The Holy Spirit, God's Breath as a Sign of Life

Day of Pentecost   May 27, 2012  

Acts 2:1-21  Psalm 104: 25-35,37
Romans 8:22-27  John 15:26-27; 16:4b-15

 Lectionary Link

  I have a harmonica here.  What makes this harmonica make a sound?  I blow in the little holes, and my breath pushes across some little reeds. The reeds in each hole are different sizes and that is what makes each sound higher or lower.  I also have a Pan Flute.  And when I blow across these bamboo tubes I can make many sounds.  What is the difference between a whistle and the harmonica and the Pan Flute?  How many sounds can a whistle make, you know that whistle that the referee uses at the soccer game.  A whistle only makes one sound.

  Today is a special feast day.  It is the feast of Pentecost. It means that the season of Easter is finished.  It means that the season of Pentecost begins.  And what is the color for the Day of Pentecost?  How did you know?

  Pentecost is the day when we celebrate the birth of the church. So it is our birthday party.

  And how was the church born?

  Well, more than 2000 years ago after Jesus left this earth, his friends were wondering if God was going to be gone and absent from their lives.  But you know what they discovered?  They discovered that God was still with them.  They discovered a wonderful energy and a wonderful happiness and joy within them.  And even though Jesus was gone, they felt that God was very close to them and with them.

  And so when God was close to them and with them, do you know what they called God?  They called God the Holy Spirit.

  The word for Spirit means wind or breath.  Can you blow air out of your mouth?  What does blowing air out your mouth mean?  Does it mean that you are alive?  Can you see your breath when you blow it?  You can’t see it but you can feel it, right.  How do you know your breath is there?  You feel it against your hand.

  So do you see why people began to call God, the Holy Spirit.  Even though God’s Spirit could not be seen, the results of God’s presence was known.

  So we can know God’s presence without seeing God or without seeing Jesus, because God is the Holy Spirit.  And the Holy Spirit gave birth to the church, because the church feels and knows the presence of God without seeing God.

  Just as I blow into the harmonica and the Pan flute and make different sounds.  Can you imagine the breath of God blowing through you?  Can you imagine God’s Spirit in you, living through you and doing something special in this world?  Just like each sound in my harmonica is different when I blow through, so each one of us is different and when the Holy Spirit blows through and lives through us, the Holy Spirit is able to do something special and different through each of us.

  Today, on Pentecost Sunday, let us each know that God’s Spirit is in us, teaching us to love and help this world in a special way.  I want you to remember always that the Holy Spirit is living in you.  Can you remember that?

The Church as a Pipe Organ

Day of Pentecost  Cycle B  May 27, 2012  

Acts 2:1-21  Psalm 104: 25-35,37

Romans 8:22-27  John 15:26-27; 16:4b-15

Lectionary Link

  The name of our parish newsletter is “In the Spirit.”  Where did that name come from?  The author of the book of Revelation is St. John the Divine.  And where have you heard that name before?  St. John the Divine is the patron saint of our parish.  And why is he called the divine and not the apostle or the evangelist?  The author of the book of Revelations was caught up in a visionary state and he wrote that he was “in the Spirit.”   It was such a unique visionary state that I do not think that anyone can fully understand it.  Being in the spirit, being in this visionary state is what the ancients used to call divining God’s truth or being divinized to some extent as a human being

  The Feast of Pentecost is about being In the Spirit, or to be more exact,  being  in the Holy Spirit.  How did the early Jewish followers of Jesus come to accept the religious experience of non-Jewish followers of Christ?  They discovered that Jews and non-Jews could be In the Spirit.  They discovered that Gentiles could be filled with the Holy Spirit.

  As we consider the Holy Spirit in the church on the feast of Pentecost,  let us liken the dynamics of the Holy Spirit to one of the most fascinating musical instruments of all time, the pipe organ.  What is a pipe organ?  It is essentially lots of different sizes and shapes of whistles that make distinctive sounds when wind or air is forced through them.  Imagine a very large pipe organ with more than 10,000 pipes in an old European Cathedral.  A very old pipe organ that is still in use today has most likely been rebuilt many times.  Each time an organ is rebuilt older pipes are retained and new pipes are added to present the sound desired by the organ builder and organ tuner.  An old pipe organ then is a mixture of pipes of varying ages. In a pipe organ, the sound comes from the wind of one blower and it is fed through bellows and wind chests with many holes and a pipe sits on each hole.  There is one wind source and that wind is made to sound in 10,000 different ways, some times in harmony, and some times in dissonance.

  This is image that I would like for us to ponder to consider the feast of Pentecost.  Let us think of ourselves as the pipes in the God’s pipe organ.  And the Holy Spirit is the Wind of God that plays through us to make us a beautiful work of art to benefit this world and to prove the work of God in our world.  Imagine God as the Total Organ, the Spirit as the Wind within the Pipe Organ and imagine Jesus as the composer and the organist who plays the music.  And so you have an image of the Trinity on Pentecost Sunday.

  When you hear a pipe organ play, you feel like there is wonderful life within those apparent lifeless pipes.  Those lifeless pipes can come alive with power, beauty, grace, softness, thundering, trumpeting and rhythms fast and slow.  And the music is the end result of the life of wind being blown through all of those different pipes.

  Can you and I begin to see our lives as lives that are given over to God and composed and played by Jesus and animated by the Wind of God’s Spirit?  Wouldn’t it be boring if all of the pipes on a pipe organ were of one size and shape?  Wouldn’t it be boring if God’s Spirit had only one human body and personality proto-type that was cloned over and over as a sort of robotic Christian?

  On the feast of Pentecost we recognize that we are not robotic and cloned Christians.   We are people of diverse shapes and sizes that represent our bodies, souls and spirits and the special time and place where we find our selves living.  God has made us to be played by the Holy Spirit in our special time and place.

  So today on Pentecost Sunday, let each of us find the special way that the Holy Spirit wants to sound through our lives.  Let us not worry too much that the Holy Spirit makes different sounds through other people.  Why?  Because we all have special places and ministries given to us by the Holy Spirit because of the unique shape and constitution of our life experience.

  Let us pray that we will accept the One Spirit, the one breath of God to blow through us to make wonderful music for the benefit of our world through the ministry of our lives.  And if we do this, we will know that Jesus Christ is the Composer, and the music maker of our lives.  Amen.