Pentecost, 2005:

The Chaplain of an English Boys’ School had developed a novel method for teaching the boys the Nicene Creed.  Each boy had been given a phrase to commit to memory and, at the beginning of each class in Church History, each boy would stand when his turn came and recite his particular phrase.  This worked extremely well.  One day, as the phrases were being repeated with precision…”I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth,” “And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God,” “And he shall come again, with glory, to judge both the quick and the dead; whose kingdom shall have no end,” there was a long pause.  Finally, one of the boys spoke up and said, “Sir, the boy who believes in the Holy Spirit is absent today.  Shall I continue with “And I believe in one holy Catholic and Apostolic Church?”

I suspect it is not just that class that was missing someone who believes in the Holy Spirit.  Perhaps there are some missing today because they believe in the Holy Spirit and are not sure that reality can be found in the Episcopal Church or maybe they are absent because they are not sure about the work of the Holy Spirit.  Whatever the reason, I would hope you realize that Pentecost is one of the great feast days of the church and we really do need to find ways to celebrate this gift.

The Gospel for this Pentecost Sunday is St. John’s remembrance of and sharing of a resurrection appearance of Jesus to his disciples in Jerusalem.  It is intended to be remembered and shared with disciples in every generation, even those of us now into the third millennium since it first happened.  St. John says that those first followers of the itinerant preacher, those who had been hand-picked to upset the world, were huddled together in fear of their lives, behind locked doors.  We would have done the same thing.  They had shut themselves up with a memory, stuck their fingers in their ears to deaden the sound of the ugly present, and had put their hands over their eyes to keep from looking at the unknown future.

It is a story that has been published in many new editions in the centuries since that time.  People in every generation, some more noticeable than others, climb the shaky stairs into as much religion as they have left, just under the roof, and behind locked doors.  There they exchange fond recollections, rehearsing an ancient faith that brings them very little peace and hardly any power to speak of.  Some in this generation have taken that route.  They worship a prayer book or an edition of the Bible or a particular liturgical approach or a leadership based on gender and not on God’s call.

The really significant thing about it is that Jesus always comes back and breaks out of the mold into which the followers which to place him.  He stood among them and spoke.  They had been feeling a tremendous burden and the presence of that voice brought about in them a peace, a kind of peace that the collect in the Prayer Book says the world cannot give.  He says to them, “Shalom.”  The gift of peace comes not by seeking it; it comes when a purpose that has been lost out of life is found again.  They had recognized their own limitations, but our limitations are not God’s.  God has us on his hands and not the other way round.  And God has made a difference in and with and through the lives of countless numbers of people far too long to be helpless when it comes to our lives and our witness.

They rejoice when they saw the Lord.  It was too good to be true.  It’s too good not to be true fits God’s world better.  It was not easy to believe in Jesus then; it is not easy to believe in him today.  The Sanhedrin, the governing body of the people, the court of appeals in Palestine, would have nothing to do with him.  Most of the respectable people despised him.  They had made him eat his blasphemous words.  He had died out there on that hillside just as any condemned man would have died.  Those were the facts and facts are facts, right?  That is unless the facts happen to collide with a God who pays very little attention to such facts and even less to those who think they have it all figured out.

What are the facts anyway?  It is not easy to believe that the evil in life can ever be dislodged by the good.  It seems sometimes that we have lost our moral compass.  Our young people, copying what their elders have taught them, resort to violence and hatred rears its ugly head again and the innocent suffer and die.  Dictators arise and hundreds of thousands are made refugees.  Young women, primarily from other countries, are sold into slavery to feed the perverted appetites of men mostly in this country.  We continue to have hungry children in this land of plenty, our elected officials appear to be corrupt and devoid of moral authority, and good is called evil and evil is called good.  We add billions to the debt that will have to be paid by our grandchildren as they attempt to buy back a nation that we sold in our greed and arrogance.  Why keep fooling ourselves with pretty pictures?

But, life is not the cut and dried affair some people seem to think.  With everyone yawning on their front porches, sitting around the courthouse benches, or up at Dak’s Everyday Old man’s Coffee Club, talking about how terrible everything is.  We need to remember certain truths: Christmas comes out of a stable; the Son of God out of a little-known village and twenty-plus centuries come out of an empty grave.  When they saw him again they rubbed their eyes and then stood up, breathed deeply the holy breath of God, took the Holy Spirit into the very center of their beings, and said, “Lord, you can count on me.  I’ll do the work you have given me to do.”

From what we know of God, we will not be allowed to alter the message to fit our prejudices and presuppositions about who is in and who is out.  We have a message to proclaim, to live, and it is not ours.  It is God’s!  “And you are witnesses to these things.”  It is the universal “you,” that transcends time and space and comes just as forcefully to each of us.  This is the Good News that changed the world.  We are given an awesome responsibility.  We, like all witnesses, are to speak the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help us God.  And God will!

For the first disciples the directions that Jesus gave were that they must begin in Jerusalem.  They were to begin from the place they thought the last flicker of hope had gone out.  They were to begin from the place they had failed him, betrayed him, denied him, and ran away.  God is Christ had given them a second chance.

Perhaps God says the same thing to each of us.  Go where you have failed to preach and live this story.  It that’s your home, go home.  If that’s your family, your friends, your business, you are to go there.  You are to tell the story; you are to be the story.  Tell what you know to be true.

We have been elected.  It began over twenty centuries ago.  Eleven lonely, fearful souls against the world, but God added another and another.  God is not impressed with flow charts and organizational plans.  God will add it up and multiply it.  The arithmetic is always God’s business.  A person with a word and a deed to match, that’s all God has ever asked.  And that’s all God asks this day.

We cannot move on to belief in the one holy Catholic and Apostolic church without a firm belief in the Holy Spirit.  That’s God’s gift to us who would be lost without it.  The Father sent the Son into the world, the Son sends us into the world, and has given us a Guide, a Counselor, a Comforter.  That remains the only way the church will continue to grow.

So, breathe deeply this Pentecost Sunday.  Take the Holy Spirit into the very center of your being, down deep where you live and move and have your being.  You are a new creation, you have been elected, and you have a story to tell.  God’s peace will surround you.  Go!  Amen.