By The Rev. Anne Bolles-Beaven, Sabbatical PriestTake my lips and speak through them; take our ears and hear through them; take our hearts and set them on fire with love for thee. May I speak in the name of the Living God.” Amen.
When the day of Pentecost had come the disciples were all together in one place: attentively, watching and waiting for whatever it was that Jesus had said would happen to happen. Without warning seemingly out of nowhere came the sound of a roaring wind. It filled the entire house where they were sitting. Then the Holy Spirit swept through their ranks like wildfire. Suddenly they were all speaking at once about God’s deeds of power—and they were speaking in all the languages of the world.
Devout Jewish pilgrims from all over the world were staying in Jerusalem at the time. They came running at the sound, thunderstruck. Aren’t all of these who are talking Galileans? How can we hear them proclaiming God’s deeds of power each in our own mother tongue? What is going on here? How can this be?
It was a singular moment yet to a lesser degree we know this miracle of speaking and hearing in our own experience, times when someone seemingly ordinary says something to us that blows us away as, again, seemingly out of nowhere a connection is made, a freeing insight gained, healing happens. We hear a sermon or a song and think: It’s as if they’re speaking directly to me! And, indeed, the Holy Spirit does speak to us every day many times a day if only we will listen. Fifty years ago a friend is given a passage of scripture; he credits it with saving him from a nervous breakdown. A friend tells another friend: “you are loved, so loved” and she hears the voice of God. Someone in a grocery store smiles handing a woman back a dropped can of peas and hands her back her self-respect.
We’re here because, miraculously, over the course of our lives we’ve experienced “God’s deeds of power” spoken to us in a language we can understand, a language that calls to us like our mother tongue in a foreign land, irresistibly drawing us in love, by love, for love. Like the Jewish pilgrims before us we’ve gathered at the sound. People being people—both then and now—continue to draw varying conclusions about the evidence: “It’s God,” cries one. “You’re kidding yourself,” mocks another. “They’re drunk on cheap wine,” some sneered at the disciples.
Something happened in that movement of tongues and wind and fire because from that moment everything changed. In the words of Barbara Brown Taylor, “The followers became leaders, the listeners became preachers, the converts became missionaries, the healed became healers. The disciples became apostles, witnesses of the risen Lord by the power of the Holy Spirit. Surprising things began to happen. They began to say things that sounded like him, and they began to do things they had never seen anyone but him do before.” (Gospel Medicine, Cambridge: MA; Cowley Publications, 1995, p. 77-78).
For one thing instead of denying he even knew Jesus Peter stepped up on Pentecost with boldness: Friends, we’re not drunk. It’s only 9 o’clock in the morning. But it is intoxicating—this mind blowing, heartwarming, life changing power of God that connects us to each other and the world in love and service. Listen up and get this story straight. This is just as the prophet Joel announced: God has poured out God’s Spirit “upon all flesh” upon all kinds of people, not just on prophets, priests and royalty, but on our sons and our daughters, on male and female slaves, on the lost the lonely and the left behind, our young see visions and our old dream dreams.
The Spirit of Truth is here to lead us into all truth: the truth about ourselves, the truth about Jesus Christ crucified and Risen, the truth about whose world this is and how we can help one another. God is calling us all in the language of passion and love—a language each of us can understand. It brings courage out of fear, life out of death, community out of chaos, saying: Step out in faith, I will meet you with power. If you want to walk on water you got to get out of the boat! “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.”
“When the day of Pentecost had come” the community consisted of 120 people. By the end of Peter’s sermon 3000 people were baptized. (O to preach like that!) “When the day of Pentecost had come” all Christ’s followers were all together in one place, by the time the sun had set they’d been blown out over the known world. Without the power of the Holy Spirit the disciples would have become life-less and scattered like Ezekiel’s dry bones BY it they came together bone upon bone into a living Body, the living, breathing, transforming Body of Christ. The Church was born. We’re still here.
With the events of this day the Easter season comes to an end. The Paschal candle which has burned in our midst since the Easter Vigil will be extinguished—the presence of Christ no longer signified by its presence in our midst but by his presence in US. With the Feast of Pentecost the flame of love that burned in Christ alone, now burns in us by the power of the Holy Spirit. It has the power to transform and transfigure us as it did the disciples if only we’ll allow it. It comes to warm and comfort us. It comes to guide us in places of risk and uncertainty—where life has broken us open and we are not in control. It comes to strengthen and empower us, to equip us with patience and courage we did not know we had, for struggles we could not have imagined, for glory yet to be revealed. When we find ourselves with speech beyond our reasoning, faith beyond measure, love beyond thought, we know the Spirit has caught hold of us.
It is, my friends, the greatest unharnessed power in the world. What might we do if we understood, believed in, experienced the power working in us through the Holy Spirit! If we opened ourselves to it, decided to work with it? It may come more like a whisper than the rush of a violent wind in our lives but by our baptism we have been given the gift of the Holy Spirit. We may speak with an eloquence that converts 3000 in a day or find ourselves unable to utter a word—even so, as the alternate reading for this morning asserts, the Holy Spirit is there interceding “with sighs too deep for words.” Receiving the Holy Spirit doesn’t make life easy for us. It aligns us with God’s plan for our lives. It isn’t that life gets easy, but that important things begin to happen. We become part of something great.
Wherever we find ourselves today God is at work in us. Maybe we are lying on the ground like dry bones. God asked Ezekiel, “Mortal can these bones live?” I answered, “O Lord God you know.” Then he said to me, “Prophesy to the bones.” And Ezekiel prophesied. “Prophesy to the breath.” And Ezekiel prophesied and the Spirit of God came into those very dry bones and they lived. I’m struck—on this birthday of the church—by the power of community. The bones—and God—needed Ezekiel. The crowd needed Peter. We’re all in this together. The bones in the valley weren’t just disconnected they were “very dry.” But through Ezekiel the Spirit entered into that place of desolation and death and brought life. The disciples had been waiting and praying and praying and waiting but they didn’t give up. They encouraged one another and the breakthrough came as it always will because God is bigger than the wait or the confusion, or the risk or the fear or the uncertainty or the loss. The Holy Spirit is the greatest unharnessed power in the world.
Pentecost marks an end and a beginning—which seems fitting as our sabbatical time draws to a close. For one thing it marks the end of the disciple’s life with Christ as they had come to know it—just as it does for us. Like the disciples we’ve shared the last supper, endured the cross, rejoiced in the resurrection and encountered the Risen Christ in people we mistook for strangers and friends until the day he was taken up from us in the Ascension. We puzzled over his parables, washed each other’s feet, and pondered the meaning of his sacrifice. We shared insights and conversation, compassion and support. Like the disciples we laughed and cried and planned and prayed. We celebrated our beloved-ness, received the gifts each other had to give, kept an eye skinned for the Spirit. In short, we’ve been the Body of Christ.
It’s been a privilege to have served among you—beside you. Never have I had the pleasure of working with a team so caring and competent, spirited and supportive: from the wardens—Tom and Cheryl; to the clergy—Chris Carroll for her teaching and pastoral visits and Chris McCloud for support above and beyond the call of duty—liturgical, pastoral, personal (I could NOT have done this without you!); to Karen, parish administrator extraordinaire, to Mary our wonderful seminarian and her gift of Taize; John, our joyful and talented organist and the choir who not only processes in a reverential dance but sings when they get here; to Ulysses and the altar guild—gracious, collegial and kind, all; to Dan in charge of acolytes (and great help to me and Deacon Chris especially at Holy Week); to Roland and his healers; Nina and Kirk, masters of the gospel on the web; Clarence and newcomers, George in charge of readers (no small feat today) ; to Jane worker-of-wonders Cates in charge of our children; to Jane who covered our Confirmation Class; to the family service musicians; to ushers and greeters to all of you who “gather at the sound.” You have spoken to me for 14 weeks in a language I can understand. God is good, all the time. I thank God for you all. What a gift! What a blessing! What a parish!
Pentecost marks the beginning of a new Spirit in Christ. “I tell you the truth:” said Jesus, “it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Advocate will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you.” Fourteen weeks ago the Holy Spirit blew Bernie to South Africa and me into your midst. Now the Holy Spirit is blowing Bernie home and us apart. In true Pentecost fashion you and Bernie are coming together in a new spirit because the community has not been just sitting here marking time. The Holy Spirit has been at work. Bernie’s been changed. You’ve been changed. I’ve been changed. How will God knit together these living bones into a new reality I wonder? It must be a new reality because there is no going backwards in Christ. God always moves forward, melting us, molding us, leading us on.
That first Sunday I quoted Marcel Proust: the real voyage of discovery lies not in seeing new landscapes but in having new eyes. I wonder with what new eyes you will see yourselves and Bernie as the future unfolds. One thing is for certain God will be speaking We only know that God will be with us all speaking the language of love and grace and transformation in a way each of us will be able to understand and that the power of the Holy Spirit—the power of the invisible God is constantly at work beneath the surface of things.
The Body hasn’t stopped growing or the wind blowing since. In fact, it blew mightily during the silence of our 10:30 Taize service two weeks ago. After the whir of the siren, after the barking of the dog into the silence there came the rush of a mighty wind and it shook the roof of the house, this house, where we were sitting. Did you hear it? What a marvelous sign. Pentecost wasn’t only “back then” it is here and now. Come to make all things new—even me and you. Thanks be to God.
Come, Holy Spirit, come!
© 2009 The Rev. Anne Bolles-Beaven
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