LAKE JAMES

NORTH CAROLINA

Pentecost + May 27, 2007 + St. Paul's, Lake James

+ In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit

When I was a young boy, my best friend was a boy who lived just around the corner.  He and I always seemed to like the same things, we were about the same height and weight, and we even looked a bit alike.  We tended to play together almost every day and if we weren't at my house, we were at his.  Each of us was an only child, so I think we became very much like brothers.  Our mothers used to joke that they had two sons!

One summer, after a lot of talking about it, my friend and I began to build a cart using orange crates and some old wheels.  Although we didn't really know much about what we were doing, it was lots of fun, the cart began to take shape, and might even have worked!  We were about half finished with it when, one day at his house, his mother came out to tell him that his father was being sent to California on a business trip and that his mother and he were going to go along for a vacation!  My friend was thrilled, bubbling over with joy -- but I was crushed!  With him gone, the cart-building would stop, there would be a whole week without him to play with, and, in short, there went my happiness!  I'd like to think that I at least tried to appear happy for his sake, but I don't suppose I really did.  That coming wonderful vacation would be fine for him, but didn't include me in any way.

Do you think the disciples felt more or less like that when Jesus told them that He would be leaving them to return to His heavenly Father?

The Church Year, starting in Advent, begins by telling the story of Christ's life, the things He said and did -- then moves on to His suffering, death, resurrection and ascension.  Thos are all important things to know about, and they are all true, but they happened to Jesus, not to you or me, and they happened some two thousand years ago in a very small country far away from Lake James.  So, how do they connect to us, or how to we connect to them?  Where is the link?

This Feast of Pentecost is the celebration of that link!  Today, we give thanks for the coming of God the Holy Spirit upon the disciples, but also, if not even more, the coming of God the Holy Spirit into our midst, into our very lives!

Ask yourself, what do you mean,  who are you talking about when, as a Christian, you invoke the Name of God by saying, "In the Name of the Father and of the Son...and of the Holy Spirit."  We are so used to that Trinitarian formula that it would sound and feel odd, incomplete, if we just said, "In the Name of the Father and of the Son."  But what those last five words, "and of the Holy Spirit" really mean may be fuzzy at best.

When you say or hear the word "GOD" -- what image comes to your mind?  Certainly one of our greatest difficulties is that we have no words, no vocabulary adequate to define or even describe God.  Some teachings, such as that God is omniscient, that is, having all knowledge, are quite true, but not very helpful for imagining God.  A woman once said that, when she was a youngster, in her Sunday School class she was taught that God is perfect substance.  Very orthodox theology, but she grew up thinking that God was like a huge tapioca pudding!  So much for mentally picturing God the Father!

It is fairly easy to picture Jesus because, after all, he was and is fully human as well as fully divine.  "Humanity" in the form of a man is something with which we are familiar, so we can imaging Jesus as a Jewish man, dressed in the clothing common to the Holy Land in the first century, probably with a mustache and beard, since that was the nearly-universal custom of men at that place and time.

But how are we to picture God the Holy Spirit?  The most common image for the Holy Spirit found in Christian art is that of a dove, but that isn't likely to be of much help.  We know that Sesame Street not withstanding, God the Holy Spirit is more than a kind of holy "Big Bird."

The irony is that, the way God the Father has set things up, it is the Holy Spirit, the third Person of the Blessed Trinity, who is at work in our world, who is closest to us both in the Church and in our daily lives.  Recently, when Luke Lowder was baptized and made a member of the one, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church, that incorporation into the body of Christ happened by the action of God the Holy Spirit, working in and through Father John as he poured the water, and through me as I anointed Luke with holy chrism.  Likewise, every time the Eucharist is celebrated, the bread and wine both spiritually and truly become the Body and Blood of Jesus because the priest presiding consecrates them through the power of God the Holy Spirit.  When a penitent comes to a priest to make a sacramental confession of sin, the absolution given is real because of the act of God the Holy Spirit.

Sometimes, we tend to think of receiving sacraments in very narrow terms -- Luke's baptism, your baptism, my baptism, or your communion.  The fact is that sacraments are never simply private, individual acts, not even the making of a confession!  All sacraments are celebrated within the fellowship of the Church, regardless of how many, or how few, may be physically present at the moment.

Perhaps the most dramatic statement expressing that fact is found in words we hear so very often we many not really hear what they say.  I am thinking of the awesome affirmation found in the preface to the Prayer of Consecration which says that, no matter what the number of people present, the Holy Eucharist is offered together with Angels and Archangels, and all the Saints in heaven!  Sacraments are vehicles of grace which call us out of isolation into connection, into relationships with God and with our fellow Christians everywhere.

The Church was not designed by God to be a kind of club of people who happen to believe in Jesus, or even who happen to like "religion."  The Church is intended by God to be a caring community whose vocation is to continue the earthly ministry of Jesus through the power of the Holy Spirit.

In the Collect for today, we prayed that God would "...shed abroad the gift of the Holy Spirit through the preaching of the Gospel."  That "preaching of the Gospel," the sharing with others of the Good News of Jesus Christ, is not just what preachers do, whether in pulpits or elsewhere.  Rather, the "preaching of the Gospel" is most often done by lay people in and through the way they live their lives.  Remember the old saying (which is profoundly true): "You may be the only Gospel your neighbor ever reads!"

You -- your life!  Not a book, not a sermon preached in a church, but you and the way you do or don't live the faith you profess as a Christian.

If you or I had to be so holy, so filled with absolute and unwavering faith, so perfect that, by our own efforts and obvious goodness, others would quickly be brought to Christ and the Christian Faith, we might want (and be well advised) to give up on that right now.  This feast of Pentecost tells us that, if we are going to be the Gospels read by our neighbors, it will be because of the grace of God in us, that is, because of the presence of the Holy Spirit.  Being a Christian, being someone who takes your faith seriously, means not only believing that the Holy Spirit will be with and in you, but relying on it!

Saint Teresa of Avila, the great 16^th century reformer of the Carmelites, when asked how she could possibly hope to accomplish her goals, said, "Teresa by herself is nothing, but together, Teresa and God are an absolute majority!"  That was true for her, and it's true for us.

So we pray, "Come, Holy Spirit, fill us with your grace."  Yes, fill us with your grace, but even more, fill us with trust in that grace so that our identity as Christians may be more than a label, but a true description of our relationship to God and the way we relate to others.

Thanks be to God for the first Pentecost, and thanks be to God for the continuing Pentecost, the coming of the Holy Spirit into our lives!

+ In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

The Reverend Alfred T. K. Zadig, Sr.

This page last modified on Friday, April 11, 2008 09:40 PM