Sunday, May 31, 2009

Day of Pentecost

St. David’s Episcopal Church, DeWitt NY

The Rev. James C. Bresnahan

“The Pattern”

 

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.

 

The Day of Pentecost is a major Christian festival. Today with Christians everywhere we celebrate the birthday of the Christian church.

 

The first Pentecost Day was a day of spiritual transformation. God’s Spirit was poured out on doubtful, anxious, cringing disciples who had locked behind closed doors for fear of their lives. The Spirit molded them into a community bold to live and unafraid to die.

 

Individuals became church that day and as church developed a pattern that would be maintained over the centuries. This is that pattern.

 

The church would assemble each Sunday in honor of the Lord’s resurrection.

 

At these assemblies the ancient Hebrew Scriptures would be read aloud and in preaching and teaching Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection would be talked about in relationship to these ancient writings.

 

There would be praise to God, and praise of God.

 

New people would be brought into the life of the church through baptism.

 

There would be conversations, even debate, about how the life and presence of Jesus made church community different from other communities. Was it still the case or not that distinctions mattered, like those between male and female, rich and poor, Jew and Greek, slave and free. Did Jesus’ coming change only the heart or also social distinctions?

 

In their assemblies members confessed Jesus alone as their Lord and pledged themselves to obey God and God alone. They would honor the emperor, but they would not pledge to obey him whatever.  We must obey God, they said, and not man.

 

There would be an eating together of sharing food – those who had much provided for those who had little.

 

As part of that meal bread would be eaten and wine drunk in a solemn ceremony to celebrate the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus and the hope in his coming again.

 

And in leaving their assemblies, members would go out to visit the sick to include them in their holy communion, in the fellowship of the saints.  And each would proclaim to others the health, healing, and salvation they had found in Jesus the Lord.

 

This was their weekly pattern.

 

At the time of the Protestant Reformation part of the pattern became broken. It became the practice in certain lands to hold a Sunday afternoon service for more extended preaching and teaching, in view of the poor state of biblical understanding among the laity.  All well and good, and necessary!  These teaching services became so popular, however, that they often replaced the Sunday morning Eucharist.  Which is why for hundreds of years the Eucharist was celebrated in many protestant congregations only a few times a year or once a month.  Only in recent decades has it become more and more the practice for their to be weekly Eucharist in all the liturgical churches.  But there is still a ways to go.

 

Two other changes of note brought on by the Reformation were most welcomed: the use of the vernacular in liturgy rather than Latin and the use of a broad range of congregational hymnody, reflective of Reformation understandings of the Gospel.

 

Like the first Christians we continue to struggle over relationships and how much the coming and Lordship of Christ has changed, should how we view each other.

 

In our own country, even after the emancipation of slaves, racial segregation continued to be practiced within many or even most churches. Women up until a few decades ago could not be ordained within most faith communities.  And still today sexual orientation remains a matter that in many churches determines who or who not may serve within the church in certain ways.  We struggle still over matters of equality and privilege.

 

The most serious breach with the church’s pattern came in Nazi Germany when church leaders pledged their obedience to the Fuehrer, thereby denying the central affirmation of every church assembly that Jesus is Lord. You shall serve the Lord your God, the Lord alone.

 

Finally this.  There has been much conversation and much that has been written over the church’s history about the Spirit, God’s Holy Spirit, what the Spirit is and what the Spirit does.  Some have stressed the work of the Spirit as ecstasy and emotional experience, other an inner enlightenment; some have stressed enthusiasm, others courage and conviction; some have stressed the zeal to convert others through preaching hell, fire, and brimstone, others see the Spirit’s work in humble service; many see the Spirit’s work as leading Christians into all truth, as in today’s Gospel reading, some see that truth as doctrines, others see the truth as a true living in love.

 

We belong to a tradition that sees the work of the Spirit in calling the church into being, and assembling it week after week, and sustaining it through word and meal, for us then to go out from here to love and serve the Lord.  Whatever else the Spirit does, it is always the Spirit’s work, we believe, to gather us weekly around the word and in a meal. Here we as church are being formed and reformed as Christians. 

 

And in being formed and reformed, we carry in mind what St. Paul writes of as fruits of the Spirit – the manifestations of the Spirit in our community and in our life.  He names these as signs of the Spirit’s presence in and among us:  love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.

 

During the coming months it is my intention to bring together members of St. David’s in small group for a holy conversation about the kind of culture we are and want to be.  We will attempt to describe our culture and think through how it got to be that way.  And we will ask in what ways it needs to be affirmed and in what ways transformed.  And we will keep in mind throughout the fruits St. Paul wrote about: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.