The Comforter, the Discomforter
Sermon for the Day of Pentecost (May 19, 2024) at St. James’ Episcopal Church in Hyde Park, NY. View the scripture readings and the Collect of the Day.
Where the Holy Spirit will send us, we can’t be sure.
Listen:
Like what you hear? You can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
“And your young men shall see visions,
and your old men shall dream dreams.” the prophet Joel, quoted by St. Peter in Acts 2:1-21
Edited Transcript
Come Holy Spirit, speak to us, give us ears to hear you and courageous hearts to respond to your call. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
[On this day we read the story of Pentecost from Acts, and had different members of the congregation reading the lesson simultaneously in different languages].
Happy Pentecost! I want to say kudos. I don't think Wilma even crossed her eyes once, she held forth! I'm really thankful to all of our readers for helping us to experience this strange and exciting moment.
I tell you the truth, all the folks who agreed to participate in this experiment, I said, I don't know how this is going to feel or work! But it did! And let's see if some of the ways that we're affected, hearing everyone talking at once, saying the same words in all these diverse languages—which, what a talented congregation!—but to hear everyone speaking these words at once, it's exciting. There is a beauty and a harmony to it.
It's also disturbing. It's uncomfortable. I felt my heart rate going up not just from excitement, but from discomfort in the congregation. And especially when we heard the first person join in and we're like, who got on their cell phone during church?
This turned out to be a wonderful way for us to experience the truth about who the Holy Spirit is when She comes blowing into church. She is beautiful, wild. She pushes us out of the places where we're comfortable and out of our accustomed routines and pushes us to do things that we didn't do before, to try something we hadn't tried before, to experiment with something we were a little afraid to do.
The Holy Spirit comes blowing in. And that feeling we have is that our hearts are stirred up. We feel the desire to get up and move and go out. And that is exactly I think what the disciples experienced on the first feast of Pentecost, on the first descent of the Holy Spirit.
To fully understand this, we not only need to experience for ourselves and know those times in our life when our own hearts started to burn and we did something that surprised us. We also need to know the context in the scripture where this is happening.
Because when the Holy Spirit comes on the Apostles, they're in the midst of a time of confusion and mourning and grief. This story of Pentecost happens at the very beginning of Acts in chapter two, Luke tells us, the disciples were all with Jesus from the day of his rising from the dead. He appeared to them in this new way. He was among them. He was breaking bread. He was showing up in these closed rooms. He was surprising them constantly. They who had been mourning and grieving the loss of him in his human body—the loss of Christ as a man, because he was crucified. Then he rose again from the dead and they had him with them again in this new and mysterious way! They received him back in a way they never could have predicted or expected.
And they have him in this way for forty days. And on the fortieth day, he takes them to a mountaintop and he tells them at the end of the Gospel of Matthew, he said, "Remember, I am with you always to the end of the age. I'm with you always."
And then he ascends into heaven and he is taken from their sight by the clouds. The apostles, who had just gained back what they lost, stand looking up to heaven to see what they had gained back now apparently lost again, taken from them, lifted up once again and removed from their sight, removed from their tangible experience. And yet they have this promise: "I will be with you always till the end of the age." And the question for the church ever since has been, How is Jesus with us? How do we know? How do we experience him? How do we follow him?
And his answer has always been, I'm with you because I'm sending to you another Comforter, an Advocate to fight for you, a Comforter, to restore and heal you, to bring you into communion with one another. And that is the Holy Spirit.
In the Gospel of John, Jesus says, Unless I go, I can't send you the Spirit.
And now on Pentecost, the Spirit descends and fills the people. Jesus had said to them, after I'm lifted up, you all need to stay together. Stay in Jerusalem until I send the Holy Spirit to be upon you. And exactly 10 days later, on the fiftieth day after his rising from the dead—that's why we say "Pente-", that's the prefix for fifty, so fifty days after Easter)—on the fiftieth day, the Holy Spirit appears among the people, there's a sound like a violent wind blowing through the house, and then everyone starts proclaiming God's deeds of power in these languages that they didn't even know.
They get a new voice, new speech. Their hearts are filled with wonder, and they're all talking at once. There's so much noise that people from all over the city for whom these are their native languages, start showing up at the door, standing outside, listening to the sound of the wind and the speeches within and saying, what is happening here? What is happening? Because each of us are hearing, in our own tongue, we're hearing about God's deeds of power. And there's some who are skeptical. They're like, what is this rowdy party at nine o'clock in the morning and everyone's getting drunk and speaking in these weird languages? But others say, No. Something new and exciting is happening here.
The disciples who were in grief and mourning and confusion find themselves stirred up by the Spirit to proclaim God's deeds of power.
And the whole rest of Acts is what happens to them after they have received and been empowered by the Holy Spirit. Because they don't stay in that house! The Holy Spirit, just like it drove Jesus from his baptism out into the wilderness and from there into his ministry... The Holy Spirit drives the people of God out of the house to speak of God's deeds of power all over the city and then outside the city to the countryside and then beyond their own country and their own region to Samaria and from there to the ends of the earth! So that everyone will know Jesus has risen.
There is always hope, there is always life, and there is always an invitation to communion in that Holy Spirit that stirs us. It doesn't let us hold still. It doesn't let us do things exactly the way we've always done them, but it is constantly pushing us outward to try what we never tried before, to speak in a language that we never spoke before, just as the Holy Spirit drove those first apostles and filled their hearts.
It's still filling ours, and now it's our invitation to say, how do we speak of God's deeds of power? How do I speak of God's deeds of power in my life? How do I proclaim the good news, the really good news of Jesus Christ in my church, in my neighborhood, in this region and to the ends of the earth—everywhere I go, including the places that I didn't plan to go until God sent me there?
How will I proclaim this good news in a language that someone else can understand? How do I proclaim this good news in a language that someone who never came to church will understand? How is my life and my word, my example, a sign of God's marvelous works?
This has been the question since the church was born, and it's a question that is still filling our hearts.
It brings with it that excitement, that stirring up, that discomfort.
We remember Jesus said, I will send you a Comforter. So what is the comfort in all the discomfort? What is the peace that we bring with us? Even as we are stirred up with excitement to go out, the peace comes from our communion. The Holy Spirit, who filled the hearts of the apostles on Pentecost, is still at work within us today. The Holy Spirit is present in everyone.
When we find ourselves proclaiming God's deeds of power, what is speaking, from one heart to another, is the indwelling presence of God, the love and communion of God. That is God's gift of comfort to the church. One heart speaks to another here in this room and neighbor to neighbor outside this room, and one heart speaks to another over time because the Holy Spirit that stirred those first apostles has continued to move from one generation to the next. It stirred the hearts of the generations before us. It's stirred the hearts of the people of St. James who we love and see no longer, and it is stirring the hearts of those yet to come.
And that communion connects us with one another and with God, with Jesus who is ascended into heaven so that we find after all, we aren't alone. We never were. There is nothing to fear.
The Holy Spirit is with us, to lead us, to stir us, to guide us, and to comfort us through the knowledge that we belong to that one mystical communion, that we belong to Christ, that we belong to the Church: past, present, and yet to come.
And it's us, stirred by the Spirit, we're speaking the language that will help to call the Church yet to come into being in this generation. We do not know—just like the apostles could never have known exactly what Christ's body on earth would look like today—but that Holy Spirit that has been stirring the hearts of God's people for 2000 years is still stirring.
When Peter quotes the prophet Joel, he says, "Your young ones will have visions and your old men will dream dreams."
It is never too late.
Because the Spirit of God is always calling us and driving us and knitting us together in that mystical communion, which is our comfort as we do what God calls us to do.
When you leave this place today, I want you to feel the Spirit of God's power stirring in your heart, filling you, making you ready to answer the call of God, and to bring that good news to every place that God sends you. Amen.