Pentecost
May 15, 2005
The day of Pentecost began in fear but ended in fire. They were still afraid,
those disciples, on the morning of Pentecost. They were locked in that room,
huddled together, seeking safety in numbers. They must have told and re-told
their stories of meeting the Risen Lord, but there was more fear in that room
than fire. Luke, in his gospel and in the Acts of the Apostles, tells us that
the disciples were gathered together to await the promised gift of the Spirit,
but John tells it differently as we heard in today’s gospel. John tells us that
they had already received the Holy Spirit fifty days before, on the evening of
the first day of the week, the day of his resurrection. Jesus had come into that
same locked room. “Peace,” he had said to them. And he said it again. And then
he breathed on them the divine breath of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit that was so
alive in him, the Spirit who had raised him from the dead.
So, fifty days later when the day of Pentecost arrived,
the Spirit was already with the apostles, but the Spirit was stifled. Stifled, I
think, by fear. And how believable that is! How human! Even though the word they
had heard again and again from the risen Lord was “do not fear,” they were still
afraid, these disciples: afraid for themselves, afraid of the world outside,
afraid of the very Spirit within them!
What we celebrate on Pentecost is not the first coming of
the Spirit on the disciples, then, but the coming of the Spirit in fire,
consuming their fears in a flash and sending them out of that locked room and
into the streets, fired up with a message that has changed the face of the
earth.
My friends, I believe this is where the Pentecost story
can touch us most closely. In one way or another we all know the story of the
Spirit received but stifled by fear. Just as the Easter gift of the Spirit lay
dormant in the disciples until it was liberated by the wind and fire of
Pentecost, so, too, the gift of the Spirit we received in our baptism and
confirmation is often locked up within us, the prisoner of our fears, awaiting
liberation. Pentecost could be the liberation.
But liberation can itself be a fearful thing. Liberation
means freedom but it also means change. It means leaving comfort zones and
letting go of comfortable securities. It means hiding no longer but standing up,
and standing out. It means surrendering control and allowing God to lead us in
new directions. The liberating Spirit of Pentecost sent the disciples out into
the streets, out into the crossroads of the world – to conquests and
controversies, trials as well as triumphs. Ultimately, the Spirit turned their
lives into near carbon copies of their master’s.
In light of this, is it any wonder that we might prefer
the safety of locked-up lives, carefully regulated, undisturbed lives, where the
Spirit remains quietly dormant in us? There is safety in such a life and a kind
of peace. But there is no fire and Pentecost has not happened.
But, my friends, Pentecost has happened. Or maybe I
should say Pentecost is happening. God’s Spirit, the Spirit of fire, is in us,
waiting to be released. Longing to be released. But fire is a fearsome thing:
unpredictable and all-consuming. Fire has a mind of its own. Fire is hard to
control. Is it any wonder, then, that we might prefer a cooler, more contained
existence lived safely below the kindling point, a comfortable Christianity
rather than a confronting Christianity? I am reminded of how the great Danish
philosopher, Soren Kierkegaard, once described the committed Christian. The
Christian, he once wrote, is “someone dressed up as a circus clown trying to
tell people that their village is on fire.”
Does that clown sound like anyone you know? I can tell
you honestly it doesn’t sound like anyone I want to be. I don’t want to be a
clown. I like to be taken seriously, and I’m sure you do, too, but then I recall
words of St. Paul in First Corinthians: “God has chosen the foolish of this
world to shame the wise and the weak of this world to shame the strong,” and
then I know that I really can’t escape this clown thing and neither can you.
Kierkegaard is right, my friends: we are called to put on
the clown clothes and to do some pretty foolish things: to point an accusing
finger, for instance, at a world where the gulf between the rich and the poor is
a growing, gaping wound; a world where the constant resort to violence is an
ongoing obscenity, and where the callous, selfish disregard for the sanctity and
worth of each and every human life is a moral outrage.
But the clown’s accusing finger cannot stop there. The
Church we love, the holy Church of God, has its own failings and if we truly
love the Church we won’t be silent about them, either, won’t be afraid to point
them out: failings of blindness, of deafness, of arrogance, of
self-righteousness….
Of course, the Church’s flaws and failings look
suspiciously like some of our own personal flaws and failings and so an honest
clown must point to himself or herself as well as to the institution or, to
continue with Kierkegaard's metaphor, we not only must tell the people their
village is on fire, we must also tell ourselves.
Now, I realize I may have mixed my metaphors to the point
of confusion! I know that in the Pentecost view of things a world on fire, a
Church on fire, people on fire are good things. They are what God wants and what
the Holy Spirit makes happen. But I’m sure you get the point. The Spirit’s fire
will never get ignited –- life will be business as usual -– until we take the
Gospel seriously, take it to heart -- and then, with the Apostles on Pentecost,
take to the streets –- dressed like clowns!
Father Michael G. Ryan
Cathedral Pastor
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