Day
of Pentecost B May 24, 2015
Acts 2:1-21 Psalm 104:
25-35,37
Romans 8:22-27 John 15:26-27; 16:4b-15
What is the difference between noise and music? And you are thinking, "Well, Phil your chanting is noise and Pavarotti made music." Okay point taken.
Everything sounding at once is what we call cacophony or bad sound or noise. And yet even organized noise has narrative purpose. As when one is trying to shoo racoons from one's yard at night or when the audience applauds at a musical performance or as they cheer or boo at an athletic contest.
Today we welcome to our parish the gift of a pipe organ and it is the perfect gift on the perfect day, the Day of Pentecost. A pipe organ is like having a band and an orchestra within the various cabinets which house the pipes.
The Day of Pentecost is the Day of the Holy Spirit and this day is also the birth of the church. What started with Jesus of Nazareth within the Judaism of Palestine became the church which began to reach throughout the world and the early Christian expositors had to account for the widespread success of the message of Jesus to people of every language. In the Hebrew Scriptures the polyglot peoples of the world were explained as a curse of God to wreak havoc on the people of Babel who had been united with one language to overthrow God. The story of Babel is that ancient explanation for many languages; God punished and scattered people into many language groups.
But the Day of Pentecost is a revisiting of the story of Babel. It is a day of shouting "viva la difference." Long live diversity. But now diversity is not interpreted as a curse. The Day of Pentecost is a day of a new understanding of the true universality of God and the ability to translate God into the experience and language of each and every person. God should be the most relevant and the most accessible Being to everyone.
What has happened in the history of humanity is that groups of people take the blessing of God and how that blessing has come to them and then they pretend that they can make God accessible only through their own religious regulations and practices. And this can leave many people feeling as though the Great and accessible God is not available to them. The way in which religion is often practiced seems to be about building barriers around God creating lots of hoops for people to jump through to tell them how they can have something which they already have, namely God's loving presence.
We celebrate today the gift of a pipe organ and a pipe organ is perhaps a most perfect metaphor for the Feast of Pentecost.
A pipe organ is driven by moving air. It is generated by a blower. The pressurized air in the chests of an organ allows each pipe to blow like a whistle. Each whistles has a different length and shape and air release spaces which form the unique sound of each pipe. In a pipe organ there is one source of air but there are many resulting sounds which come from that air. And when the sounds are blended and arranged they can create the aesthetic event of music.
The Holy Spirit is the creative Breath and Wind of God's omnipresence. The ancients observed that Breath is the sign of human life. Breath cannot be seen but the effects can be known in the life of a person. The ancients also observed the great external breath of the world, the presence of Wind. Wind can erode and shape and propel ships. Wind is a force of nature and it is not seen but its effects are unavoidable. So in the ancient creation story we are told that the Spirit of God moved over the void and created and animated and gave life. But this great Wind and Breath differentiated itself into the vast diversity which was known in creation.
The great Spirit of God's unseen presence has been known by people in many ways. The biblical tradition is a history of how people have come to acknowledge how God's Spirit has become evident to them in their time and place.
What happened in the aftermath of Jesus Christ is that an understanding of God became perpetuated as one who could be translated as the Good News of love, justice and forgiveness into the language of each and every person.
In the metaphor of the pipe organ, it as if God is the composer of a great and wonderful and endless piece of music. And Jesus is God playing this music with the pipe organ of creation, and the Holy Spirit is the one wind and energy which sounds through all of the diverse pipes with incredible beauty because of the blending and juxtaposition of all of the different sounds.
In this pipe organ metaphor, it would seem as though the pipes of the organ are just dead lifeless things. But sometimes a pipe can seem to have a mind of its own. A pipe organ cipher is when a pipe makes a squeaky sound and it is stuck on that squeaky sound and stands out as such. This is not fun for an organist become the organist has to locate the pipe to get it unstuck.
In this metaphor, you and I as individual pipes in this great creative music effort of God, have freedom to shape our experience so that the life of God can sound through us in beautiful ways, sometimes as soloists and sometimes in harmony. In our prayer and our worship we are trying to adjust our lives to the flow of God's Spirit through us so that we can do beautiful things for God in the ministry of love and justice to which we are called.
On this Day of Pentecost I need to remember that I am not the only pipe in God's pipe organ. A single pipe would be just one note and pitch and it would be like a boring whistle. The Day of Pentecost is a day of celebrating the oneness of God's Spirit in the diversity of expression through all people. A basic sound of each person comes through language and language is the basic proof that people were made to be together. The fact that the one Spirit can make Jesus Christ known in all of the languages is proof of God's accessibility and we celebrate God's accessibility through diversity today.
Good music comes through the blending of diversity. The little switches on the pipe organ are called stops. These stops blend together various divisions of pipes to create all of the different styles of music which can be used to present a musical composition. You have heard phrase, "Pulling out all of the stops?" This is when an organist literally has all of the pipe divisions playing and if all pipes were playing at once it is quite a cacophonous rumble. In our lives we need to know how and when to "pipe down." We need to observe rests in music and we need to observe rests in our lives as a way of allowing others to know that they have a welcome place in the music which God is trying to create with all of us.
Today we celebrate the presence of God as Holy Spirit in our world. God as Holy Spirit is the sustaining breath of life. And let us remember that one of our most important functions in life is to be available to the Holy Spirit to be a place of prayer. A pipe in a pipe organ is full of life when blown air is forced through it. Prayer through us is one of the chief works of the Holy Spirit.
St. Paul in the Epistle to the Romans writes that the Spirit is deep within us praying through us with deep groans. Sometimes we can misinterpret the deep groans of our lives as depression or as sad moods. Have you ever considered the deep groans of your life as the Spirit of God praying through you?
So the Spirit of God can come in ecstatic joy but Spirit of God can be known in deep groans of intercession. And these groans represent the identity which God takes with the deep deep suffering present in a world so full of the freedom of the diversity of so many things happening together at the same time.
Each pipe has a place within a pipe organ. You and I and everyone else has a place within the great pipe organ of God. Let us on this Day of Pentecost endeavor to make ourselves available to God's Spirit to express the specific ministry which God gives to us. Let us appreciate the diversity of the other pipes within the great pipe organ of God's family. And let us learn to be played by God with God's composition as played by the divine organist, Jesus Christ. Amen.
Everything sounding at once is what we call cacophony or bad sound or noise. And yet even organized noise has narrative purpose. As when one is trying to shoo racoons from one's yard at night or when the audience applauds at a musical performance or as they cheer or boo at an athletic contest.
Today we welcome to our parish the gift of a pipe organ and it is the perfect gift on the perfect day, the Day of Pentecost. A pipe organ is like having a band and an orchestra within the various cabinets which house the pipes.
The Day of Pentecost is the Day of the Holy Spirit and this day is also the birth of the church. What started with Jesus of Nazareth within the Judaism of Palestine became the church which began to reach throughout the world and the early Christian expositors had to account for the widespread success of the message of Jesus to people of every language. In the Hebrew Scriptures the polyglot peoples of the world were explained as a curse of God to wreak havoc on the people of Babel who had been united with one language to overthrow God. The story of Babel is that ancient explanation for many languages; God punished and scattered people into many language groups.
But the Day of Pentecost is a revisiting of the story of Babel. It is a day of shouting "viva la difference." Long live diversity. But now diversity is not interpreted as a curse. The Day of Pentecost is a day of a new understanding of the true universality of God and the ability to translate God into the experience and language of each and every person. God should be the most relevant and the most accessible Being to everyone.
What has happened in the history of humanity is that groups of people take the blessing of God and how that blessing has come to them and then they pretend that they can make God accessible only through their own religious regulations and practices. And this can leave many people feeling as though the Great and accessible God is not available to them. The way in which religion is often practiced seems to be about building barriers around God creating lots of hoops for people to jump through to tell them how they can have something which they already have, namely God's loving presence.
We celebrate today the gift of a pipe organ and a pipe organ is perhaps a most perfect metaphor for the Feast of Pentecost.
A pipe organ is driven by moving air. It is generated by a blower. The pressurized air in the chests of an organ allows each pipe to blow like a whistle. Each whistles has a different length and shape and air release spaces which form the unique sound of each pipe. In a pipe organ there is one source of air but there are many resulting sounds which come from that air. And when the sounds are blended and arranged they can create the aesthetic event of music.
The Holy Spirit is the creative Breath and Wind of God's omnipresence. The ancients observed that Breath is the sign of human life. Breath cannot be seen but the effects can be known in the life of a person. The ancients also observed the great external breath of the world, the presence of Wind. Wind can erode and shape and propel ships. Wind is a force of nature and it is not seen but its effects are unavoidable. So in the ancient creation story we are told that the Spirit of God moved over the void and created and animated and gave life. But this great Wind and Breath differentiated itself into the vast diversity which was known in creation.
The great Spirit of God's unseen presence has been known by people in many ways. The biblical tradition is a history of how people have come to acknowledge how God's Spirit has become evident to them in their time and place.
What happened in the aftermath of Jesus Christ is that an understanding of God became perpetuated as one who could be translated as the Good News of love, justice and forgiveness into the language of each and every person.
In the metaphor of the pipe organ, it as if God is the composer of a great and wonderful and endless piece of music. And Jesus is God playing this music with the pipe organ of creation, and the Holy Spirit is the one wind and energy which sounds through all of the diverse pipes with incredible beauty because of the blending and juxtaposition of all of the different sounds.
In this pipe organ metaphor, it would seem as though the pipes of the organ are just dead lifeless things. But sometimes a pipe can seem to have a mind of its own. A pipe organ cipher is when a pipe makes a squeaky sound and it is stuck on that squeaky sound and stands out as such. This is not fun for an organist become the organist has to locate the pipe to get it unstuck.
In this metaphor, you and I as individual pipes in this great creative music effort of God, have freedom to shape our experience so that the life of God can sound through us in beautiful ways, sometimes as soloists and sometimes in harmony. In our prayer and our worship we are trying to adjust our lives to the flow of God's Spirit through us so that we can do beautiful things for God in the ministry of love and justice to which we are called.
On this Day of Pentecost I need to remember that I am not the only pipe in God's pipe organ. A single pipe would be just one note and pitch and it would be like a boring whistle. The Day of Pentecost is a day of celebrating the oneness of God's Spirit in the diversity of expression through all people. A basic sound of each person comes through language and language is the basic proof that people were made to be together. The fact that the one Spirit can make Jesus Christ known in all of the languages is proof of God's accessibility and we celebrate God's accessibility through diversity today.
Good music comes through the blending of diversity. The little switches on the pipe organ are called stops. These stops blend together various divisions of pipes to create all of the different styles of music which can be used to present a musical composition. You have heard phrase, "Pulling out all of the stops?" This is when an organist literally has all of the pipe divisions playing and if all pipes were playing at once it is quite a cacophonous rumble. In our lives we need to know how and when to "pipe down." We need to observe rests in music and we need to observe rests in our lives as a way of allowing others to know that they have a welcome place in the music which God is trying to create with all of us.
Today we celebrate the presence of God as Holy Spirit in our world. God as Holy Spirit is the sustaining breath of life. And let us remember that one of our most important functions in life is to be available to the Holy Spirit to be a place of prayer. A pipe in a pipe organ is full of life when blown air is forced through it. Prayer through us is one of the chief works of the Holy Spirit.
St. Paul in the Epistle to the Romans writes that the Spirit is deep within us praying through us with deep groans. Sometimes we can misinterpret the deep groans of our lives as depression or as sad moods. Have you ever considered the deep groans of your life as the Spirit of God praying through you?
So the Spirit of God can come in ecstatic joy but Spirit of God can be known in deep groans of intercession. And these groans represent the identity which God takes with the deep deep suffering present in a world so full of the freedom of the diversity of so many things happening together at the same time.
Each pipe has a place within a pipe organ. You and I and everyone else has a place within the great pipe organ of God. Let us on this Day of Pentecost endeavor to make ourselves available to God's Spirit to express the specific ministry which God gives to us. Let us appreciate the diversity of the other pipes within the great pipe organ of God's family. And let us learn to be played by God with God's composition as played by the divine organist, Jesus Christ. Amen.
