Those of you who have become my Facebook friend (that’s a computer social community) know that my Facebook picture is one of a baptism that I did in Biloxi. And you might deduce from that picture that baptism is one of my favorite parts of being a priest. Baptism by itself is a great day for a celebration and the fact that today is Pentecost makes it just that much better.
Our tradition holds that Pentecost is the birthday of the church and so at some point today I suspect that we will have a birthday cake to eat. Pentecost comes exactly 50 days after Easter. In the church we call that period of time the Great 50 Days of Easter. We have literally gone from ashes to fire in our journey from Ash Wednesday to Pentecost. So what exactly is Pentecost all about?
All during the Easter Season we have heard Jesus teaching the apostles about how they are to live their lives once he had ascended. Back on the first Sunday after Easter we heard in the Gospel reading Jesus promise the apostles that he would send an advocate to them, a counselor, a guide for them in the days after he was no longer with them. The story of what happened when God sent that Advocate is found in these passages from Acts. This year, because Easter fell on the same week as Passover, our celebration of Pentecost falls on the same weekend as the Jewish Festival of Weeks, Shavuot – or in Greek - Pentecost. I mention this because week before last I was in Utah giving a workshop with my good friend and disaster colleague Rabbi Myrna Matsa and she and I shared some notes on what we would be doing when we returned home and prepared for our respective Pentecost celebrations. Down in Mississippi this weekend, Rabbi Myrna and her congregation are celebrating the first services in their new synagogue after it had been destroyed by Katrina and here in Massachusetts I am going to baptize three of God’s most precious children. Awesome huh! What great ways to spend two really important liturgical holidays.
The Festival of Weeks celebrates the revealing of the Ten Commandments to Moses on Mt Sinai. In first Century Israel, where farming was a large part of the economy, it was a day to bring the best of the grain harvest to the Temple for sacrifice. And that is why the apostles were all together in one place as our lesson from Acts tells us. They had come to celebrate Shavuot, Pentecost. Scripture tells us that suddenly the wind picked up and filled the house and tongues of fire rested on them and an amazing thing happened. (As if big winds and fire were not amazing enough) But the most amazing thing was that all of these people who had come from all parts of the world and spoke a gazillion different languages – all of a sudden heard the apostles speaking – not in a language that was foreign to them but rather in their own native language. The idea that God’s message would be given in such a way that there would be universal understanding is common to both Christianity and to Judaism and I suspect to other faiths as well.
Whether it is the gift of the Ten Commandments to the people of Israel or of the Holy Spirit to the budding multi-cultural community of Christians - both are gifts from God and both are given by God in such a way that difference – in language or culture or gender or social/economic class – none of the differences can block access to either of these holy gifts from God. And neither of these gifts are meant to be stashed away in the attic for safe keeping. Both are to become central to our relationship with God. Both are to guide our interaction with other human beings. Both are to be comfort and sustenance for us. Both call us to be in a different place than we were before, to take seriously God’s action in our lives. Both remind us of God’s Love for us and of our responsibility to carry that Love to others in the world.
Rabbi Myrna and I gave a workshop on building interfaith partnerships in the midst of disaster. There were not many blessings to come out of Katrina, but one was the profound bonding that we as chaplains, counselors, and advocates felt as we worked together on the issues of human rights, affordable housing, and in seeking appropriate actions to protect the Gulf Coast from another disaster. What we learned was that when we could focus on our common vision, our common needs and desires, then all of the energy drainers and project stoppers would crumble in our path.
One of the stories we told that I had pirated off some email was this:
Once upon a time there was a mountain that had four corners. At the foot of each corner of the mountain stood a climber who desired to climb to the summit. Each climber had brought all that he thought he needed to make the climb to the top of the mountain. As they began to climb they each soon realized that they would not make it to the top with all of the equipment that they had brought. So each one began to drop off something. One left his heavy axe that he had planned to chop branches out of the way with, another realized that he did not need the ropes and chains that he had brought. Another left his cooking gear, and still another decided that he did not need the bedding after all. One by one as they climbed they kept leaving unnecessary items on the side of the mountain. Each one of them know that he could retrieve them on the way down but for now they were not needed and in fact were cumbersome and held them back from their goal of reaching the summit. Hours went by and still they climbed. Then they reached the top and looked at each other. What they saw was that each of the climbers stood on the summit naked. All that they had carried had become useless to them and they sought a common goal of reaching the top of the mountain.
When we allow God’s Spirit to fill us completely, to engulf us in wind and fire – we find that whatever it is that separates us is wiped away by God’s all consuming Love for us and our desire to share that Love with others. This morning as we wash Phoebe, Bear, and Toluwani with the waters of baptism, as we anoint them and mark them as Christ’s own forever, we will also renew our own promises made at our baptism. Baptism invites each of us to consider how God is calling us to act in the world, how God calls us to spread the Good News of Christ through our compassion for others and our hope for the world. It calls us to come to a common understanding, a common vision of what God’s Kingdom should be and what we will need to carry us there. And these baptisms - on this Day of Pentecost - invite us to remember how God has acted in the world and then to search for the ways that God is active in our lives right now. We are invited to be filled with the Holy Spirit so that we will be better teachers, mentors, and caregivers for these children as they - by virtue of their baptisms - become the bearers of Christ’s Light in the world.
We hear in this wonderful story of the early church how the Holy Spirit came and lit up the followers of Jesus literally and figuratively. They went into the streets telling Jesus’ story to anyone who would listen and they were understood in unexpected and miraculous ways. And so I wonder, when are our voices unintelligible? What is it that touches our tongues so that others might hear and understand? What is it that takes the words we speak and transforms them for the hearers into God’s message? The author of Acts tells us that it is the very Spirit of God that fills us with love, compassion, and a willingness to reach out to our brothers and sisters, to listen intently to the stories of struggle, to speak truthfully and openly in telling our own stories. When we open our hearts up to God and allow the Spirit to work in and through us then we are speaking the universal language of Love and we are able to be understood and to understand.
God’s Love, God’s Light, God’s Spirit comes to us as a free gift. It is given to all – each in her own language – so that all might share in the grace of it. It sets us on fire with energy and excitement. It burns like a hot coal in our bellies giving us the passion and desire, and energy to climb to the top of the mountain. It is all we need for the journey. God’s spirit fills every void and stretches as far as the imagination can carry us.
11th Century rabbi named Meir ben Issac wrote a poem for Shavuot that talks about God’s Love. It is a poem that speaks of God’s Love in the gift of the Commandments.
"Could we with ink the ocean fill, Were every blade of grass a quill, Were the whole world of parchment made, And every man a scribe by trade, To write the love of God above would drain the ocean dry; Nor could the scroll contain the whole, Though stretched from sky to sky."
Thanks be to God, Amen
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