The Day of Pentecost

Pentecost Sunday – Year C (RCL) 2010
Genesis 11: 1 – 9; Psalm 104; Acts 2: 1 – 21; John 14: 8 – 17 [25 – 27]
St. Stephen’s Episcopal Parish, Portland OR
Sunday, May 23, 2010

HOMETOWN LOCAL VOICES – BIG CITY ETERNAL WORDS

Let us pray: Come Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful and kindle in us the fire of your love. Send forth you’re Spirit, and we shall be created – and you shall renew the face of the earth. O God, who by the light of the Holy Spirit instructs the hearts of the faithful, grant by the light of that same Spirit we may truly wise and ever rejoice in Her consolations, through Christ our Lord. Amen.

(SUNG) SPIRIT OF GOD IN THE CLEAR RUNNING WATER,
BLOWING TO GREATNESS THE TREES ON THE HILL,
SPIRIT OF GOD IN THE FINGER OF MORNING,
FILL THE EARTH, BRING IT TO BIRTH AND BLOW WHERE
YOU WILL. BLOW, BLOW, BLOW TILL I BE BUT BREATH OF
THE SPIRIT BLOWING IN ME.

I was traveling to some un-remembered city for yet another business appointment for the Fortune 500 Corporation in which I was a Human Resources manager. Air travel was an almost weekly requirement for my job and this jaunt to some un-remembered State (I think it was one of the square one’s, they change those around every four years you know and no one knows the difference) was from my home here in Portland where I had been living for about 3 years. As I sped down the airport corridor to meet the taxi at curbside, which would take me into the downtown area for my meeting, I heard two women in a conversational exchange from behind me. The one at a clearly audible level said to the other, “I don’t really have the time, but if you’ll sit down with me and have a cup of coffee we can try and talk it out, just the two of us.” Immediately I was at home, I knew these people, these were “my people” these were people who came from my neck of the woods and though I was living in the cosmopolitan city of Portland, OR I was still deep at my roots a Jersey boy. I’m sure you have all had a similar experience – one where you heard your own language in the midst of a foreign situation or place. Whether that is in another country where you were relieved and thrilled to hear your native tongue being spoken by a store clerk or restaurant server and knew that you could breath just a little easier – or hearing your native “dialect” or “accent” in a part of this country where you would not expect to hear it and instantly feeling a little rush of familiarity and relief. This is something of what those 3000 gathered in Jerusalem on that first Pentecost Sunday experienced and it marked the power of God’s Holy Spirit in their lives and their Church and would change them forever. That same Holy Spirit continues to speak in the myriad of voices in our Church and it has – and will continue to change us forever.

Into the life, mystery and majesty of that Church today we call down God’s Holy Spirit to fill the hearts of each of us who have gathered here to worship and work; to minister as choir or cook – reader or greeter in order to make this place in God’s Kindom at the corner of 13th and Clay a place of healing and prayer for those who are the baptized children of God looking to discover what that God is calling us to do as disciples of the 21st century. What we will do today, as we renew our commitments made in the Holy Sacrament of Baptism, is unchangeable for the remainder of the earthly life of Christ’s Church. The Book of Common Prayer says that the bond, which God establishes with us in Baptism, is indissoluble. The Apostle Paul writes in a letter to the early Christian community at Rome that, “the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable.” What that means for those of us who are less familiar with Church lingo, is that no one – at any time, or for any reason can take away the effects of this sacramental action that we received and remember today and in which we each were indelibly marked as Christ’s own, forever. The Holy Spirit whose coming we recount on this festival day will fill our hearts and minds and souls and claim each of us as a beloved child in whom God is well pleased. That is pretty powerful stuff – So, we take on a deep and important task this day as we remember the coming of God’s Holy Spirit to the first church meetin’ and we welcome the coming of that same Holy Spirit into our Church meeting and vow to support each other as God’s saints sharing in God’s ministry among us. We will renew our own Baptismal Covenants and re- connect with joy the memory of our own baptisms when we entered into covenantal relationship with the God who has loved us since we were formed in our mother’s womb and who has led us into the warm welcome of this faith community where a place has been prepared for us at God’s table and where we as sisters and brothers in the faith say, to each other “welcome home.” I’m particularly struck by the irony of this day of coming of the Holy Spirit that we remember in a renewal of our baptismal promises – that we also hold in prayer and beseech God’s Holy Spirit to be with our brother and Friend John as he nears the end of his journey and receives the promise of that Holy Spirit to take him to that place where the communion of saints joins in that worship and praise that has rung through eternity. Please hold John and his family in your prayers this day and ask that the holy spirit of God might guide him in peace as he nears the end of this piece of his journey in Christ.

(SUNG) FILL THE EARTH, BRING IT
TO BIRTH, AND BLOW WHERE YO WILL. BLOW, BLOW, BLOW
TILL I BE BUT BREATH OF THE SPIRIT BLOWING IN ME.

So what of this “Whitsunday”? What of this festival of Weeks, which we have inherited from our sisters and brothers in the Hebrew tradition and which, we claim as the birthday of the Church? Pentecost translated from the Greek means “fifty” and for the Hebrew people was celebrated as a festival for the harvest. Fifty days were counted from the offering of the barley sheaf at the festival of unleavened bread (or Passover). The book of Leviticus compels the faithful to “count until the day after the seventh Sabbath, fifty days; then you shall present an offering of new grain to the Lord.” The feast became known as the feast of weeks, because the countdown was seven Sabbaths – seven weeks – a week of weeks. Subsequently, fifty days after the 1st Christian Sabbath (the day of the empty tomb and Resurrection) when the disciples were once again gathered in what is presumed to be the familiar “upper room”, a sound like the rush of a violent wind filled the entire house where they were gathered. Divided tongues like the flames of fire, appeared among them and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them the ability. The devout Jews from every nation under heaven were gathered in Jerusalem for the festival and when they heard this sound they assembled – and the story tells us they were bewildered because each of them heard the disciples speaking in their own native language. Comments were made about their questionable level of sobriety – however it was 9:00 in the morning and a devout Jew would yet to have broken fast prior to their morning devotions, much less partaken of the fruit of the vine. Something was up – something very big was up and people were bewildered, confounded, amazed, perplexed and wildly curious about this group of folk from the hick town of Galilee who could suddenly speak, and be understood in all of the languages of then known world. This was the reversal of the curse at Babel, which we heard from the Genesis recounting of that famous story explaining the formation of separate languages for the peoples of the earth. It was now, is seemed, God’s intention to allow humanity the gift of common communication so that the word could be spread to all the faithful from every land.

Then Peter, the same Peter who had a mere seven and a half weeks earlier denied three times that he even knew the Christ – delivers the sermon of his life, calls on the words of the Prophet Joel and interprets them for a new covenant and new vision of God’s saving work in the world. Peter might indeed be the preacher on this first gathering of the Church in Jerusalem – but it is the Holy Spirit with which all of the disciples have been filled – who is the author of that sermon. Joel, in the second chapter of the book which bears his name and his visions says: “Then afterward I will pour out my spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions.” For Joel’s understanding and prophesy “all flesh” meant all Jewish flesh – for Peter (really for the Holy Spirit) “all flesh” meant “all nations of the world” and even Peter at this point in the story is not fully aware of what this vision of God’s Holy Spirit will entail. It is not until the tenth Chapter of this second part of the author of Luke’s Gospel which we call The Acts of the Apostles, that Peter will come to understand that “all flesh” means “all flesh” (no asterisk or footnote that “some restrictions may apply”). It is that radical and inclusive Gospel, which Jesus came to reveal, that challenges us in the Church to this very day. The names of the currently excluded group may change; the circumstances of the “difference” will vary – and the church continues to learn, and learn, and relearn that “all flesh” means “all flesh” and that in the words of our baptismal promises, we “will respect the dignity of every human being.” This promised filling of God’s people with the “paraclete”, the “advocate” who will come as the spirit of all truth is foretold in the Gospel narrative, which we heard in this morning’s reading from the Author of John’s account. This Spirit – this Holy Spirit – will demand much of those who are chosen as disciples of the risen Christ and not merely followers of the historical Jesus. Those of us who have been baptized into the Holy Spirit will have great demands made of us by that Spirit. As one of my seminary Profs told us as the incoming class – “folks, when God calls you God’s not doing you a favor” and there is some truth to that. However, it is also the promise that God’s Holy Spirit will be with us “forever”. It should be evident to us, in this time and place, in this work of welcome and healing to which we are called in God’s Church, that the Holy Spirit is powerfully and plainly in our midst; moving, stretching and exploding the boundaries of Her church by the powerful and prophetic wind which is sweeping through it.

(SUNG) SPIRIT OF GOD EVERYONE’S HEART IS LONELY, WATCHING AND WAITING AND HUNGRY UNTIL; SPIRIT OF GOD WE LONG THAT YOU ONLY, FULFILL THE EARTH BRING IT TO BIRTH,
AND BLOW WHERE YOU WILL. BLOW, BLOW, BLOW TILL I
BE, BUT BREATH OF YOUR SPIRIT BLOWING IN ME.

So we have emblazoned the Church in deep shades of fiery red, as we mark this festal day and in recognition of the two thousand and tenth birthday of this body which we call the Church. It is fitting that we do this and that in so doing that we renew our promises and recall that moment when we promised or it was promised for us and we became members of Christ’s church becoming Christ’s body. This is another of our “festival days” and we mark it as special and blessed. Unlike the festival day that we celebrated fifty days ago, we don’t have to add any chairs to accommodate the hoards of people clamoring to sing happy birthday to the church – or the festival day that we celebrated five months ago when we gathered to say happy birthday to Jesus in the stable at Bethlehem. This festival day, though, is no less significant or important to our lives as the gathered community of faithful followers of the Risen One who has sent us the gift of the Spirit to prod and to push us; to guard and to guide us; to beckon and to blow us into the breath of the Spirit which will renew the face of the Earth.

Amen.