"When the day of Pentecost had come, the apostles 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 other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability."
--Acts 2: 1-4
A little more than three years ago I came down to Asheboro, North Carolina to meet with the search committee from The Episcopal Church of the Good Shepherd. It was a pretty good meeting, considering that I'm here now, but to be honest, I still had a few more interviews with other churches to go, and Good Shepherd still needed time to discern if I was the right person to call as their 15th rector. So as I got ready to leave, the last thing I said to the search committee was, “We will all trust in the Spirit. She rarely makes a mistake.” I, for one, do not believe that she did.
A 12th century Bavarian fresco depicting the Trinity. Note that the Holy Spirit is seen here as a woman.
Folks often wonder why I use the feminine pronoun to describe the Holy Spirit. There’re theological reasons behind it, namely that Hebrew—the language Jesus read—and Aramaic—the language he spoke—use feminine words to describe the Holy Spirit, and if we go back to the writings of the Jewish Testament—namely the Wisdom books like the Psalms and Proverbs—we see spirit, breath, and wisdom, all feminine words, used to describe God. But on a personal level using the feminine reminds me that God encompasses all genders, for God is pure love, and agape, the Greek word used by Jesus to describe the love that God embodies, the love that we are called to practice as followers of Jesus, is a feminine word. So, yeah, I will always defend using ‘she’ when talking about the Holy Spirit.
It is the Spirit that makes it possible for us to live out agape love. The Spirit inspires us with that love that we may go into the world and share it. Such was the case on the Jewish festival of Pentecost long ago. Picture the scene: the 12 apostles—it was 11, but now Matthias is counted among them—are huddled together in that upper room, utterly confused, filled with anticipatory anxiety of what is going to happen next now that Jesus has gone into heaven. He said he would send an advocate, but what kind of advocate? How will they know who this person is when she—or he—arrives? We can feel the tension and we can understand because we have all been there. We’ve all been in mourning for the losses we have experienced, afraid of what is coming next. And then…WOOSH!! Like a mighty wind she blows through. This is the same holy breath that breathed on the waters of chaos and said, “Be still,” now blowing on them, but this time not bidding stillness, no, but filling them with agape love, which sets their hearts ablaze. This is who drives those frightened 12 into the streets to tell everyone—regardless of where they were coming from or even what language they were speaking—of the life-giving, wonder-working, all-powerful love of Jesus Christ. With the Spirit’s power igniting the hearts of all those gathered, the Church is born.
An icon depicting the Day of Pentecost
By now most of y’all have seen Presiding Bishop Michael Curry’s homily at the Royal Wedding this past weekend. I wondered if there might even be some folks who showed up to church on Sunday because they saw that homily and wanted to know more about this Episcopal Church thing that that preacher is connected with. Bishop Curry’s message was simple and clear, yet it was powerful: Imagine our world when love is the way, he said, no child would go to bed hungry, poverty would become history, and the world would be as a sanctuary. We would treat one another as children of God, lay down our swords and shields down by the riverside to study war no more, borrowing from that great African American spiritual. All Episcopal clergy should be grateful to our Presiding Bishop for leading the charge and inspiring us to preach with such abandon last weekend, even if our messages were not quite up to his standard. Nevertheless, the significance of his message cannot be overstated. Here was a black American evangelical preaching in a chapel that survived the Norman conquest and two World Wars, surrounded by the pomp and circumstance of royalty, recalling slavery and the power of love to sustain and heal. It was exactly what the whole world needed to see and hear on such an occasion. You can watch the entire homily in the video at the bottom of this blog post.
We needed to be reminded of the power of love, and that, brothers and sisters, is exactly what Pentecost, the great feast we celebrated on Sunday, is about. On this day the God of love lit a fire in the hearts of those men and women gathered in the streets of Jerusalem. Do we dare let it happen again? Do we dare let God’s fire burn in our hearts, so that we may, as Dr. King said, discover the redemptive power of love? Like most churches, Good Shepherd wore red for Pentecost; after all, it is the color of the Holy Spirit and fire. We also wear red on the feasts of the martyrs, those who died for their faith, but we do so less for the red of their blood spilled and more for the red of the passion with which they lived their lives of faith. Our Pentecostal prayer for our parishes, our communities, and this whole great big world that Jesus loves so much is that we will be filled with that same passion and fire to go into the streets and to love with abandon. Hal David and Burt Bacharach were right—what the world needs now is love, sweet love, for it is the only thing that there’s just too little of. When we look at a world that is filled with so much violence, so much hatred, so many divisions of us and them, haves and have-nots, what we need now, more than ever, is the passionate and redemptive love of God made known to us in Jesus Christ.
That’s the love that our Lord poured out on the cross, the love that the Advocate rained down upon the Jerusalem streets, the love that we pray may be poured out on us once more. Bishop Curry paraphrased the 20th century Jesuit priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin in that same wedding homily, but the full quote goes like this:
“Someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love, and then, for a second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire.”
That fire lit up the world at creation and burned in the prophets who spoke of God’s justice rolling down like a waterfall upon the all people. That fire burst out of Jesus of Nazareth from every fiber of his being, and now, on yet another Pentecost, we pray that we too may harness that energy of love and once again discover the fire of God’s passion, mercy, and dream of shalom. That’s what the Jesus Movement is all about, and what the Episcopal branch of that Movement is all about. That’s what Bishop Curry preached on, and that’s why Esquire magazine (yes, Esquire!) was quoted as saying:
"We really did not expect to get inspired by a Royal Wedding, but there you are; now if you’ll excuse me, I am going to join the Episcopal Church!”
One headline echoing those sentiments called Bishop Curry's message about love "radical." It ain’t radical if it’s true! What was preached on Saturday, is the power of of the love of God to break through into this world, inspiring and propelling us to be agents of that love to the broken and vulnerable, the wealthy and the powerful, and everyone in-between.
Pentecost marks the anniversary of the start of my ministry as rector of Good Shepherd. I said to our folks on my first Pentecost with them that I did not know where the Spirit would lead us, and while I still don't know for sure, I do know that if we trust her we will get where God wants us to be. That, I believe is true for all of us, no matter where we find ourselves in life. If we trust the Holy Spirit and let love always be our guide, then whether we find ourselves in church buildings or out in that great big world, we will do the redemptive work that inches us ever closer to the Kingdom. For if love is our guide, and if love is the fire that burns within us, then we cannot help but know that we are, all of us, children of God. When we know it for ourselves, then we can know it for our brothers and sisters, and we can share it with them, and together we can set this world ablaze with God’s love and transform this old world into the new one that Jesus so often spoke of.
Another Pentecost selfie with the fine folks of Good Shepherd, Asheboro
My prayer for all of us is that we will let the Spirit’s fire burn in us, empowering us for the work of ministry, the work of light and forgiveness in a dark and unforgiving world. May you be filled with that fire, brothers and sisters, may love burn in you this day, and may you listen to and trust the Spirit. She NEVER makes a mistake!
Here is the full homily from The Most Rev. Michael Curry, Presiding Bishop & Primate of the Episcopal Church, at the wedding of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex
