Sermon of Pentecost, 27 May 2007
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Readings: Acts 2:1-21, Psalm 104:25-35, 37, Romans 8:14-17, John 14:8-17, (25-27)


The story of Pentecost is one of our best known stories from throughout the church year. The tongues of fire dancing over each of the disciples’ heads is one of the images I remember most clearly from my childhood along with baby Jesus in the manger, Jesus walking on water, the crown of thorns, and the empty tomb.

As the most straightforward example we have in Scripture of the Holy Spirit’s presence with human kind, this story needs little in the way of explanation; but as one of the most profound examples in scripture of God doing a new thing, Pentecost is one of the most important opportunities we have in the church year to really take a deep look at our own present day chapter in salvation history – beginning with the coming of the Holy Spirit that Christ promised to us all.

Most of you by now have heard me say at some point that the disciples just didn’t get what Christ was about, what he was doing in the world, and what he was calling them to do as his followers. They were hard-headed and hard-hearted about who and what Jesus was supposed to be and do; they sought to arrange themselves into a political hierarchy that would define their positions of power once Jesus took David’s throne in Jerusalem; they sought to stay on mountaintops and when the deep valley of death finally came, they turned tail and ran away. After Christ’s death and even after his resurrection, they disbanded and headed back to their former ways of life. Finally realizing that Christ was indeed risen, and being told specifically by Christ to go back to Jerusalem to await the coming of the Holy Spirit, the disciples watched him ascend out of their sight into the heavens.

Today it is my profound joy to finally get to say that the disciples GET IT.

Gathered together in a single house, the disciples all sat together, likely chatting about old times or about the addition of Matthias to take Judas’ place as the new twelfth disciple. Suddenly there is such a loud rush of wind that people all over Jerusalem rush to find the source of the cacophonous sound to find out what has happened. Meanwhile, the disciples are at the epicenter of chaos. Wind howls through the house, filling their sitting room with a breathtaking force. From the midst of the gale fire erupts, dividing into tongues which come to rest atop each of the assembled disciples’ heads. And then… silence. Filled with awesome wonder, each of the disciples begins to speak, only to find that they each speak as if with a new tongue.

The gathering throngs, eager to find what has happened arrive to find the disciples speaking about the wonders of God’s awesome deeds of power and about God’s kingdom. What is most astonishing, however, is that each hears the disciples as if speaking in their own native tongue.

Peter, with his head as hard as stone throughout Christ’s ministry on earth, finally becomes the Rock that Christ named him for and speaks to the gathered crowd with insight, understanding, eloquence, and power – claiming his place as the leader of the early Church.

This is the Holy Spirit.

So often throughout the history of the Church we have found ourselves clinging to simpler, more containable descriptions of the Holy Spirit. The form of the dove is one that has the time honored stamp of tradition in paintings, sculpture, education, and story – a beautiful and yet tamed image for the third person of the trinity. The Holy Spirit of today’s readings, however, is anything but tame: the rush of a violent wind, filling the house and dancing in tongues of fire over its recipients who find themselves profoundly changed forever. The disciples could no longer sit on the sidelines, hiding behind Christ or hiding behind closed doors after his departure. In that moment, they became more than they had ever been, and more than they could ever have hoped to be.

In many ways, the power of the Holy Spirit can be frightening. The idea that God might just blow into our living room someday and upheave everything we know and find comfortable – leaving us changed forever – is not a comforting thought for many of us. And so we reach for the one image of the Holy Spirit that we can handle – the dove. The sign of peace, the sign of the end of the great flood, the sign that God sent to descend on Christ at his baptism. How quickly we forget that it was the same spirit that drove him into the wilderness for forty days immediately thereafter.

So what is the Holy Spirit if it can’t simply be defined as a Sweet Heavenly Dove, or even simply as wind or fire? Defined, as I believe the trinity must be, in terms of relationships, I think of the Holy Spirit as that which provides volition to God’s will and that which provides breath to drive God’s word. In Greek, a feminine word couplet “hagia pneumati” translated into English as the “Holy Spirit” literally translates to Holy or Sacred Breath. The Holy Spirit was God’s breath or wind that moved over the waters of chaos at the time of Creation. The breath of life breathed into Adam and Eve and into the Dry Bones of Ezekiel’s vision, the same breath that returned to Jesus’ body on Easter morning. She is the Spirit of prophecy that came to God’s chosen prophets in the Old Testament and, except for during Jesus’ lifetime on earth, She is God’s means of interacting with, through, and in human kind, suffusing creation with the awesome, life-changing power of God. While the Holy Spirit could be defined in countless other ways, "tame," "safe," and "docile" would not likely make the list.

As Christ promised before his death, again after his resurrection, and again at his ascension, the Holy Spirit is also, for us, the continuation of God’s salvation history amongst us in the present day.

Each of us blessed with faith has been touched by some manifestation of God in our lives, bringing us personally into this ancient and yet continually renewed history of God working very personally in and through the lives of individual people.

I was first invited to examine my faith by The Rev. Guitarman, a man who has become a dear friend and an incredible mentor to me. During my early phase of coming into the Episcopal Church as a teen, Guitarman encouraged me to become involved in the parish life at MyOldChurch in Thetownwhereitis where as many of you remember, I was tricked into attending youth group by my best friend, Grasshopper. After getting hooked on Youth Group, I started attending services and soon began looking for ways in which I could serve in the parish community. Sensing a divine opportunity to draw me further into the Church, Guitarman trained me as an acolyte, which quickly turned into me training others as acolytes, and then when I graduated high school he invited me to begin helping to lead youth group…

To make a long story short, I ended up helping to teach a confirmation class, for which Guitarman asked me to write a talk on Faith to present to the youth for our Confirmation class retreat.

It was the first opportunity I had at that point in my life to really sit and reflect on my faith and where it had come from. In retrospect, I could see that at each of the myriad crossroads I’ve encountered in my life, God was there to provide just the right person at just the right moment – almost as a signpost – to guide me in the right direction.

I have felt claimed in a very personal way by God since the time I was a very young child. At two-and-a-half, I had my first near death experience when a strep bacterium infected my right cheek. I had tripped over my cousin’s foot at my grandmother’s house and had hit my face on the corner of her oak framed television. The opening in my cheek was microscopic and after a few tears, the moment was forgotten. Within a few days, however, my cheek had turned black and blue, and had swelled so much that it swelled my eye shut. I was rushed to the hospital, where I was refused care by a medical staff that believed I was the victim of child abuse. At some point in the next few days, still awaiting care and with a life-threatening fever, I woke up in my mother’s arms, looked into her eyes and said, “Garnabus is going away now,” and promptly slipped into unconsciousness. Under what I can only imagine involved threats of malpractice, I promptly received medical attention and was scheduled for surgery for after my condition stabilized. However, when released for a night at home before the surgery a few days later, my family stopped off at a park to get me some fresh air and a stranger’s dog jumped up and scratched my face from about the corner of my eye to the middle of my infected cheek. Our own family dog, next stepped on my face in the back seat of the car, continuing the same scratch to the middle of the infected area. My cheek spontaneously drained itself and I never required the surgery that would have left a sizable scar on my face. What I have in its place is a dimple on my right cheek. – It’s been a family story ever since that God used these two dogs to perform a fairly miraculous surgery on my face.

Whatever the cause, it was a short two and a half years later, at age five, that I first articulated my desire to my parents to become a priest when I grew up.

Other signposts have come in the form of my best friend Grasshopper, who brought me to the Episcopal Church, The Rev. Guitarman asking me to write that Faith Talk in which I learned so much about where my faith had come from, and also found profound healing in my relationship with my Dad, the Happening youth retreat in which I truly experienced the movement of the Holy Spirit in a very close and personal way that profoundly changed my life and convicted me of my childhood call to the priesthood.

Again, a dear friend in 1993 convinced me that it was time to admit that “paying off my bills” could no longer be an excuse for not re-enrolling in college. She also encouraged me to become more involved in the leadership of diocesan youth ministry where at a youth minister’s retreat the following year, I spoke with an energetic young priest about my calling and, with his help, started a calling support group that has resulted in the ordination of four of our original members and the enrolling of a fifth in seminary starting last year. Of course, this also led to my staffing the Happening at which I met Fuego, introduced me to diocesan leadership that hired me in 2001 and ultimately led to my being reunited with Fuego at summer camp where we fell in love – which involved another major crossroad in my life leading to our marriage, seminary, and my eventually coming home here to St. ECWIW’s.

Looking back, it is easy to see where the Holy Spirit has profoundly touched my life in so many ways and in so many places, such that, like the disciples, I found that I could no longer sit on the sidelines, hiding behind a faceless God or hiding behind my own limitations. Each of us has our own story, our own personal salvation history in our developing and ongoing relationship with God. For Peter it involved denying Christ only to be confronted with the powerful and painful affirmations that strengthened his resolve to the point that, with the coming of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost, he could take his place as the leader of the early church. For Paul it involved a blinding encounter on the road to Damascus that shattered his previous life and set him a completely opposite course.

On this day of Pentecost, we are reminded that God has been and continues to be an active part of our personal and individual lives, and we are called to look back on that history with a profound new understanding that, through the Holy Spirit, God has been calling us to our own works of power in the world. Calling us to become more than we have ever been, and more than we could ever hope to be.

This is the Holy Spirit that the disciples encountered on Pentecost – a whirlwind of God’s breath and holy fire that baptized them with the strength, the wisdom, and the power to carry on Christ’s ministry in the world.

And this is the legacy left to us, who through Christ are baptized into the continuing family of God’s children who invite God into our lives and invite God’s Spirit to change us forever.

Paul describes the ongoing work of the Spirit as the Gifts or Fruits of the Spirit, some of which – particularly healing, pastoral care, teaching, faith, leading, and showing mercy, we celebrate right here at St. ECWIW’s today in the commissioning of our new Stephen Ministers. As a powerful example of Christ’s love and the indwelling of the Spirit, StephenMinister1, StephenMinister2, StephenMinister3, and StephenMinister4 have undergone over fifty hours of training in preparation for this ministry, which represents just one of the many Spirit filled ministries offered, led, created, and gifted by the members of our parish. In honoring their commitment this day, we honor four more lives that have been changed forever by their willingness to open their hearts to the Spirit of God that suffuses us and all of creation.

Where do you hear God's life altering winds of change blowing in your life?