Sermon Preached by the Rev. Sam Frazier, Vicar

Saint Andrew‘s Episcopal Church, Haw River, NC

May 31, 2009

Pentecost Sunday, Year B

There are lots of ways to say goodbye.  Joyce Rupp has written a wonderful book entitled Praying Our Good-byes: Understanding the Spirituality of Change in Our Lives.  We will be reading this powerful book as our summer book study beginning on Tuesday, June 9^th from 6pm to 7:30pm.  Please let me know if you want to purchase a copy of the book and join our book study group.  In the book the author maintains that partings make up the fabric of our lives.  They are an essential part of what it means to be a human being.  Most of our goodbyes are small ones and we easily cope.  We drop the kids off at school.  We leave work for a vacation, or we take up a new hobby and leave an old one behind.  No big deal.

But as we all know, leave-takings can be a whole lot more involved and more painful.  The disciples experienced that pain of loss at the crucifixion, and worked through it to Easter and to the glory of Pentecost and the presence of the Holy Spirit in their lives.  You and I will always have painful goodbyes too.  The biopsy comes back positive.  Your elderly parent needs around-the-clock care in an assisted living facility - away from home and away from everything that is familiar.  You get downsized after 25 years with a company.  The divorce papers finally take effect.  Your child goes off to college.  A fire destroys house and home.  You have to declare bankruptcy.  The last shovel of dirt goes on the grave of your spouse.   These goodbyes are all so very painful, but with God=s help, with God’s help we can live through them and come out on the other side of pain and loss, come out on the other side of pain and loss as better people, as stronger people.

There are lots of words for goodbye: so long, see you soon, farewell, until then, it=s been swell.  Saying goodbye is such a universal experience that we even use words from other languages: cao from Italian, au voire from French, adios from Spanish, and vaya con dios from Spanish.  But whatever word we use to say goodbye, it means that human beings part from one another.

This Sunday is Pentecost Sunday.  It is a celebration of the birthday of the church, and it is the story of how Jesus said goodbye to the disciples.  But his goodbye is not like our human goodbyes.  His goodbye is not like the human goodbye, because he is not parting from us.  He is just entering into a new relationship with us.  He is moving from God the man Jesus to God the eternal spirit who fills our lives with his infinite power.  The story from Acts this morning is the story of the new relationship that God gave to his people.  And this new relationship was so powerful that it created the church and the fellowship of Christians that has lasted for 2,000 years.

Here is the story of the birthday of the church.  Tradition has it that there were 120 disciples gathered together.  There was a great rushing of wind.  People saw flames dancing on the heads of the disciples.  People heard the disciples preaching the Gospel in many languages.  They were the languages of earth.  They were not speaking gibberish.  They were speaking real words in real languages.  Hold on to your hat folks!!  Here comes God into our lives!!!!

Pentecost is the story of the empowerment of the community of disciples to do the works that Jesus himself had done.  In obedience to the Lord=s command, the disciples were all together in one place.  Like wind, the Spirit acts unpredictably, so it is fitting that rushing wind should witness to the arrival of the Spirit in their lives.

As the Spirit is a fire of Divine love, it is also fitting that each of the assembled disciples should be kindled with flame.  There is in each a total surrender.  A total surrender of will and of intellect.  To surrender is so hard to do, but it is so important for our spiritual survival.  The simple fact is that we do not know how to pray or how to witness as we ought.  So the Spirit acts within us to make up for what we ourselves lack.  The result is that we can do far more with the help of the Spirit.

Look at the disciples.  They were suddenly doing far more than they could do on their own.  They were suddenly speaking genuine languages.  That day there were many Jewish pilgrims in Jerusalem from all parts of the world: from Mesopotamia in the east, from Egypt and Arabia to the south, and from Crete and Rome to the west.  All of the pilgrims heard and recognized the language of the region from which they had come.  They all heard God=s wonderful works being proclaimed.

God speaks all the languages of earth.  But what is his language?  His language is the language of peace and love.  In 1 Corinthians St. Paul describes this language when he describes love as being patient, kind, gentle, and caring for others.  The language the disciples spoke on that Pentecost Day so long ago was the language of love.  When we speak words of judgment of others because they look different or believe in God in different ways, when we act out our selfishness, when we are full of arrogance toward others because we think we are better, or when we hate our neighbor, when we do these things then we reveal that we are speaking for someone or some thing other than Christ.  We are not speaking the language of love.

Our language can have great effect on the people around us.  If we speak evil, then our words will be like swords that strike others down, or like spears that inflict great pain.  If any one of us here at Saint Andrew=s speaks badly about someone else, or even gossips about them, then that person is not speaking for Christ. But if we speak the language of God=s love, then our words of gentleness will be like a bandage bringing healing to the afflicted, or like a cup of water bringing relief to the suffering.
My friends, our words reveal us.  Our words reveal who is sitting on the throne of our hearts.  That throne is reserved for our Lord Jesus Christ.  But if we surrender it to any other person or thing, then we cannot speak the language of God, which is the language of love.  Then we cannot join those 120 disciples on that Pentecost Day speaking in so many tongues the one language of God=s love.

In his book entitled Varieties of Religious Experience, William James, who wrote often about the nature of the religious experience, said there are 2 kinds of religion: secondhand religion and firsthand religion.  Secondhand religion is believing what we have been told by others.  It is inherited religion.  It is about believing what the Bible says, or what the priest says, or the doctrines that our church says we must believe in.

On the other hand, firsthand religion has to do with direct experience.  It is not based on what someone else has told us.  It is a personal involvement with God who is within us.  It is a personal involvement in the Reality of God=s love.  The famous psychiatrist, Carl Jung, was once asked in a BBC interview, DR. JUNG, DO YOU BELIEVE IN GOD?  HE QUICKLY REPLIED NO, AND THEN HE WENT ON TO MAKE HIS CLASSIC STATEMENT: I DON=T BELIEVE IN GOD - I KNOW THERE IS A GOD!  Now that, my friends, is firsthand religion.

We must want the Kingdom of God in order to experience it.  We must desire it.  We must ask for it.  We must wait upon it.  We must abandon ourselves to it.  We must open ourselves in childlike trust and anticipation to experience the REALNESS of the Holy Spirit.  We must know that the Holy Spirit is not off somewhere else.  We must know that today the Holy Spirit is here among us, within us, all around us!  The power of the love and passion of that first Pentecost is here now, burning, burning in our hearts, burning in our souls, and burning in our lives.  Thanks be to God!! AMEN.