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St. George's Episcopal Church Roseburg, Oregon Pentecost Sunday - With Baptism 4 June2006 Go To St. George's Home Page

Acts 2:1-21
Psalm 104:24-34, 35b
Romans 8:22-27
John 15:26-27;16:4b-15
Collect of the Day
From the Revised Common Lectionary as Adapted for Use by the Episcopal Church
and Authorized by the 74 th General Convention of the ECUSA

“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.(Jn 15:26-27;16:4b-15)

Spirit of Fire
The Rev. Dr. Bill Stroop

     What has twenty-five moving parts and speaks with twenty tongues? The answer is the European Union, or the EU. A year ago, the EU expanded its membership to include 25 countries, up from the 15 that already belonged. There are now more than 450 million people living under the collective government of the EU.[1]

     This is a good thing, to be sure, but those 20 different languages get in the way of accomplishing things. Unlike the U.S. and the divisions that we experience over race, culture, or the desire by some to make English the official language of our nation, the EU is not a single country. The EU seeks to speak with one voice without surrendering the uniqueness of those 25 individual nations. And to avoid confusion, the EU speaks in all 20 languages all the time. Every session of the EU parliament requires 57 trilingual interpreters to be present. Any nation can ask that any document be immediately translated into any one of those 20 tongues. Translation costs both time and money. Decisions agreed upon by the EU are often delayed in becoming law because of the volume of material to be translated as well as the lack of skilled translators. Because communication must go both ways, there are now 380 possible two-language combinations that need to be done. And some of the combinations are strange indeed. Where does one find a Finnish to Maltese translator? Last year, translation services alone cost the EU over $1.5 billion.

     When you consider the difficulties in keeping EU parliamentarians and individual governments informed, it is remarkable that the EU has accomplished as much as it has. Likewise, when you consider the difficulties of translating across language and cultural barriers not only the stories about Jesus but the transcendent emotional and psychological and spiritual elements pertaining to the meaning Jesus has to each one of us, the real impact of the Day of Pentecost begins to emerge.

     Pentecost is not just the end of the fifty days of Easter, it is the day many people consider the birthday of this thing called “church.” It is the glorious last resplendent day in the liturgical calendar before the beginning of the “long green season” that will carry us to next Advent.

     It is a day of strange imagery. We hear the sound of wind in today’s reading from Acts to describe the physical presence of the Holy Spirit; “And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting.” And in the Gospel from John Jesus promises his disciples that “when the Spirit of truth comes, [the Spirit] will guide you into all the truth; for [the Spirit] will not speak on its own, but will speak whatever [the Spirit] hears, and [the Spirit] will declare to you the things that are to come.”

     One of the problems the EU has is that while words can be translated from one language to another, oftentimes the meaning of those words becomes lost in the process. Apparently this was also memory of the early church. The Book of Acts tells us that “All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, ‘What does this mean?’” Although we can hear the words, it takes something else to discern their meaning.

     That discernment happens through the process of interpretation. It is Peter who stepped forward and acted as the interpreter to the crowd. It was the Holy Spirit who translated the words, but it was Peter interpreted. He addressed the people and told them about Jesus and about salvation. Now I want to be careful here. Although Peter provided interpretation, we should not read that to mean that we have no part in interpretation. We must all participate in that – just like Peter did and just like the 3000 who heard him that day in Jerusalem.

     Hundreds of years later when the early churches looked back on their own histories, they were awestruck by the power present to them through their faith, the grace of God, and the memory of Jesus. The feast of Pentecost came to represent when the Holy Spirit was capable of imparting meaning to the words that described Jesus’ life, death, resurrection, and ascension. The 19 th century English artist, revivalist, and author Samuel Chadwick wrote of Pentecost that it was a time when the church “experienced illumination of mind, assurance of heart, intensity of love, fullness of power, exuberance of joy. No one needed to ask if they had received the Holy Ghost. Fire is self-evident. So is power!”[2]

     The 2004 film Big Fish is about Edward Bloom and his son Will who tries to understand who his father really is. Will hasn't spoken to his father for years because he believes him to be a liar that never really cared for his family. Edward, you see, was a spinner of really tall tales. As his son Will recreates his father‘s elusive life from the few facts he knows, we learn about Edward ourselves. We see him as a bouncing baby on the day he was born; we learn about his involvement in Vietnam and the conjoined-twin lounge singers he brought back to the States. We learn about his later vocations as a traveling salesman and bank robber. We seem him romantically fill an entire street and courtyard with potted daffodils in order to capture the eye of the love of his life. His mythic exploits dart from the delightful to the bizarre as his life unfolds in unbelievable tales involving giants, blizzards, and a witch.

     In the end, we are never sure how much of Edward’s life is myth and how much is true, but it really doesn’t really matter for Will or for us. What matters is the profound effect his father had on everyone due to his zest for life, the relationships he built, and his many accomplishments.

     Will finally comes to understand that Edward’s life cannot be adequately chronicled by faded newspaper clippings and cracked photographs. His father’s life was far more than that. It was mystical, fantastic, charming, and most importantly, it was transforming.

     And so it was for the early church. The coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost was one of those events that identifies who and what we are as Christian people perhaps more by the myth than by the reality. It is something that has the power to transform and change with the gentleness of a light breeze, or with the speed of a tornado. Following Jesus’ ascension, something gave the disciples courage to step forward as witnesses, and sufficient wisdom to be heard and understood. It was the “something” that led them to baptize people in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit as a way of demonstrating both the desire of the individual to transform their own lives, and the desire of the community of believers to support them in their new Christian vocation. As the 19 th Century Baptist Preacher A.J. Gordon, put it “Before Pentecost, the disciples found it hard to do the easy things; after Pentecost they found it easy to do the hard things.”

     It is so highly appropriate that on this Pentecost Sunday, we will baptize two young persons into the Christian faith and mark them as Christ’s own forever.

     Baptism symbolizes a kind of death and a rebirth. We die to our old ways of doing things, and we take on the mantle of Christ promising to proclaim the Good News of Christ by word and example; to seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbor; to strive for justice and peace; and to respect the dignity of every human being. We use ordinary things like water to symbolically cleanse the body and soul, indicating our desire to radically transform our lives and to live into these promises. We use oil blessed by our Bishop to make the sign of the cross on their foreheads – sealing them as Christ’s own, and uniting them to all others living and dead who have joined with Christ in the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church.

     Through our actions at Baptism, we begin the process of creating the mythic for the newly baptized. As Baylee and Noah exercise their Christian vocation in community with other Christians, they will continue to hear fanciful stories from the Bible and other sources, and they will begin to build an understanding of Christ and the Kingdom of God that will be uniquely theirs. And that mythic story – larger and more meaningful than the reality itself – will hopefully continue to ignite their souls and empower them through the action of the Holy Spirit.

     Luciano Mares of Ft. Sumner, New Mexico found a mouse in his house and wanted to get rid of it. He had some leaves burning outside, and so he threw the mouse on the fire. The terrified and burning mouse ran back to a spot beneath a window of the house, catching the house on fire. According to fire Chief Juan Chavez, the flames spread up the side and then throughout the house. All contents of the home were destroyed. No injuries were reported - except for the mouse![3] The moral of the story? Never underestimate the smallest of forces, or how the spark of fire might spread.

     The Pentecost story is a story of how the church caught the fire of the Spirit, and spread throughout the world causing a conflagration like no other. The church became empowered to carry out its purpose. And today we continue that purpose as we baptize Baylee and Noah in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. May they too become interpreters of the story and tell others about the transforming power of the man from Nazareth.

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Acts 2:1-21

When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability. Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. Amazed and astonished, they asked, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs--in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.” All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “What does this mean?” But others sneered and said, “They are filled with new wine.” But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them, “Men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to what I say. Indeed, these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o’clock in the morning. No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel: ‘In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams. Even upon my slaves, both men and women, in those days I will pour out my Spirit; and they shall prophesy. And I will show portents in the heaven above and signs on the earth below, blood, and fire, and smoky mist. The sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood, before the coming of the Lord’s great and glorious day. Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.’

Psalm 104:24-34, 35b  

24 O LORD, how manifold are your works!
In wisdom you have made them all;
the earth is full of your creatures.

25 Yonder is the sea, great and wide,
creeping things innumerable are there,
living things both small and great.

26 There go the ships,
and Leviathan that you formed to sport in it.

27 These all look to you
to give them their food in due season;

28 when you give to them, they gather it up;
when you open your hand, they are filled with good things.

29 When you hide your face, they are dismayed;
when you take away their breath, they die
and return to their dust.

30 When you send forth your spirit, they are created;
and you renew the face of the ground.

31 May the glory of the LORD endure forever;
may the LORD rejoice in his works --

32 who looks on the earth and it trembles,
who touches the mountains and they smoke.

33 I will sing to the LORD as long as I live;
I will sing praise to my God while I have being.

34 May my meditation be pleasing to him,
for I rejoice in the LORD.

35b Praise the LORD!

Romans 8:22-27

We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience. Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.

John 15:26-27;16:4b-15

“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.

Collect of the Day

Almighty God, on this day you opened the way of eternal life to every race and nation by the promised gift of your Holy Spirit: Shed abroad this gift throughout the world by the preaching of the Gospel, that it may reach to the ends of the earth; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

[1] Timothy F. Merrill. “The Interpreter.” Homiletics 18(3):42-46, May-June 2006.
[2] Martin M. Manser (Ed.). The Westminster Collection of Christian Quotations. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001. p. 275.
[3] From Synthesis for Year B. Boyds, MD: Sedgwick Publishing. June 4, 2005.

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Copyright © 2006, William G. Stroop - All Rights Reserved.
1 June 2006

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