Hunting for God (Pentecost; Whitsunday)

Hunting for God
Whitsunday (Pentecost) Children’s Sermon
31th May 2009 11:45 a.m. Family Eucharist
The Cathedral Church of St. John the Evangelist, Hong Kong
Readings: Acts 2:1-21; John 15:26-27; 16:4b-15

God, breathe into our hearts the desire to change. Take away our hearts of stone and give us hearts of flesh. Amen.

Today is a special day in Church. It has a strange name, Pentecost. That word means “50” in Greek and it comes from the fact that it is the fiftieth day from Easter. When Jesus died and then rose from the dead, he visited with his disciples and taught them on and off for forty days. But he knew he would be leaving them, and he did not want to leave them alone. That is what the story from today’s gospel is about—Jesus telling his disciples before his death that he would not leave them alone. But after he went up to heaven (that day has another strange name, Ascension Day), the disciples could not just talk with Jesus any more. Before, he could be their comforter, helper, and friend. He told them beforehand that he would send another comforter to be with them , and that is a true way he himself would visit them and be with them in this other comforter.

Pentecost is the day we celebrate to remember when the other comforter promised by Jesus first came. The comforter is the Holy Spirit, that side of God that we can hear in our conscience and feel in our hearts. People describe it in different ways-- a wind, a breath, or fire. It is like a wind because you can’t see it, but you see what it does. It is like a breath because it gives us life. It is like a fire because it burns in our hearts and just cannot be ignored. When it came upon Jesus when he was baptized, he saw it as a dove, because it was quiet and calm.


You look around, and all the priests and the altar are clothed in red. That is to remember the fire that came out of the skies upon the disciples as we read in the Pentecost story today. This is such a special day that in the olden days people getting ready to be baptized would wear white, signifying the purity of baptism. It is from the white of their clothes that we get the other name for today, Whitsunday.

Pentecost or Whitsunday is known as the birthday of the Church, since the coming of the spirit comforter marked the start of the Church as we know it.

I want to tell you a story about Pentecost that helps us understand what it is about.


A PENTECOST STORY*

*Adapted from a story by Roland McGregor, copyright 2009, all rights reserved;
used with permission (RMcGregorAlbq@AOL.COM)

This story is about a boy named George.

George went to church almost every week with his parents and sisters, Zoe and Emma. One Sunday in the spring, at lunch after church, George looked up from his plate and said,

"Pentecost isn't fun like Easter."

"Why do you say that?" said his father.

“We had lots of things to do on Easter. We dyed eggs. We had Easter baskets from the Easter bunny. Zoe and Emma had new dresses and I had a new shirt and trousers. At Church, we did the flowering of the cross, and made Easter cards in Sunday School. And we had an Easter Egg hunt. But today, all we did in Sunday school was talk about a weird story."

"What weird story?" said his father.

"The one where everybody's hair caught on fire," said George.

"That is a weird story," said his father. "You know what makes it weird?"

"No," said George.


"What makes it weird is that their hair didn't catch on fire, but when they looked at each other, they saw something they had never seen before," said his father. "You know what they saw?"

"What?" asked George.

"They saw God," said his father.

"I thought you can't see God," said George.

"Sometimes you can see something and you see God at the same time," said his father.

"Maybe it's like an Easter egg hunt," said his mother. "You look at a bush and don't see an egg, and then you look at the bush and see an egg that was there all the time. Why don't we finish up the dishes and go out in the back yard for a God hunt."

"A God hunt?" said George.

"It will be fun," said his mother.

When they got out in the yard, George said, "Where do we look?"

"What do you think?" said his father. "Should we stand here and look at the whole yard, or should we get up close to something and look very carefully?"

"Or, should we look up in the sky?" said George.

They looked and looked, sometimes high and sometimes low, sometimes close and sometimes way back.

"It's very interesting looking for God," said George.

That night George , his mother, father, Zoe and Emma all got on their knees to pray by George’s bed. "When we pray," said George, "why do we look down? "I thought God is up."

"We close our eyes and look down because we are looking at our hearts to make sure our hearts are looking up," said his mother.

Then they said a prayer, "Dear God, we like to look for you and we love to see you. Amen"

Pentecost is a special day that reminds us of our need to look for God, and our need to see God when God is here. It reassures us that God is here and that we are God's people. The holy breath, the life-giving wind of God, can do great things and give us the power to be better and more loving than we are just by ourselves. I hope and pray that all of us can seek God, will join in this God hunt, and learn to see him and let him give us life.

In the name of Christ, Amen