Come, Holy Ghost, our souls inspire and enlighten us
with thy celestial fire. Amen.
There
are many ways to think about the Holy Spirit, whose gifting to the Church we
remember and celebrate on Pentecost. The Catechism tells us that the Holy
Spirit is the third person of the Trinity. So the first thing to grasp is that
the Holy Spirit is God. And there are many other names for the Spirit, all of
which tell us something about what it is. Sometimes the Holy Spirit is
described as the Advocate, telling us that it is God’s work of interceding on
our behalf, sort of like a defense attorney. Sometimes the Holy Spirit is
called the Holy Comforter, reminding us that God’s presence with us is one of
peace and support. Sometimes the Holy Spirit is described in terms of natural
elements, such as wind and fire, both of which remind us of the Spirit’s power
and ability to come and go throughout the world. And sometimes the Holy Spirit
is described as breath because all life and vitality emanate from God.
All
of those ways of understanding the Spirit are good and proper, but sometimes it
can be hard to translate theology into our daily experiences of faith. So this
morning I want to focus on another aspect of the Spirit as described in the Catechism.
The question is “How do we recognize the presence of the Holy Spirit in our
lives?” And the part of the answer that I want to focus our attention on this
morning is “When we are brought into love and harmony with God, with ourselves,
with our neighbors, and with all creation.” The Holy Spirit is about unity.
When you feel harmony, peace, connection, that is what it feels like to notice
the Holy Spirit’s movement in our lives.
The
reason why I want to focus on the unity of the Holy Spirit on this Pentecost is
because we desperately need unity right now. To be clear, I’m not making a
comment about particular political parties or politicians, but rather the
entire landscape of our culture. Doesn’t it seem like the wheels are about to
fall off? Poll after poll and study after study point to the fact that
Americans are bitterly divided on issues like we haven’t been in a very long
time. Everything has become a contest about winning and losing, and when
everything is a contest, it means that instead of iron sharpening iron, our
political landscape is one of battle. There is disunity in our society.
We’ve
all heard about the impending ecological crisis if we do not learn how to
better live in unity with Creation. And in our personal lives, social scientists
have pointed out that we move in fewer overlapping social circles that we used
to. Essentially, for many of us, we spend time with people who are like us and who
have similar opinions as we do. Social media and many news organizations only
add to this sort of echo chamber that we live in. There is disunity in our
social landscape.
Sometimes
we even find disunity with ourselves. The demands of our jobs don’t always
align with our morals. The demands of our schedule don’t allow us to do the
things that we’d really like to be doing. A lot of people speak about wanting
to live an integrated life – where they can be true to themselves and live
authentically. There is disunity even within ourselves.
While
it’s not unique to the Millennial generation, the problem of loneliness is most
pronounced among them. People are doing things alone that used to always be a
group activity. Because of technology, we can do so many more things without
human interaction. We’ve raised a generation of people by telling them “you can
do whatever you put your mind to,” and the problem is that they’ve largely done
just that – they’ve focused on themselves and their minds and are now, contrary
to the wisdom of John Donne, are living their lives as islands unto themselves.
Therapists report seeing many more people struggling with loneliness. There is
disunity with our neighbors.
I
recently finished a fascinating book by a social psychologist at New York University’s
School of Business called The Righteous
Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion. In the book,
the author, Johnathan Haidt, gives some really insightful analysis to that
question, but that’s not really the point of this sermon. In the book though,
he writes about a phenomenon that has been noted between people who live in the
West and the rest of the world. If you were to ask the average American to describe
themselves, they will do so in personal terms – they’ll tell you where they are
from, what kind of work they do, what kind of sports or music they like, what
their hobbies are, and if they mention any family members, they are often described
in terms of possessions – as in, “I have two daughters.”
But
when you ask someone from the global South or East to describe themselves, they
answer in very different terms. They’ll tell you what company they work for,
they’ll tell you about what organizations they are a part of it, and when they
describe their family they do by saying something like “I’m a husband to Tyler.”
The point is this – we tend to think of ourselves as individuals, whereas in
many parts of the world, people think of themselves in terms of relationships
and connections. As a whole, we don’t use the language of unity and so that
means that we do not think or act in those terms either.
Now
consider the gifting of the Holy Spirit in the reading from Acts. People from
all over the known world have gathered in Jerusalem for a religious festival,
all bringing with them different cultural backgrounds, different assumptions,
different values, and different languages. The gift of the Holy Spirit is described
as the gift of a tongue that allowed the disciples to speak in other languages.
While that’s a pretty neat trick, it’s not the point. Speaking in tongues is
not the gift of Pentecost, that was the curse of Babel. Earlier in Genesis, it
was the ability to speak different languages that divided people. Instead, the
gift and miracle of Pentecost is understanding. Acts tells us “each one heard
them speaking in the native language of each.”
When
it comes to thinking about what the Holy Spirit’s presence in our lives, in our
church, or in our communities means, it is about unity that comes from
understanding. Now, to be very clear, unity is not the same as uniformity. It’s
about being together, not being the same. We can still have different opinions
about politics, liturgy, food, music, parenting styles and still be together. Had
we kept reading in Acts, that’s exactly what we would have found. That day,
three thousand people were Baptized and brought into the fellowship of Christ.
They were united to one another, despite the fact that they presumably went
back to their very different homes and still spoke different languages. But
they were now united by something far greater than all of those differences –
and that is their Baptism into the Death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ.
There
are certain terms in our faith that have been pigeonholed to have a meaning
that is so far reduced from their intended scope. Evangelical is perhaps the
most well-known example. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were all evangelists. An
evangelical is simply someone who shares the Good News of Jesus; it has nothing
to do with what sort of church you attend or how you vote. But the word “evangelical”
has been reduced and we’ve lost something by not talking about the evangelical
aspect of discipleship. Well, the same is true for the term “Pentecostal.”
Right now, our society desperately needs the gift of unity from the Holy Spirit,
and the Church can be a midwife of this unity by being more Pentecostal.
What
I am suggesting is not that we start speaking in tongues, or handling snakes,
or have ecstatic experiences in worship, or having 45-minute sermons, or having
people faint after being slain by the Spirit. That’s not the sort of
Pentecostal church that I pray St. Luke’s becomes. To be Pentecostal means that
we are united through Holy Spirit, that we are committed to speaking in a way
that people from different backgrounds can hear the grace of God in our speech and
actions.
In
the Catechism, the mission of the Church is defined as “restoring all people to
unity with God and each other in Christ.” That is what it means to be a
Pentecostal congregation – one where, being empowered by the Spirit to speak in
a way that can be heard, we restore to unity what is broken. So in thinking in
terms of all the disunity in our culture, what might it mean for you to be a
Pentecostal Episcopalian at St. Luke’s?
Well,
when it comes to our society, we can watch our language when speaking about
politics to make sure that our goal is making the love of Christ known. We can
avoid speaking about “my candidate” or “my position” and instead speak in terms
of pursuing what we trust that unifying Spirit of God would lead us to do in
the name of love. Speak in such a way that people hear the love of God on your tongue.
When it comes to creation, we can take those extra steps to make decisions that
are best for the environment, even if they are a bit more inconvenient. When it
comes to our own unintegrated lives, we can commit ourselves to prayer, to
reading Scripture, to giving generously, to serving those in need. As we do
these things that Jesus taught us to do, we bring unity to how we live Monday
through Saturday with what we profess on Sundays. When it comes to loneliness, we
can put down our phones, not be in such a rush, and have more conversations
with people. And when people engage us in conversation, we can view it not as
an interruption, but rather an invitation from the Holy Spirit.
And when it comes to
thinking about your own life, think in terms of relationships. Give God thanks
for the people in your life who give you joy and realize that is you are your
relationships. You are not what you do, you are not how much you earn, you are
not your accomplishments or your failures. You are the beloved child of God,
and everything flows from that fact that you are united to God by gracious
love.
The
thing about unity is that it’s not as hard as we make it seem. World peace can
wait until tomorrow. But for today, be a Pentecostal. Know that the Holy Spirit
was gifted to you in Baptism to help you speak a uniting word of God’s love to
this world. Come, Holy Ghost, our souls inspire, and give us a tongue of love
to speak so that we might be instruments of your unity and peace. Amen.
