May 27, 2007
(The Day of Pentecost: Whitsunday)
The Power of Fire
by The Rev. Canon Susan Sommer
Acts 2:1-21 or Genesis 11:1-9 •
Psalm 104:25-35, 37 • Romans
8:14-17 or Acts 2:1-21 • John
14:8-17, (25-27)
(From
The Lectionary Page)
At dinner one evening about a month ago, midway through a conference I was attending, several of us clergy types were chatting about the things we like to do in our copious spare time. One of my tablemates mentioned that he was a fire chaplain. Though not himself a firefighter, he had nonetheless undergone some of the same training that fire-fighters undergo. He went on to say that the most intense of these training exercises involved donning protective gear and entering into a controlled burning environment so that they, the trainees, could begin to learn the signs of impending flashover. A flashover, he explained, is the stage in the development of a fire in which all of the exposed surfaces – walls, ceilings, floors, furnishings – reach ignition temperatures. Everything, even the very air itself, erupts in flames, consuming everything and everyone in its path. Such is the power of fire.
Not for nothing does Luke include the imagery of flame in the second chapter of Acts. To the ancients, fire was elemental, mysterious, powerful, untameable. What better image could there be for that moment in which God acted and tremendous power was unleashed? As we heard, the disciples were together in the Upper Room when suddenly there was a sound like the rush of a mighty wind that filled the room. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability. And the result was astonishing. These were Jews of the Diaspora – men and women whose ancestors had been citizens of other nations and kingdoms for 6 centuries, who in many ways were more like Gentiles in their language, world view, and religious practices. They had made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem for the Festival of Weeks – a harvest festival known as Pentecost, celebrated 50 days after Passover. And there they heard of the mighty deeds of God spoken to them in their own language. In a blinding moment, national, ethnic and linguistic differences were consumed by this flashover Spirit ignited in their midst.
Such is the power of the Spirit at work, consuming that which divides us, that which creates envy and resentments, that which is contrary to God’s purposes for creation. Pentecost seems to show that what God desires most is for the Church to be not necessarily uniform, but rather united in our capacity to listen to one another and to understand, to enter into another’s linguistic enterprise, to grasp metaphors and symbols familiar to others but perhaps alien to us, and to find common ground in our praise of the mighty acts of God.
Our present reality of course looks much different. We are fragmented as a society and as a Church, broken by our differences, estranged from one another by mutual suspicions. Spend any time on the internet right now on virtually any Anglican blog site – conservative or progressive -- and you will find all manner of factionalism. The presenting issue in 2007 perhaps is orthodoxy or perhaps Scriptural interpretation or perhaps a fear and loathing of those whose affections are differently ordered. In years gone by, the issues included the ordination of women, the updating of the Book of Common Prayer; before then, the ordination of persons of color and their full inclusion in the Church; before then, liturgical ideology and whether the wearing of vestments put us dangerously close to the Church of Rome. Keep going far enough back and the issues had to do with whether our Eucharistic theology should lean more closely toward Rome or toward Geneva. Before then, whether the Bishop of Rome ought to have jurisdiction in the Church of England. And so on. And those are just some of the divisive highlights since the Anglican Reformation. Suffice to say, we Christians, we Anglicans, we Episcopalians are divided by our interpretive methodologies with respect to Holy Scripture. We are divided by our experiences. We are divided by our vision of what God desires of us and for us. We are divided, period.
And yet we have an account of a time at the very beginning of our formation as a Church in which differences, perhaps even greater than those that the Anglican Communion now faces, were consumed by the Holy Spirit. Where understanding and common ground were created among disparate, suspicious, and competing groups and where an unlettered Galilean fisherman found voice and courage to speak the words God gave him. And because we have that account – that shared memory – we have yet a vision for what the Church can be.
What is that vision? In concrete terms, that is a Church that proclaims the reign of God in word and in action, in real time, in the geography it now occupies. It is a Church that welcomes whoever walks through the door and offers hospitality. It is a Church that nourishes the hungry. And if, in the geography that Church occupies, hunger is defined both in physical and spiritual terms, or if it is a hunger for connection and the deepening of relationships, then that is how such a Church focuses its nourishing and in so doing, brings new people through its doors. It is a Church that lives servanthood, that gives generously of itself not out of guilt or a sense of self-serving self-righteousness but because it worships a God of abundance and generosity. It is a Church whose members demonstrate, without even thinking twice about it, the unwavering love – the hesed – that God has for each of us. It is a Church where forgiveness and healing are routinely practiced because each knows fully the need each has to be forgiven and to be healed.
The question for us as Christians, as Anglicans, as Episcopalians is whether we are ready to be such a church, whether we are ready for the Holy Spirit to flashover us, to consume the dross of divisiveness, and to empower us to live most fully our baptismal covenant.
Relying on the Power of Wind
by The Rev. Carol Sanford, Curate
Today is Pentecost. What are we Episcopalians to do with this day of the Holy Spirit? Will it bring us uncomfortably close to our Pentecostal neighbors? Our personal piety generally and our particular expression of liturgy here at the Cathedral seldom lead us as a group certain manifestations of the life of the Spirit; manifestations that some of us may think of as unusual, unappealing, or even threatening, such as the utterances commonly known as “speaking in tongues,” or the experience often accompanied by falling called “being slain in the Spirit.” We tend to be a bit more, well, restrained, and yet clearly we cannot restrain the Spirit of God. So what are we to do with this day? And what, really, do we mean by the Holy Spirit, anyway?
Many of us, if asked, would be pretty good at associating the Holy Spirit with Baptism and, perhaps, Confirmation or Ordination. We may know that Pentecost, this great feast of the Holy Spirit, traditionally has to do with discipleship and evangelism, and we might well come up with the image of a dove. We may have some sense of how we refer to God’s Spirit in the church, but, let’s face it, for many Episcopalians, the Holy Spirit remains a little-thought-about addendum to God the Father and God the Son. Worse, the Holy Spirit sometimes becomes for us a sort of lesser part of God.
We need to be careful about this, you know; we are Trinitarians.
Most of us, without really thinking about it, assign a sort of hierarchy to the three persons of the one God, perhaps getting a little bit confused about who is more important, Jesus or God the Father. But that means we have ceased to be monotheists, and even when we slip into that heresy, the splitting God into two separate and unequal parts, we tend to leave the Spirit out. The Holy Spirit is as much God as Christ and the Father, although to some of us the part of the creed that says we worship the Holy Spirit might even sound like heresy taken out of context.
Besides, although there are Episcopalians, certainly, who are moved in ways unfamiliar to many of us, we don’t want to be known as Holy Rollers and may fear the consequences of too much focus on Spirit.
So what are we to do, and who or what do we think this Holy Spirit is?
We know, of course, that, despite the classic report of the sale, some centuries ago, of a feather from the Holy Spirit, that the Holy Spirit is not really a bird, but that the dove image from Scripture illustrates a motion and indicates a source. What else do we know?
In our readings for today alone, this Spirit is described as a sound like the rush of a violent wind, something that appears to a group as flames of fire and rests upon individuals, something that fills people and with and through them bears witness to God. This Spirit, we learn, is poured out, given and sent. It, he or she somehow comes from God the Father in the name of Jesus. It is called the Spirit of truth, the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God. It teaches, reminds, fills, causes people to prophesy, have visions and dream dreams. Oh, and no small thing this, it is the Spirit that creates and renews the face of the earth.
But wait, isn’t God the Father the Creator? Yes. And isn’t it Jesus who, by his death and resurrection, brings renewal? Yes. Then it is still the Spirit who creates and renews the earth? Well, yes. But all of this is really for next week, Trinity Sunday, so back to our focus on the Holy Spirit.
This Spirit, we learn from today’s lessons, has something to do with transcending barriers of language and understanding; of gender, and of human relationships. The Holy Spirit… can it be possible? …transcends the barrier between humanity and divinity.
We often shy away from acknowledging what it really means that, through the Holy Spirit, in Jesus, we are truly gathered into God the Father and everlasting life. Do we really hear the words of Paul to the Romans, that we are children of God? What if we began to truly know and believe that we are heirs with Christ and so are in the Father and the Father in us?
This does not mean that we are God. We are most decidedly human. And yet, in our delightful, Christian, incarnational paradox, we are in and of God. We are mortals who partake of immortality; we are humans who live in and with the Divine.
This is astounding. It is also rather frightening and intimidating, for it carries great responsibility and much mystery. If we truly are God’s children, if we truly are heirs with Christ, if we truly are taught all things by the Holy Spirit, then we, in and with our Trinitarian God, are, or should be, creators and renewers of the earth.
This sounds hard, and sometimes it is. Sometimes we are called to action for renewal, as is happening a lot lately here at Grace and Holy Trinity. We have been honing our focus on hospitality and ministry. This isn’t always comfortable and both the process of renewal and the outcomes decline to stay tidily restrained for our comfort.
Sometimes we are called to create something new in our personal lives. Perhaps we need to ask or offer forgiveness, or maybe our schedules need to be rearranged to reflect what is of real value in life as we are pushed and pulled by the Spirit to love one another. Sometimes we are called less into action than into new ways of being or into new attitudes; we may need to examine our true outlook on life, including the hidden ways we sometimes demean ourselves and others, forgetting who we are.
It isn’t all dreary by any means. God, after all, created Leviathan just for the fun of it. If we are to live out our newness of life in fullness in God’s Holy Spirit, we will live it out in no small measure of Joy. We are children of God, now, and the Holy Spirit schools us in the ways of Love reminding us who and whose we are. Trust your instinct to love. God’s love is always present and if we cannot see the love in a situation, we, who are in and of God, can always bring it.
If you are feeling unloved and, so, unloving, I offer you the example of a young child comforted by a teddy bear. The comfort does not come because the bundle of fiber and synthetic fur loves the child. The comfort comes because the child loves the bear. We are created out of love, redeemed in love, and accompanied by love. This is our divine heritage, and the Holy Spirit will not let us rest outside of being who we truly are.
A headline in yesterday’s business section of the Kansas City Star caught my attention. It had to do with the construction of new, energy-producing turbines and read, “Relying on the Power of Wind.”
As we head out into the culmination of this Memorial Day weekend, some of us may be thinking of barbecue or the fireworks starting up at Union Station in a few hours. For others of us, there may be sorrow at loved ones lost and soldiers fallen in war. For many, tomorrow will be just another Monday. Whatever your plans, try relying on the wind, the breath, the Spirit of God. The Holy Spirit carries and propels and empowers and comforts us.
So what do we Episcopalians do with this day? We rejoice and give thanks and commit ourselves to the work of God which is our birthright. We take advantage of the immeasurable gift of the Holy Spirit, just for the fun of it.
