What I Was Going To Say....A Sermon for 3 Pentecost Proper 8C

 

Well, COVID finally got me. 

I'd managed to avoid it for these past two-plus years. But Tallahassee is awash in new cases, and I know that I have had close personal contact with at least three people who tested positive, so the fact that I got it is just...well...figures!

And it came at a time when the nation is reeling from the recent U.S. Supreme Court case to undo the decades long precedent of Roe v. Wade, which established the right of women to seek safe, legal abortions. The court has returned the decision to the states, and state upon state controlled by ultra-conservative legislatures and Governors are rushing to outlaw the procedure entirely. This goes against the vast majority of Americans' opinion. Even those people who oppose what they call "abortion on demand" still believe if the life of the mother is at risk or that the pregnancy was the result of forced sex such as rape, there should be the option to abort. 

But that's not what is going to happen. Oklahoma, for example, has said that life begins "at fertilization." That means that if a woman has an ectopic pregnancy, which is a life-threatening condition where the fetus is lodged outside the uterus, she must go through with the birth and likely die; otherwise, she is murdering "a child". Medical schools have already been reportedly very skittish about teaching the procedure because doctors have been killed for performing abortions.

I fear things in the country are going to get worse before they get better. 

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Sermon for 3 Pentecost Year C

Proper 8

June 26, 2022

Luke 9:51-62; 2 Kings 2:1-2, 6-14

 

Prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be always acceptable to you, O Lord, our strength and our redeemer.

 

There are those times when the assigned lectionary texts feel especially challenging.

And our readings this morning are very challenging given some of the events in our nation over the past few days.

I am not going lie.

When I read in our Gospel about John and James going into a town in Samaria and…finding them to be less than hospitable…wanting to rain down smoke and fire upon the place…I had to take a pause.

We don’t really know from the text what the Samaritans objected to.

We can get a sense that it might have something to do with the ongoing Hatfield vs. the McCoy feuding that existed at the time between Samaria and Israel.

The Samaritans were Jews who had intermingled with Gentiles, the Assyrians to be precise, during the years of the Babylonian exile. They were the ones who had remained while the rest were dispersed.

Jews wanted nothing to do with this mixed race of people…and the feeling was mutual.

The fact that they rejected the message of the apostles could mean they were rejecting the message of Jesus. And here’s James and John… who had just been with Jesus up on the mountain at the transfiguration with Moses and Elijah…ready to rain down fire on the Samaritans.

Elijah had rained down fire and brimstone on his opponents in the chapter in Second Kings right before the one we heard this morning. So there was precedent for this response.

As I sat with this particular part of the passage…I had to examine my own internal monologue as my phone kept pinging with news alerts.

The U.S. Supreme Court says states cannot enact stricter gun laws despite the rash of mass shootings lately…but they can control the autonomy of women and what happens with their bodies.

And there is a suggestion from one of the Justices that the court should overturn rulings that allowed married couples to have access to birth control pills, and end protections for LGBTQ-plus individuals including the right to be married.

This suggestion comes at a time when LGBTQ+ people are feeling a little on edge.

There were militia members ready to rumble at a gay pride event in Idaho in an effort to disrupt what is essentially a big block party.

A pastor in Texas suggested that LGBTQ people should be shot in the back of the head.

Such statements…said from a church pulpit…enrage me.

Such disregard for women’s lives and their healthcare infuriate me.

Seeing Christianity linked or invoked as supporting policies that demean people and threaten their lives makes my blood boil.

Like John and James, I found myself ready to call down fire from heaven, too!

But then there’s Jesus basically telling John and James… and me:

“Knock it off!”

(The text says “rebuke” but really I imagine Jesus being a little more blunt.)

That sort of violence, that eye for an eye, “you hurt me so I’m going to crush you” violence is not at all what Jesus is about.

It is totally counter to his identity and his mission.

What Jesus demands of me…of all of us…is a totally countercultural and antithetical to how we would want to be when we knee-jerk respond to those things which hurt us.

We can’t burn it all down or even expect God to take out those who we see as enemies.

To do so would be to give in to the very things that we say we are not.

When Jesus calls us to follow him, it’s not just the call to discipleship.

It’s to understand that when Luke says that Jesus “sets his face to Jerusalem” this is a call to be resolute.

To not back down.

We’re marching forward…there’s no turning around at this point.

This is the moment when Jesus knows what he must do.

He must head toward the place where the prophets go to die.

And He’s prepared to meet such resistance in this place that will put him to death by a kangaroo court.

The fact that he sets his face toward Jerusalem and then enters into the fraught and fractious territory of Samaria tells us that the journey is going to be a challenge. Don’t expect praise or gold stars and confetti-throwing crowds or parades.  

John and James somehow forgot that Jesus had already told them…and is telling us…that when a town won’t accept them… shake the dust off your feet and keep those feet moving forward.

Don’t turn back.

Don’t stop to say good-bye.

There will be others along the way who are ready to hear a message of unconditional love.

And we must accept that a radical love such as this…one that strives for justice and peace and respects the dignity of every human being (BCP, 305) will be costly.

We know this from our history in the Episcopal Church from struggles over the ordination of women to the ordination of LGBTQ people.  Our siblings in the Methodist Church are undergoing those pains now.

In our reading from Second Kings…where we hear about Elijah’s amazing ascent in the chariots of fire…we have a slightly different look at what it takes to step out as a leader.

We know that Elisha…seeking to inherit the prophetic strength of his teacher…has been told he must watch for Elijah’s ascent.

Elisha does as he’s told.

He keeps his eyes on the prophet as he rides off into heaven.

Elisha picks up the mantle of Elijah…both literally and figuratively… through witnessing this fiery departure.

Jesus on the other hand as the teacher is saying, “Don’t wait; the mission of God…to bring about freedom from oppression and more love for those who desperately are searching for it…can’t stop for anything!”

 The prophetic witness we are called to bring to the world requires us to not hesitate in confronting those things that challenge us. But we don’t go about it with a clenched fist or great balls of fire from heaven…that’s the temptation.

Hard as it can be at times…we must continuously seek strength in the love of Jesus and the determination not to let those who want to bring us down…in fact… drag us into a pit of anger and despair.

In the same way Jesus had his eyes fixed on Jerusalem…we must remain fixed on Love.

We are to stand with all of those who are facing a future where power structures are putting their basic human life and dignity in jeopardy and with those of any race or gender identity or social status who feel they’re repeatedly being left behind.

This place…this holy ground… is where the church must hold in our times.

Speak in Love to power…now and always.

In the name of God…F/S/and HS.

 

 

Our Modern-Day Legion: A Sermon for 2C Pentecost

 Another troubling week in the life of the United States. We had two more days of hearings with the House Select Committee investigating the insurrection of January 6, 2021. And the Epiphany we heard this time was that there is increasing evidence that the former President knew that he lost the 2020 Election fair and square, yet he still insisted publicly that he had won. He set up a bogus legal defense fund to bilk the gullible into giving him money...$250 million, in fact. He also sent out a tweet which was read by the insurrectionists throwing his own vice President, Mike Pence, under the bus. The already angry crowd exploded into violence and screaming to "Hang Mike Pence" as they bashed in doors and windows of the U.S. Capitol. Pence, who had been there to carry out the normally peaceful transfer of power, narrowly escaped this lynch mob. 

Then we had yet another mass shooting, this time at an Episcopal Church in the diocese of Alabama. 

And Russia has captured three American soldiers who went to fight alongside the Ukrainians to defend their nation against the Russian invasion. The Kremlin denies knowing anything about these three, but there's video evidence of at least two of the men in Russian custody. Russia's military is threatening to bring them up on charges of helping the enemy and sentencing them to death. If they should kill any of the Americans they're holding, including WNBA basketball player Brittney Griner, we would most likely enter the war, and that would be tragic. 

Seems like a Legion of trouble to me. 

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Text: Luke 8: 26-39 

Prayer: I speak to you in the name of our One loving, life-giving and liberating God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen. (PB Michael Curry)

Good morning!

And welcome to that extensive period in our church calendar called “Ordinary Time.”

That just means that we’re not in a particular season such as Christmas or Easter.

This a season for growth…growing and increasing in our faith…especially in the mundane moments of our days on this planet.

Ordinary Time challenges us to lay our faith alongside our everyday life…and work to have our faith in God inform how we live and move and have our being out in the world.

And while we’re in “Ordinary Time” in our church calendar, we seem to be living in what the Chinese call “Interesting Times” in our secular world.

War rages on in Ukraine with no end in sight.

We’re becoming more aware of the “clear and present dangers” that threaten our communal life of democracy in this country.

Many of us are facing financial difficulties as inflation rises and the cost of food and gas go up.

This heat wave poses threats to people, plants, and animals.

Politicians and pundits keep taking jabs and pushing the “othering” of marginal groups in society.

And on the day before the sobering anniversary of the shooting at Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston…a 71-year-old man pulled out a handgun at a potluck dinner in Vestavia Hills, Alabama…and shot to death three people at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church.

Their parish hall…a sight of joyous occasions…became a crime scene.

These seem to be our modern day “legion” we are contending with in our world.

These are the things that continue to cause suffering and evil which keeps all of us shackled in the tombs of our own misery…both individually and collectively.

In our Gospel lesson this morning, we go with Jesus to the land of the Gerasenes and meet a man possessed by many demons. Everything in this man’s life is out of control. The demons have overwhelmed him and all-consumed him.

At times…it feels as if we are caught up in the same hell as that man. Everything that’s happening in the world just feels out-of-whack and off-balance.

The demons I’ve named…and maybe more that you can name…feel all encompassing. And like the man in the tombs…it can seem as if we are powerless in the face of all the brokenness.

We…like him…are hurting.

Jesus confronts these demons…and immediately they sense the power emanating from him:

This Legion doesn’t have to ask, “Who are you?” Legion recognizes Jesus as “the Son of the Most High God!” (Luke 8:28b)

Instead, Legion screams “What have you to do with me?”

This collection of demons is fearful and intimidated at the presence of this Jewish outsider.

Jesus represents an unknown, a distinctly different way of being…who is willing to come to the aid of a person shunned even by his own people.  

Legion is face to face with a powerful force in Jesus and knows it.

Jesus demands the evil spirits to get out of him. The demons beg not to be sent into the abyss…meaning the nearby body of water.

They plead: “Send us into that herd of pigs!”

Pigs, by Jewish standards, represent unclean things and so Jesus readily exorcises this Legion into the pigs.

And even though Legion didn’t want to go into the abyss to its destruction, the pigs run themselves over the cliff and drown in the water.

The once-possessed man is now clean, in his right mind, made whole in every way.

This ought to be cause for celebration, right?

But then there are these bloated, floating, dead pigs.

The known Legion of demons is gone, but this exorcism has disrupted the social arrangement and the economy of the Gerasenes.

When the people see what’s happened…they’re more upset by the dead pigs than rejoicing in this one man’s freedom from the Legion that had kept him separated from their society.  

It’s almost as if the society would have preferred to live with the Legion destroying this man’s life than to allow him to see and taste what it means to be free of the demons.

As I consider the things happening around us…war, mass shootings, growing tribalism fueled by special interest media and cynical politics…I sometimes wonder if we would rather go on living with violence…than to confront it and work to change things so that we all can experience freedom.

It’s that whole the “Devil we know” thing. There’s comfort in not changing and remaining blind to the struggles people are facing. We can shrug and move on when a tragedy hits some other community.

Jesus gains the upper hand on the demons in this passage when he demands to hear their name.

Naming the things that are bogging us down…and keeping us from seeing the Christ in each other…is the first step toward getting at the root of our problems…both in our own lives and our society.

I hear people say, “America needs Jesus!” as if we don’t have Jesus. Or that if we “had Jesus” we would instantly rid ourselves of the Legion that has possession of us…and drive it into some…I don’t know…cockroaches.

It’s not that America needs Jesus; it’s that those of us who profess a faith in Jesus as the Son of the Most High God need to take these many weeks of ordinary time to discern, put our faith and our prayers into action, and decide if we are done with accepting the Legion of ills that plague us as a routine part of our lives.

Do we remain silent when we hear comments that demean and dehumanize groups of people?

Do we keep insisting that nothing can be done about gun violence as schools, churches, grocery stores, movie theaters, outdoor concert venues become crime scenes?

Will we turn toward God and each other…or will we listen to other voices that keep pulling us further and further apart?

Ordinary time in the church is our time to work toward real world changes.

This is the time for us to grow up in our faith and put our faith to work in the mission of making earth a little more like the reflection of heaven.

We have seen how empowered the early apostles were to finally move out of hiding in their upper room to confront the hostilities in their society.

Maybe we can’t preach like Peter or Paul, but we do have it within us to be the light of Jesus.

Those of us who have experienced God…

have felt moved and stretched in our faith,

who have been baptized into the body of Christ,

and fed at the Lord’s table:

we must show up.

We must show the compassion and determination of a Jewish Jesus meeting a Gentile demoniac.

Stand up to the legions in this society that try to separate us from God and each other.

And in that oft-repeated biblical phrase: Do not be afraid.

So let us pray in these words from our opening hymn by James Weldon Johnson….

God of our weary years,

God of our silent tears,

Thou hast brought us thus far on the way;

Thou who hast by thy might,

Led us into the light,

Keep us forever in the path, we pray.

Amen.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Wisdom Dance: A Sermon for Trinity Sunday Year C

 

I had a Zoom call with a couple of my friends from seminary. All of us are preaching this weekend. (OK, I preach every weekend, but that's beside the point). It was Wednesday evening. The other two had put some thought into how to address the Trinity. They had some wonderful ideas based on the Gospel lesson from John. Finally, they turned to me to find out what I was thinking. 

"Well..." I smiled, "You two are way ahead of me!" I was embarrassed to admit it, but I got as far as reading the lessons assigned and getting a sense of which one was speaking to me. But outlines? Thoughts? Coherency? The Trinity? I just couldn't wrap my mind around any of it. The most I could say was I was thinking about the readings concerning Wisdom and where she fit into the scheme of the Trinity. 

I got off the call and thought, "I guess I better get to work on my sermon." 

And so Thursday I read through the lessons again. And then saw clients for massage, went to Faust rehearsal, and watched the opening of the January 6th Commission's bringing forth the truth about what happened when an angry MAGA mob attempted to overthrow the government because they couldn't accept the election results. 

Friday, I had every intention of putting my nose to the grindstone...or at least fingers to the keyboard. And I did. 

But I also needed to pick up my massage sheets at the laundromat, and then there was a frantic phone call for me to meet some workers at the Mickee Faust Clubhouse who were there to fix a broken window. Eventually, I did sit down and spent about four and half hours considering commentaries on Proverbs 8, weighing the cultural upheaval we're living in, thinking about January 6th and the green converse sneakers of a child victim in the Uvalde shooting...and... and...and then starting to write. 

By the time I got to the end of my initial draft, I hated it. 

I considered texting my friends to express my dismay at my sermon. Instead, I went to bed and figured I would let sleep do its work on me. 

When I woke up Saturday and got back in front of the computer... reading aloud what I had written ...I realized that my biggest problem was a misplaced and underdeveloped paragraph. Thank God for cut and paste.  

Below is the final product.

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Prayer: God of mercy, make us wise with your foolish love. God of salvation, open our eyes again to see your grace. God of all who seek to follow, guide us in your faithful way. Amen. (Daily Prayer for All Seasons, 88).

It’s typical that this Sunday…Trinity Sunday…is a time when the rector, or vicar, or priest-in-charge of a parish does a hand off on the sermon.

They have their deacon…or better yet…a seminarian…anxious to preach...and they let that person handle the doctrine of the Trinity.

But Karyl and Jim Miller have conveniently gone away for the summer.

And we don’t have a seminarian….so…. (fill in the name of the Eucharistic Minister)…

I won’t be going into a treatise on the doctrine of the Trinity.

To do that always leads the preacher into pitfalls and ditches that they can’t ever dig themselves out of.

I’ve heard probably about a dozen analogies for the Trinity and like with so many things that are matters of faith…the words, words, words, just don’t hold up.

In my experience, and maybe in yours, to “understand” the Trinity is not an intellectual exercise. It’s a lived feeling.

And so how do we come to then “comprehend” that experience…and take it in?

I think this is when it’s a good time to look back at our first reading from this morning and spend some time with Lady Wisdom.

If we think back to last week’s event of Pentecost…the disciples found themselves lit up inside with a fire that poured out of their mouths…praising God in every language imaginable at that time. The Spirit…the promised Advocate…blew into the room like a mighty wind to light the flames in these folks.

With this reading…we are getting something of a personification of that fire.

It’s a feminine energy…which existed from the beginning with God.  She’s a creative energy. She’s a master worker. And she’s crying out from the heights: live!  Her voice echoes from this corner and to the town gates all the way over to that crossroad…to listen. Listen to her voice so that all may live.

In Greek…they call her Sophia. 

In Hebrew…she is Shechinah.

In English…we call her the Holy Spirit.

I’m kind of sorry the reading cuts out a whole bunch of verses in chapter eight that have a lot to say to us in this fractured time we’re living in this country. I’ll give you just a few of the missing points:  

Wisdom utters truth.

Wisdom isn’t going to feed us with twisted or crooked things.

Wisdom calls on us to gain knowledge rather than jewels and choice gold.

Those are just some of the good parts that are left out of our reading. I imagine those who put together our lectionary texts probably were thinking strictly about the world’s creation and wanted us to get us to the poetry of verses 22 through 31.

But those other parts are worth us having in our heads, too, as we think about the role Wisdom plays into our way of knowing this Triune God.

It’s fascinating to me to consider Wisdom’s role in the Trinity.

We hear of her presence when there were no depths, no springs abounding with waters and mountains…and how she was “brought forth” before the beginning of the earth.

Was she born? Did she pre-exist?

She certainly seems to have an intimate relationship with God.

It all sounds very similar to the opening of John’s Gospel:

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.” (John 1:1-2).

He was in the beginning with God. He…the Word.

But then we have Proverbs: She was created in the beginning of God’s work, the first of his acts long ago (Prov.8:22). So she was in on the beginning of creation as well.

The Word and Wisdom were both with and in God in the beginning.

As I’m thinking about this He and She which really becomes a They/Them/Theirs of the Trinity…I’m imagining a kind of dance…and an intimate relationship where the three are involved and intertwined and whirling and spinning with such fluidity and ease that we can hardly tell which one is leading and yet knowing that they’re all following each other in the same dance steps.

As one commentator noted, the Hebrew phrase that translates “brought forth” has a root which also means “whirl or dance.” And when you’re dancing with a partner… it’s a relationship. One person is moving forward…the other is mirroring those steps moving backward. One is leading…the other following. The fluidity of the movement…whether waltzing or two-stepping or free-forming it in some way…becomes an effortless flow around the dance floor.

I remember going out one night into DC early in my seminary career.

Some friends from Tallahassee had been hyping up this band to me called The Bumper Jacksons. They were playing a gig in the basement of one of the city’s barbecue restaurants.

Their music was mix of Mardi Gras jazz meets Appalachian banjo Americana. And before long, there were probably 40 or 50 people, swinging and twirling as the band played on.

It was amazing. And joyful in the way that dance ought to be.

That’s the sort of revolving and raucously joyous relationship I can imagine happening between the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit…as they go about creating, redeeming and sustaining us.

Their infectious and intermingled happiness spins its way into our hearts and minds when we think about those parts of creation that bring us delight.

The way a baby looks with wonder and curiosity at their parents. Or the satisfaction and anticipation that comes when picking that first ripe tomato off the plant you’ve been tending to so carefully.

These are the moments when we dare to bring ourselves out on the dance floor.

When we participate in the thrill of creation, we might find ourselves swept off our feet into the dance …being led by the Spirit…following Jesus…keeping up with this tango of God. The way we experience the Trinity can sometimes depend on which person of the Trinity we feel ourselves dancing with at the moment.

That’s what I mean by it being more about an experience than all the words of strained metaphors.

The key to it is that we must feel free enough and allow ourselves to dance…and not try to take over the lead.

That seems to be the Achilles’ heel…or that second left foot… that keeps tripping us up.

Even though Wisdom is calling from every direction and giving us the tune, sometimes we don’t want to listen to those wise words in her lyrical song. She’s playing a waltz and we want to do the punk rock pogo.

Even though Wisdom promises to lead us to truth…that truth requires us to dance a little differently, change our steps, listen to those notes.

We resist, preferring another dance partner, a different song.

Or maybe we don’t want to dance at all and remain a wallflower.

Maybe our ears have become so full of other voices that we can’t hear Wisdom’s refrain at all.

And while Wisdom values knowledge over choice gold and jewels…how many times will we allow bright shiny objects to blind us to what we’ve gained through our experience and knowing…shuffle ourselves into a corner?

In the Gospel lesson, Jesus tells the disciples that he has many more things to tell them, but they cannot bear them now. But he urges them to wait on the Spirit who will speak all truth to them (John 16:12-13).

As we go forth from this place…we are being invited to listen for that same truth.

Pay attention to the voice of Wisdom…and enter the dance to the beat our Trinity desires for the world.

That Wisdom is not foreign to us.

It’s been with us, around us, and in us for a long time.

Listen.

In the Name of our Creative, Dancing, Triune God…F/S/HS.

  

Light Up the World: Pentecost Sermon for Year C

 

I could have kept addressing the gun violence problem in the United States. I could have brought up Pride month. I chose instead to stick to the inspirational message of getting out there and being the light of Christ in the world. 

So, I guess I addressed gun violence AND Pride after all. Quit hiding. Quit waiting for someone else to be the change we want to see in the world. WE need to participate and take action!

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Prayer: O God, take our minds and think through them, take our lips and speak through them, take our hearts and set them on fire for Jesus’ sake. Amen. (adapted from William Sloane Coffin, Jr.)

 

Happy Pentecost! 

And Happy Birthday to the Church! 

We call this “the church’s birthday” because of that intense scene we had in our First Reading from the Book of Acts. On this occasion, where the followers of Jesus are all huddled in the upper room, the long-awaited Holy Spirit blows in with the most dramatic flair. 

Previously nervous and somewhat tentative disciples find themselves caught up in a passionate exchange of praising God in whatever native tongue they spoke…or even perhaps some second or third language they knew.

The one common theme in all of this crazy cacophony of sound is that it was all praise of God. 

A God of Love. 

A God of Compassion for the world. 

A God that no longer wanted them hiding in fear of their oppressors. 

This was the very early church, before Constantine had his vision that Christ would help him win a battle and veered the church off in the direction of being exclusively a chaplain to the rich and powerful instead of a comforter and advocate to the afflicted and powerless. 

So it’s no small matter that the Holy Spirit took their minds and thought through them…their lips and spoke through them…and definitely set their hearts on fire for Jesus’ sake. And nobody exhibits this drama better than our beloved biblical ancestor, the apostle Peter.  

I know I’ve poked fun at Peter and his way of seeming to understand Jesus but always falling just a little short of the mark. 

I love Peter, I really do. 

Peter represents us… the today followers of Jesus…so well. We all have a little bit of Peter in us. We’re all likely to be ready to say we love Jesus…but when faced with the risk of our own skins…figuratively speaking…we can just as likely fall back into silence and complicity. It’s a very rare person who likes to be the odd ball or the unpopular one. And it’s common for those who are in the minority to take a “let’s just keep our heads down and hope nobody notices us” approach to life. 

It’s survival mode. 

But that’s what the Holy Spirit is blowing up in blowing in to the upper room. No more mere survival. 

It’s time to live, to thrive, and to reach out and not hunker down. 

So let’s get back to Peter. 

He denied knowing Jesus at that fateful hour in the courtyard where his friend was being interrogated. 

Peter was scared. The cock crowed after his third denial, and he was plummeted into a sense of remorse and shame. 

Upon Jesus’ resurrection…we have the epilogue in John’s Gospel where Jesus takes his friend Peter aside and offers him forgiveness and redemption for the betrayal with the whole “Do you love me? Feed my sheep” discussion. Jesus also charges Peter with the weight of his impending responsibility to be a leader…letting him know that the days of doing whatever he wanted were over because someone was about to “fasten a belt around his waist and lead him where he did not wish to go” (John 21:18d). 

In the text, there’s this sidebar that Jesus was warning Peter of the type of death he was about to endure and legend has it that Peter was also crucified, but asked that it be upside down. 

But the predicted death of Peter was not just the literal, physical death of being killed. 

Peter was also about to die to self-centeredness and become fully alive in Love. 

We can hear that in this beginning of his testimony to those who were not part of the babbling crowd. 

To the outsiders, the disciples speaking in many tongues appeared drunk. 

It’s interesting that the sneering “others” in the text declare that the disciples are “filled with new wine.” In one way, they were! 

Think about what Jesus reportedly said…and it’s in both Matthew and Mark’s Gospels…that ”no one pours new wine into old wineskins” (Mark 2:22; Matthew 9:16-17). 

This was a literal truth because if one did put new wine into an old wineskin it would burst during the fermenting period. But the new wine of the Holy Spirit had already been poured into the new wineskins of Peter and the disciples. 

Jesus had done all the preparation work with them to get them ready to receive the new wine of the Spirit. His ascension gave them those 10 days to let the wine ferment and be ready for the great uncorking by the Holy Spirit. 

They weren’t drunk on spirits; they were drunk on THE Spirit! 

Peter’s opening statement recalls the words of the prophet Joel. We might remember these same words as they are often part of the readings we do on Ash Wednesday. 

Peter raised his voice. He proclaimed with boldness…to the men of Judea…the people of Jerusalem…the city that has the reputation for killing the prophets…that in the last days…God will pour out God’s spirit upon all flesh. Your sons AND daughters will prophesy. Young men will have visions. Old men will dream dreams. And—oh—the Spirit will be upon not just those of an inner circle. This fire is going to light up inside the slave, the free men and women (Acts 2:17-18)…this is going to be a bonfire of bold witness…coming to reorient the world toward more unity…so that every tongue will speak in the language of Christ’s love.  

Peter has gone from being a wobbly-kneed foal to a galloping thoroughbred…deeply steeped in the Jewish tradition and Hebrew Scriptures and well-versed in the language of love to speak with authority and reason. 

And he and the other disciples are fired up and ready to quit hiding in the upper room and go meet the people, speak their language, and teach them this language of love they learned from Jesus. 

This is the wonder and power of this day…passed on to us. 

Just like Peter and the disciples, we have heard the words of Scripture. 

We have sung the hymns that reinforce those words. 

We are re-membered into the Body of Christ every week when we partake in the bread and wine of our Eucharistic feast.  

Now is the day and this is the time that we take all of that with us out of this place…and carry it out into the community around us. 

Be the light and love of Christ not just while you’re inside these four walls. 

This message of Jesus…

to bring good news to the poor in spirit, 

sight to those blind to the needs of the community, 

release to those who remain captive to any number of addictions, 

and freedom to anyone still feeling the crush of oppression…

that’s the important life-giving work we’re all called to do in our every day lives. When we are charged at the end of the worship to “Go in peace to love and serve the Lord” there is a joy in that moment. 

There is excitement in that possibility. 

There is the potential to keep the Spirit rolling and growing and introducing new people to the sweet spirit that is in this place.  

And that’s why we say, “Thanks be to God!” and Happy Birthday to the church. 

In the name of God…F/S/HS.