Sermons

The Feast of Pentecost

The Feast of Pentecost
May 11, 2008
The Rev. Brian C. Taylor

This feast day of Pentecost is one of my favorites in the church year. I was ordained a priest on this festival 26 years ago in Grace Cathedral, San Francisco. But even more than that, I love this day because we celebrate the Holy Spirit.

As the years go by, I am more and more drawn to this person of the Trinity, this way of envisioning God as Spirit. Like Native Americans and Hindus, I believe that God is in all of creation. God is also beyond this world as well, existing without form and beyond time, but this world is filled with the Spirit.

Like some physicists who are people of faith, I see all matter at the subatomic level made up of divine energy, an energy whose existence cannot be explained, an energy that guides this complex universe and everything in it to adapt, to evolve, to continually bring life out of death. The energy of the Spirit is blowing in and out of what we imagine to be separate objects, separate people. The Spirit is what gives breath, form, intelligence, and harmony to all of life.

But I’ve come to the point where I don’t just believe this to be true. As Carl Jung said towards the end of his life when he was asked if he believed in God, “I don’t believe in God. I know God.” I know that all of life is pulsing with the energy of Spirit, in the winds of springtime, in every blade of grass, in every person, in every circumstance.

This is true even in things and in people we don’t think of as beautiful or good. John Cage, the composer who used everyday sounds as much as instruments, said "The first question I ask myself when something doesn't seem to be beautiful is why do I think it's not beautiful. And very shortly you discover that there is no reason…[and so] if something is boring after two minutes, try it for four. If still boring, then eight. Then sixteen. Then thirty-two. Eventually one discovers that it is not boring at all."

This is seeing things with awareness. It is seeing things deeply, as they really are, seeing that all of life is wondrous, all filled with the Spirit of God. Experiencing life this way changes how we pray. Instead of thinking of ourselves as separate from God, needing to reach out to a God who is apart from us, we just open ourselves to the Spirit who is already completely present within us, around us.

There’s nothing complicated about this; it doesn’t require great training; it doesn’t even require a lot of time. It’s just a matter of quieting down, softening our heart, and opening our mind to the energy of God. We don’t have to ask or say anything. We can just be present, feeling alive in the moment. But we feel it with an added dimension, a sense of sacred electricity, a sense of eternity, a sense that everything is held together, and that ultimately all shall be well.

Experiencing the Spirit this way in prayer, it changes how we relate to the world around us. Rather than imagining ourselves to be separate from other people, our nation as separate from other nations, and human life as separate from all other life forms, we can see humanity and all creation as one unified organism, animated by the Spirit.

Seeing life this way, how can we pollute the earth? How can we wage war against our brothers and sisters instead of seeking understanding and reconciliation? How can we ignore the needs of those who suffer because they were born into bad circumstances? How can we hold a grudge and dismiss others with resentment? We are, as St. Paul said, members of the same body.

The Spirit therefore has two transformational effects: one is the transformation of our awareness and how we pray; the other is the transformation of how we relate to the world around us.

This is the story of the earliest disciples, too. With the gift of the Spirit, first their hearts were transformed. After Pentecost, they became fearless, able to see God’s goodness in every circumstance, filled with love and hope. Again and again, that’s how they described, in the many letters of the New Testament, the transformation that had come over them.

But the Spirit also changed their relationship to society. They began to gather people across class and educational and ethnic boundaries. They shared their money, their food, and their hope in God. They healed those who suffered. They built a community that stood in stark contrast to the dog-eat-dog world around them. Theirs was a community based not upon status, competition, and self-absorption, but mercy, mutuality, and reconciliation.

For many years, St. Michael’s has excelled in helping people personally engage with the Spirit in the first kind of transformation. We’ve had a lot of emphasis on authentic spirituality. We’ve always done a lot of outward ministry, too, but we’ve been weighted towards the individual, the internal process of spiritual transformation.

But now, as I have said to you in many ways over the last few months, I believe that the same Spirit who transforms hearts is calling us to transform our community and the world around us. This is what the Spirit always does. Now is the right time in our history as a parish to allow the Spirit of God to take our spiritual grounding and apply it even more powerfully in communal and external ways.

Every day I see the Spirit is moving us in this direction. If you have any doubts, listen to this litany of developments that have all been taking place over the last few months:

· Fr. Christopher and Deacon Jan Bales have empowered many of you to bring a truly amazing amount of new creativity into education, fellowship and outreach.
· We’ve just hired a new and very skilled Business Administrator, and we’re looking for a part-time Communication Specialist, both of whom will help us do what we do in a more professional and integrated manner.
· We’re raising up two people to be ordained soon, who will expand our ability to reach out to new populations within and outside our parish.
· We displayed our many activities in a major Ministry Fair on April 13 and through weekly ministry moments by lay leaders from this pulpit. Dozens of you have signed up to join these ministries, and we are in the process of engaging you in them.
· Having concluded through our feasibility study that shall be able to raise nearly $2 million for new construction and renovation, we are moving ahead with creative design ideas so that all our activities have space to meet.
· We did a separate survey about ministry priorities, and you have very clearly said that you are committed to the core of worship, pastoral care, and education, but that you also want move outwards with more energy, being a light to the world around us and directly serving those in need.

This is an exciting time to be part of St. Michael and All Angels. A pedestrian way of describing this time is to say “Gee, there’s a lot going on.” But with the eyes of faith, with the eyes that see the Spirit moving through all creation, we see that the very same Spirit who has transformed our individual awareness and our prayer is now transforming our community and our relationship to the world around us. This is what the Spirit always does.

Today on this feast I am deeply grateful for the continual work of the Spirit in my own life and in so many of yours, transforming us from within. I am also grateful for the movement of the Spirit among us, transforming who we are as a community and what we shall be to the world around us. Happy Pentecost.