On Fire: A Sermon for Pentecost 2024

 

I am stunned I was able to get this sermon written!

Almost immediately after driving home from Valdosta after last Sunday's service, I was back in a car, making the 14+ hour trip to Austin, TX. We were burying my father-in-law's ashes, having a short visit with my wife's brother and other friends, and then immediately turning around to make the same trip back to Florida. We timed our departure on Thursday to get ahead of another violent storm system. And, as it happened, we got out of the Houston area about four hours before the weather went downhill and strong 100+ mile an hour winds blew out glass windows in the Houston downtown area. 

Adding to the complexity was a full Saturday that started with the commemoration of Mary Turner, a pregnant 19 year old black woman who was lynched on May 19, 1918 after she protested the lynching of her husband, Hayes. Her killing was horrendous. The white mob hunted her down, hung her upside down at bridge between Lowndes and Brooks counties, doused her in gasoline and lit her on fire. Someone also cut open her womb, and her eight month-old baby dropped to the ground crying. The mob stomped the baby to death, and then shot up Mary Turner. Their bodies were buried in a shallow grave, marked by a whiskey bottle and cigar. No one was ever held to account for this crime against humanity.

While Turner's great granddaughter was on hand to tell the ugly truths, our backdrop was a mural at Christ the King in which Mary Turner is depicted as a Tree of Life. For most of us, that was the basis of our comments.

These experiences all were playing in my head as I pressed on to finish this sermon. See what you think.

Texts: Acts 2:1-21; John 15: 26-27, 16:4b-15

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So after all the wild weather we’ve been enduring…not to mention in other parts of the country and Canada… for me to start talking about a mighty wind blowing through that upper room…and tongues of fire…might feel a little….eehhh….I dunno… some might say “triggering”?

Recent weather craziness…and even future storms aside…today is not a disastrous day.

This is really a time of exuberance and fun. 

We like to call this Pentecost Sunday…” The Birthday of the Church.”

Only the birthday candles on this cake are ones that no one can extinguish.

Because the Holy Spirit is on fire and lighting up every person in the room!

This is a day of excitement…and celebration…as we think about the Spirit’s extremely dramatic entry…a show of such power and flair so as to leave no doubt:

God is here and ready to get us up off the couch and into the streets!

If we’ve been paying attention to Jesus’ last will and testament that he’s giving us in John’s Gospel…we can hear Jesus promise that one of the big reasons he needed to ascend into Heaven was to make way for this amazing multi-colored force.

There’s a Spirit that’s about to come blowing in…and it’s gonna push the disciples out of that hiding place in Jerusalem to go out and do the work that still needed doing.

Because the work of the Spirit is never done.

Beyond those doors of the upper room…there were people who wanted to meet this God who loves beyond all measure without boundaries and borders and special requirements.

There were so many people who had yet to experience what it means to feel that love and care for them without demanding anything in return for the kindness except to receive it and believe it to be real.

And so the Spirit…not worrying about or stopping for a locked door and or sealed windows…just blows on in…and begins firing up this room full of people.

Suddenly…they find that the Spirit is giving them the words to speak.

Foreigners are extolling the wonders of God not in their own native languages…but in those of the other.

In all of that babbling…individuals are picking out the sounds and the phrases that spoke directly to them.

They’re hearing their heart language…coming from someone not of their own kind.

These are no longer foreigners from this country or that province…

Now they are all fellow sojourners.

Soon…this Spirit is going to lead them to have amazing encounters with random strangers…people racially and religiously different from themselves.

Out in the world beyond the upper room…they discover there’s a hunger to know the story of God through the life and teachings of Jesus.

They’ll be lead into truths that they didn’t even know they didn’t know before all this happened.

And when they run into trouble…this Holy Spirit will give them the courage to speak up…even with their voices tremble and their knees knock.

It’s oh so incredible and…

Oh…wait a minute.

Hang on here.

I’ve been talking like this Holy Spirit business is some passive event…something that we just read about every 50^th day after Easter Sunday.

Ahhh…but this Spirit…this vision of God we sing about…and raise our prayers and praises to every Sunday…has been with us all along.

And the coolest part about this incarnation of the Holy Trinity…it absolutely doesn’t care about our concepts of time and spatial limitations.

This Spirit seriously doesn’t care about the artificial boundaries we keep erecting to keep ourselves separated from each other.

It’s ready to blow away the fear and the need to control that has perpetuated racism…classism…ableism…homophobia…and misogyny.

Talk about the stuff that really needs to be blown apart and burnt up!

The Holy Spirit doesn’t have time for dragging people down.

This is a Spirit of upward mobility in the truest sense…lifting up people who have been heavy burdened and beaten down…by the judgment and doubt of the world. 

Filling them with the hope that comes from believing in a God of love…justice… and mercy.

And to make that happen…it’s ready to flip on the power switch in us.

Because it’s through our experiences with this part of the Trinity that we become people others see and think, “I wanna have whatever it is that they’re having!’

I’m reading a book co-authored by one of the priests in our diocese, my friend the Rev. Kimberly Dunn…who serves at St. Paul’s in Augusta. The book is called “Experiencing God.”

Kimberly initially started out writing this book as a paper for one of her seminary classes.

But then Dean Ian Markham of Viginia Theological Seminary decided this needed to be a bigger work with many voices from across the Episcopal Church chiming in with their stories as Episcopalians having genuine spirit-filled encounters with God.

And—yes—Episcopalians can have mystical experiences.

Some of them small…some of them times filled with ecstatic wonder.

All of them moments where God’s presence is so real….so intimate…that some might want to dismiss it as just the product of a delusional mind.

But these supposed flashes of delusion are so powerful…that they’ve made the person having the experience…sit up and take notice and make changes in their lives that radically took them in a more Godward direction.

A direction of truly seeing the connectedness of all people to this amazing source of love that is God.

These times of feeling the deep presence of God is what sometimes is the kick in the pants to go out and bring this understanding of the depth of God’s love to our friends…families…and communities.

Again: not just by talking about it. But through actions.

Through truly caring and taking necessary items to the homeless shelter.

Feeding medical students coming to the area to provide services to our migrant farmworker population.

Giving rides to people for their doctor’s appointments.

Even sitting in silence…doing centering prayer…and waiting for that still small voice to speak:

You are loved.

You always have been loved.

And I will always love you.

Now…we need to go share that love without hesitation.

In the name of God…F/S/HS