RCL Year C - Pentecost - May 19, 2013

The Rev. Kenneth H. Saunders III
Trinity Episcopal Church
Towson, MD

RCL Year C - Pentecost - May 19, 2013

Acts 2:1-21
Genesis 11:1-9
Psalm 104:25-35, 37
Romans 8:14-17
John 14:8-17, (25-27)

 

Come Holy Spirit, our souls inspire, enlighten us with your celestial fire!  The Holy Spirit – the 3^rd person of the God Head, the Paraclete or comforter, the Ruach Elohim, or the mighty breath of God.  The mighty Wind that moved over the waters of the deep in the beginning of creation, that moved over the masses in the city of Jerusalem, and still moves today among God’s gathered people…

The disciples where all gathered there in one place and at once the Holy Spirit came upon them, divided tongues as of fire appeared on each of them and they begin to speak in different languages...  Different Languages to the gathered assembly, and the whole crowd heard the word of God in their own native language.

On the Feast of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit came down and ignited the apostolic flame and it spreads like a wildfire – out of control…  so out of control that the people were able to understand the words that the apostles were speaking about the power of God…  And they understood the message, each in their own language.

What an incredible and confusing site that must have been. 

So confusing that some even accused them of having too much to drink.  Peter perks up (not one of his most brightest moments) and comes to their defense, telling them that it is only 9 o’clock in the morning and that the prophecy of Joel has come true… That the Spirit of the Living God had been poured out on all flesh and was alive right there in that place and was witnessed by all of Jerusalem.

The church is gathered now, 2000 years later and the Spirit of God continues to pour out upon all flesh…  bestowing upon us the gifts of wisdom and reason, judgment and strength, knowledge and reverence and a wonder filled with awe. 

And what I ask is, do we recognize it?  And when we do think we recognize it, what are we doing with it??  God is alive right here, present with us and the spirit is being poured out… and how do we respond?

At the 9am service, with the kids, I decided to teach them about the Holy Spirit with a pin-wheel.  A pin-wheel was one of my favorite toys as a kid.  I used to make them and I could sit there and blow on it for hours.  In fact, since these came into the office, I haven’t stopped playing with them.  So now you’re saying, “ok Ken – how did you use a pinwheel to teach about the Holy Spirit.” - Hold on, I’m getting there…   

I call this message the Parable of the Pinwheel:

Well, the scripture tells us that the Holy Spirit is the Ruach Elohim – the mighty breath of God… the rushing wind…  that same wind moved over the deep in the beginning of creation, and that same wind was the one that the disciples experienced in today’s reading from acts…  The thing is – you can’t see wind… it’s invisible. 

You can only see reactions to the wind.  Stuff blowing around, or this pinwheel…  that when then wind blows it and the pinwheel is in the right position, ready to receive and respond to the wind, it spins…  and spins and spins, and spins… 

However, then it is against the wind, it doesn’t spin so good… 

That’s what I taught about the spirit.  When we are ready, and positioned open, ready for the spirit, then the spirit can use us to produce good things…  The spirit can drive our energy and empower us to reach out and help others and so we can do what we are meant to do…   and then we can spin and spin and spin…   but if we are not open, and we have our backs toward God, then the Holy Spirit can’t do its work though us, it can’t give us the energy that we need in order to function properly. 

When we are turned away, we don’t spin so good… 

It’s all about orientation and direction…  and about us being open and ready to receive the Holy Spirit so that the Spirit of God can work in our life, to empower us with courage, wonder, wisdom and reverence.

The disciples were still in Jerusalem, and they were starting to come out of hiding.    After all, it had been 50 days since Jesus’ first appearance of being alive after a horrible death…  and it was 7 days after the disciples saw Jesus raised into the heavens.  They remembered Jesus’ promise…  His promise that they would not be alone, that He would send them a comforter and protector. And when the disciples were there that day, they experienced it – and it gave them the wisdom and power to communicate the power of God to everyone there in Jerusalem.

I want to throw in a fun fact to know and tell:  you know that funny looking hat that the bishop wears, called a miter?  It is made that way on purpose – made to look like a tongue.  A great tongue of fire sitting on his/her head, like the tongues of fire that landed on the heads of the first apostles on Pentecost.  It is a symbol of that apostolic flame that continues to burn throughout the church. 

See, every bishop in the Episcopal Church is ordained in what they call apostolic succession where you can trace the lineage of ordination (even the bishop that ordained me) back to the original apostles.  This is done by 3 apostolic bishops (or more) laying hands at ordination on the newly ordained bishop…  thus conveying orders all the way back to the original followers of Jesus…  kind of like a 2000 year old game of tag… 

At a bishop’s ordination, the bishop accepts a responsibility to bear the apostolic witness to the faith and guard the unity of the church… that unity and oneness that I spoke about last week.  (if you missed it, you can get it on-line).  See, all of this stuff all ties together…

At Pentecost, the Spirit of God comes down upon the disciples, resting on each of them and thereby bringing them, and us, all together once again.  The disciples got a crash course that day in the language of God.

As the Spirit used the speech of the disciples on Pentecost to reshape and redirect the lives of those who listened to their words, so that same Spirit on this Day reshapes, remolds, and move us…   But ONLY if we are willing turn, and listen, and be open.  After all, God speaks to us all the time in the one true word that ends our fears and brings us everlasting peace — the Word-Made-Flesh, Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

RCL Year C (Pentecost) - May 23, 2010

The Rev'd Kenneth H. Saunders III
Christ Church
Cleveland, NC

RCL Year C (Pentecost) - May 23, 2010

Acts 2:1-21 or Genesis 11:1-9
Psalm 104:25-35, 37
Romans 8:14-17 or Acts 2:1-21
John 14:8-17, (25-27)

It is the custom at many churches on the Day of Pentecost to arrange for a simultaneous reading of one or the other of today’s Scripture lessons in multiple languages. Of course, this is dependant upon the different linguistic skills of the members of the parish community… Like today, for example, we heard Acts 2:1-7 read aloud in English, Spanish, French, Latin, and German…

While most of us trust our High School and college experience, sometimes communities are actually diverse enough to have folks who can read and speak the scripture in their native tongue… The idea of course is to remind everyone that today is the Day of Pentecost, When people “from every nation under heaven” heard the disciples proclaim the Good News “in the native language of each,”

The only problem with the idea is that the net effect is sometimes more one of Babel than of Pentecost. You remember the Tower of Babel from the Book of Genesis: the story of humankind’s pride in trying to reach the heavens on its own power and of God’s response which left the entire world tongue-tied.

Ever since then understanding and cooperation have been hard to come by. Our world today is still tongue-tied… What CAN be misunderstood WILL and usually IS misunderstood. But Babel, the parable of the first clash of cultures and failure to communicate, is more than a mythic explanation of the differences among nations and languages. It is an accurate description of the human condition itself…

We often do not understand one another even when we speak in the same language. We all remain obstructed by our fundamental inability to accept the differences among us in how we live and in what we think and even how and what we believe.

But is it really God who has scattered us? Is it God who has made us aliens in our own land and sometimes in our own minds? Is it really the Lord who has confused our speech and turned us deaf to each other? Or is our Babel today perhaps the result of how humanity forgot the grammar of grace and the vocabulary of God?

At Babel, the people in their pride built a tower to reach God and the heavens, and the Lord scattered them. “This is only the beginning of what they will do,” predicted God in the judgment of human sin and conceit. Sadly, the people didn’t understand how unnecessary it all was. As one scholar has pointed out, God is always more willing to come down and join us here on earth than we are able to reach the heavens by our own enterprise and effort.

At Pentecost, the Spirit of God comes down upon the disciples, resting on each of them and thereby bringing them, and us, all together once again. The disciples got a crash course in the language of God. It might probably be fair to say that after Pentecost the days of Babel should be over.

The great differences among us, in communication and dialogue, in culture, sexuality, race and background, in wealth and poverty, are scattered in “the rush of a violent wind.”
As Acts tells us, the differences are burned away by tongues of fire. It does not matter NOW whether we are the Parthians and Medes of yester year, or Americans, Europeans, Africans or even Iraqis of today. Well, that is what is supposed to have happened at Pentecost.

So, how come we still fail to understand each other today? Why doesn’t everyone speak the same language? Or at least understand the world in the same way? Is the promise of Pentecost hollow and without meaning? These are all good questions.

But what happened at Pentecost IS important to who we are as followers of Christ, and the reality of Pentecost is universal for everyone. When the disciples spoke, they didn’t just speak to believers but to the peoples of the whole known world, and when they spoke, they were understood in a multitude of languages.

There is no question that what they said made sense to everyone. What they spoke was no doubt the language of peace as they had learned it from our Lord Jesus Christ himself. “Peace be with you,” he said to the disciples, as we read in today’s Gospel lesson.

These are words that can be understood by everyone. this is even how, 99.95% of the world greets each other… They greet each other with an exchange of peace: Shalom, La Paz, La Pache. Specifically, in Hebrew culture, they greeted each other with Shalom, wishing the other person completeness in God.

Perhaps the greatest phenomenon of Pentecost is that all the peoples gathered at Jerusalem on that day heard the disciples - amid the buzz of the city and even the hustle and bustle of their own lives. Everyone heard them… and each person there understood the Good News of the salvation of Jesus Christ not only in Hebrew and Greek, which were the common languages of that time and place, but in the language of the human heart. The language of God… The language of the one true and universal peace and completeness.

Now (as it was then), all nations and peoples yearn to hear words of forgiveness and peace. But we live in a world that doesn’t like to listen. Too often we hear what we want to hear and simply call it the voice of God.

So if our lives and our world are more full of babble than Bible, perhaps it is because we are not taking the time to learn and discern or stop and listen. We have not learned the language of God given to us by the Holy Spirit. Yes - We pay lip service with a few words, and speak God-talk here and there and perhaps even say our prayers together as a family or even go to church on Sunday.

But it is not the vernacular of our everyday conversations. All this God-talk or language about God is only an approximation to the actual reality of God, because we know that our human language cannot fully comprehend the divine mysteries.

No one human being today owns the truth. No one owns God. No one owns the church – No one owns THIS church, nor can they put God in a box or even a book... God is so much more than we can comprehend…

But I promise you… the more we listen, the closer we come to God. And the closer we come to God, the more there is to hear and understand of “God’s deeds of power” and God’s great love for us. And then, just when we finally think we may have all this God business figured out, God surprises us yet again and challenges us to delve deeper to love those we cannot possibly love and to forgive what we would consider unforgivable.

Paul tells us from his First Letter to the Church in Corinth, “There are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit. And there are varieties of service, but the same Lord. And there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone.”
The Spirit, even though it is one with the Father and the Son, can never be bottled or canned. The Spirit is at work in each of us, always fresh and always new, It is the language of God waiting to be translated into the language of our own lives.

It is only in the extent of the effort we make to accept the other, to welcome and embrace the stranger no matter how different or foreign. It is then and only then that we come to understand the language of God. Then and only then is our Babel turned to Pentecost.
As the Spirit used the speech of the disciples on Pentecost to reshape and redirect the lives of those who listened to their words, so the Spirit on this Day reshapes and remolds us… But ONLY if we are willing to listen.

After all, God speaks to us all the time in the one true word that ends fear and brings everlasting peace — the Word-Made-Flesh, Our Lord Jesus Christ.

Portions of this sermon were inspired by The Rev. Dr. Frank Hegedus, a priest of the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles.