Being Made New: Sermon for Pentecost Sunday, 2023

Descent of the Spirit, Ivanka Demchuk (Ukrainian), 2022. Used by Permission.

Today is a day of creation.

In our readings we just heard, we were taken from the very first beginnings of this precious Earth upon which we all depend, filled with marvels great and small; to Peter’s recounting of God’s love for God’s people throughout history to Easter Sunday to fifty days later, to the Day of Pentecost—and imaginatively, to today.

It’s the birthday of the Church—and we are the ones who have been given the presents. Yet this may be a present that at first glance we are not sure we really like. In the film, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Ferris complains that his parents, rather than giving him a car, gave him a computer. Never mind that that gift of a computer allows him to take his “day off” from school—and even erase the evidence from the records at school. Like teenagers everywhere, he equates what he doesn’t have with freedom.

Perhaps that is how many of us feel about our relationship with the Holy Spirit. It’s the part of the Trinity that lots of us most want to hold at arms’-length. Flames of fire popping out over our heads like we’re Bunsen burners? The way she seizes control of people by the hairs of their head and drives them out into the wilderness or into the streets speaking a whole new language? We are post-modern people, and if there is one thing that is true about most of us, it’s that we want to be in charge of our own lives. Mmmm, not sure about all this.

But today is the day we remember that without the Holy Spirit, there would be no Church. There would be no fellowship. There would be no communion. Without the Holy Spirit, all we would know of the life of faith would be in the words in a dusty library of books written by people who thought the world was flat, claimed that there was really only one gender that mattered and that women were at best defective males, and would have reacted to the fact that we can carry access to libraries greater than the library at Alexandria around in our pockets and to our loved ones voices even when they’re thousands of miles away probably with an accusation that we were practicing witchcraft, which never ends well for those accused, my friends. You can look it up.

The Holy Spirit has been there all along, as our psalm today reminds us. And without spoiling next week’s Trinity Sunday sermon too much, our psalm portion today reminds us that the Holy Spirit contains the playful creativity and imagination of God, even if it’s the part that is the hardest to depict without resorting to drawing floating, curly red flames over noggins or pretty white doves, which seems altogether too meek and mild to describe something that also creates mountains just so they can smoke when touched by God’s hand. Maybe the Scots have it right when they at least depict the Holy Spirit as a wild goose, because if you have ever encountered one of those defending its nest while out on a walk, you know what it’s like to meet something that hisses like a viper and charges with the ferocity of Godzilla or Gamera or some other Japanese monster movie character.

So what exactly does the Holy Spirit do within God that helps us?

First, she gives us the courage and the inspiration to put to embody the very best of our natures—the things Jesus came to teach us, the Holy Spirit takes and sets on fire within our souls. All the best of humanity as implanted into us at our creation: our courage to selflessly lay down our lives for others like that our Memorial Day holiday tomorrow also enshrines.

And we need that courage and sense of community. With Jesus’s rising and then ascension we are assured we will never be alone. And with the gift of the Holy Spirit, that promise is brought to fulfilment—even when things seem the bleakest. And so as we meditate upon what it means to welcome the Holy Spirit into our lives, I ask that you take a look at the beautiful icon on the cover of our bulletin. It is by a Ukrainian iconographer named Ivanka Demchuk.

Ms. Demchuk was born in 1990 in Lviv, Ukraine, which is a city on the far western border of Ukraine-- a city that has been batted back and forth between countries since its founding in the 13th century. It has at various times been claimed by Poland, Lithuania, Austria, the Soviet Union, and then, right as Ms. Demchuk was born, the restored nation of Ukraine.

Although technically Russia and Ukraine have been at war since 2014, the invasion of eastern Ukraine by Russia in February, 2022 was a cataclysmic intensification of Russian aggression, resulting in the internal displacement of 8 million Ukrainians within the country, as well as over 8 million more fleeing as refugees into Europe as of May 2023, creating the biggest refugee crisis in Europe since World War II. Many of those internal refugees are sheltering in Lviv—or pass through it on their way out of the country. It is no exaggeration to wonder how much this long threat has influenced Ms. Demchuk’s icons.

Of this particular piece, Ms. Demchuk explained to me that she had a commission for an icon on the descent of the Holy Spirit right before the Russian invasion. This invasion then led her to consider the similarities between the situation of the disciples in that upper room and the Ukrainian people as their country was being invaded. She writes, “I was thinking all the time how relevant in some meaning the situation is, especially for Ukrainian people who are under occupation of the invaders. Same as the apostles, they were hiding and in anxiety, and hoping- so I was praying for the Holy Spirit to help them to find a peace for their souls and help to endure these difficult times.”(1)

And if we are paying attention, we have seen the people of Ukraine respond with courage, with faith, with determination to resist the evil that seeks to tear them apart. And in our two depictions from John and the Acts of the Apostles, the Holy Spirit descends upon the gathered disciples the same way it descended upon Jesus at his baptism, and for the same reason: to empower us for them, and therefore us, for our mission into the world for the sake of the world. Nothing less. To realize our true ministry is not behind locked doors of buildings or hearts but out into the streets of the world.

At Pentecost, through the power of the Spirit, we are reminded that language is power, empowering us to carry the gospel of Christ throughout the farthest reaches of the world as disciples, evangelists, and teachers—as Christians who are the Church.

But the disciples’ first new language came as a challenge even earlier, for them as well as us. As soon as those early disciples answered Jesus’s call to follow him, they had to learn the language of Jesus—a strange language, then and now, awash in a grammar of grace rather than a grammar of vengeance.

We are still learning Jesus’s language of reconciliation today. It is the language of salvation, but not salvation for selfish ends. Rather, this language calls all disciples, them as well as us, to find the vocabulary for helping to repair the world and our relationships within it, with each other and ultimately, with God. This idea of responsibility of faithful people to repair the world is what our Jewish brothers and sisters call tikkun olam.

This language was filled with strange ideas, in which the greatest is the least, the least is the greatest, in which forgiveness and grace are more important than being right or self-righteous. Even after Jesus’s life on Earth was done, we can see that the disciples were still trying to make sense of that language. And we are too. We ourselves as Christians 2000 years later also continually work at acquiring that same language and it’s still just as alien and difficult for us as it was for them. The power of the Holy Spirit is here to help us continue learning Jesus’s counter-cultural grammar of grace and reconciliation.

Three of our readings today—from Acts 2, Psalm 104, and John 20-- hearken back to creation, and remind us that creation is not a one-time event. God did not make heaven and earth so much as God IS MAKING heaven and Earth. With the same breath or Spirit or wind that hovered over creation at the dawn of time, Jesus breathes that same life-giving, empowering, creative Spirit over and into the disciples and sends them en masse out into the streets, where they are then empowered to go and make more disciples of all nations and all peoples. Rather than the end, they begin anew. Our celebration of Pentecost today reminds us to begin anew, too, and draw closer to God so that we may serve God in all our lives.

Presiding Bishop Michael Curry makes this connection between Pentecost and creation clear in his book Crazy Christians: A Call to Follow Jesus. He says,

“When we draw closer to God, we draw closer to each other, for we are all children of the one God who created us all. And when God draws us closer, the Spirit moves, and we experience the power of Pentecost, that day many Christians over the centuries have regarded as the day when the Church was born. Paul said, “If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!”(2)

That doesn’t mean we have to be perfect. Seriously. Remember those same apostles. They took being NOT perfect to an art form. And thank God for that. That allows us to have hope for ourselves.

The Spirit moves over the world at creation, and the Spirit moves over us seeking to restore and renew creation within us. I want you to listen in a few minutes during the Eucharistic prayer we are going to pray together as Christ’s Church for the world. Listen as we call down the Spirit to move over the bread and wine, and therefore over US, so that WE can be made a new creation before God as we lift our hearts in thanks. Listen as we ask that same Spirit to transform us as God’s children and heirs, to be sent out into the world to continue Christ’s mission to all the world as his Holy Church.

Just as creation is ongoing, the Church is not something tied to a specific time or place or event in history. The Church is not a building. The Church is not a hierarchy. The Church is not a denomination. The Church is not a social club. The Church is the Body of Christ, bound together in bonds tighter than the closest family bonds we may have known. The Church does not exist for its own sake, and that’s a crucial point to make, I think, in this day and age, when institutions can run roughshod over people, and when it seems we are more divided by ever.

As members of the Church, empowered by the Holy Spirit, called to live out the gospel of Christ, we too do not exist for our own sake, or for our own salvation. Instead, we are called into discipleship for the life of the world, to go out into the places that most need the light of Christ, starting with the corners of our own hearts-- and then spreading outward into the entire world.

By the power of the Holy Spirit, the Church is part of the mystical Body of Christ and as such, is given FOR the world as an offering. As each of us remember this day that we are the Church we are called to offer ourselves for the good of others. We are called to build bridges between people who are all so different, and yet united by bearing the image of God that was planted in all of us at creation, no matter what our race, background, social class, or perceived “goodness” or “sinfulness.”


Pentecost reminds us to open ourselves to the power of God in the world right now. Jesus is still creating a new Spirit within us, calling the Church out into the streets to testify to this ongoing creation in the world—and that is you and me, not an institution or a building or just the clergy, but all of us who are baptized by water and the Spirit, as our Baptismal liturgy reminds us. Each and every baptized Christian, whether lay or ordained, is a minister of the gospel of Jesus. Each and every one of us, as Christians, is called to testify to the power of the love of God as revealed in Christ Jesus in the world, by living lives of joy, compassion, wisdom, faith, hope, and healing—all of which qualify as grade-A, bona fide miracles in this day and age of cynicism and greed.

Pentecost, Dame Warburg Welch

In a few moments, we are going to be called to say together the words of the Nicene Creed, which is the description of how the Trinity works and moves within our lives. We haven’t said those words since Easter Day—something that three of you all have asked me about, which earns you a gold star.

I hope you hear those words anew on this Pentecost Day. I hope, no matter how much certain parts of it make you want to cross your fingers behind your backs, you listen especially to the escription of what the Holy Spirit does in our lives there in that last paragraph where she is the star of the show. And then I hope you listen for what the Spirit does as we pray together the Eucharistic prayer—especially as we all collectively call her down into our midst to change ordinary stuff of creation and human hands into the very Body of Christ into our midst, so that we can be formed and sent out, strengthened and encouraged, just like those apostles on that Pentecost Day two millennia ago.

We can be the miracle. Let us go forth by the power of the Spirit. Let us be the Church in and for the world.

Preached at the 505 on May 27 and the 10:30 am Holy Eucharist on May 28, 2023, at St. Martin's Episcopal Church.

Readings:

Acts 2:1-21

Psalm 104:25-35, 37

1 Corinthians 12:3b-13

John 20:19-23

Citations:

1) Email exchange wit Ivanka Demchuk, May 24, 2023, on Etsy. Copies of Ms Demchuk's art can be purchased at Modern Icon Art.

Michael B. Curry, Crazy Christians: A Call to Follow Jesus, Kindle edition, kindle location 1347-1350. 

Speaking to the Soul: Sermon for the Feast of Pentecost

There is a viral video that is making the rounds right now. A young woman decides to tell a story to her dog, named Zeus. But this story uses all of his favorite words, including “park,” good boy,” “handsome boy” “I love you,” and, the big one, “snacks.” Apparently at the sound of the first favorite word, her dog gets very excited and attentive.

But as the story goes along—and it’s not a long story—the dog realizes that these words are not promises, but instead are, from his perspective, a cruel joke. You can see the dog sitting there, thinking, “Park? We’re going to the park? Wait-- why are we not going to the park?” 

“Good boy? WHO’S the good boy? I am the only good boy! Who is this other good boy, because it can’t be me; she’s not petting me. Why does she keep sitting there and talking and not following through on her promises?”

With each new favorite word woven into the story of her imaginary trip to the park saying “I love you” to some unknown “handsome boy” and munching on “snacks,” the dog gets a stunned, shocked look on its face. The words lack any follow-through, and the dog realizes he’s been had. He finally stalks off in disgust as his owner keeps prattling on, and snickering at his response. As she ends the story with lots of uses of the word “snacks,” the lowest blow of them all, the dog has had too much, and starts barking—which in his language obviously means, as a toddler I once knew would say when she was disgusted with someone, “Shut up, you crazy lady. You’re drunk.”

In our story from Acts today, through a gift of the Holy Spirit, Jews from all over the Mediterranean and Middle East, gathered for an important Jewish festival in Jerusalem, suddenly hear the gospel of Jesus proclaimed in their own languages. Even though the people talking obviously are not native to their homelands and languages. These complete strangers, natives of dozens of lands in which Jews had been scattered during their many exiles, hear about a story of incredible power, filled with wondrous words, words of promise. And just like poor Zeus, when some of them hear this amazing gospel, itself filled with wonders too great to keep in, some of the listeners react in disbelief and suspect, despite the early hour of the morning, that those who are speaking to them in a frenzy of joy, are drunk.

In the reading from Acts 2:1-21, we are reminded of the power of words in the response of the disciples after the power of the Holy Spirit comes over them, giving them the gift of language. In a blink they are outside, in the streets, doing exactly what the disciples were told to do in our gospel reading—they are out in the world, testifying to the power of God as revealed in Christ to the people they encounter there. It’s probably the most excitement you and I have ever heard coming out of a church meeting.

In a kind of reverse of the curse of the Tower of Babel, now these disciples, many of them simple country folk, have just learned to speak other people’s language. I think that’s an important point for us too in the Church today: we are called to speak to people in their own languages first, rather than expect them to immediately understand the language of Christianity.

But the disciples’ first new language came as a challenge even earlier, for them as well as us. As soon as those early disciples answered Jesus’s call to follow him, they had to learn the language of Jesus—a strange language, then and now, awash in a grammar of grace rather than a grammar of vengeance.

This language, this grammar of grace, was filled with strange ideas, in which the greatest is the least, the least is the greatest, in which forgiveness and grace are more important than being right or self-righteous. Even after Jesus’s life on Earth was done, we can see that the disciples were still trying to make sense of that language. And we are too. We ourselves as Christians 2000 years later also continually work at acquiring that same language-- and it’s still just as alien and difficult for us as it was for them. The power of the Holy Spirit is here to help us continue learning Jesus’s counter-cultural grammar of grace and reconciliation.

The Holy Spirit, Triptych by Filippo Rossi

The Spirit hovered over the waters at creation, and God spoke goodness into the world. The Spirit breathed the Church to life at Pentecost, and blew those disciples out into the streets with the explosive power of love and truth to proclaim the good news to those who most needed to hear it—and in their own languages. The Spirit hovers over us even now, hoping to reinforce the goodness in our hearts. The Spirit is always trying to speak to the soul, using a language that we understood instinctively in childhood, but often have allowed to slip away as our hearts sometimes harden and we become more “worldly-wise.” That’s why the language of love that God imprinted on us at creation, during Jesus’s ministry and again at our baptism, often seems like a foreign tongue. It’s hard for us to trust in words like “grace,” “mercy,” and “forgiveness” for ourselves as being real, much less for us to speak and live them out to others.

As we were discussing these readings in Bible study this week, we reflected with a sense of wonder what it would be like to have those around us really understand what we are saying. Too much that we say gets lost along the way from one person’s mouth to another person’s ear. And the more people become different from us, the worse that lack of understanding often becomes. And yet here are these followers of Jesus, seized by the Spirit, pouring out into the streets and speaking and being understood by people who come from vastly different cultures from those of the disciples.

But that’s exactly what we are called to do as the Church. We are called to speak to the soul of each precious person we encounter, and hear the echoed whisper of that goodness and love vibrating from them—especially when it’s hard for us to do so, when we allow our differences, our fears, or our suspicions to divide us rather than strengthen us. Words do matter when we are speaking to the soul, and the word is Love.

As I talked about last week, story is one of the most powerful forces in the world—and story is bound up in language—language that can hold nothing back, or language that can attempt to limit access to the good news. And we have to give up the idea that we can domesticate Jesus for our own purposes, or that we should hold the Holy Spirit at arms’ length because we fear being seized by love and sent out into those streets just like those disciples all those years ago.

Language is powerful—just as the wind that is often a symbol for the Spirit is powerful. Language can help span divides, soothe grief,-- and spark conflagrations too. Especially when language is used to divide, to wound, to taunt, or to assault the very basis of the truth, as we have experienced these last few years.

We are called, and empowered by the Holy Spirit, just like those disciples, to the proclamation of the power of love.

Willie James Jennings, in his commentary on the Book of Acts, call this moment, “The beginning of the miracle of Pentecost, the revolution of the intimate. This is the beginning of a community broken open by the sheer act of God, and we are yet to comprehend the extent to which God acts and is acting to break us open. Indeed it will be a community created by the spirit precisely in the breaking open.”(1) The gospel launches a revolution of the intimate, because in speaking of the love of God, we are called to be vulnerable and unguarded in sharing the story of God’s unifying love in a world that only profits by division and turning us against each other in competition or downright hatred.

The story we hear today is the story of the first great promotion of the gospel of Jesus since his execution and resurrection. These last 50 days, they had been an insular little community, locked behind doors, afraid even though the assurance that Jesus most often gave were assurances to not be afraid and instead be at peace. He said those two things—don’t be afraid and peace be with you—so that the disciples would be able to share in Jesus’s work, and he offers us the Spirit to help us now. 

Sharing in Jesus’s work of redemption, reconciliation, healing, and salvation in the here and now is, after all, the entire point of being a follower of Jesus. It’s not just to hoard away the gospel or cut off people from its promises. Our work, just like those disciples, is to go out and speak the good news to all we meet in language that they understand. It’s to let the Spirit lead us without fear.

Let’s face it—we are very much like those disciples locked away in that upper room. We too have been locked away out of fear for a very long time—it seems like forever—as this pandemic has come in waves and surges at us. Yet take a step away from this most recent scenario, and you could say that the institutional church is very much in the same spot.

Too often, we in the big-C Church sit back and wait for seekers to come to us, ignoring the fact that most of those who have turned their backs on religion have heard its practitioners using language that scapegoats others, or that emphasizes selfishness over mission in the world. Too often some who claim the name of Christ try to lock away the gospel. They talk more about who is not allowed in, about who is NOT allowed to be treated as full members of the Body of Christ. They even talk about withholding communion from people. They talk in the language of control and power, rather than in the language of good news about Jesus.

But on this birthday of the Church, we are being asked to take seriously our call to allow the Holy Spirit, as our companion in the Way of Jesus, into our hearts and then send us out into the streets.

To go out into the streets seek out those different from us. We are called to share our story—the story of how Jesus has changed your life and mine through his love, his healing, his transformative welcome of all. We are called not just to use beautiful words, like that poor dog heard from the lips of his owner, but to follow through with fulfilling the promises those words offer. Because the best words always are tied to actions.

We are called to meet people where they are, and speak the truth of love, especially in the face of hatred, paranoid division, and falsehood. We are called to care for the vulnerable—even the vulnerable ones we do not know. We are called to talk about mercy and grace, remembering the mercy and grace we ourselves know have received repeatedly, from God and others. Full stop.

If we talk about forgiveness, and we must, we ourselves must model forgiveness and mercy, bringing it to life in a world too given over to anger, suspicion, and nurturing grievances until they swell and explode like road kill in the summer sun.

If we talk about salvation, and we must, we have to model the kingdom values of Jesus—the grace that doesn’t keep score, but instead gives freely and generously to everyone, whether the world would count them as among the “deserving” or not. We must not look for the least we can do, but the best we can give.

If we talk about love, and we must, we must embody love. This is especially important in this time of division and hate, and in this time when too many openly scorn any idea that we have obligations to each other to act in ways that protect each other, even at our own inconvenience or sacrifice. The church, of all places, should be a place of concern for those we encounter, a place that strives to protect the weakest and most vulnerable, a place where we maintain our parishes not as locked rooms but as launching points to go out and proclaim the gospel in a language all will understand, however long that take.

We may not be perfect at it. We ourselves are still learning Jesus’s language of love, community, and reconciliation today. But it is the language that alone can unify creation as God intended from the beginning. It is the language of salvation, but not salvation for selfish ends. Rather, this language calls all disciples, them as well as us, to find the vocabulary for helping to repair the world and our relationships within it, with each other and ultimately, with God. This idea of responsibility of faithful people to repair the world is what our Jewish brothers and sisters call tikkun olam—the repair of the world.

In a world that focuses on the temporary, we are called to speak of the eternal. In a world that focuses on transaction in all relationships, we are called to transformation and embrace. As disciples, we are called to embrace rather than shun the power of the Holy Spirit, and speak to the soul. Let us dedicate ourselves, this Pentecost Day, to speaking—and embodying-- the miracle of love.

Amen.

Preached at the 10:30 am Holy Eucharist at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville, on the Day of Pentecost, May 23, 2021.

Readings:

• Ezekiel 37:1-14
• Psalm 104:25-35, 37
• Acts 2:1-21
• John 15:26-27; 16:4b-15

Citations:

1) Willie James Jennings, Acts: A Theological Commentary on the Bible (Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible), p. 27.

The Four Pentecost Winds: Speaking to the Soul, May 20, 2021

Water,
Still and burnished as a mirror,
Until the Holy Breath breathed words
Over the unformed void
Stirring it up,
Singing to it like a mother to her child:
Earth brought forth from her slumber
Hallowed and cherished and tumbled
By that divine Spirit, restless in creativity.

An ark,
Adrift after an eternity of rain,
Buffeted by the waves
That once again were driven and formed
By the Wind of God into subsidence, until
Bumping ashore on a high hill
To begin again.

A prophet
Feels the mountains shake and nearly split
At the press of that same gale,
But now
Lays down his mantle
And jumps astride that zephyr
As it carries him from the bonds of earth.

Hearts
Of the faithful
Locked behind doors
Cannot withstand that Spirit
When She lights upon crown and brow,
Set minds aflame like wildfire through dry sage
Breathing tongues of truth
That carry them out into the streets, rejoicing.
That same Spirit
Split the heavens at His baptism
Split the Temple curtain at His death,
Stirred and soothed the grasses
Where his pierced feet pass at His rising.
Break open the turbulent hearts
From the men and women who still are willing
To let the Spirit fill them like a sail
And carry them out rejoicing,
Four Strong Winds
of God.

God is still speaking new life
Into goodness and blessing,
Carrying us over the waters of chaos.
Make us brave as Elijah,
Bold enough to ride
The wild goose a-winging heavenward,
Obedient and yielding to God’s love
That takes us where it will,
Stirring the waters of baptism,
Revealing among us a new Creation,
If we consent to be filled.

Fill us and renew us
Knit together as one
As Christ’s Body,
In Love’s Name,
O Spirit of the Living God.

A version of this poem was first published on Episcopal Cafe's Speaking to the Soul on May 20, 2021.

The Power of Breath, the Power of Love: Sermon for Pentecost A

As I consider these readings the first thing that strikes me is the statement in the first verse of our first reading that the disciples were all gathered together in one place. Since March 16, we have not been able to do that. This Sunday, May 31, marks the end of the initial order from the diocese to cease in-person worship, and it doesn’t look as though we are able to resume that any time soon. As of May 30, 2020, more than 105,000 Americans have died from COVID-19, with 1.8 million confirmed cases, and we all know that the real numbers of both are undoubtedly much higher, given the lack of testing we still have in this country. Who know when we will be able to be gathered together in one place again?

We too, some of us, have been huddled behind locked doors. Others of us have locked away their hearts and closed themselves to compassion, recklessly disregarding pleas for social distancing and mask wearing, endangering each other and workers without considering consequences and the care we owe each other in the name of decency and honor. They do not realize that they have locked themselves away as much as any prisoner kept in chains in a dungeon deep. They have clenched their hearts like fists against the power depicted in our readings today—a power we celebrate today, celebrate so that we can instead open our hearts to it, break our hearts open to it—the power of love. 

Jesus’s ministry and teaching during his earthly ministry was centered on love, reconciliation, renewal. On feeding and healing those who were hungry and hurting in body and in spirit. On rescuing the lost, the outcast, the oppressed and restoring them to a place of hope, of dignity, of full membership in the community. Each and every miracle and encounter we see with Jesus recounted in scripture calls us to consider the ways in which God has likewise been present to us in our own lives, to respond with gratitude, and then to embody that same generosity, charity, and love in action out into a world that groans under suffering and domination just as much now as it did 2000 years ago. 

And yet Jesus does not leave us without his presence or other resources. Jesus reminds us that the power to follow in his ministry as his disciples is given to us in our very breath. I am convinced it is vitally important for us to lay our passage from Acts and our passage from John alongside each other, with our psalm reading as the hinge. In John, we hear that familiar story of the disciples in the room, afraid of the forces outside of it that might be coming to get them, the same forces that seized hold of Jesus and crucified him. And make no mistake. It wasn’t the “Jews” who killed Jesus. It was the death-dealing power of empire, and those who were willing to go along with it, making a so-called “bargain with the devil” in order to maintain their own places of influence, wealth, and power, that killed Jesus. Indeed, those forces are still are at work right now, working to usurp Jesus’ message of hope and peace and replace it with one of division, hatred, and fear.

That’s why Jesus’s final gift to his disciples that we hear recounted today is so important for us to hear anew. The final gift to us is the breath of God. A gift that was implanted in us in the very beginning of creation, as Psalm 104 reminds us, created as God sends forth the Holy Spirit like a wind or breath to move over chaos and draw forth from it new life and new growth. That breath is the foundation of life itself, a gift given to each of us that also calls us to seek to live in wisdom, compassion, and peace with each other. Not by participating in the oppressions of this world, but by embodying and embracing the power of life and love over the forces that preach hate, contempt, and death. What a precious message of renewal, so desperately needed in this time and in this place! 

 That breath of God, given to us in double portion when we invite the Spirit of God to reside within our hearts, calls us to reject any power that would deprive another of breath, whether by exploiting them for their labor or by kneeling upon their necks to drive the breath from their helpless bodies. 

We already have too much of violence in our lives. So I think it’s important to remember that although the SOUND of the Spirit in Acts is described as sounding like a violent wind, the image from our gospel tempers that, and reminds us that the gift of the Spirit of God comes gently. It comes to make us brave, to make us hopeful, to make us powerful through love.

Growing up in Tornado Alley in Oklahoma, I know what a violent wind is like. Perhaps it is fears of being seized by a violent wind that leads so many of us Christians to want to hold the Holy Spirit at arm’s length. So we are called to understand that the Holy Spirit only goes where she is welcomed. The Spirit of God’s means of working are collaborative, as we see in our epistle, requiring assent, just as Mary assented to God’s call to her at the Annunciation. The Spirit seeks to break us open, yes, but through love, where we have closed ourselves off from the hope and possibility of the good things God offers to us, and our own human frailty and sinfulness keeps us from working toward and embracing.

The Spirit does not storm into our lives, upending our own agency but comes alongside us, gentle as a breath, to speak words of healing into the well of pain that twists and disfigures our world by our silences and our closing ourselves off to each other. The Spirit calls to us lovingly, gently, to realize the power of love, hope, healing that we can all contribute to, that is our lasting inheritance as Jesus calls us to share in his incredible work of blessing and reconciliation. That breath to us of our ability to be his Body in the world and to continue his ministry.

The events we hear recounted in our readings today remind us that as long as we center ourselves in love and faithfulness to God and to each other, nothing can separate us from each other. Indeed, the Spirit’s greatest deed of power in our readings today is her power to break through any barrier that we humans can erect—those of ethnicity, class, or language. And through language that the Spirit enables the witness of the disciples to the crowd outside their room. 

Once the disciples accept that gift of breath, that gift of Spirit, what do they do with it? They go out and proclaim. They go out and tell out the joyous story of God’s reaching out to us to reclaim us and draw us into relationship with the Creator of the universe. Their discipleship moves from learning to themselves proclaiming the message Jesus had imparted to them. They go out to share the peace of Christ for the transformation of the world. Many of us marvel at the idea of the gift of being able to speak in all the different languages of the onlookers in the streets of Jerusalem gathered for the festival celebrating the giving of the Torah on Mt. Sinai.

Very often, churches who have been gathered together on this feast have invited members of the congregation who have the ability to speak parts of the passage in other languages, and we have heard parts of this passage spoken in French, German, Italian, Spanish, Hebrew, Tagalog, Japanese, Creole, Korean, Mandarin, Arabic, Yoruba, Swahili. Yet the true miracle lies deeper—through the power of the Holy Spirit, each person felt heard by God, and by the strangers who poured out of that room. 

The gift of language is irretrievably tied up in our identities. I have spent the last 2 weeks watching my mother struggle to both express herself and understand what is going on around her due to damage to the parts of her brain that control speech and language. Her first three days post-stroke, the only sentence she really had mastery of was “I’m mad.” And the doctors and nurses were usually unfortunately too rushed to spend the time to try to understand what my mother was trying to say, or to consider that she didn’t understand what they were saying most of the time. So the two sides were at an impasse. After a week, she started talking in longer sentences, and talked about memories rather easily. Yet if someone asked her a direct question, she struggled, and often found herself saying her other favorite sentence: “No.”

Yet I am reminded that at the root of the gift of language is the gift of breath. As disciples, Pentecost reminds us to use our breath not to promote the hatred and contempt that power this world of our. We are called to use our breath, our precious breath, to sing out God’s message of love, of hope, of community, of being joined together by our common origin. We are to use our breath not to condemn the oppressed but to declare our unity and our love regardless of the categories that could be used to divide us.

As the events of the last week have proven, we are divided by language in this country. It’s not a division based on lack of fluency. It’s a division fueled by lack of care and concern for the welfare of others. When someone who is sworn to protect and to serve the citizens of his community callously ignores pleas like “I can’t breathe.” When we fail to take seriously the divide in the justice system that excuses and accepts the killing of a suspect over $20, but at the same time insists that his killer deserves the protection of due process in abundance, we are not speaking the same language when we talk about justice or the sanctity of life. When we close our eyes to oppressions and micro-aggressions suffered daily by our neighbors, when we deny our kinship with each other and dehumanize each other, speaking the same language doesn’t seem to matter much.

At the root of that gift of breath, and at the root of that gift of language, lies our charge to use our lives in service to God, by using our own breath to testify to God’s power to redeem and repair the world. We are called to protect the ability of our fellow human beings to breathe, whether that ability to breathe is threatened by violence, racism, poverty, and injustice, or by COVID-19. 

The breath of the Spirit implanted in us is the breath of love, a word we are too quick to discount or limit to romance. Perhaps it might help us to think of it as a powerful wind, after all.

The Spirit not only blesses us with the gift and responsibility of taking the language of love that animates our very existence as God’s children and translating that love into action in defense of the defenseless. The Spirit gives the listeners, those to whom we are called to minister and stand alongside, the assurance that they are heard and understood—that God calls us to speak and hear in the language of love, compassion, mercy, and grace. To be able to reach into the depths of every person, to cherish their most basic identity as a child of God created in God’s image, no matter what their circumstance, and be willing to lay our lives alongside theirs in recognition that we are all beloved, that no one is beyond redemption, that no one has forfeited the claim we all have to life, dignity, and hope. 

Our message, powered by that gift of breath, is one of healing, of unity, and, ultimately of peace. Not peace as the absence of tension, that ignores the plight of the hurting in order for us just to “get along.” God did not send Jesus into the world to protect the status quo or to urge our surrender to the principalities of this world. Jesus’ peace is founded on love in action that is the foundation of our very existence. 

May we use the gift of our breath, the gift of our love, to welcome the Spirit into our lives, for the life of the world and protection of our neighbors.

Amen.

Preached at the 10:30 online service at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville on the Day of Pentecost, May 31, 2020.

Readings:
Acts 2:1-21
Psalm 104:25-35, 37
1 Corinthians 12:3b-13
John 20:19-23

Prayer, day 2682: The Day of Pentecost

Come, Holy Spirit,
and renew our hearts and our mind
that we may be animated
to bear the holy fire of joy and faithfulness into the world. 

May we be united to one another and to Christ
as one body,
to set our entire beings upon worshipping and serving our God. 
May we be filled with holy forbearance and peace,
inspired by love to tend to Christ
in the least of those we meet. 
May goodness and gentleness take root in our hearts,
breaking us open to new life in Christ our Savior and his Gospel. 

Come, Holy Spirit, we pray,
and spread your sheltering wings over those who call upon You.

Amen.

Miraculous in Wisdom: Speaking to the Soul, May 28, 2020

Psalm 104: 25-35, 37

The last ten days I have been back in my hometown, caring for my mother who has suffered a stroke. I’ve been working with my sister to get her medical care and to clean, update, and prepare her house for her release from rehab, doing all within our power to keep her out of a nursing home or assisted living. One of the things we had to do was go through old photographs and assorted detritus from our childhoods. Born in the 60s, I am a child of the 80s, and there have been many fashion experiments that we have discovered in old photographs that have brought fits of laughter in the midst of our anxiety and exhaustion.

I found a box out in the garage of a lot of my college stuff—posters of Magnum PI and the Beatles, a calligraphy print of Ecclesiastes 3:1-8, old notebooks, and cassette tapes. When I was in college Christian pop and rock had just become a big deal. Although I didn’t listen to a lot of that type of music (my tastes ran more toward classical, new wave, and indie artists), I did like Amy Grant, and she did a lovely, simple song based upon Psalm 104’s celebration of creation. It’s a simple song: the sound of night insects, then a legato guitar arpeggio, and then the simply sung lyrics and melody, straight from our portion of Psalm 104 we will hear on the Day of Pentecost. You can listen to it on YouTube. Each layer of sound is reminiscent of the steps and stages of creation, from simple to more complex.

One of my favorite lines of this section of Psalm 104 is “In wisdom you have made them all.” When I was a kid, sitting in science class and learning about the amazing diversity of life was a religious experience for me. There are creatures that live in extreme cold, extreme darkness, extreme heat. There are giant amoebas called xenophyophores that live six and a half miles below the surface of the Pacific. There are bacteria that eat oil that have developed in the Gulf of Mexico. There’s a species of walking stick insect in Borneo that grows to over a foot long.  There’s the Venus Flytrap. There’s the seahorse. There’s the platypus. There’s the sea urchin. There’s a plant called “dancing grass” that visibly moves in response to sound.

The psalm celebrates the splendor and order of creation and the absolute generosity and sufficiency of all the works of God. Once again, as in Psalms 8 and 9, we are reminded that all that we have and all that we are are gifts from God. In this reading, we see mountains being turned into something insubstantial by the power of God—this time they smoke. God is the seat of ultimate power-- but that power is used for blessing far more than for curse. There are abundant images of plenty- use of words like “manifold,” “all,” “full,” “great,” “wide,” innumerable,” “filled,” “endure forever.” All of the images but one remind us of gifts. The one reminder that this generosity is in itself something that we enjoy but do not earn is found in v. 29: “When you hide your face, they are dismayed; when you take away their breath, they die and return to dust.” Our time on earth is short in our sight but is nonetheless a gift.

The first 24 verses of this psalm retells the story of creation from Genesis, but we get the SparkNotes version here. The order in verses 25-29 echoes Genesis --as well as evolutionary theory (I’ve always felt that the laws of physics are some of the most amazing miracles and signs of God’s love for us). First there is the sea, full of life, then come crawling things out of the water and onto the land, and some things become great. I have always thought of the Leviathan as a dinosaur-like creature, so that’s the image I get there, as well. And then there is the mention of the breath of life as in Genesis 2. The sea here is represented as a place of creation, which is different than how it is often depicted elsewhere in scripture, as a place of chaos, disorder, and storms.

I have heard people claim that they don’t believe in miracles. And yet, they are all around us: the blaze of a rainbow against a dark prairie sky after a thunderstorm of percussive force. The firing of synapses, electric impulses timed just right, as a baby stands upright and toddles her first few steps. The frilled beauty of wildflowers, so easily discounted, but greater in loveliness than Solomon in all his glory. And this week, watching my mother relearn words and go from simple demands to sentences and paragraphs and names, finding creative ways including drawing and metaphor to attempt to get around the roadblocks the injury to her brain has created. In the same seven days that reminds us of the breadth and beauty of creation, my mother has been recreating her connection with language and speech, facing her long recovery with realism but also with hope, faith, and perseverance. I know that her deep faith informs it all, for my mother’s relationship with God has not been shaken one bit. These small but consequential miracles remind me of God’s ongoing creation and care for us, granting us comfort and peace in the face of struggle and trial. The works of God are indeed without number, and the grace of God undergirds each miraculous moment.

O Lord, how many are thy works! In wisdom thou hast made them all!

This was first published at the Episcopal Cafe's Speaking to the Soul on May 28, 2020.

Prayer 2323: Pentecost Sunday

(Scotland, day 10 )
Merciful One, Blessed Trinity,
We turn to you in faith
as a baby turns into the shoulder of her mother.
You have kept us safe
from the sun’s setting to its rising, Lord Christ,
and watched over us as we slept.

Spirit of the Living God,
set our hearts and wills aflame,
that we may bear your glory into the world,
and testify to the beauty of your gospel of love.

Guide us in our roaming
and protect us in our homing,
covering us with traveling mercies throughout our day.
Hear the whispered prayers of your beloveds,
and gather within your embrace
all those for whom we pray, O Merciful One.

Amen.

Prayer, day 1940: The Day of Pentecost

For Pentecost
Almighty God, You give us a Spirit of Wisdom, Power, Healing, & Truth: guide and inspire us by your Spirit in all we do. May we as your people sing out the glory of your Name and all your wondrous works, and give thanks for the bounty you provide. Enflame us by your Love, that our lives may be a testimony to your saving power and abundant grace. Let us always turn to your Advocate and seek to be led by Holy Wisdom, that we may be open and forthright in all we do. Knit us together in faithfulness, that we may be able to speak the Truth and live the Love for which all hearts thirst. Strengthen your faithful people to be your hands, heart, and hope in the world, to bring your good news to the wide world. By your Spirit, bestow your grace, blessing, and benediction upon those for whom we pray.

Amen.

Speaking to the Soul: Speaking to the Soul, June 21, 2017

Jesus, the Word- detail from a door at La Sagrada Familia, Barcelona.

Daily Office readings for June 21, 2017

On Monday, my friends Andrew and Maria and I were blessed to go on a retreat with our bishop as the day of our ordination to the priesthood draws near. One of the things we did was to go over the liturgy for the ordination of a priest. We carefully examined and discussed the language that is used in the liturgy, because, as Bishop Smith reminded us, words matter. This may seem to be an obvious point, but this is actually a statement that receives a lot of resistance right now, especially in our political discourse. As a former English teacher, the idea that words do NOT matter is actually puzzling, and even a bit frightening. As a former history teacher, I recall times when words have been used to the great benefit of humanity. I have also known of times and places where political leaders have used words to inoculate themselves as they have gone about perpetrating great evils, where words have been used to insert terrible concepts into the political discourse through the use of euphemism and doublespeak and sometimes the outright undermining or subversion of the power of words.

No, I believe that words matter. And so do most of the world’s great religions: in Islam, the only Qur’an that can be called a Holy Qur’an in one that is written in Arabic, the language of Muhammad, and a person who has memorized every single word of the Qur’an is called a hafiz, which means “guardian.” For generations, the Torah existed in through memorization. Now, there are actually two Torahs, the written Torah, which we see preserved in the first five books of the Christian Bible, and the oral Torah, which is commentary and explanation about the written Torah preserved in the Midrashim and the Talmud. In the book of Genesis, both Jews and Christians are reminded that God spoke creation into being, commenting on the goodness of creation aloud at the end of each “day.” In the Christian gospel of John, the Word of God is described as being present within creation itself, and Jesus is identified as that living Word.

Words matter. That’s why my attention was caught when I saw that the Pentecost event in the Book of Acts was one of the readings used today in the daily office. In the reading from Acts 2:1-21, we are reminded of the power of words in the response of the disciples after the power of the Holy Spirit comes over them, giving them the gift of language. In a blink they are outside, in the streets, doing exactly what the disciples were told to do in our gospel reading—they are out in the world, testifying to the power of God as revealed in Christ to the people they encounter there. It’s probably the most excitement you and I have ever heard coming out of a church meeting.

In a kind of reverse of the curse of the Tower of Babel, now these disciples, many of them simple country folk, have just learned to speak other people’s language. I think that’s an important point for us too in the Church today: we are called to speak to people in their own languages first, rather than expect them to immediately understand the language of Christianity.

Through the power of the Spirit, we are reminded that language is power, empowering us to carry the gospel of Christ throughout the farthest reaches of the world as disciples, evangelists, and teachers—as Christians who are the Church.

But the disciples’ first new language came as a challenge even earlier, for them as well as us. As soon as those early disciples answered Jesus’s call to follow him, they had to learn the language of Jesus—a strange language, then and now, awash in a grammar of grace rather than a grammar of vengeance. 

We are still learning Jesus’s language of reconciliation today. It is the language of salvation, but not salvation for selfish ends. Rather, this language calls all disciples, them as well as us, to find the vocabulary for helping to repair the world and our relationships within it, with each other and ultimately, with God. This idea of responsibility of faithful people to repair the world is what our Jewish brothers and sisters call tikkun olam—the repair of the world.

This language was filled with strange ideas, in which the greatest is the least, the least is the greatest, in which forgiveness and grace are more important than being right or self-righteous. Even after Jesus’s life on Earth was done, we can see that the disciples were still trying to make sense of that language. And we are too. We ourselves as Christians 2000 years later also continually work at acquiring that same language-- and it’s still just as alien and difficult for us as it was for them. The power of the Holy Spirit is here to help us continue learning Jesus’s counter-cultural grammar of grace and reconciliation.

The Spirit hovered over the waters at creation, and God spoke goodness into the world. The Spirit breathed the Church to life at Pentecost, and blew those disciples out into the streets with the explosive power of love and truth to proclaim the good news to those who most needed to hear it—and in their own languages. The Spirit hovers over us even now, hoping to reinforce the goodness in our hearts. The Spirit is always trying to speak to the soul, using a language that we understood instinctively in childhood, but often have allowed to slip away as our hearts sometimes harden and we become more “worldly-wise.” That’s why the language of love that God imprinted on us at creation, during Jesus’s ministry and again at our baptism, often seems like a foreign tongue. It’s hard for us to trust in words like “grace,” “mercy,” and “forgiveness” for ourselves as being real, much less for us to speak and live them out to others.

But that’s exactly what we are called to do as the Church. We are called to speak to the soul of each precious person we encounter, and hear the echoed whisper of that goodness and love vibrating from them—especially when it’s hard for us to do so, when we allow our differences, our fears, or our suspicions to divide us rather than strengthen us. Words do matter when we are speaking to the soul, and the word is Love.

This essay was first posted on the Episcopal Cafe's Speaking to the Soul on June 21, 2017, with the title "Words Matter."