What is God Like?

3 Pentecost C June 9, 2013

1 Kings 17:8-16 (17-24) Psalm 146

Galatians 1:11-24 Luke 7:11-17

 Lectionary Link

  What is the Lord God like?  The writers of the Bible  use many words trying to answer that question.  They use poetry and stories and salvation history to try to relate to their reading community, what the Lord God is like.

  What is the Lord God like?  The writer of the Psalms tells us:   The Lord is the one who made heaven and earth, the seas, and all that is in them;  and who keeps the divine promise for ever; and who gives justice to those who are oppressed, and food to those who hunger. The LORD sets the prisoners free; the LORD opens the eyes of the blind; the LORD lifts up those who are bowed down;  The LORD loves the righteous; the LORD cares for the stranger; he sustains the orphan and widow, but frustrates the way of the wicked.  That is what the Lord is like.

  Is this what we really think God is like?  Those who see this world with hunger, oppression, sickness and  people neglected,  challenge this view of God whose existence would only be proved through realized justice and total eradication of hunger.  People who are trying to remove the word God as relevant to their lives want to challenge us theists as being intellectually impaired.

  We need to remind ourselves and all people who defend God poorly that the Psalmist did not write:  The Lord God forces justice to be practiced in the world.  God forces people to share their food so that no one is hungry.  God does not heal the blind because God does not permit blindness in the first place.

  Certain notions of God cannot be defended when this world is not exempted from random and non-random events of pain, suffering and afflictions?

  Perhaps the most adequate answer is that God is this pure freedom of creativity and rather than monopolizing all power through a divine tyranny, God allows a genuine degree of true freedom in everything within the divine environment.

  What would be totally unthinkable is the world as fixed and static entities that always interacted in robotic ways to avoid the competitions between systems which cause pain and suffering.  Automated, driver-less cars make sense for having no accidents; automated entities in this world would be lifeless and soulless life because potential conflicting peoples and entities is what characterizes genuine freedom and this is what makes us persons and not robots or machines.  We know ourselves to be people with a degree of freedom and we assume this is expressive of a greater being of creative freedom and it is not difficult to project personality upon this Great Being, because we believe the freedom that has created personhood, is a higher form of personhood than our own.

  So how would a God who cares for justice and yet permits freedom as the only conditions suitable for their being authentic personhood; how would such a God be and act towards us and everything that is not God?  How would God respect our freedom and yet instruct us to use our freedom in the best possible way?

  The task of any parent is to be a persuader since a parent wants a child to choose what is good and right.  This is what God is like; God persuades and lures us to surpass ourselves in excellence.  The Bible is a book written by very imperfect people under the influence of the divine lure to do what is right, just and loving.  The Bible heroes are those who as it were, “took the bait” from the divine lure and in their lives instantiated, lived out, what God is like.

  So have the examples of Elijah, Jesus and St. Paul.  In ancient times the child of a widow was very important to her life, not just for the obvious reason of mother-child relationship but also for continued connection with the father’s family as a social and economic safety net.  The prophets of God had to show what God was like as an example to us all?  Why?  In the play of freedom in this world we can become practitioners and victims of a kind of social Darwinism; living as though only the fit and the strong have the full right of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  The weak have no right to survive; they are a drag upon the life of the strong and therefore expendable.

  In biblical religion this sense of inevitability of the rights of the strong and powerful is countered by the revealed law and by the witness of the prophets who remind us what God is like.  And even people who have law can limit the function of the law for the benefit of a privileged few.  Even the law can become but a regulation between rich and powerful people stepping on each other’s toes.

  St. Paul saw that the boundaries of Judaism in practice were too narrow; there were too many outsiders to Judaism.  St. Paul came to understand that God was not one to exclude and so he devoted his life to the inclusion of the Gentiles in the message of God’s love.  He wanted to show the Gentiles what God was like; one who loved justice and one who cared for the widow and orphan and for the poor.  If God was to be good news in this world, the news about God was to be an actual reality for the most embracing common good.

  Today, we have the great task in our lives to show this world that the word God has a functional reality in this world.  If we don’t live the reality of God as love and good news and justice, then we may be responsible for the creation of more atheists, people for whom God seems to have no useful reality.

  The Bible and the people of the Bible did not finish the work of justice and love in this world, because they were not perfect and neither are we.  The Bible only represents a cursory start to the never-ending work of love and justice in this world.  Today, we have the examples of Elijah, Jesus and Paul who showed us what God is like; God cares for the lives of the vulnerable and God does not have any outsiders.  Let us continue in this work of showing the people of our lives what God is like.

  People who profess God can can actually live very unloving lives.  People who do not profess God can actually live just and caring lives.  But why not profess God and also strive to be just and caring in our lives?  For us, there is incredible significance in the experience of knowing an inspired sense of Great Love and Justice that challenges the human ego as being the sole origin of such wonderful attributes.

  We confess God, as indeed the best way, to check the humanistic ego, because we know that the power of our dominion when the humanistic ego is not checked by Higher Love and Justice results in horrendous outcomes.

  Let us go forth and show this world what God is like.  Let us the live the good news.  Let us love one another, love mercy and justice and walk humbly with our God.  Amen.

Gospel Puppet Show: God Cares for Those Who Mourn

Gospel Puppet Show

June 9, 2013

3 Pentecost

Characters:

Jesus

Disciple Peter

Widow: Miriam

Widow’s Son: Josh

(sounds of people mourning)

Peter:  Jesus, we’re coming to the village of Nain.  I see something ahead.  There must have been an accident.  Shall we go around the village to avoid the problem?

Jesus:  No Peter, let us go and see if we can help.

(arriving at the woman and a covered body)

Peter:  It looks like we're too late to help.  The son of this widow has died and they are having a funeral.  Let’s not disturb the funeral.

Jesus:  I feel very sad for this woman.  She lost her husband and now she has lost her only child.  God cares for those who are suffering and we must show her that God cares for her.

Peter: How will we do that?

Jesus:  Let's go and see.

(Jesus meets the widow)

Jesus:  What is your name?

Widow:  My name is Miriam.

Jesus:  What happened?

Widow:  My only child Josh got a really bad fever and then he died.  I lost my husband and now I have lost my son.  Now only God can help me get through this.

Jesus: Do not cry, Miriam.  God cares for widows and orphans, and I am here to prove this.

(Jesus goes to the covered body)

Jesus: Josh, Rise and get up.

(Josh, pushes the grave cloth aside)

Josh:  Wow.  Mom where am I?  Have I been in a long sleep?  And who are these people?

Widow:  Josh, you got very sick and we thought you were dead.  But this nice man Jesus came and he has now brought you back to my life.  And God has answered my prayer.  I know that God cares for me.  Thank you Jesus for showing me that God loves and cares for us.

Jesus:  Peter, this is our mission in life.

Peter: What mission?

Jesus:  It is our mission to show people about God’s love and care.  It is our mission to tell good news to people about God’s love.  Can you remember that?

Peter:  Yes, I can and do you think the boys and girls here today can remember this important mission?  Can you boys and girls remember to show everyone that God loves and cares for them?

All:  Yes we can.

Peter:  Good, then lets get to work.  Good bye!

Elijah's Holy Barbecue and Having Faith When Jesus Is Not Physically Present

2 Pentecost Cycle C Proper 4 June 2, 2013
1 Kings 18:20-21, (22-29), 30-39 Psalm 96

Galatians 1:1-12  Luke 7:1-10

Lectionary Link

  Our lessons appointed for our reading today highlight the clash of people in their religious thinking and in their beliefs about God.

  In the reading from the Hebrew Scripture we read about the prophet Elijah issuing a challenge to all of the prophets of Baal.  He was pitting the God of Israel against the god Baal.  The challenged involved building altars upon Mount Carmel, placing the offerings upon the altars and then the challenge was to see if Baal or the God of Israel would respond by zapping the offerings upon the altars with fire from heaven.  Now in Texas we used to be awfully proud of our competition barbecue but never anything like this.  Yes, the winner often thought his barbecue was divine, but there has never been anything like this holy barbecue showdown on Mount Carmel.

  And Elijah was confident and maybe a little cocky don’t you think?  He insisted that water be poured upon his altar just to make it harder for the God of Israel to start a fire upon the altar.   And sure enough, the God of Elijah and the God of Israel came through and zapped that offering on the altar that had been soaked in water.  And the prophets of Baal could get no response from their god  who could not even flick his Bic.

  And the God of Israel won this Holy Barbecue and a message was sent to the rotten King of Israel, Ahab and his wife Jezebel who had gone after the god Baal.  Jezebel is perhaps one of the most infamous woman’s name in history.   She was the daughter of the king of Tyre who Ahab married for political reason but she also brought with her the worship of Baal.

  We have legendary super heroes today and many children use those heroes to inspire their imaginations of doing the impossible.  Elijah was one of those super heroes whose place in the writings for Israel was to accentuate the power of the Lord God of Israel and to warn them not to forsake the Lord God for other gods.  The Hebrews Scriptures are realistic in portraying that the God of Israel had competitors in the gods and goddesses of Canaan.  And sometimes the God of Israel was not their choice.  Much of the writing in the Hebrew Scriptures blames the bad luck of the people of Israel upon their infidelity to the God of Israel and their running after other gods.

  The legendary event of the holy barbecue with Yahweh sending fire from heaven was a super story with an obvious message about God’s greatness.

  St. Paul also makes reference to a religious clash within his communities.  He has some very strong words for some Gospel competitors.  Apparently some other prophets arrived in Galatia after Paul left and they preached the Gospel differently than Paul did; it was different enough for him to issue a curse upon those who preached a Gospel different from Paul.  This isn’t quite as impressive as the Holy barbecue showdown of Elijah and the prophets of Baal but it does reveal to us that there must have been quite a diversity of preachers of the Gospel within the early Christian communities.  And Paul disagreed with Peter and others about how the Gospel should be lived and preached.  We should not put the past on a pedestal of purity as if the people of the past were exempt from all sorts of religious disputes and disagreement which seem to be characteristic of our age.

   We probably too should remember that the Nicaea Council was the beginning of the effort to remove all religious disagreement and diversity from the church.  What the Emperor was for the Roman Empire the Pope and Patriarch were to become for a Holy Empire Church with a central authority removing all disagreement from the worldwide church.  Such has never worked and it still doesn’t.

  The Gospel lesson for today has a rather interesting religious judgment upon the faith of Israel.  A centurion was a Roman military commander for 800-1200 soldiers.  He was loyal to the Caesar and would be required to venerate the Caesar as a god.

  But someone a certain centurian loved and cared for was ill; he had heard about the wonder worker Jesus and so as a patron for a synagogue, he asked some Jews to arrange an audience with Jesus, and Jesus agreed.  But then the centurion thought, “If I issue a command, I don’t have to be present with all of my troops for it to be carried out, surely this Jesus can do the same.”  So this centurion, who had to be loyal to his Caesar god, paid homage to Jesus by saying, “I am not worthy to have you in my home; just say the word and my servant will be healed.”

  And this is what Jesus said about the faith of the centurion and about faith in Israel: “I tell you, not even in Israel have I found such faith.”

  Remember that this Gospel is being recounted within a Lucan Christ community, after followers of Jesus have been dismissed from the synagogue and had curses read against them in the prayers at the synagogues.  The followers of Jesus had increasingly become gentiles and Roman citizens and were people who did not have eyewitness contact with Jesus.  They were like us; “They and we have not been in the worthy situation of  having eyewitness encounters with Jesus.”  They had to believe and we must believe that the salvation power of Christ works apart from his physical presence.

  Like the centurion, we say, “We’ve not been worthy for the presence of the historical Jesus within our home, but just let the words of Jesus be said and his saving health can still be known to us.”  And our faith can be as real and as valid as the faith of the eyewitnesses in Israel in the time of Jesus.

  Elijah was involved in a religious dispute; so was St. Paul, and so was Jesus, but I prefer the judgment of Jesus.  Jesus affirms the faith that is great and possible even when we don't actually see him.  Jesus does not seem to be concerned about controlling a community, he seems to be concerned that we have faith and that we be affirmed in our faith when we believe in a saving health that comes without ever seeing him.

  We probably will never cease fighting in the church and out of the church about God, faith and religion.  It might be good for us to step back and realize that Jesus saluted the faith of one who was already committed to venerate the divinity of an Emperor.  It is a good witness for us not to rush into sectarian judgments based upon our own preference; rather, let us rejoice when we find faith in people to embrace the saving faith of Christ.  Let us remember the words of Christ before the Christian religion was even born;  “I tell you, not even in Israel have I found such faith.”  Let us hold to Jesus who honors faith from all sorts of persons, and he honors our faith too.  Amen.

Gospel Puppet Show; Healing of the Centurion's Servant Cycle c, proper 4

Gospel Puppet Show

June 2, 2013

2 Pentecost

Characters:

Claudius

Junius

Father Phil

General Claudius:  psst.  Father Phil could I talk to you?

Father Phil:  General Claudius, what are you doing here?  Shouldn’t you be off fighting a war?

General Claudius: Well, we’ve had peace for a while and I have been able to be home but I have had sadness in my house.

Father Phil:  What happened?

General Claudius:  Well, one of my employees and best friend, Junius has become very ill and I am worried about him.  I’ve taken him to all of the best doctors and they say that they have done all that they can do.  And I need a favor from you.

Father Phil:  What do you need from me?

General Claudius:  Well, you know that I have been very friendly and helpful.  I have help to build some places of worship.   You know that I respect God.  And I would like you to go asked Jesus a favor for me?

Father Phil:  What do you want me to ask him?

General Claudius:  I want you to ask him to come to my house and heal my best friend Junius.  Will you do that for me?

Father Phil: Okay but I don’t know when I am going to see him.

(Claudius leaves)

(Jesus pops us on the other side of the puppet theatre)

Jesus: Father Phil, how are you?

Father Phil:  Jesus, you frightened me.  I need to see you and talk with you.  How did you know?

Jesus: Just call it divine knowledge.  So what do you need?

Father Phil:  The Roman General Claudius said his employee and friend Junius was really sick and he heard about you and he wanted me to ask you to go to his house to heal his friend.  Can you go?

Jesus: Sure, off I go.

 (Jesus disappears…after a while Claudius reappears)

General Claudius:  Father Phil, could I speak with you again?

Father Phil:  You already are speaking with me, so continue.

General Claudius:  I don’t want to waste the time of Jesus.  I am a General and I give orders and my orders get obeyed.  Jesus is greater than I am and I am sure that he can just heal my friend without coming to my house.  I am not worthy to have such an important person as Jesus in my home.

Father Phil:  Okay, I’ll try to find Jesus again.

(Claudius disappears and Jesus reappears)

Father Phil:  Jesus, I need…..

Jesus:  Yes, you need to talk to me and tell me that General Claudius thinks that I can heal his servant without even coming to his house.  And he is correct.  I have already healed his friend.  And I think that he has great faith to believe in me even though he does not see me.

Father Phil:  Isn’t that like our faith too?

Jesus:  Yes, it is.  Only a few people get to see me and talk with me.  But many people do not see me but they still believe in me and they still know my love, goodness and health.

Father Phil:  This is the faith of all of our children here too.  They live about two thousand years after you but they still gather together because of your love and kindness.

Jesus: Yes and I salute the faith of all who don’t see me but still believe in my love and kindness.

Father Phil:  Thank you Jesus for teaching us about faith. 

Puppet Show for Trinity Sunday

Gospel Puppet Show

May 26, 2013

Trinity Sunday

Characters:

Officer George

Father Phil

  

Sign on the Puppet Theatre

Security Agent, Security Systems and Driving Instruction

Fr. Phil: (knocks on the puppet theatre) Is anyone in?  I need some help.

Officer George:  (pops up)  Hello, I’m Officer George here.  Can I help you?

Fr. Phil:  Yes,  I need some one to teach a friend of mine how to drive.

Officer George:  Happy to help you.  Just have them come and sign up and I will be do the driving instruction.  I have never had a ticket but I wrote lots of tickets for speeders when I was a traffic cop.

Fr. Phil:  Great, I’ll have my friend come by to see you and sign up for the class.

(Officer George leaves)

Fr. Phil:  Oops, I forgot that I needed something else.  (Fr. Phil knocks on the theatre again)   Hello, is anyone still in the office?

Officer George: (pops up)  Yes, I’m still here.  Do you need another driving lesson?

Fr. Phil: No, I want to talk to your security person.  I need to have an alarm installed at my home.

Officer George:  Well, you’ve come to the right place.  I’ll be happy to help you.

Fr. Phil:  But aren’t you the Driving Instructor?

Officer George:  Yes, but I also install alarm systems.  Is that a problem?

Fr. Phil:  Well, no but you must be a busy person.  I will give you my address.  When can you come by and give me a bid.

Officer George:  I’ll come by tomorrow and help you decide what kind of alarm system that you need.  Good bye…..(Officer George disappears)

Fr. Phil:  Oops.  I forgot I still need something.  I need a security guard to come by each night and check our property.  Knock!  Knock!  Is anyone still there?

Officer George:  Oh, hello.  I see you are still here.  How can I help you? 

Fr. Phil:  I want to talk with your security agent.  I need a watchman to check out the church each night.  Can I hire one of your night watchmen?

Officer George:  Yes, you can.  I am the night watchman.

Fr. Phil:  How can you be the Driver Instructor, the alarm installer and the night watchman?

Officer George:  Well, I could ask you how you, the one and same person, could need a driver instructor, an alarm installed and a watchman.

Fr. Phil:  Well, as a person I have many needs.

Officer George: So you can be just one person and have many needs?  Don’t you think that I can be one person and have many jobs and titles?  I am a Driving Instructor, an alarm installer and a watchman.  Fr. Phil as a priest you should be able to understand that?

Fr. Phil:  Why do you say that?

Officer George:  Well, today is Trinity Sunday.  God is One, but we know God in different ways in God’s different Persons.  We know God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Fr. Phil: Officer George, thank you for your instruction about the Trinity.  Do you think this will help the children at St. John’s understand the Trinity?

Officer George:  Maybe a little…but now you’ve given me a fourth job, a teacher.  I think that I’ll stick to my three jobs.  Good bye, as you see I’m a very busy person having three different jobs.

Fr. Phil:  Good bye Officer George and thank you.  God must be a very busy God since there are so many people who have so many needs.  It’s a good thing that God is Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  Don’t you think so?

The Trinity: Affirming Dynamic Personalism

Trinity Sunday  May 26, 2013

Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31 Psalm 8/Canticle 13

Romans 5:1-5  John 16:12-15

Lectionary Link 

  For most of my preaching life I have begun my sermons with the rather presumptuous invocation, “In the name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  Amen.  Please be seated.”  I say “please be seated” since a child once quoted back to me my introduction with also the “Please be seated” which I found humorous; kind of like when one is reading a play script and one reads the stage directions which are written in parenthesis or italics as though it were part of the script.

  It is rather presumptuous to invoke the Trinity upon my little talks, as if, what I had to offer was worthy of such.  But just regard it in this way; if God abandons the  meanings of my sermons in the mind of the listeners, there is no hope for my sermons at all.

  Since this is Trinity Sunday and not Angels Dancing on a Pinhead Sunday, my sermon topic is assigned to be on the former not the latter, even though the Trinity may be as arcane and mysterious as that other proverbial topic of angelology.

  I think that I should begin by polling you my listeners about the state of your Trinitarian thinking.  America is a place of polls; we take polls for everything because it is related to what we want to sell to people and we want to have an indication what they might be buying before we go into full-scale production.

  When you pray, to whom do you pray?  God the Father?  God the Son?  Or God the Holy Spirit?  Or do you just pray to God?  And when you pray to God are you thinking about God the Father or all three Persons of the Trinity?  Or perhaps you are not consciously addressing any particular member of the Trinity?  Do you spread out the prayer attention that you give to each person of the Trinity?  Or do you assume that you are praying to God the Father, in the name of Jesus and through the power of the Holy Spirit?  What is the nature of your Trinitarian prayers?

  Do you pray differently with regard to the Trinity because you’re attending the Episcopal Church?  Would it not seem that Pentecostal churches perhaps give more attention to the Holy Spirit than do other churches?

  How come when people cuss and swear they generally just use the name God and are more likely to use some form of Jesus Christ as their scatological expletive?  It seems as though the Holy Spirit does not get mentioned in most scatological references and why is that?  Is it because the Holy Spirit is lesser known or is it because Jesus said that to blaspheme the Holy Spirit is the unforgivable sin?

  Are you or people you know more likely to pray to the Blessed Virgin Mary or to a favorite or designated saint than to God?  Or to a saintly departed grandparent?

  If it took more than four centuries of church history for the Trinity to become established as normative for most of Christianity, what are the roots of the Trinity and why did it become important for Christian identity?

  The Christ communities of the first four centuries were finding their identity in the ways in which they came to speak and teach about God.  There were other teachings about God and gods.  The followers of Jesus at first were another sect within Judaism.  Judaism is what we call a radical monotheistic religion; that God is One was crucial to the distinctive identity of the Jews in ancient Canaan which had people who had other gods and goddesses.  One of the main criticisms of the prophets against Israel was that they often were drawn to the polytheistic practices of their neighbors.   In Judaism there was the notion of a divinized human figure known as the Messiah or God’s anointed.  The most famous messiah was King David.  David was not a divine being but he was assumed as God’s chosen one to a special divine work.  Many ancient cultures had emperor cults and the monarchs used association with gods and goddesses as a way to perpetuate their divine right of rule.  The gods, as it were, “ordained the rule of the emperor” and so one should not oppose the will of the gods. 

  The notion of a messiah king for Israel was something of a copying of the way other kings in the region used divine selection as a way of legitimizing the right to rule.

  The early Christ communities inherited the notion of a messiah as a divinely designated figure.  For many Jews, the proof of the Messiah would be in his power like King David to restore Israel to freedom and success.  Jesus could not be such a figure; he would be a secret messiah, one who suffered and one who would be a king only to those who had his risen presence made known to them.  It would be true to say that Christians came to understand Jesus as not just a selected messiah like David; rather Jesus was one who was a pre-existing God, known as the Word from the beginning.  Christians re-interpreted the Royal Psalms as a way to speak about Jesus as God’s Son.  “The Lord said to my Lord, you are my Son; today I have begotten you.”  This language from the Psalm gave the followers of Jesus the language for them to present their claim that Jesus was God’s only begotten Son.

  Remember too, that the Roman Emperors even after the famous Christian Emperor Constantine were still designated as Augustus or as divine beings by the Roman senate.  So Roman Emperors were gods and sons of god; one can see where a “son of god” vocabulary was accessible and prevalent in understanding the nature of Jesus and how he would be presented within the Christian communities.

  The amazing thing is that Christianity was so successful in the first four centuries in the Roman Empire that the Emperors lost their significant “cultic role” as gods and sons of a god, and for political purposes began to play second fiddle to Jesus, Son of God.  They began with Constantine to see their role as the regents of Christ on earth, as Christian monarchs.  So after noticing the success of Christianity, Constantine the Great noticed that the Empire consisted of some significant metropolitan Christian centers; Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch and Rome.  But these centers had Christian religious disagreement within their regions and among themselves.  No particular bishop was exercising or had authority throughout all of the church.  And so Constantine called the bishops together in 325 in Nicaea.

  The Nicaea Council was a watershed event in the history of the church in establishing a worldwide collaborative practice to set an official language as how to talk about the Christian understanding of God.

  Essentially, the Council of Nicaea established what was regarded to be important in the Gospel narrative in the life of Jesus.  Jesus addressed God as his Father and so Jesus was his Son and equal with God.  Jesus spoke of sending of the Holy Spirit who is also God.  The Council of Nicaea really confused things for philosophers who were baffled by the saying that three Persons are still one God with all three still being equal.

  The big elephant in the room for us and for the bishops at Nicaea is and was  that we must use language.  Language is used for things and beings for which we have no empirical references and so when dealing with invisible things like love, hope, and God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, their meaning and truth for us does not mean being able to point to them like we point to a particular tree.

  The Trinity is an agreement by the church about the language that we use about God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  The agreement was put in the form of a creed for teaching purposes and to organize an expanding community.  The agreement about the Trinity was the result of trying to reduce the narrative form of the Gospels into abbreviated teaching points for Christian initiation and identity.  The problem is that because a group of people decide about how to use language at a certain time in history, it does not guarantee that the very same meanings of the language will be grasped in the same way at a different time.

  What is meaningful is that the language of the Trinity has remained as a part of our Christian identity and that it still invites us to seek interpretation of knowing God as primarily a relational God, not an aloof God, because we believe that personhood in humanity is what makes us unique and so personhood as dynamic relationship must also exist as a reality of God.

  If personhood is definitive as something that is superior in human beings; surely it must derive from some super-dynamic personhood community.  And so we confess God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, not to limit metaphors for God but to celebrate the notion of “person” as crucial in our own self-definition and self-knowing and this finds its parallel in our assignment of these important words to our confession of what we regard to be greatest, namely, God, as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  Amen.

Pentecost: A Day to Confess this Universe as a Friendly Place

Day of Pentecost   May 23, 2010

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

Acts 2:1-11      John 14:8-17, 25-17 

 Lectionary Link

  Today is the day of the Holy Spirit.  Long before the church had used Hellenistic philosophy to institutionalize an official doctrine of the personhood the member of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit, the notion of Spirit was used as the best metaphor for the reality of unseen and mysterious, but very real Life.  How do we know if a person is alive?  They have breath.  If you put your hand under the nose or in front of the mouth you can feel the movement of air.  On a cold day one can see one’s breath because of the water that is present in one’s breath.  Breath is same word for spirit and it is a sign of life.  And how could breath within a person be used in a larger metaphorical sense for life itself?  The entire world is breathing and how do we know?  We have the presence of Wind, an unseen force but a very real force to be reckoned with.  In a storm we see the destructive force of wind; in erosion we see the creative shaping force of wind.  One can easily see how breath and wind became the metaphor for Spirit and sign of invisible but obvious Life.

  In the creation story there is a speaker, a word spoken and an agent of creation.  And that agent of creation is the Spirit.  The Spirit of God, the Wind or Breath of God moved over the face of the Deep, over the Abyss.   I love the appointed Psalm for the feast of Pentecost.  It refers to the creative work of the Spirit in the incredible diversity of Nature.  The Psalmist of the 104^th Psalm was probably one who had some sea experience on the Mediterranean; and don’t you just love the Prayerbook Psalter rendering, “there is that Leviathan, which you have made for the sport of it.”  One has a sense that the creative Spirit is like a dance choreographer who has devised characters, moves and performances for the joy of the performers and for those who watch.  The Spirit is one who creates the sense of play that we feel is present within the world.  The Psalmist invites us to stop and smell the roses, stop and enjoy the entertainment that is present within life as continuous performance of the Spirit creator.

  What is it that makes human beings different at observing life and nature than the other creatures of the world?  Human beings attain their distinction of existence because of another unseen force that epitomizes human existence, namely our language ability.  Remember in the creation event, there is a speaker and a word spoken. Word is how word users have their world created.  Text seems to make language visible but the language or word ability is the invisible ability embedded in human consciousness which gives us our distinction in perceiving and thinking and extending the kind of control that humans have learned to exercise in this world.

  Jesus said that his words were “spirit and they were life.”  His words were words that invite us to a quality of life that the Gospels refer to as abundant life.  Spirit and word are used as ways to speak about creation and the invisible and yet omnipresence of Word in human experience is literally what creates the human experience and makes us observers of the world in ways that no other creatures do.  

  Because we have Word-spirit life, we interpret the world so that we can interact with the world.  This interaction does not take place in a vacuum; mutual experience is conducted through a marvelous connectivity in this world.  This connectivity is mysterious even as it is just assumed as a matter of fact.  I see you, you see me because there is an entire situation of connectivity that allows mutual experience.

  We as human being have developed our language ability to diversify and to project incredible theoretical understanding of our connections within this world.  In theoretical particle physical we think that with Higgs boson we have discovered an elementary particle of life itself.  We think that we can interpret the presence and meaning of sub-atomic particles and attempt to see what religious people have called “spirit.”

  I believe that what we as people of faith have to add to this equation is how we interpret and project the meaning of how we are connected to each other and with this world.  In faith we project that the connectivity of Omnipresent Spirit has personality.  As human beings with personality we believe that we bestow honor upon everything that we interpret and project upon, the honor of having something like personality, because personality involves the force of relationship.

  Scientists in their realm of study and discourse want to project impersonal forces but a scientist as eminent as Einstein once said, The most important question a person can ask is, "Is the Universe a friendly place?”  The friendly place question is the question of religion and faith and it is where we believe that it makes a difference in quality of life if we can project an essential friendliness onto the universe and with an echoing effect believe that what we regard to be the very best about ourselves has come from someone greater than ourselves in every way.  And if personality is part of the greatness of human experience we have derived this personality from the super-Personality of the universe, whom we Christians have come to address as Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  We do this not to present limiting metaphors for God’s greatness, but at the very least if human personality is a great wonder of humanity then it is not difficult to imagine that we derived human personality from Super-personality. 

  And if what is definitive about humanity is our ability with spirit-word then the entire purpose of spirit-word is to interrelate in very personal ways within an entire community of different beings.  And God is the fullness of community of beings in relationship.

  What is the difference between calling something elementary Higgs boson or the Holy Spirit?  Where is the evidence of a tradition and a community derived from Higgs boson?  Scientists may be able to convince us about this basic elementary particle, but so what?  For two thousand years we have a very personal and friendly force in the world that has been able to replicate and reproduce in successive generation a community of people who have gathered to celebrate the mysteries of the personal but hidden forces of love, joy, peace, gentleness, goodness, patience and self control.  And we cannot see any of these virtues; they are sub-atomic but yet they are evident within a community of people who find that they partake of a personal force who makes these virtues real in experience. And even though they are very inexact in how each person experiences them, they are common enough for people to nod in recognition and agreement when they have experienced this personal force of virtue.

  Today, on this feast of Pentecost we celebrate our faith in how we answers Einstein’s question:  Is the universe a friendly place?  Yes indeed.  Jesus revealed God with a personality accessible to humanity.  Jesus revealed God as a Fatherly person.  But Jesus also revealed God to be personal without having to be limited to the body of a human person.  The physical body of Jesus left this world but the Friendly and Lively Presence of God is celebrated in the Pentecost event.

  At Pentecost there was painful discovery, painful because of the lateness of discovery: My, my God you have always been personally present as Holy Spirit since creation and we are late to discover this reality.  So Pentecost is the day the party began because of the discovery that indeed the universe has always been and is always a friendly place.  In life or death we are going to find friendliness and friendship because of the Holy Spirit as comforting presence.

  Let us continue this party that began two thousand years ago when a group of people discovered that indeed the universe is a friendly place because of the friendly, Holy Spirit.  Amen.