First Fruits (Pentecost B)

 

First Fruits

Whitsunday (Pentecost) (Year B)
23 May 2021
Homily Preached at Trinity Episcopal Church

Ashland, Oregon

By the Rev. Anthony Hutchinson, SCP, Ph.D.
8:00 a.m. Said Mass on the Labyrinth

10:00 a.m. Said Mass with Music in the Chancel
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.

 

In this week’s clergy conference call with Bishop Akiyama, we heard two troubling stories from right here in Southern Oregon of challenges to sibling priests stemming from prejudice based on race or class.  In one, people left a congregation and a congregant declined home communion when a priest was called who was not the “right” gender and race.  In another, a local mayor and city council used the power of their office to try to stop an episcopal congregation from ministering to the poor and homeless.  The Bishop, bless her, asked that her priests hear these stories so that we could begin a discussion on how to faithfully minister in this trouble time.  She responded to the stories by detailing her theology of priestly calling, saying that “the Gospel is not a buffet from which to pick and choose according to one’s whims,” calling us to stand firm in our open preaching of the Gospel even when this spurred opposition, and offering Diocesan support for legal challenges to officials who violate the First Amendment’s ban on government fostering one kind of religion over another.  Both priests telling these sad stories still wanted to minister to all, including their antagonists, but found greater and greater opposition as they tried to do so.   These foes thought, perhaps, they were trying to follow the Spirit of God by standing up for the right as they understood it.  But the stories’ ugly details revealed that laying such prejudice and malice on God’s Holy Spirit is blasphemous. 

 

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 coincidence. 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.