Day of Pentecost

May 27, 2007

Acts 2:1-21

Psalm 104:25-35

Romans 8:14-17

John 14a;8-17

           Good morning, good people of St. George’s  Church, and Happy Birthday.  Happy Birthday on two counts, actually.  As you well know this year marks the 150th birthday of this parish of St. George’s in this community of Lee.  You will be hearing about all the ways we are going to celebrate our birthday at next Sunday’s congregational lunch and meeting.  But today we are also celebrating the birthday of the Church as it was born to us at Pentecost.  The story is a familiar one; we hear it every year on this day of Pentecost, and indeed we need to hear it every year.  Just as we revisit our own birth stories.  Because they are always worth hearing.  Birth stories help us know who we are.  They help us form our identity with a family and in the many communities we belong to.  The Church’s birth story helps us remember who we are as a people of God and as the body of Christ in the world.  Our story of Pentecost helps us to remember how and why the Spirit came to live and move and have her being in us.  And remembering such stories is so important, because it is so easy to forget.

              It is easy to forget that Jesus did not abandon us by his ascension into heaven.  It is easy to forget that Jesus promised that the Spirit would come to us, and just as the father had been in him, he would continue to live in us by the power of the Spirit.  As we move through the church year it is easy to forget that, and that is not a good thing.  Because if we forget that—if the church forgets, or if any one member of the church forgets that the Spirit of God dwells in us, then we find ourselves alone, feeling abandoned, struggling to stay alive, no less to do God’s work in the world by our life and ministry.  We forget that our life depends on more than just the air we breathe to keep us alive.  We also breathe in the life of the Spirit.  It is the same breath Jesus breathed into his disciples and the same breath God breathed into his Church at Pentecost.  And it is the same breath that breathes in us when we are sealed in Baptism by the Holy Spirit.

              I think we would all agree that having breath is a good thing.  Even if it only contains the oxygen which keeps us alive.  But for a practicing Christian, breathing in the Spirit of God is what makes life worth living.  It is what makes the Church worth serving.  But only if we are breathing in the life of the Spirit.  Only if we become aware of its power in us.  And only if we feel the joy in it.  Otherwise, we go through life just breathing in and out.  Trying to get through it without too many difficulties.  Desperately looking for ways to find meaning and enjoyment to help relieve the hum-drum tediousness of our day-to-day existence.  Hoping that we won’t die before we know what it is like to really live.  I am reminded of the story of the little fish swimming with his mother in the ocean.  He asks his mother, “Where is the ocean?”  “It is all around you,” his mother replies.  “It fills your holes so that you can breathe and grow to become the fish you are meant to be.”  But the little fish does not believe her.  So for his whole life he asks all the fish he meets in the ocean the same question.  And for his entire life this little fish does not realize that he has been living in the very ocean which has enabled him to breathe in and out.  But he never finds his life in it.  He never becomes the fish God made him to be. 

            Baptized Christians who live their lives just breathing in and out are just like this fish.  Life just happens to them.  Even their life in the church just happens to them.  They never live into the joy of being the people God created them to be.  Because they are not aware of the Spirit that dwells in them.  They have not experienced the power of the Spirit to transform their lives to be the good and to do the good which can make a difference for good in this world.  But when Christians becomes aware of the Spirit living and moving in them, their whole life changes.  Instead of living in the hum-drum routines of their daily existence, they begin to live a life which are much more animated.  They become actively engaged in their world, and they become confident of the ways God would have them live in it.  Doubt and fear no longer rule their thinking and their actions.  They become people who are positive and hopeful, willing to take risks and able to accept their consequences.   Spirit-filled people no longer live their lives in negative capability.  Even their failures become opportunities.  They do not fear people who are not like them, nor people whose beliefs they do not share.  They find diversity to be a gift of God’s creating his human creatures, and they welcome it.  They find unity in the many things they have in common, and they never allow their unity to divide or to conquer others.  Most important, people living in the power of the Spirit will find each other and they will become the Church.  

            But if the Spirit is to accomplish such good in us, we need to move with her out of our comfortable places so that we can grow by her and she can  and for grow in us.  People who are living and growing in the Spirit will find themselves saying and doing things they never thought were possible.  A popular perception of Episcopalians is that we are not people who like to witness to our faith.  We are not likely to ask someone to come to church with us, nor are we likely to share our love for God or for our church with others, at least in any public way.  I have not found that to be true in my short experience in this church, but I know one thing.  If it were not for the power of the Spirit at Pentecost, we wouldn’t even have a church to attend.  What was true then is still true today.  People who are filled with the Spirit can’t help themselves.  They want to share their love and joy with others.  That is how and why the Church began, and that is the way it will continue to grow. 

            A Jesuit professor of theology at a Catholic university asked his students one day if they thought their faith was worth sharing, even preaching it and teaching it to others.  The wisest answer he heard was this:  “If you love someone or something enough you want to share it.  You can’t wait to tell them of your love.”  The professor concludes from this that perhaps the Church suffers from our lack of love for her, and our lack of love for each other as the body of Christ in the world.  And where does our lack of love come from; it comes from our lack of living and breathing in the Spirit.  Of not realizing that by our baptism, the Holy Spirit took her place in us.  She is living and breathing in us waiting for us to surrender our doubt and fear, our anxiety and our complacency, and any other thing that keeps her from empowering us.  The Spirit wants us to feel the fire in our belly.  The fire of love.  God’s love.  She wants to be set free to do her work in us, so that this church of St. George, and every community of faith on this earth can be the people God made us to be to do the work God gives us to do.

            Some 2000 years ago, God breathed his Spirit into the many and diverse people gathered for their Jewish celebration of Pentecost.  They expressed their love and joy in the many languages they represented.  They couldn’t help it.  It was the power of God that set them free; a mighty wind which blew so hard upon them and into them it moved them to speak in tongues.  But here is the important part.  Everyone began to understand each other and share the experience of the Spirit.  The Spirit of God brought diverse people together to become the Church.  That Spirit moved them out of their comfortable lives and sent them into a fearful and hostile world to proclaim a message of love and hope and possibility for their life.  They formed communities of faith who loved each other despite their differences, and forgave each other even when that was not easy to do.  They called their gatherings churches and as their numbers grew and they became a presence in their communities, people recognized them for living lives strikingly different from their own.  They continued to be so alive in the Spirit that even the most hum-drum and routine work of their life was done in a spirit of love, an attitude joy and a in the hope of thanksgiving. 

            As I prepared this sermon I could not help but think that the day of Pentecost might be compared to the day of a wedding.  It is the day when two people begin a lifetime of living into the love which became apparent by the fire which was growing in them.  But it is the marriage which brings the promises of a wedding to fulfillment.  It is the way two people grow with each other and build a relationship in their day-to-day life with its joys and difficulties.  It is the way two people keep the fire of love alive in they give themselves to each other and to the others in their life which builds communities of love for a common good.  It is no different for the Church.  We might think of the day of Pentecost as the day the Holy Spirit became wedded to the Church.  It is a marriage made in heaven, but its success or failure depends on how we live into this marriage on this earth.     

            In many churches today, Pentecost will be celebrated with fiery songs and prayer, and people will literally speak the gospel lesson simultaneously in their native tongues.  In some churches there will be animated expressions in body language.  And a great outpouring of emotion.  In fact in Pentecostal churches you and can witness such expressions at every worship event.  But how do we live the other six days of the week?  What happens in each of us and for our faith communities tomorrow—and for the rest of our days.  We can be certain that the Spirit is not going to leave us.  And if we feel its lack in the hum-drum routines of our life together; if we lose our ability to live our life in love and hope and joy, in promise and possibility, then we can only be sure of one thing; we have left the Spirit.  We are just breathing in and out—oxygen-filled breath which can never fan the flames of the Spirit which dwells within us.  And when we come to church only breathing the oxygen which gets us here, church is  not much more than just another place to meet each other and pass the time and fill our life with a place to be and something to do on a Sunday morning.  We sing our songs and pray our prayers, and receive the body and blood of Jesus, never knowing the power they have to transform us.  We never experience the ways the Spirit can move us into a life of love and joy and hope and possibility.  We never know life in relationship with others who share that power with us.  We will be people who call ourselves a church, but we will not BE the Church.  Not the Church God brought into being at Pentecost. 

           Today the people of St. George’s and churches everywhere must ask ourselves if we are that church.  Or are we only breathing in and out.  If we are only breathing in and out, then we will not be much different from every other institution which exists in this world for the sake of this world.  And there is no reason why anybody should want to share their life with us here.  We have nothing more to give them than what they can already receive anywhere else.  But practicing Christians know this is not true.  We may fall short of being the Church as it came to us at Pentecost, but we know that only the Church can give what the world cannot give.  But only if we are aware that we have it ourselves.  Only if we are living in the power of the Holy Spirit.  The power which already dwells in us and empowers us to become the Church God meant for us to be at Pentecost.