Get Out There! A Sermon for Pentecost with Holy Baptisms

 

What a fantastic way to celebrate Pentecost. We had not one, not two...but six baptisms! Both of which were family affairs. A mom and her two toddlers; two moms and their teenage daughter. All of them came to us through our modest outreach efforts on Ash Wednesday offering "Ashes-to-Go" in the parking lot of the church. 

Don't ever let anyone say that the Holy Spirit is dead.

She's alive...and is still making beautiful mischief while the world feasts on mayhem.

Text: Acts 2:1-21

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What a scene that must’ve been in the upper room that day…the day that the Holy Spirit swept in like a great mighty wind.

All these people…from different regions of the world as they knew it at that time…are in Jerusalem.

The disciples are huddled together…not quite knowing what to do with themselves.

They’d been moved by the words of Jesus.

They’d given up their careers and left their homes to follow Jesus.

They’d just been on an emotional rollercoaster…having seen him killed by the Roman authorities…and then he reappeared to them…resurrected from the dead.

He continued to encourage them…and then left them again to ascend into heaven.

So there they are…sitting there…looking at each other…trying to figure out what they’re supposed to be doing with themselves now.

Suddenly…a great gust of wind throws open the doors and the windows of that room.

The Holy Spirit lights their hearts and minds…and most importantly their mouths…on fire.

They start telling the story of God’s love with such a passion in languages they’d never spoken before.

But others are hearing them.

They understand them.

And what they’re hearing are words that express a universal truth about their true selves:

They are all beloved children of God.

It had to be an incredible moment!

It reminds me of the time when my wife and I were visiting Lourdes in France.  

The grotto of Bernadette is a Roman Catholic pilgrimage site…which isn’t far from where Isabelle grew up.

People from all over the world come to this place…many seeking healing.

When you walk through the plaza as you approach the grotto…it’s like the United Nations of languages.

People are speaking French…Italian…German…Spanish…just lots of other languages all around you.

There’s often a religious service taking place in the grotto…which can also be in whatever is the native tongue of the priest.

We were there in the afternoon…and so the priest was leading people in reciting the rosary…with the Hail Mary and Our Father prayers.

Groups were filing through the grotto as the people prayed.

They were touching the stones of this cave where Bernadette reportedly had had a vision of the Virgin Mary in the 19^th century.

But then…as the service was ending…the priest began chanting the Ave Maria.

And the whole place…in the grotto…and out in the large plaza…people stopped.

And in one voice…they all join in singing the chorus together.

It didn’t matter what nationality they were…or even whether they were Roman Catholic or not…in that moment…we were all made one…in the Holy Spirit…united in this song of praise.

That sense of being swept up in a single a voice and singing in joyful praise of God is how I imagine what it must have been like to be in that upper room at that moment.

Filled with the Holy Spirit…these followers of Jesus have something like a new life breathed into them.

Look at Peter.

I think many of us can relate to Peter as that disciple who wants to follow Jesus…and gets it right sometimes and falls short in so many other ways.

Peter raises his voice …and begins a soliloquy about Jesus.

The Spirit is stirring him up…and he’s speaking with that level of confidence and eloquence like he’d never had before.

If we remember way back into Advent…we heard how John the Baptizer had promised that while he was baptizing with water…the one that was coming would baptize the people with fire.

Well…here it is…just as he had promised!

And with this baptism…it’s time for those who had been worried and afraid…those who had been wondering what to do…to put aside any doubt or fear…and get out there.

Their hesitations…are literally and figuratively burned up and blown away.

They’re free…and liberated to proclaim proudly…who they are and whose they are.

It’s out of the Upper Room and into the streets…and beyond!

Thomas went to India.

John went to Turkey and Greece.

Peter went to Rome.

Matthew to Syria.

This fledgling ragtag movement of love…compassion…healing and mercy that Jesus had been leading has taken off…and the church has come into being. Hallelujah and Happy Birthday to the Church!

And just like any birthday…this is not a one-and-done event.

Birthdays keep coming.

The Spirit keeps lighting up more people…bringing more and more into this practice of love.

Think about all those we’ve seen throughout time who have shown courage and strength despite whatever obstacles get thrown in their way.

We can see the fruits of the spirit at work through religious leaders like Howard Thurman…and Martin Luther King, Jr….and even the Philadelphia Eleven.

We can witness how the Spirit gave courage to leaders in civil rights like Rosa Parks and Marsha P. Johnson.

We know the presence of the Holy Spirit when we look to those people who fill us with hope…the people who gives us encouragement…the people who remind us that when God surveyed all of creation… God called it all good.

This is the work of the Holy Spirit…to keep us moving…stretching…and embracing the good that is in us and confirmed through the waters of baptism.

Today…we are blessed to be baptizing Anna, Brandi, Madison, Aureila, Ridley and Brittany.

Through these waters of baptism we are both welcoming you into the Body of Christ…that big…amazing…and very diverse Christian family.

And we are confirming what has been true about each of you all along: you are beloved children of God…valued and precious in God’s sight.

Each one of us who has been made part of the Christian church…no matter what denomination or orthodoxy…are made one through baptism…all singing that same song of praise to God…who is Love everlasting.

And that’s the message that needs to leave here and be taken out into the world.

The Holy Spirit is that person of the Trinity that keeps nudging us toward living lives that reflect Christ’s love….and Christ’s mission to care not just for ourselves but others.

And—I need to warn y’all—the Spirit is pretty relentless in the pursuit of us and getting us to get out there.

As one of my spiritual directors here in the diocese used to tell me, “The Holy Spirit has got some mighty sharp elbows, and she doesn’t mind sticking you in the ribs when it’s necessary!”

Let’s go! Let the Spirit be the guide! And let’s make God’s love be the core of our beings.

In the name of our One Holy and Undivided Trinity.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Unity in Troubled Times

 Hello again!

If you're wondering what happened to me...I have been away. Far away...across the Atlantic enjoying a break from my every day to spend time visitng friends and family in France. It was nice to be removed from regularly being exposed to the horrors happening in the country, but I wasn't sealed off in a bubble. I did still have access to the internet. And that means I saw stories from home getting posted on Facebook.

The worst one was the report about the 50 Florida Highway Patrol cruisers along with several unmarked cars and a massive police force of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents descended upon a construction site in Tallahassee between the two major universities the day before we were coming back. The purpose was to terrorize the Latino/a population of the city, but the practical effect meant that construction workers all over the city went home out of fear that they would be the next arrests. 

Out of 100 or so arrests, only four got booked into the Leon County jail. Many were eventually released. And still others can't be found. Thanks to Secretary of State Marco Rubio (a Floridian who might as well be called an "anchor baby" since his own parents immigrated to the USA from Cuba before Castro's revolution), thousands of men and women have had their temporary worker permits and other documentation cancelled because.......

Well....because....we're now going to ciminalize being brown and a foreigner.

Seeing this news made me want to stay in France. Never come back to the USA...until we get rid of this regime once and for all. 

But I knew that wasn't possible.

And God seems to have a purpose for me here. Maybe to deliver sermons to a small Congregation in Southwest Georgia.  See what you think.

Text: John 17: 20-26

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 My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following Your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please You does in fact please You. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that, if I do this, You will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it. Therefore I will trust You always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for You are ever with me, and You will never leave me to face my perils alone. Amen.

 

That prayer by the American monk and theologian Thomas Merton is called “A Prayer of Unknowing.”

I’ve used it before…and find that I go back to it from time to time.

And it seemed like the perfect prayer for this particular Sunday…in which we are in this liminal space not only in our church time…and also where we are in our current moment in this country.

The church calendar tells us that we’re in this suspended moment between the Day of the Ascension…the day that Jesus makes his final ascent to sit at the right hand of God…and the celebration of Pentecost next Sunday…which is when the Holy Spirit…that third person of the Trinity…will make a dramatic entrance and serve in that role as that guiding conscience…and spirit of truth and courage for those who are believers in Christ.

In our Gospel reading from John this Sunday…what we’ve heard is the final portion of a very long prayer that Jesus offered to the disciples right before his crucifixion.

This final farewell in John’s Gospel stretches over about three and half chapters. It serves as Jesus’s last pep talk to his followers…reminding them that to love one another as he has loved.

To remember the source of that love that he has shown them is none other than the love that comes from God the Father.

He wants them to hold it in their hearts that the greatest love they can show is that love that isn’t self-serving and selfish…but reaches out and gives comfort and support…especially to those who find themselves down and despondent.

These words…that John has Jesus speaking…were not just meant for disciples of Jesus gathered with him in the Upper Room in Jerusalem.

This was an important and necessary speech for the followers of Jesus that made up John’s community in 100 CE…about 70 years after the crucifixion.

These were the very early Christians…both Jews and Gentiles…the ones who were beginning to be identified as Christians…who were living at a time where they felt their world was crashing down around them.

At the time that John was writing this Gospel…the early followers of Jesus were in a very difficult spot.

They’d been hoping that Jesus would have ushered in a new Messianic age.

Instead…they had endured and survived a brual war with the Roman Empire which ended with the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem.

And they found themselves unwelcomed in the synagogues of the Jewish population which didn’t accept Jesus as Messiah.

So they were a minority within an already persecuted minority.

We can imagine that some people might have been falling away from the faith at that point.

So this long prayer of Jesus in John’s Gospel is there not just to get his disciples in the right frame of mind for what was coming with the crucifixion.

John wanted his own community to buck up…be brave…and don’t give into hopelessness…and to continue to live into the way…the truth and the life that Jesus had shown to those who believe.

That message was meaningful then…and it is clearly meant for us now.

Take a look at the way this passage begins. We hear Jesus pray:

 "I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one.” (John 17:20)

If the disciples had let their fear of the Roman Empire shut them up…if they had let their anxieties over what the authorities might do to them get in their way of acting…we would never have known the story of Jesus.

If Peter had just curled up into a ball of shame and guilt…and if Paul had never had his amazing conversion experience on the way to Damascus…this Jesus movement might’ve lasted only for a few years.

If John’s followers had allowed their depression and their dread to dominate their thoughts and made them go silent in face of oppression…the Gospel of Jesus would never have spread beyond Palestine.

This prayer shows us that it’s through the followers…those who are committed believers in Jesus…people who’ve been moved and touched by the Christian story…it is through them that God’s love becomes really real to the greater population.

And it is through our participation…in hearing this prayer…that God’s love links us to our ancestral heritage of all the faithful who have come to believe in God through Jesus Christ.

So this is a prayer about unity.

Not only unity with the ancestors and the saints that have gone before us.

This is about bringing ourselves…our souls…into communion with God.

Feeding our hearts on the love that is “the Alpha and Omega…the beginning and the end” of all things (Rev.22:13) and unifying us individually and collectively with the holy.

It also serves as a prayer of unity right now…in our present moment…bonding us in mutual aid and affection for one another.

And—boy—do we need that unity now!

Because there are those forces that want to divide us and make us fear and hate one another.

They want us to see our differences—whatever they are—racial…political…gender identity…orientation…ethnicity…as reasons to pull away from one another.

I was deeply hurt and angered by a recent raid on a construction site this past week in my city of Tallahassee.

More than 100 people in safety vests and neon colored shirts and jeans were arrested and put onto a bus with no air conditioning…because they were undocumented.

By the end of the day…only four people were booked into the Leon County jail.

Many others were released.

And still others were sent off…even though they are not criminals.

These were people who were working and contribuiting to society as their asylum claims were getting processed.

This was an action that was an overkill of police force…an apparent attempt to cause the maxium amount of fear in the city…especially among the Latinos and Latinas in the area.

But of course such things never just touch one segement of the population.

We’re all interconnected.

What happens to one group will have ripple effects that touches everyone.

Lots of people…white people in Tallahassee…and not all of one political camp or the other…were shaken.

All of the construction projects in Tallahassee screeched to a halt…and now no one feels safe going to work.

Wives are missing their husbands.

Children don’t know what’s happened to their dads.

Again…we see these words of Jesus in John’s Gospel:

"Righteous Father, the world does not know you, but I know you; and these know that you have sent me. I made your name known to them, and I will make it known, so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them." (John 17:25-26)

There will always be those who will attempt to get us to turn on one another…to break our bonds of unity.

There will always be efforts to touch those dark corners of our hearts that make us see the “other”…however we define that “other” for ourselves…as a person or a group of people to fear.

Don’t give into that temptation.

Remember the promises we make at our baptism…to seek and serve Christ in each other…loving our neighbors as ourselves…striving for justice and peace among all people…and respecting the dignity of every human being.

This prayer that Jesus offers…one that is particularly geared toward people who are living in a time of confusion and uncertainty…is the constant reminder that we have so much more in common with one another…so much more that unifies us…to each other in the Body of Christ…and brings our true selves into deeper relationship with God.

This prayer reminds us that even when we’re uncertain about things going on in our lives…to keep walking in love…and bringing that love out into the world.

The love that Jesus demonstrates again and again…a love that knows no “others” and has no black out dates or exceptions.

That love is OUR superpower.

Use it.

Live it.

Share it.

In the name of our One Holy and Undivided Trinity.