts and talents to share God’s love in this community?”
Most of you know that I like icons. I especially like this one of the descent of the Holy Spirit from the Cathedral of St. Sophia. You remember that icons are not realistic pictures but rather attempts to capture spiritual realities visually. This icon is different from what we might expect such an icon to be, in that it shows the apostles at rest, perhaps being gently bathed by the light touch of the Spirit. Henry Nouwen has written movingly of the way in which this icon reflects the Spirit’s role in creating Christian community, by drawing us into the community of love created by the Holy Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. But two other things strike me about this icon. The first is how different all the apostles are. At first glance, they may look alike. However, if you look closely, you can see that the icon tradition has visibly represented the diversity among them. They are different ages, they are dressed differently, some are bearded and some are not, and their postures differ. In effect, the icon gives us a visual representation of the diversity of gifts among that first apostolic community. Second, and perhaps more important, each figure has in his lap a book or other object. Tranquil as this scene may be, we have the sure sense that the apostles will shortly rise from their chairs to go out to serve the church in the various paths on which they will be led.
We are here, because the Spirit has brought us here. The Spirit has given us all gifts. The Spirit has given us the responsibility to rebuild and revitalize this parish. And so therefore we pray most earnestly, that the Spirit will continue to shower her gifts on us, so that we may continue to bring God’s reign nearer. “Come, Holy Ghost, our souls inspire, and light us with celestial fire. Thou the anointing Spirit art, who dost thy seven-fold gifts impart.”
My friends, none of these reasons is why you are here. You are here because the Holy Spirit brought you here. You may even be here against your will. Certainly you have every good reason not to be here, and no longer any social approbation for rousing yourselves and actually getting here. You are here, because the Holy Spirit blew you in through the red doors – for a reason.
Jesus’ disappearance is behind us, we’ve crossed over the threshold, and the Holy Spirit is rampant in the world. But the Holy is wily and changeable, and she has many ways of making herself known. Some of us can really resonate with the violent, life-changing experiences of the disciples in the Book of Acts. We know that in Scripture a powerful wind is often a signal for God’s presence. Remember how Jesus tried to describe the Spirit to Nicodemus? “The wind blows where it chooses,” he said, “and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” For some of us, the Holy Spirit does feel like a great rushing wind, coming into our lives, carrying us along, even pushing us in unexpected directions. We know too that in Scripture fire is also a signal of God’s presence. Remember the Pillar of Fire that followed the Israelites in their journey through the Sinai? When Jeremiah felt so compelled to speak God’s word that he could no longer keep silent, he said that God’s urging felt “like fire in the bones.” And when John Wesley felt himself come alive again spiritually at the Aldersgate meeting, he said his heart “felt strangely warmed.”
To others of us, the Holy Spirit comes as a gentle breath, a quickening and enlivening. Although Elijah had expected God to come in thunder and fire, God spoke to Elijah in a whisper. After Jesus’ resurrection, the disciples in John’s Gospel felt Jesus breathe the Holy Spirit into them. “Breathe on me, breath of God,” says one of our hymns. Gentle, easy, yet life-giving and utterly life-changing. For yet others, the Holy Spirit comes in extraordinary, inexplicable experiences. The fractious members of the Christian community at Corinth suddenly had the ability to speak ecstatically in another language. St. Francis of Assisi heard the crucifix in a country church calling to him. A woman knelt at the altar of a strange church and suddenly knew she was home. A student sang in a church choir, and all his resistance to the workings of the Holy Spirit melted away.
However the Spirit brought you here, as a strong but invisible force, as a gentle tug on the sleeve, or through a moment in your life you still can’t explain, you are here because the Spirit has brought you here. We are all here because the Spirit has brought us here. As Paul told the Corinthians who thought their ability to speak in tongues made them special, “No one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except by the Spirit.” Paul went on to remind the Corinthian Christians that collectively their community possessed many different kinds of gifts, not just that of speaking in tongues, and that all their gifts had come from the same Spirit. Whatever the gifts were, whether they were teaching, administration, preaching, devotion, healing, or working miracles, all these gifts had been given to the community by the Spirit, distributed by the Spirit as the Spirit saw fit. Most important, the Spirit had given these gifts to the Corinthian Christians for a reason: “for the common good,” i.e. to build up the church in that place.
As with the Christian community at Corinth, the Spirit has given the church of our day diverse gifts and talents, all of which the Spirit needs the church to exercise. From a lofty perspective, you might even say that the Spirit has given diverse gifts to the churches. Perhaps the Spirit has intentionally scattered her gifts around. Perhaps every denomination, maybe even every faith community, has diverse God-given gifts and talents, and no denomination or community has all the gifts needed to bring God’s reign nearer. Much as we love the Episcopal Church, perhaps we can learn from Lutherans, or Roman Catholics, or even Baptists and Pentecostals. In the same way, I believe that the Spirit has scattered her gifts around the various parishes in our diocese. All of our parishes have God-given gifts, but perhaps none of them has all the gifts needed to build the kingdom of God. We have a lot to learn from each other. And the Spirit has certainly scattered her gifts here at St. Peter’s. All of us have different God-given gifts that this parish needs, and none of us, whatever our age, station, or life situation, is without gifts. The Spirit has distributed gifts and talents among us all, and the Spirit calls on us to use our gifts.
My friends, there’s kind of a paradox here. The Spirit has not given us these gifts for our own spiritual self-aggrandizement, nor solely to enable us to feel at peace with ourselves, valuable as that may be, or at ease with the world. Strength for the journey, maybe. But, as one writer observed, the real truth is that the Spirit has given us gifts and talents that create problems for us, that, in fact, may make us profoundly uncomfortable. After they stepped over that threshold, there was no going back to the old life for the disciples. In the very last chapter of John’s Gospel, Peter, James, and John tried to return to fishing. Jesus caught up with them, and told Peter to “Feed my sheep.” Celtic Christians still use the image of the wild goose as a symbol for the unfettered Spirit. They know that the Spirit, like a noisy and bothersome wild goose, often shakes us out of our complacency and leads us in unexpected directions.
And so too for us. Having stepped over that same threshold, we know there is no going back to what this parish once was. There is no going back to a life focused solely on ourselves and our own narrow needs. In a recent speech, New York Times columnist David Brooks challenged his listeners to give up our American pre-occupation with self-fulfillment and instead make a “sacred commitment” to service to others. “Most successful young people,” he wrote, “don’t look inside and then plan a life. They look outside and find a problem which summons their life…. They are called by a problem which then helps them create self-identity.” Isn’t that true for us as well? The Spirit calls each of to use our gifts to reach out to people of every language, ethnicity, and social station. The Spirit calls all of us, young or old, women or men, to prophesy. The Spirit calls all of us to use our gifts to bring the reign of God nearer, to partner with God in God’s work, wherever we can discern it. The Spirit calls us to ask, “Who needs us?” and “What can we do with our diverse gifts and talents to share God’s love in this community?”
Most of you know that I like icons. I especially like this one of the descent of the Holy Spirit from the Cathedral of St. Sophia. You remember that icons are not realistic pictures but rather attempts to capture spiritual realities visually. This icon is different from what we might expect such an icon to be, in that it shows the apostles at rest, perhaps being gently bathed by the light touch of the Spirit. Henry Nouwen has written movingly of the way in which this icon reflects the Spirit’s role in creating Christian community, by drawing us into the community of love created by the Holy Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. But two other things strike me about this icon. The first is how different all the apostles are. At first glance, they may look alike. However, if you look closely, you can see that the icon tradition has visibly represented the diversity among them. They are different ages, they are dressed differently, some are bearded and some are not, and their postures differ. In effect, the icon gives us a visual representation of the diversity of gifts among that first apostolic community. Second, and perhaps more important, each figure has in his lap a book or other object. Tranquil as this scene may be, we have the sure sense that the apostles will shortly rise from their chairs to go out to serve the church in the various paths on which they will be led.
We are here, because the Spirit has brought us here. The Spirit has given us all gifts. The Spirit has given us the responsibility to rebuild and revitalize this parish. And so therefore we pray most earnestly, that the Spirit will continue to shower her gifts on us, so that we may continue to bring God’s reign nearer. “Come, Holy Ghost, our souls inspire, and light us with celestial fire. Thou the anointing Spirit art, who dost thy seven-fold gifts impart.”
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