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

Jesus Loves You (3rd Sunday of Easter Year B)

Third Sunday of Easter (Year B)
26 April 2009 9:00 am
Morning Prayer for Primary Students
Sheng Kung Hui Tak Kin Shiu Keung Primary School, Hong Kong
(Representing the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist, Hong Kong )
Readings: Used in this Simplified English Service: Proverbs 4:7; 1 Thess. 5:16-18

Jesus Loves You

God, place in us a desire to change—take away
our hearts of stone and give us hearts of flesh. Amen.

When my son Charlie was five years old, we lived in Beijing. One cold January morning near Spring Festival (Chinese New Year), we went to visit a Temple Festival with him. His older brothers and sisters didn’t want to go out in the cold. We went into the Temple after seeing the street festival. All the altars in front of the statues of the Buddha were loaded with fresh fruit, candies, and treats. We went from room to room, looking at each altar.

An old Buddhist monk in saffron robes watched us. He smiled at Charlie. Then as we were about to leave, he came up to us, went to one of the altars, and took a handful of candies. He gave them to Charlie with a big smile. “Fosa ai ni” he said. “Buddha loves you. Both Charlie and we were surprised. We knew you shouldn’t take anything from the altars since they were gifts to God. But here was one of the monks of the Temple who knew that the little foreign boy liked candy and wanted to tell him something about his faith. Charlie has always remembered that day.

Now I am not a Buddhist monk, but a Christian minister. So I can’t really tell you whether Buddha loves you, though I am pretty sure that the old monk was telling my son something true.


What I can tell you today is this—Jesus loves you.

One of our readings today (Prov. 4:7) told us to do good quickly to those who deserve it. Jesus told us to do good, and be kind not just to people who we think deserve it, but to everyone.

Once, he pointed to the sun, and to rain clouds, and said this, “God makes his wonderful sun shine on both good people and bad people alike. Both good people and bad people can feel its warmth, and go outside and enjoy it. God also sends his rain to both the good and the bad alike. It gives water to make the gardens and farm plants grow of both good people and bad people, so that everyone might have enough to eat. God gives good things to both good people and bad people. And that’s how we should be--kind and good to everyone, no matter what we think about them being good or bad.” (Matt. 5:45)

Another time, a great big building (called the Tower of Siloam) fell down and many people were killed. People came to Jesus and said, “Those people who died when the building fell down—they must have been really bad people. That’s why God made the building fall down to punish them, right?” (Luke 13:3-5)

But Jesus replied, “No. It’s not that way at all. Those poor people weren’t any worse than anybody else. God wasn’t punishing them. Bad things happen, and sometimes they happen to good people. We don’t know why. But we do know that God loves us, and that we should love other people.”

Jesus didn’t just teach us to love and be kind. He showed us the way to do it.

You know how sometimes at school kids make fun of some children? They might be different from other people in some way: smaller, not so pretty, not as skilled in sports, not as smart in homework, poorer, not wearing the right fashionable things or labels or maybe not as quick in talking. Or maybe people just think they are different, when in fact they aren’t. Sometimes bullies try to make these weaker people’s lives miserable.

Jesus spent a lot of his time with people like that—outcasts, those who other made fun of, those who were judged not good enough. He welcomed them and said they were God's 'special people, the ones closest to the God who loves all.

The powerful people of the day didn’t like this, and finally they killed Jesus because he wouldn’t shut up about being fair to and kind to others. Jesus died for us. As he taught, sometimes bad things happen to good people, and good things to bad. His death was unfair, and very painful. It was bad indeed. And he was not just good, but he was exactly what God set out to make when he created us people. And though Jesus knew he was going to suffer an unjust death, he did not give up talking about being fair and just to outcasts, and never turned from God in doubt about God's love for him and for all. God showed he was true and loving by raising Jesus from the dead.

If we had candies on this altar today I would take a handful from the pile and give each and every one of you a handful of candy and say “Jesus Loves You.”

Because he DOES love you. He loves us all.

In the name of God, Amen

Stretching Toward Jesus (First Lent)

First Sunday of Lent (Year B)
1st March 2009 11:45am Family Eucharist
Cathedral Church of St. John the Evangelist, Hong Kong
Readings: Gen 3:1-6; 1 Pet 3:18-22; Mark 1:9-15 (TEC, RCL, CW); Ps 25 (TEC); 91:1-12 (CW)
Used in this “Ash Sunday” Family Service: Isa 58, Matt 6:1-6

Stretching Toward Jesus

God, place in us a desire to change—take away our hearts of stone and give us hearts of flesh. Amen. (adapted from Dorothy Day)

Today is the first Sunday in the Church season that we call Lent. It is the time when we prepare for Easter by making a special effort to become more like God wants us to be. God created each one of us, and when God finishes creation, he always declares what he created to be “very good” (Gen 1:31). God has an intention, God has a plan in mind for each and every one of us.

But look at us. Even though there are lots of good things in us, and lots of good points, there are also a lot of places where we fall short, where we are not what God intends us to be, and where we even act like spoiled children towards God. Sometimes we just can’t help but say the unkind thing about a classmate behind his back because it makes us look smarter and more in line with the inside group at school or work. Sometimes we just can’t be bothered with putting in a little extra effort to help someone who needs it because we are tired, feel frustrated, or annoyed. We fall short of what God wants because of lots of different things: our fears, thoughtlessness, laziness, weakness, or our own deliberate choice.

What that means is that God is not yet finished creating us. That moment when God can look at us and say, “Very Good” is still in the future. But we have to learn to let God do this. That’s why we pray, why we go to Church and Sunday School, why we take communion, learn what Jesus taught and how he behaved. It is also why we keep Lent.

The word Lent comes from an Old English word that means lengthen, or get longer. In the Northern Hemisphere where this practice of Christianity grew, February through April are springtime, when warmth and light returns after the cold and dark of winter. The days of winter are very short and the days of summer very long. Where I grew up, in the middle of winter, the sun came up at about 8:00 in the morning and went down at about 4:00 in the afternoon. But in the summer, the sky started to get light at 4:30 in the morning and finally got dark in the evening about 10:00 pm. So in the springtime, the days gradually grew longer until they were almost twice as long as they had been in the winter.

During Lent, we too should stretch and try to get longer and taller. Not in a physical way, but in our hearts and the way we follow Jesus. During Lent, we try to remember and think on the places where we fall short, where we don’t measure up to what God wants for us, and try to set it right. Some of us give up a few things we like—like certain foods or treats—in order help us remember all the time to stretch and think about what Jesus wants us to be. Some of us make a special effort to say our prayers, to read Bible stories and other good books, and to be especially kind and helpful to others, especially those who really need the help. Some make special efforts to say they’re sorry and make up for bad things they have done to others.

When you run a race, you have your pace and your stride—how fast you move your feet and how far you place them ahead of each other with each step. A coach tells a runner to speed up: quicken your pace, lengthen your stride. That means move your feet faster and make each step count more by making it longer. Lent is a quiet time, so we shouldn’t try to do too much: moving faster isn’t the point. Making each spiritual step count more, lengthening our stride, is essential as we try to listen to God. So just like the lengthening days, our steps get longer, and we stretch ourselves more. We do this together at a special time called Lent, because doing things together and with the help of others usually helps us do them better. It also helps remind us to do it.

All the stuff in today’s service about ashes, about needing to change, about praying and listening—all of this is meant to help us remember that from now until Easter—forty days not counting Sundays, since Sundays are special days anyway—we need to really stretch to try to reach what Jesus wants us to be. We need to lengthen, just like the days are lengthening. So let’s try hard.

In the name of God, Amen