A Rushing Wind and Tongues of Fire (Pentecost)

A Rushing Wind and Tongues of Fire

Whitsunday (Pentecost) (Year B)
27th May 2012
Homily Preached at Trinity Episcopal Church

Ashland, Oregon
8:00 a.m. Spoken Mass; 10:00 a.m. Sung Mass
Acts 2:1-21; Ps 104:25-35, 37; Rom 8:22-27; John 15:26-27,16:4b-15 

God, take away our hearts of stone and give us hearts of flesh. Amen.

I once had a colleague at the Department of State who was a self-declared “Bible believing” Christian.  When she discovered that I was a regular Church-goer, choir member, and taught the weekly scripture adult Sunday class at my local Episcopal Church, she made it a point of regularly letting me know how her prayer life was going, and how proactive she and her church were in struggling against what she called the “wicked world we live in.”  One Monday, she seemed particularly beaming, and first thing she took me aside to update me on her spiritual life. 

“Tony, I was so blessed today.  I’m too low ranked to merit parking privileges downstairs and can’t afford the regular parking fees at Columbia Plaza across the street so I usually park over near the Lincoln memorial and walk the four blocks here.  But I didn’t have time today, and so I just relied on God.  I prayed for guidance, and Jesus sent the Holy Spirit to me and led me to a side street just a half block away where there are never any parking places.    But just as I turned the corner, a car pulled out and I found a place within 100 yards of the C Street entrance!  And it’s just the regular street meter fares!  I feel so blessed.  God guided me, and sent his Holy Spirit just as he promised!  Just shows what He’ll do when we try to follow his path!” 

I nodded, smiled, and said nothing, allowing her to express her happiness and thankfulness.   It was only on my drive home that evening that I realized what it was that so annoyed me in what she had said.  She was saying that Almighty God had been her personal parking valet, arriving at her beck and call in order to save her the inconvenience of walking a few blocks and possibly being late to a meeting.  I had been working on some life and death issues involving the Korean peninsula, and the contrast was all too great.  Really? God was personally caring for her parking needs because she was so close to God? And this in a world where it seemed that the Almighty couldn’t be bothered to move the hearts of the world’s people to abolish war, end racism, eliminate poverty, abolish handguns, or end hunger. 

Now I understood that making this contrast was unfair, both to her and to God.  Jesus taught us that if we pray with faith, God will grant us what we pray for.  Paul told us to make our desires known to God.  Many, many passages tell us to be thankful in God for all good things in our lives.  Jesus tells us that God is aware of and cares for even individual sparrows in flight or hairs on our head. 

Even knowing this, she still had annoyed me, mainly because she seemed so self-serving.  Maybe God did help her that day.  Maybe the Spirit “guided” her.   Her thankfulness was thus right.  But making this into a servant to her own ego and sense of partisan advantage (“only we true Christians can experience such blessings!”) cheapened what otherwise might have been innocent open-heartedness.

Today’s scriptures tell us just how varied the workings of the Holy Spirit are:  In Acts, the Spirit is God’s active and almost overwhelming presence in a shared communal event facilitating communication and empowering ministry.  In John, Jesus calls the Spirit to be at our side, a comforter or advocate, enlivening memory and strengthening the heart.  In Romans, the spirit is a quiet whispering intermediary between us personally and God, giving us access to God and to our own inexpressible unformed feelings.

In practical terms, what we experience as guidance by the Holy Spirit often seems very close to conscience, insight, intuition, arriving at a firmly held conclusion, or even, like my State Department colleague’s parking, dumb luck. But there is a difference. 

It is important in understanding the story of the outpouring of the spirit on the Day of Pentecost to know what occasion the day was:  the feast of Shavuot, or Weeks, fifty days after the Feast of Passover.  Shavuot was a festival of the first fruits, where the very earliest produce of the agricultural year was becoming available.  Remember the hardship of winter in a pre-industrial society.  You stored food by drying it, salting it, perhaps smoking it, or saving roots in cool cellars.  By early Spring, your larder was pretty low, and fresh fruits and vegetables only a vague memory.  So the earliest produce of spring signaled that hardship was over, and prodigal summer was arriving soon. On Shavuot, the first produce was given back to God in thanks, and then you held a big party with fresh produce, not dried and stored food.  

Paul uses this very image—first fruits—in today’s epistle to describe the Spirit.  Paul sees the world in which we live both as an early spring on the verge of a rich summer, or a woman in labor, suffering great pain in hope of a new life being delivered.  The spirit is a sign that the baby will be born, that produce will come.  The Spirit is like the first fruits in the spring, after our larders have run bare:  it is a sign of better things to come, of more and more life and abundance.

Elsewhere, Paul says this, “God establishes us with you in Christ and has anointed us, by putting his seal on us and giving us his Spirit in our hearts as a first installment” (2 Cor 1: 20-22).  A seal: a symbol and authenticating sign of the genuineness and reliability of our faith and hope.   An anointing: this means being smeared with sweet oil.  A person was made a king or a priest in ancient Israel by a ritual of putting olive oil on the head or body.  The act set the person aside for a special role and work.  A first installment: the first payment of a much greater sum to come later. 

He also says, “God has given us the Spirit as a guarantee” (2 Cor 5:4-7).

How do we know God’s Spirit is with us?  

In Galatians, we read this: 

“The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.”  (Gal 5: 22-23) 

Thus “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control” are signs of the Spirit, that seal of the sureness of God’s promises, that down payment on the whole of God’s promises, those first fruits of an abundant and rich harvest. 

Sisters and brothers at Trinity:  I made a realization a couple of years after coming here:  it is somewhat providential that Trinity Ashland’s Patronal Feast, Trinity Sunday, comes one week after the Feast of Pentecost.  Because I see the Spirit of God at work in the good people of this Parish.  Susan Stitham likes to joke that our parish and community are full of white haired people who used to be very important people.  We have many, many accomplished people here, to be sure.  But more importantly, we are focused on things that matter, and are overflowing in good works, acts of mercy, and skillful advancement of God’s reign in our own lives and the lives of those about us.  We do not talk a lot about the spirit, but our lives are rich in peace, love, joy, patience, generosity, self-control, and generosity.   What a blessing to be with you, and learn from you, to see God at work in your lives and of the community at large.

May we continue learn to hear the Spirit’s whispers, and recognize her thunderings, be warmed at her gently burning hearth, and also be purified in her raging fire.   If we continue to follow the way of Jesus open to the Spirit all the while, this fire will burn through all the world. 

Thanks be to God. Amen.