Sermon for Pentecost Sunday
(RCL Year C)
2016
Acts 2:1-21
Romans
8:14-17
Psalm 104:25-35, 37
John 14:8-17, (25-27)
Philip said to Jesus,
"Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied." Jesus said to
him, "Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not
know me? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, `Show us the
Father'? Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me?
The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own; but the Father who dwells
in me does his works. Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in
me; but if you do not, then believe me because of the works themselves. Very
truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do
and, in fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going to the
Father. I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be
glorified in the Son. If in my name you ask me for anything, I will do it.
"If you love me, you
will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you
another Advocate, to be with you forever. This is the Spirit of truth, whom the
world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him,
because he abides with you, and he will be in you."
["I have said these
things to you while I am still with you. But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit,
whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you
of all that I have said to you. Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you.
I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled,
and do not let them be afraid."]
Today is a
wonderful festival in the church. A
festival that commemorates the gift of the Holy Spirit in our lives. It is also a Sunday that I would love to
rearrange the order of our lessons and start with the Gospel and end with the
Reading from the Acts of the Apostles And then perhaps Romans.
The Gospel reading today from John is part of
what is referred to as the “farewell Discourse”. It takes place in the Gospel just before
Jesus is betrayed and arrested. In it
Jesus is telling the disciples that he is going away. And we have Phillip wonderfully still not
getting it. After all this time Philip
want Jesus to “show us the father.” Philip
still does not get it. And as we
struggle with who is God we probably have similar thoughts, questions and
requests running through our thoughts as well.
How many of
us wonder where God is in various situations.
In this crazy world filled with people worrying about what bathroom
someone uses – and insisting that a transgendered person use the bathroom of
the sex on their birth certificate is insane.
What are we going to do insist that people start carrying around their
birth certificates and show them to the bathroom police before they are allowed
to enter? Don’t we have more pressing
things to worry about? How about ending
homelessness and hunger? What about
taking care of our veterans? We do well to ask where God is in these situations.
So in
response to Philips request Jesus tries again to explain that he and the Father
are one and there is more. That while
Jesus is leaving them to go back to the Father in his place he is sending an
advocate. The companion. The faithful spirit of God. That member of the Holy Trinity that hovered
over the waters at the time of creation.
She is coming to be with the disciples after Jesus is gone. She is coming to be with us!
And that is
where we pick up with our reading form the Acts of the Apostles. After Jesus’ resurrection the disciples seem
to spend much of their time locked away in fear. They have occasionally left the locked room
to go fishing. Or to try and return to
their previous lives but they still have not gotten out to do what Jesus asked
them to do. They are not out making
disciples and baptizing people. They are
afraid that they are going to be next in line for the Romans to kill.
And suddenly –
while they are locked away the Holy Spirit enters into the room and enters into
them. I love some of the iconography of
this feast that depicts each of the disciples with a flame dancing on their
heads. And that same Holy Spirit that
descended on Jesus at his Baptism drives them out of the locked room. Just a she drove Jesus out into the
wilderness after his baptism. They were
driven out and started speaking of Jesus in many tongues so that people from
different lands could understand.
This festival
of Pentecost that we celebrate as the coming of the Holy Spirit is also a
Jewish Festival. It is one of three
important times when Jews gather and give thanks. It is the festival of first fruits. It is a time when many people would be
gathered in Jerusalem to give thanks for the first fruits. All of these people are in town so the Roman
authorities would have been on edge. So
it would be a dangerous time to start preaching about someone who only 50 days
earlier had been crucified.
But that is
exactly what happens. The Holy Spirit
picks a time when the streets are packed with pilgrims to drive the Disciples
out of their locked room. And to make
sure that every one can understand their message they speak in many
tongues. It is such a spectacle that
some people think that they are drunk!
And perhaps they are – drunk on the Holy Sprit of God who is opening
their hearts and minds to the knowledge of God’s dream of Love and Peace.
It is then
that Peter tries to explain what is happening and quotes from the prophet
Joel. Lets listen to part of the quote
from the prophet Joel.
The gift
of the Holy Spirit includes something scary.
It is the gift of Prophesy as well. Peter has realized that this gift of
the Holy Spirit includes the gift of prophesy.
A command to tell truth to power.
A call to stand up to the bullies of the world that would make second,
third or even fourth class citizens of people who are not in power. We see it all over the world. In our election season candidates belittle
their competitors. They drive their rhetoric
to extremes to supposedly draw people into their camps. It is crazy and this year seems to be about
the craziest political season I have witnessed in my lifetime.
But we are
called to act differently. We are called
to show God’s love to everyone. All of
us are filled with the Holy Spirit.
Young and old, men and women.
Slaves and free. People like us and people not like us. We are all given the gift of the Holy Spirit
at our baptisms. And when we receive
that gift we are called to get out of our locked rooms and to work to bring God’s
dream to fruition. A dream of a creation
where love prevails and where we are good stewards of the environment – this
fragile earth our island home.
We always
try to tame this festival. I have seen
churches that decorate with red balloons and churches that read either the
gospel reading or the reading from Acts in many languages. We even have been known to call it the
churches birthday. But I will tell you
something. The Holy Spirit will not be
tamed. And I can tell you from personal
experience that she does not take no for an answer. She will pursue each and everyone of us to do
the work we are called to do. She
certainly has been pursuing me for many years.
Today is also
the liturgical anniversary of me celebrating my first Mass as a priest. I was ordained on the eve of Pentecost last
year. The end of one journey – the
journey towards ordination and the beginning of another journey. At my ordination Dr. Susanna Singer – my
advisor from seminary – preached a sermon about the Holy Spirit. In her sermon she reminded us that it is at
our own peril that we invite the Holy Spirit into our lives.
In her
sermon Dr. Singer said: “I think the novelist and poet Annie Dillard got it
right when she said:
“On the whole, I do not find
Christians sufficiently sensible of conditions. Does anyone have the foggiest
idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? The churches are children
playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to
kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats
to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life
preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping
god may wake someday and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to
where we can never return.”
When we
accept the gift of the Holy Spirit – which is given to all of us at our
baptisms we should also be given crash helmets.
Because the spirit of truth, the advocate will not rest until God’s
dream comes to fruition. She will
continue to call us out to teach, feed, and love all of God’s creation. She will draw us out of our churches to be
prophets against anything that separates creation from the Love of God.
So don’t
take this festival of the Holy Spirit lightly.
The Spirit of creation is nothing if not persistent. She will call you out of your locked
room. No matter how many times to shut
and lock the door she will be with you. Driving you out of the locked
room. Driving each and every person to
use their God given gifts to usher in God’s Dream. She will drive each and every one of us
out. Out into the world to
bring God’s dream of
Love and Peace to our hurting and hurt filled world.
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