At last Pentecost is here! I’m sure you’ve been counting the days, just waiting for this great finale for the Paschal season. Naturally we’ll be singing our favorite old Pentecost hymns, and hear the grand Pentecost readings you always look forward to. Don’t worry, I will try to make things short today because I know you are wanting to rush home and prepare for your Pentecost dinner tonight. Don’t forget to check Macy’s windows for their big annual Pentecost display. You’re probably glad to be finished with all your Pentecost note-sending though. And of course each one of you is wearing something red just to mark the season, as we always have done.
Of course, I’m fantasizing here. I know that perhaps 5% of what I have just imagined is actually true. If that. Still, I wish it were all true. Once upon a time, it was. Pentecost was once the second greatest festival. And festival meant what it sounds like.
Eastertide should end w an exclamation point. For too many it just ends in three pathetic dots. I once explained this in former place Easter as season and a young woman informed me that no matter what I said Easter was over.
Well, it is not over until today. This is truly one of the best and brightest holidays of the year. There used to be great feast days scattered through the year, for God made the whole calendar.
And the great feasts do one of three things: Commemorate an event, focus on a teaching, or honor a person.
Pentecost may be the richest of them all-for Pentecost does all three.
Pentecost certainly commemorates an event. Actually several events. It first was a great harvest festival–the reaping of the grain. Second, the giving of the Law to Moses on Mt Sinai–St Augustine for example mentions that. You know when we Christians appropriate a Hebrew feast we do not erase it–we build upon it. So Pentecost for us is about that giving of Torah just as much as for Jews today.
Why? Because that was the first step. We take it for granted–God is holy and strong and unique and moral. I asked my students at NYU to define god and that’s what they came up with. But the significance of Mt Sinai is this. Before that, nobody knew that about God. God was many, God was local, God was powerful but certainly not almighty and a God was hardly what decent person would call moral. Mt Sinai was God saying this–absolutely holy, absolutely moral, absolutely the creator of the world, that is what I am. That was new. And finally, what happens in the first lesson today–that historical event, told in the plain matter of fact language of history.
The rabbis had a legend that when God offered the Torah on Sinai, he really offered it to the entire world. The Hebrews were the only ones to accept the invitation. And the first Christians said Pentecost was the day that set that straight–when the rest of us got our second chance.
Second, Pentecost invites us to reflect on one of the great Christian teachings. The principle of Ecclesiology–what it means to be the Church. For Pentecost is the true founding day of the Christian church–the day the disciples passed suddenly form a state of shock to a state of grace.
This is why we have that classic second lesson–there are many gifts , but it is always the same spirit, there are many ways of serving, but the same Lord, there are many different kinds of faithful action, but one God. And what the spirit does through the individual is for the common good. The word canon means measuring stick and that’s what Paul the gt church builder provides so often. Heres a measuring stick–how does your church measures against it? Is there a true variety of gifts? I’ve told you about my parish long ago where the rector wanted nothing but social outreach and disdained . He said he was a prophet but he missed the Church’s fundamental teaching that at Pentecost, the entire Church received the challenge of Prophecy. But at another point I was in my wanderings I had a rector who wanted no part of social outreach, only liturgical perfection. The Church after all is all about prayer, right? Well, the impossible thing is they were both correct. Both thought he had the essence of Christianity and neither apparently had taken Paul very seriously. You see Paul thought of the Church in many ways but above all as like a body. And outreach, hospitality, Christian education, the liturgy, the Office–these are organs in the body. To say one is more important than the other is insane–like asking whether the brain or the liver or the heart or the lungs are the most important organ. They are all, vital. They work best in conjunction. In fact they only work that way.
Paul also makes a list of things here but it’s just a for example list. Paul’s list here isn’t the important thing–it’s the principle. Many gifts one spirit many services one God. Many ways of serving–the parish should want it all. My own ideal is the great Anglo-Catholic parishes in London in the nineteenth century–which led the world in their sacramental liturgy. They were the first to welcome back the chasuble and the daily office and the weekly Eucharist which we almost take for granted now and which are found in probably 80%? Of Anglican parishes worldwide. Not surprisingly they were at the forefront also of theology and were the first to give the Anglican response to both he fundamentalists and the secular Bible scholars. And they were also the first to feed the poor and shelter the homeless on the docks of London. And also were the first parishes in the world to speak out against the evil of slavery. And those parishes are historically the great grandmother parishes of precisely this parish where you and I are blessed enough to be called.
But if you want a checklist the great tradition offers one. Actually, two. They are for parishes not individuals–there’s just enough for a parish to do, too much for an individual.
They are the corporal acts of mercy and the spiritual works of mercy. In the oldest forms there were five of each–Gregory 1st said these five works are the five fingers of the left hand of God. Here they are: feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, sheltering the stranger, visiting the sick, ministering to the prisoner. You misunderstand if you think I’m saying here are your duties better do them. I am saying this: here are five golden opportunities for you to know a kind of joy you want know in nay other way. Irnaeus said just as Christ God’s right hand, the Holy Spirit is the left hand. And Gregory added, these five acts are the five fingers of the left hand of God.
Third, finally and most importantly Pentecost honors a Person. And that person is the Holy Spirit. Perhaps you don’t think of the Holy Spirit as a person. Most people don’t. I’m afraid many people do not think about the Holy Spirit, period. Let me show you something.
My old senior colleague and friend Bob Wright–he’s the one leading Andrew’s group around Rome right now-- and I agree on this: hymns offer a good barometer for spirituality. Look at content p. Hymns to Christmas hymns—about 40. Easter-about 40. Pentecost—7, and fewer even because versions of same hymn. Now look over to the right—hymns to God—presumably this means God the Father—60. To Jesus—65. To the Holy Spirit—16. And again,5 are same so really only 11.
When you pray to whom do you pray? Do you say Father in heaven? Do you say Dear Jesus?
How often do you pray to the Holy Spirit?
That does not sound equal to me. When we say or sing in a few minutes “with the Father and the Son he is worshiped and glorified,” we are repeating something the great church forebears put in to guarantee the equal honor fo the holy Spirit.
I think that means our whole Church has some work to do.
Notice something else. The dates when those hymns were written. The Church is always most aware of the Holy Spirit when the Church is strong.
Now the spirit of course is always there always at work. People don’t always recognize this, that’s all. When my older son was small I was still at the Seminary. And this was when the Star Wars movies were brand new. And of course he was part of that just as he was very much part of Seminary. One day one of my friends to greet him said “May the force be with you.” And without missing a beat James replied, “and also with you.”
So happy Pentecost. Don’t let this day slip by. Let your Easter end w an exclamation point.
I know you aren’t going to have a Pentecost party and I know you aren’t going to have sent Pentecost cards and I know that perhaps you wont even say happy Pentecost again today. But you can commemorate it, keep Pentecost in your heart. And get familiar with the Holy Spirit. Want to know what HS feels like? Well the spirit as Jesus says goes where the spirit will. The spirit is always there when needed, but it’s not up to you. Yet I can almost promise: Do one of these things: visit the sick, fee the hungry, clothe the naked, shelter the stranger, or visit a prisoner. I can almost promise you will find out what its like to have the spirit nearby.
And when you worship today I want you to notice something. Every week, after Andrew or I say the words this is my Body, we raise the bread aloft and we genuflect. That is because when our style of doing Euch was developed in the High Middle Ages, we thought that that this was the moment the bread actually became Body.
But notice that I also pause, and I bow at the waist, after these words: “with thy word and holy spirit to bless and sanctify these gifts of bread and wine that they may be unto us the Body and Blood.”
Because the older belief was that the bread became Body when the Holy Spirit was called down.
That makes the Spirit the bond that binds Christ, bread, prayer, and humankind. It’s what we mean by the “unity” of the Holy Ghost.
Think of the Holy Spirit coming as wind and fire, so you can see and be warmed, as Dionysius put it. Or better still, think of what St Hildegard said:
The Holy Spirit is
breath of fire,
fire of love,
living vine,
soothing balm,
the whiff of holiness
and the sweet taste of God in the heart.
Happy Pentecost. And may the Lord and giver of life be with you.
