Vigil of Pentecost/Day of Pentecost Sermon
When I first began to sense a call to the ordained ministry in my own life, I felt as if I had been sent out into the great and vast wide open sea in a small insignificant life raft. It was mostly scary, it was sometimes fun, it was, to say the least an adventure. At one point when I was asking questions about how God was working in my life, I emailed an Episcopal Priest who was the Episcopal Chaplain at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. I had met him at a young adult conference in St. Louis and was drawn to his wisdom. He wrote to me shortly after that and, during a particularly bumpy time in my life, said:
If you are confused – Thank God!
If you do not have all the answers – Thank God!
If you do not know exactly what God is up to – Thank God!
If you have to wait up on the Lord – Thank God!
There are no shortcuts to grace.
Our home is NOT the destination, but the journey
St. Anselm said, “I do not understand so that I may believe, I believe so that I may understand.”
Trust precedes understanding.
Grace precedes acceptance.
Faith precedes works.
Those words calmed me; brought me peace and they still do, to this day, they are posted on the wall behind my desk in my office.
We are in a similar place as a community of faith. We struggle with wanting to believe God has a promised and preferred future for us as we live out our lives, at the same time, we feel as if we cannot trust God to do the work within us to bring about that promised future. It is an epic struggle for the Church, and has become an epic struggle only recently as we have watched Christendom lose its grip on Christianity in the world. Fear often overtakes us and we want to step back onto solid ground, we want to leave the desert we are in, that place where we it seems we can’t identify anything about who we are and what we want, our default instinct tells us that we must step back onto that place where we think we know what will happen, where we think we can predict what will become of us. We struggle with being confused, we struggle with not having all the answers, we struggle not knowing exactly what God is up to, we have to wait and it drives us crazy!
We walk in the desert; we walk in a place where no one can make their home, because sand does not make a good foundation. We walk in the desert, parched, thirsty for anything to quench our desire, yet can find no water. We walk in the desert starving for fulfillment, and can find no sustenance. We walk and are forced to trust that God is doing something among us, forced to believe first, then understand that what God is doing among is will be revealed in time.
The spirit we receive this day of Pentecost is not one of slavery, as Paul states, it is not a spirit of fear that forces us back into places we find comfortable. It is a spirit of adoption, a spirit of abundance, a spirit of belonging that brings us closer to the Holy One in our lives. There is great hope, you can hear it in the voice of Isaiah where he says, “They shall feed along the ways, on all the bare heights shall be their pasture; they shall not hunger or thirst, neither scorching wind nor sun shall strike them down, for he who has pity on them will lead them, and by springs of water will guide them.” Our journey of faith is in the hand of God, God is not in our hand as we journey forward, we are in God’s hand, we are being cared for, loved and watched over by a God who is not far from us, is not even a small distance away, but right here with us, among us, celebrating our joys, weeping with us in our sorrows; a God who is laughing at and with us, as well as wiping away our tears. We long to know, we wish to stand on firm ground, but God is with us, God is among us weaving us together and leading us into a promised and preferred future in which each of us is called to be a missionary, a missional people full of the Holy Spirit.
In the Book, Missional Leader, the next book we may read together, the definition of Missional Church is written, it says, “God is about a big purpose in and for the whole of creation. The church has been called into life to be both the means of this mission and a foretaste of where God is inviting all creation to go. Just as its Lord is a mission shaped God, so the community of God’s people exists, not for themselves but for the sake of the work. The church’s very nature is to be God’s missionary people. A missional church is a community of God’s people who live into the imagination that they are by their very nature, God’s missionary people living as a demonstration of what God plans to do in and for all of creation in Jesus Christ.” Can we imagine ourselves as God’s missionary people living in the world? Can we bring ourselves to dream that the Church is not this building we reside in today, the Church is not the spires, the bricks and mortar, the boiler, can we come to believe and understand this is true? Cad we instead come to understand that the Church is you, it is you, it is you, and it is you. We, the people gathered together are the Church, and therefore we are the people called to do God’s mission in the world. This building will not accomplish the mission we are being called to fulfill. It is only a stopping place on the journey. The staff we hire will not accomplish the mission we are being called to fulfill, they must empower and raise up people to participate in this mission. The red doors and our blue and white The Episcopal Church Welcomes You signs will not accomplish the mission we are being called to fulfill, that all falls to us as a people called, gathered, centered and sent.
Anthony De Mello says this about the needs of the Church: “The greatest need of the Church today is not new legislations, new theology, new structures, new liturgies – all these without the Holy Spirit are like a dead body without a soul. We desperately need someone to take away our hearts of stone and give us a heart of flesh; we need an infusion of enthusiasm and inspiration and courage and spiritual strength. We need to persevere in our love without discouragement or cynicism, but with a new faith in the future. In other words, we need the fresh outpouring of the Holy Spirit.” The spirit is being poured out upon us here, not just because it is Pentecost, but because we coming to see and believe that God is at work in our midst, that the Spirit is blowing and moving through and among us. We are being immersed in the spirit in ways that will transform us into new human beings. God is standing before us as I speak, holding out to us a new heart, a heart of flesh, one that will bring to us new life, new imagination and new spirit! God is holding out to us a heart of flesh, ready and willing to take the old, stone heart out of us, ready to take away our discouragement and our cynicism. God is here people, and we must believe it! God is here people and we must listen! God is here people and we must open ourselves to the spirit as it pours over all of us like rain from the skies.
Isaiah says, “Sing for joy, O heavens, and exult, O earth; break forth, O mountains, into singing!” What is keeping us from singing, what is keeping us from dancing? Do we trust that God can truly accomplish all that needs to be done in us to make this community a new and vibrant group of people grounded in Christ and sent by the Holy Spirit? Do we believe that we are a powerful, spirit filled and transformational people, do we believe that God acts in our lives in an intimate, relational way, until we believe that God is here, that God is with us, we won’t break forth from this place, singing.
Paul says in Ephesians, “The gifts God gave were that some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to the measure of the full stature of Christ.” Paul says we have everything we need sitting right here. We don’t need anything more; we do not need programs to make us feel better about ourselves. We do not need experts to tell us where to go. We do not need classes to make ourselves more knowledgeable in the Body of Christ. We are the Body of Christ, we are the Body of Christ right here and right now, with everything we need to go into the world proclaiming the Kingdom of God.
In Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, Paul says, “Each builder must choose with care how to build on it. For no one can lay any foundation other than the one that has been laid; that foundation is Jesus Christ.” This does not mean we sit and spend our time carefully considering what it is we might want to be called to do or build. It means we carefully consider what we have at our disposal to build with and then use it to build upon the foundation of Christ, to enhance what has already been built or to create something completely new. Our journey of faith is not about finding the right material to build with, rather it is putting what we have and who we are into the service of God at all times.
We have spent the past five or six weeks dwelling on one piece of Scripture on Wednesday nights, Luke 10:1-12. It is the moment Jesus turns his head towards Jerusalem, towards his death. In that moment his mission changes, it changes from simply healing and teaching to preparing and raising up his disciples to do what he has done. He sends out 72 or 70, depending on the translation to preach the Gospel, heal the sick and proclaim to all that the Kingdom of God has come near. This Gospel has now been etched upon our hearts, etched upon our souls and etched upon our minds. It is the core theological teaching that led us to the point where we sit today. Last night we commissioned ourselves as missionaries. We asked for God’s blessing upon the worship we give, the community we form and the justice we do. What, I have come to believe, God is asking all of us to do, is to take on this mantle of mission and to go from this place proclaiming the Kingdom of God. Before I say anything more, please, please please, get those old and stupid and irrelevant ideas about going into the world with the Gospel as a missionary OUT OF YOUR HEAD! You are not going out to convert the heathen; you are not going out to proclaim judgment on those you deem unworthy. You are going out to teach, you are going out to heal and you are going out to say, The Kingdom of God has come near.
So how will you say to those people you meet on this journey, the Kingdom of God has come near? What will you do to become a missionary in the world, sent by God to live into the promised and preferred future God has for us? What will you do? I am not sure what you will do, or even what to tell you to do, but I do know this, you must never give up. I do know this; you must never let failure have the final say. I do know this, our stories are the stories of God’s preferred and promised future for all of creation. Share them; believe they were given to you by God, not by anyone else. Talk about how you pray to God, share your experiences of God’ great providence, share your experiences of God’s horrible absence from your life. In the joys and the mountaintop experiences God is present. In the valleys, darkness and sorrow of our lives, God is just as present. Have courage. Have faith. Believe so that we may all come to understand. Hold your hand out to another person, allow people to see your heart, not a heart of stone, but one of flesh, one that sees how God is here among us, not far away, working, shaping and forming us into God’s missionary people, moving forward together, always singing.
If you are confused – Thank God!
If you do not have all the answers – Thank God!
If you do not know exactly what God is up to – Thank God!
If you have to wait up on the Lord – Thank God!
There are no shortcuts to grace.
Our home is NOT the destination, but the journey
St. Anselm said, “I do not understand so that I may believe, I believe so that I may understand.”
Trust precedes understanding.
Grace precedes acceptance.
Faith precedes works.
Those words calmed me; brought me peace and they still do, to this day, they are posted on the wall behind my desk in my office.
We are in a similar place as a community of faith. We struggle with wanting to believe God has a promised and preferred future for us as we live out our lives, at the same time, we feel as if we cannot trust God to do the work within us to bring about that promised future. It is an epic struggle for the Church, and has become an epic struggle only recently as we have watched Christendom lose its grip on Christianity in the world. Fear often overtakes us and we want to step back onto solid ground, we want to leave the desert we are in, that place where we it seems we can’t identify anything about who we are and what we want, our default instinct tells us that we must step back onto that place where we think we know what will happen, where we think we can predict what will become of us. We struggle with being confused, we struggle with not having all the answers, we struggle not knowing exactly what God is up to, we have to wait and it drives us crazy!
We walk in the desert; we walk in a place where no one can make their home, because sand does not make a good foundation. We walk in the desert, parched, thirsty for anything to quench our desire, yet can find no water. We walk in the desert starving for fulfillment, and can find no sustenance. We walk and are forced to trust that God is doing something among us, forced to believe first, then understand that what God is doing among is will be revealed in time.
The spirit we receive this day of Pentecost is not one of slavery, as Paul states, it is not a spirit of fear that forces us back into places we find comfortable. It is a spirit of adoption, a spirit of abundance, a spirit of belonging that brings us closer to the Holy One in our lives. There is great hope, you can hear it in the voice of Isaiah where he says, “They shall feed along the ways, on all the bare heights shall be their pasture; they shall not hunger or thirst, neither scorching wind nor sun shall strike them down, for he who has pity on them will lead them, and by springs of water will guide them.” Our journey of faith is in the hand of God, God is not in our hand as we journey forward, we are in God’s hand, we are being cared for, loved and watched over by a God who is not far from us, is not even a small distance away, but right here with us, among us, celebrating our joys, weeping with us in our sorrows; a God who is laughing at and with us, as well as wiping away our tears. We long to know, we wish to stand on firm ground, but God is with us, God is among us weaving us together and leading us into a promised and preferred future in which each of us is called to be a missionary, a missional people full of the Holy Spirit.
In the Book, Missional Leader, the next book we may read together, the definition of Missional Church is written, it says, “God is about a big purpose in and for the whole of creation. The church has been called into life to be both the means of this mission and a foretaste of where God is inviting all creation to go. Just as its Lord is a mission shaped God, so the community of God’s people exists, not for themselves but for the sake of the work. The church’s very nature is to be God’s missionary people. A missional church is a community of God’s people who live into the imagination that they are by their very nature, God’s missionary people living as a demonstration of what God plans to do in and for all of creation in Jesus Christ.” Can we imagine ourselves as God’s missionary people living in the world? Can we bring ourselves to dream that the Church is not this building we reside in today, the Church is not the spires, the bricks and mortar, the boiler, can we come to believe and understand this is true? Cad we instead come to understand that the Church is you, it is you, it is you, and it is you. We, the people gathered together are the Church, and therefore we are the people called to do God’s mission in the world. This building will not accomplish the mission we are being called to fulfill. It is only a stopping place on the journey. The staff we hire will not accomplish the mission we are being called to fulfill, they must empower and raise up people to participate in this mission. The red doors and our blue and white The Episcopal Church Welcomes You signs will not accomplish the mission we are being called to fulfill, that all falls to us as a people called, gathered, centered and sent.
Anthony De Mello says this about the needs of the Church: “The greatest need of the Church today is not new legislations, new theology, new structures, new liturgies – all these without the Holy Spirit are like a dead body without a soul. We desperately need someone to take away our hearts of stone and give us a heart of flesh; we need an infusion of enthusiasm and inspiration and courage and spiritual strength. We need to persevere in our love without discouragement or cynicism, but with a new faith in the future. In other words, we need the fresh outpouring of the Holy Spirit.” The spirit is being poured out upon us here, not just because it is Pentecost, but because we coming to see and believe that God is at work in our midst, that the Spirit is blowing and moving through and among us. We are being immersed in the spirit in ways that will transform us into new human beings. God is standing before us as I speak, holding out to us a new heart, a heart of flesh, one that will bring to us new life, new imagination and new spirit! God is holding out to us a heart of flesh, ready and willing to take the old, stone heart out of us, ready to take away our discouragement and our cynicism. God is here people, and we must believe it! God is here people and we must listen! God is here people and we must open ourselves to the spirit as it pours over all of us like rain from the skies.
Isaiah says, “Sing for joy, O heavens, and exult, O earth; break forth, O mountains, into singing!” What is keeping us from singing, what is keeping us from dancing? Do we trust that God can truly accomplish all that needs to be done in us to make this community a new and vibrant group of people grounded in Christ and sent by the Holy Spirit? Do we believe that we are a powerful, spirit filled and transformational people, do we believe that God acts in our lives in an intimate, relational way, until we believe that God is here, that God is with us, we won’t break forth from this place, singing.
Paul says in Ephesians, “The gifts God gave were that some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to the measure of the full stature of Christ.” Paul says we have everything we need sitting right here. We don’t need anything more; we do not need programs to make us feel better about ourselves. We do not need experts to tell us where to go. We do not need classes to make ourselves more knowledgeable in the Body of Christ. We are the Body of Christ, we are the Body of Christ right here and right now, with everything we need to go into the world proclaiming the Kingdom of God.
In Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, Paul says, “Each builder must choose with care how to build on it. For no one can lay any foundation other than the one that has been laid; that foundation is Jesus Christ.” This does not mean we sit and spend our time carefully considering what it is we might want to be called to do or build. It means we carefully consider what we have at our disposal to build with and then use it to build upon the foundation of Christ, to enhance what has already been built or to create something completely new. Our journey of faith is not about finding the right material to build with, rather it is putting what we have and who we are into the service of God at all times.
We have spent the past five or six weeks dwelling on one piece of Scripture on Wednesday nights, Luke 10:1-12. It is the moment Jesus turns his head towards Jerusalem, towards his death. In that moment his mission changes, it changes from simply healing and teaching to preparing and raising up his disciples to do what he has done. He sends out 72 or 70, depending on the translation to preach the Gospel, heal the sick and proclaim to all that the Kingdom of God has come near. This Gospel has now been etched upon our hearts, etched upon our souls and etched upon our minds. It is the core theological teaching that led us to the point where we sit today. Last night we commissioned ourselves as missionaries. We asked for God’s blessing upon the worship we give, the community we form and the justice we do. What, I have come to believe, God is asking all of us to do, is to take on this mantle of mission and to go from this place proclaiming the Kingdom of God. Before I say anything more, please, please please, get those old and stupid and irrelevant ideas about going into the world with the Gospel as a missionary OUT OF YOUR HEAD! You are not going out to convert the heathen; you are not going out to proclaim judgment on those you deem unworthy. You are going out to teach, you are going out to heal and you are going out to say, The Kingdom of God has come near.
So how will you say to those people you meet on this journey, the Kingdom of God has come near? What will you do to become a missionary in the world, sent by God to live into the promised and preferred future God has for us? What will you do? I am not sure what you will do, or even what to tell you to do, but I do know this, you must never give up. I do know this; you must never let failure have the final say. I do know this, our stories are the stories of God’s preferred and promised future for all of creation. Share them; believe they were given to you by God, not by anyone else. Talk about how you pray to God, share your experiences of God’ great providence, share your experiences of God’s horrible absence from your life. In the joys and the mountaintop experiences God is present. In the valleys, darkness and sorrow of our lives, God is just as present. Have courage. Have faith. Believe so that we may all come to understand. Hold your hand out to another person, allow people to see your heart, not a heart of stone, but one of flesh, one that sees how God is here among us, not far away, working, shaping and forming us into God’s missionary people, moving forward together, always singing.
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