Sermon for Pentecost Year B RCL 2012
Jesus said to his disciples, "When the Advocate comes,
whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who comes from the
Father, he will testify on my behalf. You also are to testify because you have
been with me from the beginning.
"I did not say these things to you from the beginning,
because I was with you. But, now I am going to him who sent me; yet none of you
asks me, `Where are you going?' But because I have said these things to you,
sorrow has filled your hearts. Nevertheless I tell you the truth: it is to your
advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Advocate will not come
to you; but if I go, I will send him to you. And when he comes, he will prove
the world wrong about sin and righteousness and judgment: about sin, because
they do not believe in me; about righteousness, because I am going to the
Father and you will see me no longer; about judgment, because the ruler of this
world has been condemned.
"I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot
bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the
truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears, and
he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me, because
he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is
mine. For this reason I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to
you."
Come Holy Spirit our souls inspire ,
And lighten with celestial fire! (From Hymn 504)
Today we celebrate the Gift of the Holy Sprit to the Church. The gift of the Holy Spirit to us. But what does that mean? What does it look like? What are we to do with this gift? One writer wrote that the problem with the
gift of the Holy Spirit is that we don’t know what to do with it or really what
it is. He said that it is like
un-wrapping a present and looking in and not being sure what is in the
box. Dr. Thomoas wrote “As you pull off
the ribbon and the wrapping paper, all the eyes in the circle are on you. You
open the box and there it is....
But is it a pencil sharpener or a coffee grinder?
...a scarf or a bread napkin?
... earrings or fishing lures?” (The Rev. Dr. Thomas G. Long What’s the Gift? http://day1.org/3822-whats_the_gift)
For many of us that is how we feel about the gift of the Holy
Spirit. What is it and what are we to do
with it. Perhaps our biggest problem
with God the Holy Spirit is that we cannon contain her. The creative Spirit that we celebrate today
is at the same time disruptive and creates safety (Working preacher.org) SO what are we to do with the gift?
When I read the lessons today I wished we could swap the
reading of John and Acts. Reading John
after reading Acts is someone anticlimactic.
In John Jesus tells us that when he is gone he will send the Advocate to
us.
Now as a side note I have a little problem using a masculine
pronoun to with the Holy Spirit. In many
places in the Bible the creative life giving spirit of God is described using
feminine imagery. So I am going to try and use feminine pronouns when I speak
about the Spirit today.
In our Gospel reading today Jesus promises us that the
spirit will open up to us the things that Jesus wanted to tell us that we are
not ready to hear or to understand. And
this is probably my biggest beef with trying to read the Bible literally and
stopping our interpretation and understanding of God with what is written in
our bibles. I have a problem when we try
to set our understanding of God with only what was revealed in the
scriptures. Especially when we read
today that "I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear
them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, she will guide you into all the
truth; for she will not speak on her own, but will speak whatever she hears,
and she will declare to you the things that are to come. “. Jesus promises us
that God’s revelations are going to continue.
That God will continually try to open our eyes to the truth.
In the story in the book of Acts we read of the Spirit descending
on the Apostles. I love the metaphor of
the spirit settling on the Apostle’s heads like flames of fire. The event however was not a private one. The gift of the Spirit broke open the
self-imposed tomb that the Apostle’s had been living in. It finally got them out of the locked room
and out with the people. It was a disruptive
event. So disruptive that people thought
the Apostle’s were drunk! The neat thing
for me is that even though on one hand the spirit was disruptive it also was
inclusive at the same time. All of the
people – no matter where they were from – could understand the Apostles as
though they were speaking the various native languages. It opened up not just the Apostles but the
people were able to understand as well.
So where do you see the Holy Spirit working today? In many ways I think the Holy Spirit is
aching to make a return performance of the type we heard about proclaimed in
the story of the Dry Bones in Ezekiel.
In many places and in many of our lives there are dry places. Places we think God cannot reach. I believe God is aching to breath her
wonderful creative spirit on all of us especially in our dry places. To release that powerful creative spirit that
has been part of creation from the very birth of creation. At the Bishops conference a few weeks ago one
of the speakers used the story of the Dry Bones as a metaphor for re-imagining
the church. If we can envision God
taking a valley piled high in very dry bones and putting them back together,
sinew on sinew, flesh on flesh, then why can’t we imagine it happening
today? If we can imagine God breathing
the life given spirit into the people of ancient times why can’t we imagine it
today?
Well one reason is that it is scary! We don’t really want to have a bunch of dry
bones reassembled into flesh bearing bodies and re-animated. We would rather, as the old saying goes, let
sleeping dogs lie! But that is not what
we are called to do. God calls us to be
spirit bearers in our world. To open our
hearts, minds and bodies to both recognize the spirit and to let the spirit
work thorough us.
I can tell you it is scary.
One of the most intense experiences I had of the spirit working through
me happened one time when I was writing a sermon. I had spent a week planning a sermon based on
the Gospel reading of the Loaves and Fishes.
I had it all planned out. But the
spirit apparently had other ideas. The
night before I sat down to write my sermon a headline in the Missionary (the
old Diocesan newspaper) grabbed my attention.
It was the story of a young gay man who committed suicide after being bullied. The next morning I sat down still planning to
write the sermon that I had planned.
Instead – in a very short period of time I wrote a very different sermon
– a sermon on the sin of exclusion and bullying. A sermon that told the tale of how words can
and do kill. As I wrote the sermon I
reached out for books and opened them right up to just the right place with
just the right quotes. When I was done I
was exhausted, excited and scared. What
had just happened? I read the sermon and
wondered who wrote it. I feel now that
the Holy Spirit had a hand in opening me up and inspiring me to write that
sermon. It broke open experiences and
emotions that I did not know were there. She breathed life into a pile of dry bones
that needed to be animated. She inspired
me to write about a subject that needed to be heard and still, unfortunately
needs to be heard today.
So on this Pentecost Sunday I invite you to not be too
sentimental about this being the Church’s Birthday. Pentecost is about more that wearing red and
remembering an event of over 2000 years ago.
Yes Pentecost is a time to remember the creative force of God working
through out our history – from the birth of creation through the valley of Dry
Bones and on that first Pentecost Sunday after the Resurrection and Ascension. But more importantly Pentecost is an
invitation to see the working of the Holy Spirit in our own lives. To pray, in the opening words of one of our
Hymns to “ Come Holy Spirit our souls inspire , And lighten with celestial
fire! (From Hymn 504)” And then to put on our seat belts because
once we let the spirit into our lives she is likely to break open things we
would just as soon remain locked away and to lead us on a wonderful wild
ride. A ride that will open us and the world
around us to God’s perfect reign of Love and reconciliation. So get ready.
God is going to breath – breath life into our valley of Dry Bones and it
is going to happen when we least expect it to happen.
Amen.
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