Lots
of times when I’m away from Chicago people will say to
me, “Chicago! The windy city!” Then when they hear I’m
from Winnetka, I often get this response: “The Big Noise from
Winnetka,” which was a #1 big band hit in 1938. Sometimes I confuse
the two and refer to the “Big Wind from Winnetka,” to which
the more knowledgeable of my friends will gently correct me. Now I
haven’t actually heard “The Big Noise from Winnetka,” but
I’ve certainly experienced the big wind of Winnetka and actually
get to put it all together on this particular Sunday morning.
Hear
again the second sentence from the first reading that while the disciples
were all together on the day of Pentecost, “Suddenly
from heaven there came a sound (a noise) like the rush of a violent
wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting.” It
was the wind of the Holy Spirit on the day we call the Birthday of
the Church, the wind of God empowering the disciples to do great things.
In the Episcopal Church words like Pentecostal and Holy
Spirit are subject to a certain amount of mistrust because they
conjure up forms of worship that are, shall we say, a bit more enthusiastic.
The story is told (by Sam Lloyd) of a woman who wandered into an
Episcopal church service one morning as things were proceeding in
proper order: hymns, lessons, prayers. But when the priest stepped
into the pulpit the woman came alive. “Yes!” she blurted
out when the preacher made a point she thought particularly apt. “Praise
the Lord!—Praise his holy name,” getting louder and louder.
People began to squirm uncomfortably. “Amen!” she cried,
and at that point an usher walked up to her and whispered, “Excuse
me, M’am, but is there something wrong?” “Why no,” she
said, “I’ve got the Spirit!” At which point the
usher replied, “Well, you certainly didn’t get it here!”
Now
let me say that while I can understand that usher’s sentiment
in general, before this service is over I hope to make the case that
the Holy Spirit is alive and well in our midst and that it’s
O.K. to talk about that once in a while and it’s O.K. to do some “Praise
God’s” once in a while.
Well,
who is this Holy Spirit? You and I probably have fairly vivid pictures
in our mind’s eye of God and of Jesus, but the Spirit
is elusive. The best you get in paintings is an occasional dove such
as the one on the back of the celebrant’s chasuble, or perhaps
tongues of fire such as we read in the Book of Acts resting on each
of the disciples. But you can’t see the Spirit aside from what
the Spirit does. In the Bible the word for Spirit in both Hebrew and
Greek comes from the same root as wind.
And
when I think of wind I inevitably think of Hurricane Bob in 1992
when we were at our summer home on Cuttyhunk Island. You certainly
couldn’t
see the wind, but you could feel the immensity of its power. You
could see trees being uprooted and the walls of the house shaking.
Sometimes the wind is gentle and comforting and sometimes it will
have its own way, even in the Church, even in the World.
Sometimes
the wind of the Spirit can blow so hard it pushes us in whole new
directions. It can bring a dead church back to life as it did through
St. Francis of Assisi in the 13 th Century, as it did for Martin
Luther in the 15 th Century. Sometimes the wind of the Spirit can
move through a whole people as happened just over a decade ago when
Eastern Europe threw off its Communist oppressors. We believe the
Spirit was moving to end slavery in the 19 th Century. We believe
the Spirit was moving in the civil rights movememts in the 60’s
and 70’s. The truth is that the Spirit was with God at the beginning,
the Spirit who hovered over the face of the waters, the Spirit that
breathed life into Adam and Eve, infusing the whole created order with
the presence of God.
I have
been amused as well as irritated at these debates pitting what’s called “intelligent design” against evolution.
There is a kind of desperation to get God into science curriculums
equaled by the desperate efforts of scientific purists to keep God
out. My own feeling is that God can take care of God’s self and
that when the Bible says God created the Heavens and the Earth, the
Bible isn’t particularly interested to say how that happened
scientifically or how long it took, and that just because there’s
nothing in the Bible about dinosaurs it doesn’t mean they didn’t
exist. Those who say the world was created in literally seven days
have absolutely no appreciation of how God thinks of time, and those
who say that God had nothing to do with it need to grow up and get
a life and read the astrophysicist who wrote that the fact of one small
part of the universe being conscious of its own existence is by whatever
name we want to call it, God.
Sometimes
we’re looking so hard for the presence of God and
the work of the Holy Spirit that we fail to look right under our very
noses. That Holy Spirit can be very sneaky and must have a sense of
humor, given what you and I call “coincidence” or even “serendipity.” We’d
have to be blind and deaf not to have seen it this morning in our joy
at welcoming Peterson Bullock Foster and Robert George Medica into
the Body of Christ. In fact we’re very specific in giving the
Holy Spirit credit when we pray, “We thank you, almighty God,
for the gift of water. Over it the Holy Spirit moved in the beginning
of Creation…in it your son Jesus received the baptism of John
and was anointed by the Holy Spirit…in it we are buried with
Christ in his death. By it we share in his resurrection. Through it
we are reborn by the Holy Spirit.”
Allison
and Michael Millar certainly saw the Holy Spirit working in their
lives with the birth of Lauren Grace this past week, and some friends
of ours who actually live on Cuttyhunk year-round and have been trying
to conceive a child, finally succeeded and we give thanks for the
birth of Addison June Petrulli. We can see the work of the Holy Spirit
in all of those wonderful connections that tie us together such as:
Our friend Ann Brewer’s 25 th anniversary as a priest
and a physician being celebrated today at the Cathedral of St. John
the Divine in New York City where her husband Jim Kowalski is the Dean,
only to receive this e-mail from Betsy Fowle—former Associate
Rector of Christ Church and now Rector of All Saints Church in South
Hadley, Massachusetts—who writes,
There
is a wonderful young couple here in our parish who were new during
my first year and are very active (he was Received last year and
serves on the Vestry, etc.). They are both music teachers and just
had their first baby recently, born prematurely. He has had a bit
of a rough start but is doing well now and up to 8 lbs, and I’m
going to baptize him on Pentecost. Tonight at a meeting Greg asked
me if I know Jim Kowalski and Anne Brewer and I said I’d met
them and that they are very close friends of our very close friends
(the Prevosts). Well, small world…Laura (his wife) used to baby-sit
for the Kowalski-Brewer’s children and her mother was the organist
at Good Shepherd, West Hartford, where Jim was Rector in the 80’s.
I guess they have kept in touch for years and Greg and Laura just heard
that there is a celebration for Anne’s 25 th anniversary as priest
and doctor this weekend, the same day as Cameron’s baptism.
Now
did you follow all that? Not to worry. The Holy Spirit did, because
that’s what the Holy Spirit does. The Holy Spirit sneaks around
helping us to make all of these wonderful connections, motivating us
to keep in touch, nurturing the bonds of affection within families
and within the Church, in addition to all the big stuff like quarks
and quasars and “cosmics.”
For
me, all of that is “Praise
the Lord!” stuff, to know
that all the energy of the Universe can focus in on holy baptisms,
for instance, and how it is that holy baptisms are able to connect
all of us to the whole of the energy of the Universe. This is “Alleluia” stuff,
my good friends, and “Alleluia” is just a Hebrew word that
means “Yea, God!” And so taking a bit of a risk in lieu
of the creation of our Christ Church cheerleaders, give me an
A—L—L—E—L—U—I—A!
What
d’ya
got?Alleluia!
What
d’ya
got? Alleluia!
What
d’ya
got? Alleluia!
Now
you’ve
got it! Amen.
