Holy Spirit: The Ultimate Regulator of the Sublime

Day of Pentecost  A June 4, 2017

Gen. 11:1-9Ps. 104: 25-32

Acts 2:1-11      John 14:8-17, 25-17 
Lectionary Link

When I lived overseas, I had a professor friend whom I was visiting one day after a class.  I noticed that she kept looking at her watch and seemed very concerned about the time.  I asked if she were waiting for something, and I offered to excuse myself.  But she replied, "I am waiting for 1 p.m. because I never drink before 1 p.m."  And I thought, well I guess that is restraint of a sort, but it might be indicative of a problem,

In the account about the Day of Pentecost found in the Acts of the Apostles, there was great ecstasy and euphoria early in the morning and Peter felt he needed to give a disclaimer about the ecstatic behaviors.  He said, "Indeed, these people are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o'clock in the morning."

So here we are at church, having looked at our watches and waited until Mass started at 10:15 a.m., because "we don't do ecstasy and euphoria" before 10:15 a.m.

It is interesting that drunkenness, a negative behavior is used metaphorically for the appearance of the joyful behaviors of people who have come to know themselves as possessed enthusiastically by God's Holy Spirit.

Have we ever been accused of looking like happy drunks in our worship here at St. John's?  In our Anglican tradition we've inherited a long tradition of the "stiff upper lip" in face of everything and so our Prayer Book liturgies involve locking all signs of enthusiasm and ecstasy out of our worship.   We save our enthusiasm for our sporting events and rock concerts as if we feared having too much excitement about God.

On this Day of Pentecost, let us be invited to contemplate coming into apparent experiences of the sublime.  The experience of the Sublime is to come into the sense of being touched or altered through the influence of someone or something that is beyond our control.  The experience seems to stop time, it seems to melt our ego, it seems to give a sense of euphoria or harmony or a merging with other people or with Nature.

Perhaps the greatest epidemic in our world today is all of the attempts at simulations of the Sublime that end in some sort of addiction.  Perhaps the best known form of universal religion today is one of the many different 12 step programs.  12 step programs are found across religions and borders because people have become addicted to simulate the Sublime in ways do not allow them to integrate the addictive behaviors with holistic living. 

Alcohol, mushrooms, peyote, drugs have all been used in ways to simulate the experience of the Sublime.  Scientist who have wanted to simulate the Sublime have come to see this experience as but the chemical state of one's brain.  The chemical state of one's brain can be altered in various ways to simulate the euphoric sense of the Sublime.

One might say that since the late 1960's pharmacology has become the main way that people simulate the Sublime.  Aldous Huxley, Timothy Leary, Richard Alpert and John Lilly were some of the early proponents of simulating peak minds states through the use of various drugs.  In our world today, we regard freedom from pain and anxiety to be crucial to the experience of the Sublime, but we've come to have an incredible opioid addiction crisis.  When a TV commercial for a pill uses 5 seconds to tell about a possible benefit and then the rest of the commercial to explain possible dangerous side effects, we know that we are a world that has been tricked to elevate counterfeit simulations of the Sublime to be the surrogates for religious experience.

On this feast day of Pentecost, we are here to proclaim our belief in the validity of the human quest to know and experience the Sublime.  You and I were made for ecstasy.  We were made for the release of profound desire.  We were made to experience profound joy.  What did C.S. Lewis call his autobiographical spiritual journey?  Surprised by Joy.  You and I were made for the Sublime.  Why do I say this?

We have a built in natural high that has been given to us by virtue of our being created in God's Image.  When the Spirit of God moved and breathed life into creation and into us, the Spirit of God never left the created order.  But the Spirit of God has had to live incognito and anonymous for so much of human history.  The Spirit of God has lived ignored by you and me for long periods in our lives, especially when we thought that other simulations of the Sublime were easier or more accessible.

The Day of Pentecost is when the church gives the Holy Spirit a "coming out" Party.  And the Holy Spirit says to us, "Thanks for the recognition party, but I never left; it is just that sometimes you have forgotten about how close I am to you all of the time."

The proof that you and I were made for the experience of the Sublime is the presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives.  The experience of the Holy Spirit is the highest of the natural highs.  Sometimes we experience the Sublime effects of the Holy Spirit in random and intermittent events.  We also adapt rules of life and spiritual practices to help us access the always already Sublime presence of the Holy Spirit.  It is so easy to get distracted from obviousness of the Holy Spirit that we can seek Sublime replacements in sports, work, the erotic, in pharmacology and many other kinds of escapist entertainments.

How and why can the Holy Spirit be known as the highest of all natural highs?  I would call the Holy Spirit the ultimate regulator of the Sublime.  And what do I mean?  The experience of the Holy Spirit is the appropriate integration of the experiences of the Sublime into a holistic experience of life.  How does this happen?  It happens because of the Sublime effects of the Holy Spirit, called fruits of the Spirit: Love, Joy, Peace, Hope, Patience, Gentleness, Humility, Goodness, Self-Control and Faith.  All of these effects contribute to the appropriate integration of all our experiences in life.  So the Holy Spirit is the ability to let God take control of our lives and steer us to the appropriate integration of all of our life experiences, and to allow us the freedom to enjoy, experience pleasure, survive pain and loss and minister to each other without falling into addictive or harmful behaviors.

The Holy Spirit is the great regulator of the experiences of the Sublime.  If we submit to the Holy Spirit, we can discover and affirm the multi-faceted appearances of the Sublime in our lives: In art, cinema, theater, comedy, in beautiful things, in environmental arrangements, in our home and in special places, in a quiet church,  in music, in the company of friends, in love's embrace, in the discovery of something creative occurring within us, in being a beneficial presence to others,  in Nature, with our pets, on the mountain, at the ocean, in a good meal, a good nights' sleep, in a fantastic dream, in shouting joyful alleluias, in meditative silence, in the liturgical event, in the Eucharistic event, in eye to eye gaze.  The Sublime effects of any human experience can be blessed events and not addictive events, if we achieve the experience of the Holy Spirit as the great regulator of the Sublime.

Today, we need to submit to the creative control of the Holy Spirit.  You and I like to limit where we think the sublime effects of the Holy Spirit can occur.  We can lock the Holy Spirit in our own limitations of our own religious groups, our own national and ethnic habits or own socio-economic educational groups.  The Holy Spirit is truly universal.  Each person's body has the limitation of physical location.  We have blood types and different DNA.  We have different color skin.  We have different inward and outward orientations.  And as we look far below the layer of our skin, we can arrive at the true universal of the world, the universe and of all life: we arrive at the universal and all inclusive Holy Spirit, who is the One regulator of all human differences.

As we celebrate this feast of Pentecost, this feast of the Holy Spirit of God, let us invite the Holy Spirit to be the creative regulator of our experiences of the Sublime. 

Today, I wish for each of us many of the most delicious experiences of the Sublime, not of the addictive kind, but the ones that come because our lives have been to be regulated by the Holy Spirit who gives us in all experience, the experience of love, joy, peace, hope, gentleness, humility, patience, self control and faith.  With the Holy Spirit as our creative regulator, we can experience a wide variety of the Sublime to keep us surprisingly joyful and always with the ecstatic alleluia in our mouths.  Alleluia.  Alleluia.  Amen.

Sunday School, June 4, 2017 The Day of Pentecost A

Sunday School, June 4, 2017    The Day of Pentecost  A

Theme:

Pentecost is the Holy Spirit’s Day

Pentecost is also called the Birth Day of the Church

What is the Bible Story about the Spirit?

In the Creation Story of the Book of Genesis, the Hebrew word for Spirit (ruach) means Wind or Breath.  We know that breathing is a sign of life. 

Wind can erode and shape rocks and mountains and cause waves.

In the Creation Story, the Spirit created by moving over unorganized  stuff and began to bring light, darkness, land, sea, plants, animals, human into being.

Something of Spirit life is found in all of creation

In the Bible story, the Spirit is kind of forgotten for many years even though the Spirit was seen as responsible for anointing leaders, kings, judges, prophets and wisdom teachers for teaching about God.

On the Day of Pentecost the Holy Spirit begins a new era.  We know that we cannot see God and yet God is everywhere.  We may not see the wind but we can see the effects of the wind.  This is what the Holy Spirit is like.  We can’t see the Holy Spirit but we can know the effects of the Holy Spirit.

What are the effects of the Holy Spirit that we can know?  Love, joy, peace, patience, gentleness, self-control, faith and justice.

If we know the effects of the Holy Spirit we should spend our entire lives in learning how to gain more of the effects of the Holy Spirit, by knowing love, joy, peace, patience, gentleness, self-control, faith and justice.

If we allow the fruits of the Holy Spirit to be expressed in the deeds and words of our lives we will be letting the life and the personality of God the Holy Spirit be known in our lives.

This is what we celebrate on the Day of Pentecost

Sermon (using a harmonica)

Do you know what kind of instrument I have in my hand?    It’s called a harmonica?  And do you know how this instrument is played?    It’s played by putting it up to my mouth and blowing.

  How is this instrument different than a whistle?    A whistle usually makes just one sound, but this harmonica can make many different sounds.

  It is a reed instrument.  If we open up the harmonica, we can find many differ little pieces of thin metal and they are different sizes.  Some are short and some are long.

  When I blow air across the short ones a high sound is made.  When I blow air across the long ones, a lower sound is made.

  So if we blow in the correct way, we can play many different notes and different kinds of music.  A harmonica is not like a whistle because a harmonica can make many different sounds.  And we can play many different songs with the harmonica.  We can even bend the notes and make it cry….or we can make it sound like a train.

  What is it that makes the harmonica play?  It is blown air or wind that comes from the lungs.

  Did you know that one of the ways that we talk about God is to call God, the Holy Spirit.  The Special Spirit.  The Special Wind or Breath.  Can you see Wind or Breath?  Well we can see clouds or we can see our breath when it’s cold.

  But we don’t actually see the Wind or Breath.  We know Wind and Breath are here because we can feel and see the movement that is caused by Wind and Breath.  When you blow on a Wind mill, you can see the wind mill turn.

  So today in when we celebrate the Invisible presence of God who is everywhere, just like wind and breath. 

  And we celebrate the fact that God’s wind or breath is within us blowing us…or playing us, just like I blow air into this harmonica to play the different sounds to make music or noise.

  We cannot see God Spirit…But God’s spirit is blowing through us and playing us as music.

  So we need to see ourselves as God’s musical instruments.  All different sizes and shapes, ages, with different appearances, different abilities and gifts.  God enjoys that we are all so different.  Because we’re different God can play lots of different songs through us.

  And what kind of music does God’s breath or Spirit play through us?  We call that music love, joy, peace, faith, self-control, gentleness, patience and all of the other good things that God wants to do through us.  How many of you want to be God’s instrument today?  Do you want the Wind or Breath of God to be blown through you today?

  Today, we remind ourselves that the Breath or Wind of God, the Holy Spirit is filling us today to help our lives be like a beautiful song for God today.  So today we let God the Spirit play a beautiful song through us.  Amen.

St. John the Divine Episcopal Church

17740 Peak Avenue, Morgan Hill, CA 95037

Family Service with Holy Eucharist

June 4, 2017: The Day of Pentecost

Gathering Songs: Every Time I Feel the Spirit;  We Are One in the Spirit, Lord, Be Glorified

 Liturgist: Alleluia, Christ is Risen.

People: The Lord is Risen Indeed.  Alleluia.

Liturgist:  Oh God, Our hearts are open to you.

And you know us and we can hide nothing from you.

Prepare our hearts and our minds to love you and worship you.

Through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.

Song: Every Time I Feel the Spirit, (Christian Children’s Songbook, # 48)

Refrain: Every time I feel the spirit moving in my heart, I will pray.  O every time I feel the spirit moving in my heart I will pray.

1-On Pentecost day, the Spirit came.  The people praised with joyous tongues.  The Spirit came to everyone.  Jews and Gentiles, all the same. Refrain

2-God’s Spirit lives, within the church.  He gives us gifts to build us up.  God’s Spirit fills us with his love.  O blessed Spirit, heavenly dove.  Refrain

Liturgist:         The Lord be with you.

People:            And also with you.

Liturgist:  Let us pray

Almighty God, on this day you opened the way of eternal life to every race and nation by the promised gift of your Holy Spirit: Shed abroad this gift throughout the world by the preaching of the Gospel, that it may reach to the ends of the earth; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

First Litany of Praise: Chant: Alleluia

O God, you are Great!  Alleluia

O God, you have made us! Alleluia

O God, you have made yourself known to us!  Alleluia

O God, you have provided us with us a Savior!  Alleluia

O God, you have given us a Christian family!  Alleluia

O God, you have forgiven our sins!  Alleluia

O God, you brought your Son Jesus back from the dead!  Alleluia

A reading from the First Letter of Paul to the Corinthians

Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of services, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.

Liturgist: The Word of the Lord

People: Thanks be to God

Liturgist: Let us read together from Psalm 104

You send forth your Spirit, and they are created; * and so you renew the face of the earth.

May the glory of the LORD endure for ever; * may the LORD rejoice in all his works.

Litany Phrase: Thanks be to God! (chanted)

Litanist:

For the good earth, for our food and clothing. Thanks be to God!

For our families and friends. Thanks be to God!

For the talents and gifts that you have given to us. Thanks be to God!

For this day of worship. Thanks be to God!

For health and for a good night’s sleep. Thanks be to God!

For work and for play. Thanks be to God!

For teaching and for learning. Thanks be to God!

For the happy events of our lives. Thanks be to God!

For the celebration of the birthdays and anniversaries of our friends and parish family.

   Thanks be to God!

Liturgist:         The Holy Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ according to John

People:            Glory to you, Lord Christ.

On the last day of the festival, the great day, while Jesus was standing there, he cried out, "Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink. As the scripture has said, `Out of the believer's heart shall flow rivers of living water.'" Now he said this about the Spirit, which believers in him were to receive; for as yet there was no Spirit, because Jesus was not yet glorified.

Liturgist:         The Gospel of the Lord.

People:            Praise to you, Lord Christ.

Sermon – Father Phil

Children’s Creed

We did not make ourselves, so we believe that God the Father is the maker of the world.

Since God is so great and we are so small,

We believe God came into our world and was born as Jesus, son of the Virgin Mary.

We need God’s help and we believe that God saved us by the life, death and

     resurrection of Jesus Christ.

We believe that God is present with us now as the Holy Spirit.

We believe that we are baptized into God’s family the Church where everyone is

     welcome.

We believe that Christ is kind and fair.

We believe that we have a future in knowing Jesus Christ.

And since we all must die, we believe that God will preserve us forever.  Amen.

Litany Phrase: Christ, have mercy.

For fighting and war to cease in our world. Christ, have mercy.

For peace on earth and good will towards all. Christ, have mercy.

For the safety of all who travel. Christ, have mercy.

For jobs for all who need them. Christ, have mercy.

For care of those who are growing old. Christ, have mercy.

For the safety, health and nutrition of all the children in our world. Christ, have mercy.

For the well-being of our families and friends. Christ, have mercy.

For the good health of those we know to be ill. Christ, have mercy.

For the remembrance of those who have died. Christ, have mercy.

For the forgiveness of all of our sins. Christ, have mercy.

Youth Liturgist:          The Peace of the Lord be always with you.

People:                        And also with you.

Song during the preparation of the Altar and the receiving of an offering

Offertory Song: They’ll Know We Are Christians,  Worship and Rejoice, # 595

1-We are one in the Spirit; we are one in the Lord.  We are one in the Spirit; we are one in the Lord.  And we pray that all unity may one day be restored.  Refrain: And they’ll know we are Christians by our love, by our love.  Yes, they’ll know we are Christians by our love.

2-We will walk with each other; we will walk hand in hand.  We will walk with each other; we will walk hand in hand. And together we’ll spread the news that God is in our land.  Refrain

3-We will work with each other; we will work side by side.  We will work with each other; we will work side by side.  And we’ll guard each one’s dignity and save each other’s pride. Refrain

4-All praise to the Father, from whom all things come.  And praise to Christ Jesus, his only Son.  And all praise to the Spirit who makes us one.  Refrain

Doxology

Praise God from whom all blessings flow. Praise Him, all creatures here below.

Praise Him above, ye heavenly host. Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

Prologue to the Eucharist

Jesus said, “Let the children come to me, for to them belong the kingdom of God.”

All become members of a family by birth or adoption.

Baptism is a celebration of our birth into the family of God.

A family meal gathers and sustains each human family.

The Holy Eucharist is the special meal that Jesus gave to his friends to keep us together as the family of Christ.

The Lord be with you

And also with you.

Lift up your hearts

We lift them to the Lord.

Let us give thanks to God.

It is right to give God thanks and praise.

It is very good and right to give thanks, because God made us, Jesus redeemed us and the Holy Spirit dwells in our hearts.  Therefore with Angels and Archangels and all of the world that we see and don’t see, we forever sing this hymn of praise:

Holy, Holy, Holy (Intoned)

Holy, Holy, Holy Lord, God of Power and Might.  Heav’n and earth are full of your glory.

Hosanna in the highest.  Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. 

Hosanna in the highest. Hosanna in the Highest.

(All may gather around the altar)

Our grateful praise we offer to you God, our Creator;

You have made us in your image

And you gave us many men and women of faith to help us to live by faith:

Adam and Eve, Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob and Rachael.

And then you gave us your Son, Jesus, born of Mary, nurtured by Joseph

And he called us to be sons and daughters of God.

Your Son called us to live better lives and he gave us this Holy Meal so that when we eat

  the bread and drink the wine, we can  know that the Presence of Christ is as near to us as  

  this food and drink  that becomes a part of us.

And so, Father, we bring you these gifts of bread and wine. Bless and sanctify them by your Holy Spirit to be for your people the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ our Lord.  Bless and sanctify us by your Holy Spirit so that we may love God and our neighbor.

On the night when Jesus was betrayed he took bread, said the blessing, broke the bread, and gave it to his friends, and said, "Take, eat: This is my Body, which is given for you. Do this for the remembrance of me."

After supper, Jesus took the cup of wine, gave thanks, and said, "Drink this, all of you. This is my Blood of the new Covenant, which is shed for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins. Whenever you drink it, do this for the remembrance of me."

Father, we now celebrate the memorial of your Son. When we eat this holy Meal of Bread and Wine, we are telling the entire world about the life, death and resurrection of Christ and that his presence will be with us in our future.

Let this holy meal keep us together as friends who share a special relationship because of your Son Jesus Christ.  May we forever live with praise to God to whom we belong as sons and daughters.

By Christ, and with Christ, and in Christ, in the unity of the Holy Spirit all honor and glory

 is yours, Almighty Father, now and for ever. AMEN.

And now as our Savior Christ has taught us, we now sing,

Our Father: (Renew # 180, West Indian Lord’s Prayer)

Our Father who art in heaven:  Hallowed be thy name.

Thy Kingdom come, Thy Will be done: Hallowed be thy name.

Done on earth as it is in heaven: Hallowed be thy name.

Give us this day our daily bread: Hallowed be thy name.

And forgive us all our debts: Hallowed be thy name.

As we forgive our debtors: Hallowed be thy name.

Lead us not into temptation: Hallowed be thy name.

But deliver us from evil: Hallowed be thy name.

Thine is the kingdom, power, and glory: Hallowed be thy name.

Forever and ever: Hallowed be thy name.

Amen, amen, amen: Hallowed be thy name.

Amen, amen, amen, amen: Hallowed be thy name.

Breaking of the Bread

Celebrant:       Alleluia.  Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us.

People:            Therefore let us keep the feast.  Alleluia!

Words of Administration

Communion Song:    Jesus Shall Reign,   arr. Linda Lamb

                                        Divine Joy Handbell Choir

Post-Communion Prayer

Everlasting God, we have gathered for the meal that Jesus asked us to keep;

We have remembered his words of blessing on the bread and the wine.

And His Presence has been known to us.

We have remembered that we are sons and daughters of God and brothers

    and sisters in Christ.

Send us forth now into our everyday lives remembering that the blessing in the

     bread and wine spreads into each time, place and person in our lives,

As we are ever blessed by you, O Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  Amen.

Closing Song: Lord, Be Glorified (Renew!  # 172)

1- In our lives, Lord, be glorified, be glorified, in our lives, Lord, be glorified today.

2- In our homes, Lord, be glorified, be glorified, in our homes, Lord, be glorified today.

3- In our church, Lord, be glorified, be glorified, in our church, Lord, be glorified today.

4- In your world, Lord, be glorified, be glorified, in your world, Lord, be glorified today

Dismissal:   

Liturgist: Alleluia!  Alleluia!  Let us go forth in the Name of Christ.

People: Thanks be to God!  Alleluia!  Alleluia!

Pentecost: Ab uno in plures, E pluribus Unum

Feast of Pentecost A June 8, 2014   

Acts 2:1-11        Psalm 104:25-35, 37b

1 Corinthians 12:4-13      John 20:19-23           

 Lectionary Link

  What is the official motto of the United States?  Is it: E pluribus Unum?  Or, In God we Trust?

E pluribus Unum was the de facto but not the legal motto until 1956.  The American Congress got really religious in the 1950’s:  They codified “In God we Trust” as the official motto of The United States.  And in 1954 on Flag Day, the Congress added “under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance, which had survived without that addition since its composition in 1892 and official adoption in 1942.

  The Day of Pentecost is a very “E pluribus Unum” day.  From the many One.  The foundation of any mystical body whether it be a country or organization or the church has to deal with the basic complex dynamic of life itself.  The one and the many.  One could turn the phrase around.  Ab uno, in plures.  From the one, the many.

  The Gospel of John begins with, “In the beginning was the Word…and everything was created by the Word.  So from the Word came many languages, many textual creations which are the very basis for people understanding themselves and their own life stories within their culture settings The culture setting makes it profound imprint as people take on their languages within their own families.

  Word is what unifies all but Word is able to be reflected into endless diversity.  Word is perhaps the only thing which cannot be falsified.  One can say or think, “Word does not exist,” but one has to use word to say or think such a thing and so a denial of word cannot be true.  Word is undeniable in human experience.  It is the unity of human experience.

  But it is not enough to confess the simplicity of the Singularity of Word; we speak many words.  Our bodies articulate many kinds of body language words of action.  Word is the very condition for the many tongues of the Day of Pentecost.  Many from the One; One from the many.  We live in the tension of these two meaningful truths each and every day of our lives.

  One from the many is the great faith adventure of life?  Why?  Because once the great egg Humpty Dumpty has shattered from his fall, it is harder to put him back together again.  All the king’s men and his horses have tried forever to use the glue of power and government to force the shattered outer shell of the diversity of life back into one situation of unity.

  As we ponder the unity in difference which is celebrated on Pentecost, the day of many languages confessing a common message, we are required to ask of ourselves what this unity means.

  Unity cannot mean the extreme simplicity of monochromatic experience.  White and black are colors but if we only had one color in life to experience we would live in boredom if there was no differentiation in color.

  I have some very ambiguous feelings about some modern optical art.  When I went to a gallery in Washington D.C. and saw the Rothko panels covering the wall, an entire wall of large canvasses all monochromatic and worth millions of dollars.  I couldn’t help but think the joke is on us, this whole system of how artistic value is made in our culture.  Yes, I understand the philosophy and the revolts within schools of art and such canvasses are not just canvasses but also expressive of paradigm shifts within our culture.  And I like many of Rothko’s paintings.  His monochrome canvasses are not just valued art because they are single colored canvasses, they stand in the tradition of aesthetic value being the contrast between the one and the many.  One could say that Rothko’s monochromes have value because he did so many other polychromatic works.

  It was given to the followers of Jesus to find a way, to put unity back together from the many.  This is the great faith adventure of life itself if we want to preserve life for the future.  Our tradition is a worthy tradition to persist within because of this adventure to put unity together from the many.

  It is easier to separate and contemplate as a single agent meditating on one’s breath and navel on the mountainside.  Living and working and praying among the many is often messy.  It is very messy to go among the many languages which people speak in words and in their life styles and experiences.  The day of Pentecost calls for us to look for the One within the many.  The Day of Pentecost is not over; we are still in the hunt for the One within the many.

  But the one is not having everyone fold into the background of a single white color and becoming invisible.  The oneness which we seek is an experience of the total play of difference towards some higher purposes.  And what would those higher purposes be?  What would unity be known as if it is to be true to the many?

  We have words for the higher unity from the many.  One word might be harmony.  Harmony is a word which expresses the honoring of differences in a unity expressed as beauty.  Harmony can co-exist with solos and with melody.  In actual life practice another name for harmony is justice and love.   Love and justice express the freedom of the differences of gifts to be expressed and the result is not a competition which destroys the individual but of a harmony which creates something beautiful.

  Do you know why people like to sing in choirs?  They like to work on the individual parts over and over again and add them to the other voices because in the performance there is the beauty of getting truly lost as an individual voice in the greater work.  The harmony of the piece of music both elevates the many and the one in a singular event.

  If we can grasp this experience we can grasp the mission of Pentecost.  The mission of Pentecost is to bring back the events and expression of unity from the experiences of the many.  This mission is greater than the church; it is the American experiment which has known successes and failures.  Today, it would seem that E pluribus Unum has been reduced by greed to the power struggle between groups.  It’s almost like the basses in the choir getting so strong they decide that they don’t need the other sections or they only want the other voices for occasional contrast in service of the superiority of the basses.

  The work of Pentecost is not over; we in the church need to live this tradition of the One from the many so that the collateral effects of our success will be known in family, business, education and politics.  We owe it to God, to Christ, to the Church and to our world to devote ourselves to the One from the many.

  The Spirit is One who speaks in many tongues and languages of the diverse experiences of all people.  It is a daunting task to find harmonic unity among so much diversity.  The task is even more daunting today because instant communication allows us to know such manifold diversity in a deluge of information.  It seems almost too difficult to process such complex diversity into workable harmonic unity.

  But the Spirit is One; the Spirit inspires us to new harmonies where differences are acknowledged and celebrated even as the Spirit inspires the egos behind the differences to be checked at the door for the purpose of those higher harmonies.  Let us on this Pentecost Day re-commit ourselves to these higher harmonies of Jesus Christ as they are known in justice, love, service, sacrifice, joy and peace.  Amen.

A Couple of Pentecost Sermons, Discards from the editing room

 Feast of Pentecost A June 8, 2014   

Acts 2:1-11        Psalm 104:25-35, 37b

1 Corinthians 12:4-13      John 20:19-23 

Lectionary Link

 There is perhaps a most challenging idea that is offered by St. Paul on this feast day of Pentecost.  It is challenging because involves the greatest struggle that each of us faces in this life.  It is also ambiguous since it requires that we try to define the practice of this ideal in various community situations.

  And what is this most challenging idea of life?  It is what St. Paul called the common good.  This notion of the common good has also been the challenge of all political thinking.  The common good can be stated in very broad notions like the freedom all members of a society to pursue life, liberty and happiness.  It is much easier to confess ideals of the common good in broad terms than it is to specify the details in actual situation.  Whether it is the world community, our nation, state, city, business, school, parish community, or family, the common good is an ideal and a challenge.  And we can preach the ideal but we also must get our hands dirty in the details to make the common good function for all members.

  St. Paul wrote about the meaning of the knowing the Holy Spirit in our community life:  “ To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.” 

  Why is it important to know the Holy Spirit within our lives?

  It is important to know the Holy Spirit within our lives because diversity in every order of life seems to be a rule of life.  When diverse persons and things in life seem to complement each other, we call it the unity of harmony.  When diversity is experienced as reciprocity amongst difference people and different things, we celebrate Beauty.  We also know that diversity can be experienced as chaos, disharmony and as conflict and war.  When diversity is experienced as clash between particulars, diversity seems to threaten quality of life.

  On this day of Pentecost, we celebrate our belief in the Omni-presence of God in this World as the Personality of God’s Holy Spirit.  Sometimes in our Trinitarian Theology, we can view God the Father as an absent creator, who lives away from us.  And we can view Jesus Christ, as God’s Son, who only had a short 30 something years of ministry with us.  We do need to understand that God has been present with us as a personal, creative energy of life itself.  We need to understand God as the Holy Spirit.  We need to discover God as personal force of life who is the giver of gifts.

  Why do we need to know God as the personal and present force of the Holy Spirit?  I think that the experience of God as Holy Spirit gives us a different kind of accountability in life.  The great problems in human life are caused because people do not have a profound sense of accountability to someone greater than themselves or their own narrow interest groups.  The Holy Spirit as the creative force of life itself and the giver of all gifts and the creator of all diversity, can be dishonored and unrecognized.  But even when the Holy Spirit is dishonored and unrecognized, the Holy Spirit keeps on giving to all.  The Holy Spirit is like the sun that shines on the good and evil without partiality.  Great works of charity can be done under the cover of sunlight and great works of evil can be done under the cover of sunlight.

  It makes a great different in how we are related to the Holy Spirit, as creative, personal and present force of life.  It makes a difference because if we are in touch with the Holy Spirit, we will weave our diversity into beautiful rainbow productions.  If we are in touch with the Holy Spirit, we do not let our diverse and special gifts dominate or over-whelm or hoard, we seek the kind of direction that will help us blend for the common good.

  Our patient choir director, constantly wants us to look up from our music at her, not because she needy for visual attention, she wants us to look up so that we don’t commit inadvertent solo events in places where solos are not called for.  The goal of choral music is to blend and harmonize for the common good, and the way to common good in choral music is to follow the direction of the director.    

   St. Paul uses two metaphors to speak about the effects of the Holy Spirit in our lives and in the life of the church and the world.  St. Paul wrote about the gifts of the Spirit and the fruits of the Spirit.

  And why do we need to understand both effects of the Holy Spirit?  Well, I can be a gifted singer but never follow any direction in the choir and so ruin the choral presentation.  In short the gifts of the Spirit have to be directed by the fruits of the Spirit.  And what are the fruits of the Spirit?  Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Gentleness, Goodness, Kindness,  Meekness, Faith and Self  Control.  (Certainly, in choir our director wants the practice of self control).

  On this day of Pentecost, let us celebrate the presence of God’s Holy Spirit in our lives, in our world and in our parish life.  This world needs a diversity of gifts to bring quality of life and justice to all people.  And we know that we have massive failures in our world in the ways in which the gifts of God are being deployed toward the common good.  And we can be over-whelmed by the great failure of the common good for the peoples in our world.

  But what is our response to this great failure of the common good in in our world?  Our response is to celebrate where the common good is evident.  Rather than worrying about global matters over which we have no direct control, we need to respond within our own circumstances to bring the experience of the common good to our own immediate communities.

  We need help in our efforts to promote the common good in our lives.  We need to know and acknowledge the Holy Spirit of God as the personal creative force who is present in our world to whom we are accountable for the deployment of the gifts of our lives.

  God the Holy Spirit gives enough gifts for the common good of the world.  God the Holy Spirit has given enough gifts for the well-being and common good of St. John the Divine.  God the Holy Spirit is not a stingy giver.

  The issue for us today is taking up and deploying the gifts that we’ve been given.  How and where are we directing the gifts of our lives today?  Are we using our gifts for the best creative purposes in our lives and in the lives of our community?  As we take up our gifts today, left us also seek the direction of how our gifts are to be deployed; let us also seek the fruits of God’s Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control.

  In the choir of life, we look to the Holy Spirit as the conductor of our gifts, so that what we produce with our lives is the beauty of the common good.  O, Spirit of God, we thank you that you give us gifts, and we thank you that you also give us the fruits of the Spirit to help us deploy our gifts for the common good. Amen.

    Have you thought recently about your spiritual gift?

  Well, what is a spiritual gift?  How does it differ from a natural gift?  And maybe you have found your gift but it has no place to be expressed.  If you told me that you had a gift with the Swahili language and wanted to use it in the parish, I might be hard pressed to find an outlet for that gift.  So discovering our gifts and finding a place where our gifts would be received is a major task of life.  Each of us at some time and some place has felt out of place with our particular gift.  Have you ever given a gift, or a present, to someone and it was obvious that they had no use or appreciation for the gift? (Certainly if you’ve been a parent, you often had that unrequited feeling).  But even in our employment, if we feel that our abilities are not being received, it can contribute to our eventful burn out.   That unrequited feeling is one of the worst feelings to have, since in our basic altruistic impulses, we at the very least want to be useful to other people and make a contribution to the common good.

  I would like for us to look at the Feast of Pentecost as the opportunity to view this world and our lives as gifts from God.  But it is not enough just to be gifts from God; we also have to have the gift of wisdom and discernment in the deployment of our gifts within the communities where we are living.  When the competition amongst gifted people abound, there is much confusion and one wonders how having so many gifts can go awry.

  St. Paul wrote about the Holy Spirit giving gifts to the members of the Corinthian church.  The Corinthian church was like every church and like every family with the same basic issue of life:  How can a community experience the unity of peace in the midst of a diversity of gifts and personalities.  How did St. Paul’s address this dilemma? He said unity was possible because we have all drunk of the same Spirit.  But what does that mean in a practical sense?

  In a practical sense, I think it means that in our worship of a very great God, our own significance is dwarfed and the contrast allows us in humility to check our egos at the door.  When we are able to do this, we are able to deploy our gifts in winsomely persuasive ways and we can avoid the competitive and coercive deployment of our gifts.

  After St. Paul saluted the Corinthians for all of their gifts in the 12^th  chapter, what did he write about in the 13^th chapter?  In the 13^th chapter, he wrote that you could have all of the gifts, even spectacular gifts, but if we do not have love, St. Paul reminds us that our gifts account for nothing and can even cause harm and discord.

  The Feast of Pentecost reminds us about the great art of living.  The great art of living involves how to live in unity in the midst of all of the diversity of peoples, languages and human experiences.  The problem in our society, our world, our communities, parishes and family is that we often do not find or access the Holy Spirit of unity in our lives.  Instead of putting together the puzzle of diversity into a celebration of complementing common good, we often celebrate an egotistical or separating tribalism or nationalism centering on superiority and dominance.

  We believe that God created great diversity in nature and in humanity.  And we believe that God called creation, good, very good.  And we are told that the Spirit of God moved over the face of the deep in the process of creation.

  In the feast of Pentecost, this same Spirit of God becomes evident to us as God’s presence behind everything in this world.  There is a seemingly infinite amount of diversity in this world and diversity can mean war and competition unless behind this screen of creation we can come to know the creating Spirit of God.  The One who created us, created us to fit together with a reciprocity that represents the beauty that God created us for.  The human sin is that we have lost touch with God’s Spirit behind the curtain of diversity of life and now too often diversity does not contribute towards the reciprocity of Beauty; diversity is used to serve open war and hatred.

  Pentecost is the day when we celebrate the fact that the followers of Jesus got back to the Spirit of God and it was a great awakening for the church. It was the birth of the church.  And the Spirit of God is the very life of the Church.  It is our task in life to get behind the curtain of diversity of life and experience the Spirit of God, within and underneath all of our lives.  And when we can do this our diverse gifts can be wonderful contributions to the common good of the families and communities of our lives.

    If you are worried about whether you have a special spiritual gift, don’t worry.  One of the gifts that God gives to us is to hide ourselves from ourselves.  Some of the most important mentors in my early life did not ever know what they really did for me; they were just faithful and kind in important ways.  If in our prayer and worship, we are making ourselves available to God, God is using us even if we don’t know it.  And that’s okay.

  As I look around St. John’s, I see evidence upon evidence of God’s Spirit working through our members.  And most of you probably don’t even know it, but everything here gets done because of the gifts of the people who come here.  The gifts of people who have been here in the past still bless us today.  And we keep our doors open because of the gifts of so many people.  And every gift is important.  The Spirit of God is so awesome that we have no problem checking our egos at the door before divine greatness, and so we can receive wisdom and discernment in the deployment of our gifts for the common good.

  We are a gifted people for sure, but beyond our gifts, I experience our community as a loving community and as a community of God’s Holy Spirit.  And today, God’s Holy Spirit asks us to continue to offer our selves and our gifts to be used for the common good.  Thank you,  Holy Spirit for giving gifts to us.  And thank you people of St. John’s for sharing your gifts for our common good.  Amen.

Another Sermon

Feast of Pentecost A June 8, 2014   

Acts 2:1-11        Psalm 104:25-35, 37b

1 Corinthians 12:4-13      John 20:19-23      

As firm and fixed as the leaders of religious traditions like to present them, they are in fact very fluid.  They are living traditions and they change according to the ways in which people use what they have received.  They change because every community and every person is charged with adopting the traditions to one’s own context and situation.

It so happens that the followers of Jesus in the decades which followed his life on earth became predominantly people who were not raised with the traditions of Judaism.  But Jesus was a Jew and he lived within that tradition and so Judaism was appropriated and adapted for the mission of the Jesus movement.

We observe Pentecost as a Christian feast fifty days after the resurrection.  But Pentecost was a Jewish feast, a harvest feast, fifty days after Passover.  It was also a feast which commemorated the giving of the law on Mt. Sinai to Moses.

The giving of the law to Moses occurred on Mt. Sinai; this is the greatest event in the Hebrew religion.  It is told with descriptions of special effect; smoke, fire and cloud and thundering sounds are written about to characterize the glory of God’s presence kissing earth so closely in the giving of the law.

But the laws were written on stone tablets; the prophets found this to be a problem so they had visions and wished for a time when people could have the teachings (the torah) of God written upon the human heart.

 The followers of Jesus were looking for solutions in their time for the anticipations of the prophets of old.

What happened within the followers of Jesus?   Jews and Gentiles began to show evidence of their life conditions changed and converted by the message of Jesus Christ.  They had to explain and teach this new dynamic.

There was a new Mt. Sinai event.  It occurred in Jerusalem on the 50^th day after Passover when the giving of the law was commemorated.  The law was given again in the Pentecost event; the law was now to be written on the hearts of many.  It was no longer limited to the stone tablets; it was no longer limited to the Hebrew language.

 The Pentecost event in the sacred story of the church was created to teach this transition of the teaching of Jesus from being only to the Jewish community to being offered and valid to anyone who found it to be meaningful and relevant to the transformation of their lives.

In reading the account from Acts of the Apostles about this Pentecost event at a pilgrimage feast for Jews gathering in Jerusalem, we find that the apostles in this Mt. Sinai Event suddenly became polyglottic.  They spoke in the languages which were known by Jews who lived in places around the Roman World and who had taken on the languages of these various places as their own native tongue.

 One can see how these polyglottic disciples were symbols about the universalization of a form of Judaism which took place because of the success of the message of Jesus Christ.

Christo-centric Judaism could be translated and embraced in the experience of a person from any place or culture.

The unity of the Spirit is a very complex unity; it isn’t simplistic.  It is not just suddenly a magical fix of the differences which exist in human experience between people of different cultures and background.  The unity of Spirit of Pentecost means that God’s Spirit can interpret to anyone the relevance of Jesus Christ to anyone in the world.It means that anyone can come to know about this very unique and rare person Jesus Christ.  We have taken this unity of availability of the message and made it into a political unity of Christians who align themselves with pope, bishops or pastors.

Pentecost is not about political or administrative unity of people get religious passports to receive sacraments and ministry in various  Christian bodies.

The unity of Pentecost is based upon the ability of the message of God’s love being able to be translated and to be understood, relevant and powerful in the life of anyone who wishes to know God’s life changing presence.

The presence of God’s Spirit comes in as many diverse ways as there are people.  God empties or reduces the aloofness of the divine to become relevant to the peculiar life story of each person.  The ways in which God becomes relevant to people is endlessly different.

God can even change lives for people who do not use God or Christians words. The success of AA is a testimony to the fact that Sublime grace can work without specific religious or Christian sub-titles.

The unity of the God’s Spirit means that the Sublime is available in so many ways to everyone who is drawn in this life to be breathless with “O my God” awesome acknowledgment. Or simply “O my.”   The moment of awe of the sublime is the moment of true worship because in those moments one does not have try to pretend that one is being worshipful in public places of worship.  (though in fact the sublime can occur in the places of worship, particularly if one has an experience of wisdom to expand one’s heart and mind).

Pentecost is a Day when celebrate the fact that Christ as Word from the beginning became a polyglottic experience so that everyone could know one is free to anthropomorphize God in one's very own language because God empties the divine self and lays down the divine life to be known by each of us.

Pentecost means that the language we speak is God's language because God is humble enough to be known by those of us who have reason to be humble because we are truly small.  But God's humility is to love us and to accept the way in which we love God on our own terms, never having a final form of love, or love language, but a growing and continuing love.  This means we have the possibility to be polyglottic forever in how we will speak of Christ in as many ways and languages as we can.  God has a future in human language, because the Word of God became many ways of relating the closeness of God to humanity.

The one heart of God gave life blood to all of the capillaries of each and every human situation and this is what we celebrate on the day of Pentecost.  Amen.