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The Day of Pentecost
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A Sermon by
The Rev. Canon Carl Turner
✛
Pentecost: Making the Church Loving, Liberating, and Life-giving
Alleluia. Christ is Risen!
The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia!
As a Brit in New York, having just returned from my youngest daughter’s wedding and hearing of yet more terrorist attacks in London (where, less than two weeks I was staying for meetings in the very area where the attacks took place) I find myself with lots of emotions today. I decided I needed the encouragement of the Easter Greeting at the beginning of my sermon; Pentecost brings the liturgical season of Easter to a close, but the message of Easter is what the Church needs to proclaim when people spread terror and fear and discord.
Our Presiding Bishop, Michael Curry, talks about our church as being the ‘Episcopal branch of the Jesus Movement.’ Someone once asked him to give an image of what he meant by the Jesus Movement. His answer was to describe the Gospel procession in the Eucharist – a liturgical action we have all been part of a few moments ago in this church – the moment when the book of the Gospels moved into the midst of the congregation and as a congregation, many of us moved so that we all faced the Gospel. Bishop Curry said, “In that Gospel moment, the Church has become The Jesus Movement, with life reoriented around the teachings of Jesus and around his very Spirit.”
The Catechism of the Episcopal Church says this about the action of the Holy Spirit:
Question: How do we recognize the presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives?
Answer: We recognize the presence of the Holy Spirit when we confess Jesus Christ as Lord and are brought into love and harmony with God, with ourselves, with our neighbors, and with all creation.
For me, that echoes our mission statement written on the steps of our church: “to love and serve our Lord Jesus Christ” and, quite literarily, in the making of harmony through music and liturgy, and in the harmony of our fellowship and common life together – loving and serving the Lord Jesus. Some people in the world want discord and division (the memorial next to this pulpit is a permanent reminder of that sad fact) but the church exists to promote love and harmony, forgiveness and peace.
Sometimes, Pentecost is described as the ‘birthday of the Church’. Luke’s account of the day of Pentecost certainly looks like a birthday celebration – a new beginning; a new creation through the action of the Spirit. The followers of Jesus had gathered in a room and waited and prayed but what happened at Pentecost prevented them from remaining simply a group of people that prayed and cared for one another; Pentecost changed everything by opening the doors of that room. The doors were opened not just to allow the Holy Spirit in, the doors were opened to allow the followers of Jesus out. Pentecost was the birth of the Jesus Movement – the followers of Jesus were to be a people ‘on the move’ –confessing Jesus as Lord and bringing people into love and harmony one with another. Pentecost changed the followers of Jesus from being organized religion and into the body of Christ. Jesus had told his disciples that after his Ascension he would send them the gift of the Spirit – the Paraclete, or Comforter, who would allow Jesus and the Father to make their home in each one of them:
“Those who love me will keep my word,” says the Lord, “and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them.” (John 14:23)
How is this to happen? Through the action of the Holy Spirit. That same Spirit that hovered over the waters of creation; the Spirit that gave life to humankind and revealed through prophecy and miracle; that same Spirit that overshadowed Mary and brought the incarnate Word into our time and space; the Spirit that that was poured out upon and filled Jesus and his ministry; that same Spirit that was promised to you and to me by Jesus.
Sometimes, the Church forgets that it is the Jesus Movement and can be very broken; broken not because Christ’s body was broken on the cross, but broken through mistrust, or disagreements, or quarrelling, or even downright unkindness of its members one to another. When the Lord prayed in the upper room on the night he was betrayed, what did he pray? “The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.” (John 17:22-23)
We become the body of Christ not simply because we believe the right things or say the right things or even do the right things – we become the body of Christ when the Holy Spirit dwells in us so that the Father and Jesus make our home with us and we model a new way of being community.
Harmony is not the same as unison and many notes can make a beautiful and surprising sound. St Paul reminded us of this in our epistle reading; of the variety of gifts that make up the diversity of the church’s ministry.
Archbishop Justin, preaching at Pentecost just before his enthronement said this: “We divide again and again over our disagreements, rather than setting a pattern for the world by disagreeing in love, and settling our disputes in the unity of the Spirit… His work is unity, and the clearest sign of the presence of the Spirit is the integrating chaos of His power, bringing vision, dreams and calling that enabled scattered people to have diversity without enmity.” [1]
On the day of Pentecost, peoples who spoke many different languages were brought together because of Jesus; 3000 were converted but, we are told, others sneered.
What is one of the central marks of the presence of the Holy Spirit in the life of the believer and, therefore, in the life of the church? Forgiveness. How significant that, in John’s Gospel, on Easter day, Jesus appears to his disciples and brings them peace – his peace – the peace he had shared with them in the upper room before his betrayal, and he breathed on them: “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” Forgiveness is at the heart of the Church’s life; it is at the heart of the Jesus Movement; it flows from the wounds of love (remember that he showed them his hands and his side first) and it is animated through the action of the Holy Spirit.
When asked what is at the heart of the Jesus Movement, Michael Curry sums it up in very few words: “When you look at Jesus, you see one who is loving, one who is liberating, and one who is life-giving.”
Loving – Liberating – Life Giving.
And if the Church is the body of Christ, when we experience its life, we should experience a community that is loving, liberating, and life giving.
I find it very poignant that it is only when the followers of Jesus go out in mission that they are given the name ‘Christian’. In Antioch, not Jerusalem, they were recognized as the body of Christ because Jesus and the Father were making their home in them through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. (see Acts 11:25-26).
Michael Ramsey once said: “The Church exists by the power of the Holy Spirit. Whether as fellowship, or body, or temple, or people of God, it has no existence apart from the impact of the Holy Spirit upon human lives.” (Holy Spirit – page 84)
The Holy Spirit can do this here – has done this here – will do this here again if we are open to his presence and our Church is seen to be loving, liberating and life-giving.
My dear friends; Alleluia. Christ is Risen!
The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia!
_______________
[1] Sermon preached in Durham Cathedral on the Feast of Pentecost, May 27, 2012.
