Happy Birthday!

Sermon preached by the Rev. Lowell E. Grisham, Rector
St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Fayetteville, Arkansas
May 30, 2009; Pentecost Sunday, Year B
Episcopal Revised Common Lectionary

(John 15:26-27, 16:4b-15) –Jesus said to his disciples, "When the Advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who comes from the Father, he will testify on my behalf. You also are to testify because you have been with me from the beginning.

"I did not say these things to you from the beginning, because I was with you. But, now I am going to him who sent me; yet none of you asks me, `Where are you going?' But because I have said these things to you, sorrow has filled your hearts. Nevertheless I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Advocate will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you. And when he comes, he will prove the world wrong about sin and righteousness and judgment: about sin, because they do not believe in me; about righteousness, because I am going to the Father and you will see me no longer; about judgment, because the ruler of this world has been condemned.

"I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me, because he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine. For this reason I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.".
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On Pentecost the Church was born. God's Holy Spirit breathed fire into a group of huddled, perplexed disciples, who were trying to figure out what to do. Their leader had been executed. After three days he appeared to them, convincing them that his life had been resurrected from death. But then he left them; they experienced his Ascension, his departure from them, a profound absence. And so they waited – waited in a condition of not-knowing, yet in a spirit of anticipation.

On the Jewish Feast of Shavu'ot (sha-voo-oat) – also known as Pentecost because it is 50 days after Passover – when pilgrims from throughout the Jewish world came to the Temple to present the first fruits of the harvest, the Spirit energized the Church into life. Today, Pentecost, we celebrate the Church's birthday.

Part of what we'll do today for this birthday event is to celebrate some of the ministries of this church – recognizing our Sunday School teachers, giving awards to our young choir members, commissioning new servants in our Healing Touch ministry. We'll also have a Birthday party, our annual Parish Picnic after today's 11:00 service. Don't miss it. But most especially today, we will baptize – bringing friends to the waters of new birth where they will be filled with the fire and breath of God's Holy Spirit. And we will feast. We will partake of the heavenly banquet of Christ's life, and be renewed and strengthened for our work. The Spirit is moving. It is Pentecost. Happy Birthday!


Some years ago I picked up a practice to help me begin to pray. As I start a period of prayer, I will first observe my breath, watching it freely move, in and out. Then quietly I will pray, "Oh God, you are closer to me than my own breath. May each breath I take deepen my awareness of you." (from Mark Link, You)

God is as omnipresent and as life-giving as the air we breathe. God's Holy Spirit is the atmosphere in which we live and move and have our being: Like the air, invisible and unnoticed, until it blows, sometimes with refreshing breezes, sometimes with rending force that can shake foundations.

There is an old story about a seeker who came to a holy teacher with the request: "I want to know God; teach me to pray." The teacher took the seeker to a nearby stream, where he suddenly thrust the seeker's head under the water and held it. The seeker struggled, but the teacher would not release. Finally at the point when it seemed that the seeker would drown, the teacher released his grasp, and the seeker burst out of the water gasping for breath. "When you want God as much as you wanted that air," the teacher exclaimed, "then I will teach you to pray."

At the core of our being, where our deepest desires lie, we do desperately want God. At the center of our being, we desperately want to love and be loved; we desperately want meaning, understanding and purpose; we want our lives to count for something – something greater than ourselves. We want to be safe and secure, we want to rest and be at peace; we also want to be energized and truly alive. We want to be comfortable in our own skins – at one with ourselves. We want to be in healthy relationships with our families, our neighbors and our community. At our deepest place, we truly want to be at one with everyone and everything, in a living union with the whole of life. At our core, we want it all. God is all.

God's Holy Spirit is the energy of God breathing us into being – breathing all into being.

Here's the way parishioner Lesley Knieriem describes it when she does our presentation on the Holy Trinity for our Inquirer's Classes each fall and spring: "God the Holy Spirit – ...the Sacred Breath or the Divine Wind – is always proceeding blowing lifting raising swirling inspiring binding together pushing pulling healing enlivening creating redeeming sanctifying loving."

The Spirit is sometimes a quiet and subtle Sacred Breath: Like the invisible air, still and omnipresent around us. Reaching into our lungs and breathing life to every inner molecule of our body, transmitting sound, wrapping plants and animals and everything in a life-giving planetary hug.

The Spirit is sometimes a shattering Divine Wind, tearing away foundations, revealing fault lines, shattering our certainties, transcending the old ways and storming the new upon us with tempestuous power that can make us feel like we are drowning.

But from the torrential waters of Baptism comes the death that brings new life. We ride the storm into the baptismal waters of Christ's death and burial. We are raised to the new birth of resurrection as God's own children and given the fire-breathing breath of the Holy Spirit.

In God's Spirit our desperate needs are satisfied: We are loved and enabled to love; we are given meaning and understanding and purpose; we know our lives count, for we are God's beloved children. Our safety and security is given; we can rest and be at peace. We are energized, on fire with God's Sacred Breath, bringing compassion and justice to everything we touch. We can be comfortable in our own skins, at one with our neighbor, even at one with the whole earth, for as Dame Julian of Norwich said, pondering the fate of those who have never heard the Gospel, all God does is done in Love, and therefore "all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well."

Happy Pentecost! Happy Birthday! Happy Re-birth Day!