Pentecost

Pentecost 1997

Sermon given at St. Alban’s Episcopal Church Brentwood

By Rev. Valerie Ann Hart

John 20:19-23

Acts 2: 1-11

         Come Holy Spirit, come, come like the fire and burn, come like the wind and blow. Take our eyes and see through them, take our ears and hear through them, take our mouths and speak through them, take our hearts and set them afire.

         Have you ever had to write something, maybe a paper for school or a report for work, and you just sit there in front of the paper, empty, tried, thinking you’ll never get that done, and all of a sudden, a thought enters your mind, seemingly out of nowhere, and soon you are off and writing, feeling energized, creative again.

         Or perhaps you have sat at a meeting where all you wanted to do was go to sleep. You know the feeling, bored, drowsy, the meeting is going nowhere and you have a hard time concentrating. And you can tell that the others around you feel the same way, even if they are suppressing their yawns. When, suddenly, someone comes up with a comment or idea that seems to set the place alive. Suddenly the tiredness is gone and the ideas begin flying. What seemed like a waste of time that you would do anything to leave, is now the place you most want to be.

         We’ve all known those flashes, those breakthrough of illumination, where suddenly the energy is there to make a difference. Sometimes we refer to it as inspiration - to be in the spirit - to breath in.

         Today, on Pentecost, we celebrate the Holy Spirit, the third person of the trinity. Today is also considered the birthday of the church. Before my sermon I invoked the presence of the Holy Spirit. At the baptism today we will ask for the Holy Spirit to come upon the child Jacob Rhys Cropper. But what are we talking about when we refer to the Holy Spirit?

         When I was growing up the third person of the trinity was referred to as the Holy Ghost. In my child’s mind I imaged it to looks something like Casper the friendly ghost. It was a white, see through kind of thing. But that is not at all how the Holy Spirit shows itself in the Bible. 

         One image is of a dove, and we can see that dove represented on the back window, that descended upon Jesus when he was baptized. The other images are presented in the readings today. At Pentecost the Holy Spirit comes as wind and fire. It is also represented as breath in the Gospel as Jesus breathes upon the disciples. Breath, fire, wind, a dove. These are the images. But what do they represent. At first look they are very comforting, the gentle dove, the fire that warms us when we are cold, the gentle breeze that cools us, the breath of Christ. Who wouldn’t want the spirit to be present, to give us support and peace.

         But there is one thing we need to remember about the Holy Spirit - it is not domesticated. The Spirit blows where it wills. It can be a gentle breeze that fills us with comfort, or a tornado that turns our life upside down. - Just ask Dorothy when she finds herself transported from the gray of Kansas to the vivid colors of Oz. The Spirit can be a warming fire, and it can rage and burn bright and hard like the fire that purifies metal, burning away all our impurities. And if you have ever felt yourself in the refiner’s fire you know how uncomfortable that can be. 

         And even the image of that gentle dove is deceptive. After Christ’s baptism, we are told that the spirit drove him into the desert for 40 days of fasting and temptations. I’m not sure I’d want that kind of gentleness. 

         And finally we have the image of Jesus breathing onto the disciples. He tells them “receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” What a powerful, daring, incredible responsibility, and awesome power.

         The Holy Spirit is sometimes described as God’s action in the world. So what is this action like. First of all, when the Holy Spirit comes into our lives everything is turned upside down, everything is changed. We are no longer the same person we were before the spirit enters our life. Dorothy is a wonderful image for this. Her old life was destroyed by the tornado. She finds herself in a whole new world, a world full of wonder, and fear, and temptation, and hope. When we ask for the presence of the spirit, we need to be ready to be transformed.

         Next we find that the action of the spirit is the beginning of a process, of a journey. Christ goes to the wilderness, the disciples go out of the room they are hiding in and begin to preach. 

         When Dorothy finds herself in Oz she begins a journey, a journey that transforms her. She goes from being a weak and frightened girl, into the leader of a group of travelers who has the courage to confront the false wizard and demand gifts for her friends. And she also develops the wisdom to realized that she has, and always has had, the power to go where she most wants to be, to go home.

         The spirit transforms, purifies and empowers - empowered to do what God calls us to do. Christ is empowered to follow his call to teach, and heal, and sacrifice himself. The disciples are empowered to forgive, to preach and to teach the good news. 

         The Holy Spirit is God acting in the world, and when it comes upon us, it is to prepare and empower us to act. One must be very careful what one asks for.

         After my brain surgery, and the difficulties I went through for the first year, I was so grateful to be alive, to be enjoying my family, to be able to think and act, that I prayed in thanksgiving, “How can I serve?” I prayed this almost every day for several years, not having any idea what the answer to this prayer would be. Suddenly one day I felt the Spirit upon me, and felt I had received the answer to my prayer - I was to become a priest. It was something I had never even imagined. And it was the beginning of one of the most difficult and rewarding journeys of my life. I knew what I felt called to, but getting their involved dealing with the diocese, going to seminary, confronting many inner doubts and fears, learning things about myself that I would just as well have ignored. It was years of burning, purification, tempering of the instrument (and it still goes on), for a purpose. So I could be empowered. So I could act.

         Every experience of the Holy Spirit in the Bible is associated with empowerment, empowerment to action. When we receive the gift of the Holy Spirit we are called to action. Those of us who are baptized had the Holy Spirit invoked in our lives. Those of us who feel touched by the spirit of God’s love have been touched by the spirit and are empowered to act, to make a difference, to tell others, to be God’s instruments on earth.

         The Holy Spirit is far from domesticated. It can and will turn your life upside down, sending you to places you have never imagined, testing refining and purifying you, and most importantly, empowering you. Empowering you to make a difference in the world. 

         Come Holy Spirit, come, come like the fire and burn, come like the wind and blow. Take our eyes and see through them, take our ears and hear through them, take our mouths and speak through them, take our hearts and set them afire.

7 Easter B: The Sunday after the Ascension

In the unfolding of the church year this Sunday represents the time between the Ascension and Pentecost when the disciples did not know how Christ would be made known in the world. In Jesus' prayer during the last supper in John's Gospel he that his disciples would be one as he and the Father are one. This suggests that the love of Christ is shown through the love among God's people.

7 Easter

Transcribed from a sermon given on 

May 20, 2012

At St. Barnabas Episcopal Church Arroyo Grande

By Rev. Valerie Ann Hart

Every year the Church go through the whole history of Christianity. We recently celebrated Easter and the resurrection followed by the time when Christ was with his disciples and appearing to them after his resurrection. Last Thursday was Ascension Day, which in spite of the fact that it is not celebrated very often is actually one of the main liturgical holidays of the Christian calendar. It could be considered number four after Easter, Pentecost and Christmas.  

We are right now, today, in an interesting spot of the church year. Jesus’ physical presence as the resurrected Christ is not longer with the disciples, he has been taken up into heaven, and yet the Holy Spirit on Pentecost has not yet come upon the disciples. Now represents that odd time of waiting, watching and wondering what’s next. How do we see him? He was alive, he died, then he was resurrected and now he’s gone. How is Christ known in the world now? 

The gospel reading today is a continuation of the prayer of Jesus during the last supper when he is prayed for his disciples. Remember that when he is praying for his disciples it is not just those that are physically present that his is praying for, it is for all of us who throughout time will be his disciples. That prayer is for us.

Once Jesus was no longer physically present, Christ’s presence, God’s presence, is made known in the world through us, through the disciples, through the people of God. 

What Jesus prays is about relationship. He prays that the disciples may be one as he and the Father are one. This means that he prays that we would be one as Jesus and God are one. It is interesting, this emphasis on relationship. It is part of why that wonderful confusing mystery called the Trinity is so important. It is all about relationship. God’s very essence is a relationship among a unity that also has some separateness to it. A unity of three persons. There is only one God but it is in three persons, which is totally confusing, but it speaks to the understanding that God IS relationship. God is often referred to as love and love is about relationship.

In this Gospel reading, Jesus is praying that that relationship manifested between Jesus and the Father would be alive in the community of his followers. That sense of a unity, of oneness, and yet separateness. We are all separate human beings and yet we form one body. We are Christ in the world - in unity. It is a little like a dance of relationship, a dance of love and caring for one another. It is how we manifest Christ in the world. 

Christ is seen by how we relate to each other, which is sometimes good news and sometimes is not such good news. Think about when people come to the church for the first time, when they finally get the courage to open up those doors and walk in. Sometimes they are coming because they hear that we have great music, sometimes they may be coming because they hope that they will get an inspiring sermon. Usually they are not quite sure why they are coming. But the way in which Christ’s love is made known to them is by the community of who we are and how we live as Christ’s disciples. It is our love for one another, it is our relationships with one another and our openness to inviting others into that relationship, that is the way we manifest God in the world. 

We are Christ’s eyes and ears and hands and feet. We are the body of Christ. Some research has shown that after a person comes to a church for the first time, if they don’t within two months have a first name relationship with at least eight people they probably won’t come back. It’s about relationship. We have a couple of months to establish a relationship. That is how God is known. That is how God’s love is expressed.

When we were getting the Sunday School going we agreed that the main priority for Sunday School is that each and every one of those children feel safe and loved and cared about. If they happen to learn some scripture, great, but what’s really important is that they feel cared about and loved because we preach with our relationships. Remember, Christ prayed for us that we would be in unity as he and the Father are a unity. 

He also prayed about the idea that we were in world, but we are not really of the world. As I have been thinking about this sermon I went to a conference at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco. At the cathedral they have a labyrinth, which is a circle on the floor that has a path that winds back and forth and back and forth and eventually gets to the middle. The idea is that you walk that path until you get to the middle, you stop and pray there, and then you walk back out. It is a powerful walking meditation that I like. 

I hadn’t been to Grace Cathedral in a long time, so after the conference I decided to go and walk the labyrinth. One of the things about the labyrinth is that it winds. You’re on the outside for a while and then you go toward the middle and then you are back out on the outside again and then you finally find yourself in the middle. So while you are walking it can be a little disorienting. You just have to focus on the path in front of you. 

There were a few other people who were also walking the labyrinth and they were going at different speeds. Some were coming out and some where going in. Sometimes we were far apart and sometimes we were close together. It is kind of how the church community works. We are all walking the path, we are all walking on that faith journey. Sometimes we come real close together and sometimes we look like we are further apart. Sometimes somebody is coming out while you are going in and you almost bump into each other if you are not careful. You’ve got to make room for each other. There is a sense of almost being in a dance. If you are watching some people walking the labyrinth they seem almost like they are dancing when they come close together and then they go far apart. 

That for me is a wonderful description of what the community of faith is like. We are each walking the path to Christ. It is our own path yet we are in relationship as we do that. 

On a beautiful Saturday in San Francisco there are tourists, lots of tourists. Grace Cathedral is one of the places that tourists come. When you come into the cathedral there is the baptismal font and then the labyrinth is right there. You have to walk across the labyrinth to go down the main aisle of the cathedral. When tourists are looking at the stained glass windows, or are looking at the architecture, or are taking pictures, or chatting with each they may walk right across the labyrinth without knowing it. 

Those of us walking the labyrinth probably look really strange to the tourists. We are walking and then turning and then walking and turning. They probably can’t figure out what we are doing because they don’t even notice the labyrinth on the floor. 

It is a very interesting experience to be focused on following this path and then all of a sudden encounter a family that is walking across in front of you or somebody standing and taking a picture. There was a sense that those of us walking the labyrinth were walking our spiritual path, and the world was going on around us. We weren’t separate from the world, we were perfectly aware of the tourists and the cathedral and everything that was going on, but our focus was on following that spiritual path, while these others didn’t even see the path that we were on and probably couldn’t understand why we were walking the way we were. 

I think that is a great description of what our life in the world is like. If we are following whatever path Christ is calling us to walk, and if each step along the way we are trying to follow where Christ is calling us, we may look a little odd at times to the world. Our responsibility is to keep focusing on our own path. We are still in the world and the world is still going on around us. 

Another thing about the labyrinth is that as you walk in you walk toward the center which represents reaching Christ. When you arrive you just stand and experience and let in that presence of Christ, but you don’t get to stay there. There is no bed there to stay in. You can’t set up your tent. You have to walk back out and go back out into the world. That is the part of the spiritual journey where we come together as a community, we support one another and we nourish one another but we don’t do it for our own sake. We don’t nourish each other as a community just because it feels good, we do it to empower us to go out into the world and to share God’s love in the world. To minister to others and to share that love beyond ourselves. 

We are the body of Christ. We are in Christ’s prayer that we might be in unity as God and the Father are one and that we might be in the world, and yet not totally of the world.

Amen

Easter 6 B

On the Sixth Sunday of Easter in 2015 I was providing supply at a church that had scheduled for that Sunday to have an informal children’s sermon followed by a sermon for the adults. Here is how I spoke about friendship and love to both the children and the adults. 

Easter 6 B

May 10, 2015

The Rev. Valerie Hart

Children's sermon 

Any of you have a best friend? Raise your hands.

Tell me, what makes a good friend?

See how they respond. Bring up

Fun

Trust

Honesty

They are there no matter what

Someone we can tell our secrets to

Won't judge us

Jesus tells us that we are his friends. Jesus is like that. He will care about us no matter what. We can trust him. We can tell him our secrets. We can even have fun with him. He says that he wants us to have the joy that he has and for our joy to be complete. 

Say a prayer telling Jesus we want to be his friend. 

Adult sermon

During the children's sermon we talked about what a friend is like. (Refer back to some of the things the children said.) 

I'd like you to bring to mind one of your really good friends, either current or in the past. Think about what made that relationship so special?

Really good friends are always there for you, no matter what. If at three o'clock in the morning you are stalled by the side of a lonely highway you can call them on the phone and they'll get up out of bed and come to get you. They may be cussing you out the whole way there, but they will pick you up. 

A good friend is one that you can ask them if a pair of pants make you look fat, and they'll tell you the truth. 

Such friendships are built over time. They usually have to do with going through stuff together. It might be a coworker or someone you volunteer with or a neighbor, but a good friendship is built on being tested together. Soldiers who have been on the battlefield say that the one thing they remember positively about that time was the friendships that they developed. Successful soldiers in battle form a cohesive whole where each of them is willing to sacrifice themselves for the others. The same is true of firefighters. They are people who are willing to risk and even lose their lives to save one another. 

Given that it is Mother's Day I have to include that mothers are like that too. They are willing to do whatever it takes to keep their children safe and healthy. 

In the Gospel today, Jesus says, "I have called you friends." What we have been talking about is the type of friendship that that Christ offers us. We are offered a deep and abiding friendship with God. 

There is a tradition in the Hebrew Scriptures of friendship with God. Abraham is the best known friend of God. In fact, that is the term that is most often used to describe him. He was a friend of God because he totally trusted God. He trusted enough to leave his homeland and wander without knowing where he was going, trusting God’s promise of a home. Now if you read Genesis you will see that Abraham was not always courageous, that he sometimes did not live up to what we might have expected of a hero of the Bible, but he was always God’s friend. He was willing to argue with God and to sometimes doubt God, but he was always God's friend. 

Jesus says that we are his friends and abide in his love if we do what he commands. 

And what does Jesus command? That we love one another as he has loved us.

We are to love. 

Now in Greek there are several words that all get translated into English as love. The Greeks had a more nuanced understand of the concept of love than we do. 

The first is Eros. It has to do with emotion. It is the romantic, sexual kind of love. It is about feeling good. 

The second word is Philio. This has to do with affection and positive regard, as in a friendship. We find the word Philio in Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love. Philio is that brotherly love. 

And then there is agape. Agape love is not about emotions. It is not about feeling warm and fuzzy inside. Agape love is not about how one feels, but what one does. It is about action not about warm feelings. 

It is a love that is unconditional 

It is a love that is sacrificial

It is a love that sees beyond the surface of things. 

In agape love there is no self benefit. It is not concerned with what is in it for me

Agape love is offered whether it is returned or not

C.S. Lewis describes agape love as "gift love."

It is not a feeling - it is a choice. It is a choice to care. A choice to give. 

Thomas Aquinas describes agape love as "to will the good of another." 

And it is the Greek word Agape that is used each of the many times love is used in these passages. 

When Christ says that we are to love one another as he loves us it is this is the kind of love he is talking about. It is a universal, unconditional, sacrificial love that he is talking about. 

Christ wants us to obey his command to love, not out of fear, not out of concern for punishment, but out of friendship and love. 

It is like how hard we worked to obey a teacher that we really respected; that we knew had our best interest at heart. Not out of fear of punishment but out of a desire to do what he or she wanted us to do. 

Christ invites us to be his friends, not his servants. He wants us to obey not out of fear, but out of friendship. 

He wants us to love one another in the sacrificial way that he loves us. He wants us to choose to love. He wants us to choose to will good for another. 

He wants us to do this not for his sake, but for our sake. He wants us to do this so that his joy may be in us and that our joy and be complete. 

There is no greater joy than this, to abide in his love - to be Gods friend. 

Amen