Pentecost

Hallelujah, Christ is risen.

The Lord is risen indeed.

Alleluia.

There is one body and one spirit.

There is one hope in God's call to us.

One Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all.

Let's pray together.

Almighty God, do you all hearts are open, all desires known, and from you no secrets are hid.

Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love you and worthily magnify your holy name through Christ our Lord.

Amen.

The Lord be with you, and also with you.

Let us pray.

Almighty God, on this day you open the way of eternal life to every race and nation by the promised gift of your Holy Spirit.

Shed abroad this gift throughout the world by the preaching of the gospel, that it may reach to the ends of the earth, through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God forever and ever.

Amen.

A reading from Acts.

When the day of Pentecost had come, the disciples were all together in one place, and suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting.

Divided tongues as of fire appeared among them, and the tongue rested on each of them, and all of them were filled with the Holy Spirit, and began to speak in other languages as the Spirit gave them ability.

Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem.

And at this time the crowd gathered and was bewildered because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each amazed and apologize.

Are not all these speaking Galileans?

And how is it that we hear each of those in our own native language?

Asia, Virginia and Pamphilia, Egypt and the heart of Libya belonging to the Irene, and visitors from Rome, and Protestant and Arabs in Rome language.

We hear them thinking about God.

All remains and perfect saying to one another what is it?

But others are weird in the line.

And being these are not known.

Which is only nine in the morning.

No, it is what was open for the property.

In the last days, it will be gonna be clear.

And I will pour out my appearance upon all of that.

And your sons and daughters are not a and your young man.

And your old man will be injured.

Even upon my both men and women in those days I would pour out my appearance and age of it.

And I wouldn't have four days in the heavens above.

And I will be fire and heaven.

Before the coming of the Lord's great and glorious day.

Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be the word of the Lord.

Oh Lord, how manifold are your works in wisdom?

You have made them all.

The earth is full of your creatures.

Yonder is the great and wide sea, with all its living things too many to number.

Creatures, both small and great.

And there is that leviathan which you have made for the support of it.

All of them look to you to give them their food in due season.

You give it to them, they gather it.

You open your hand and they are filled with good things.

You hide your face and they are terrified.

You take away their breath and they die and return to their dust.

You send forth your spirit and they are created.

And so you renew the faces of the earth.

May your glory, O Lord, endure forever.

May you rejoice in all your work.

You look at the earth and it trembles.

You touch the mountains and they smoke.

I will praise my God while I have my being.

Bless the Lord, O my soul.

Hallelujah.

A reading from 1 Corinthians.

No one can say Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit.

Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit.

And there are varieties of services, but the same Lord.

And there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone.

To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.

To one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit.

To another, faith by the same Spirit, to another, gifts of healing by the one Spirit, to another the working of miracles, to another, prophecy, to another the discernment of spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues.

All these are activated by the one and the same spirit, who allots to each one individually just as the Spirit chooses.

For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ.

For in the one spirit we were all baptized into one body.

Jews are Greeks, slaves are free.

And we were all made to drink of one spirit.

The word of the Lord.

Thanks be to God.

After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side, and then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord.

Jesus said to them, Peace be with you, as the Father has sent me, so I send you.

When he'd said this, he breathed on them and said to them, Receive the Holy Spirit.

If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them.

If you retain the sins of any, they are retained.

The Gospel of the Lord.

On the day of Pentecost, fifty days after the celebration of Easter, the disciples had once again gathered in Jerusalem.

This is no surprise, actually, the day of Pentecost historically coincided with the Jewish festival of Shabuot.

This is a festival that, of course, happens 50 days, hence the word Pentecost meaning 50, 50 days after the celebration of the Passover.

And the holiday is really centered on the commemoration of Moshe, of Moses going up on top of Mount Horeb or Mount Sinai and receiving the Torah from God in the cloud.

The Torah, which is not really best understood as law, we usually hear as law, as rules, cramping our style in the Jewish tradition.

The law, the Torah is God's greatest gift.

It offers us a way of living in one another in community.

It offers ways in which we might increase our joy as we consider and treat one another and as we consider and respond to God.

So every year on Shabuot, and this still happens today in synagogues and temples throughout the world, our Jewish brothers and sisters gather to hear the Torah read by their rabbis or by their religious leaders on this day.

So the disciples have come back to Jerusalem.

It's possible they'd gone to Galilee.

They've come back, and on this day they would hear the books we refer to as Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy re-read.

It's not that they're receiving a new law, a new Torah.

It's sort of like that Quaker Oates commercial, like taste them again for the first time.

Every year you come back to the Torah in a new place and you re-enliven receiving the gift for the very, very first time.

And these were people who were extremely in need of receiving God's plans for how they ought to live.

They're in a state of likely panic.

Notice that the doors are locked.

That is very unlike our Jewish brothers and sisters on high holy days to lock the doors, in which guests are typically shown very fine hospitality, even if they're not known to the host.

The disciples are locked up in their fear, maybe they think they'll be next, that the people who were behind the death of Jesus might turn their attention to them as well.

And this week, and I really love this lectionary year A, we get to hear two very different versions of the same story.

So in Luke, we get to hear the disciples are shut up.

Maybe it's very fair to say they're out of breath, and all of a sudden there's a loud sound like a blowing wind.

That's how we hear our translation today.

And maybe it's really helpful to hear that the word spirit in the Bible is best translated as moving air.

Moving air, of course, as you know, could be a breeze, it could be a gale force wind.

In general, it is often translated as breath.

And that's what's great about reading John and Acts side by side.

In the John story, Pentecost happens on Easter Day.

Jesus shows up from resurrection, and look what he does.

He breathes on the disciples and says, Receive the Holy Spirit.

Of course, he means the holy breath.

There's an interesting practice in some dioceses where the bishop, especially at ordinations, will breathe on the ordinand.

This sometimes has happened in the Episcopal Church in confirmations that the bishop will not just lay hands, but breathe on somebody to pass on visibly, physically, tangibly, this spirit, this moving air that represents God.

What I love about hearing this story about John next to Luke is that they really play off of each other and expand each other.

So think about Jesus breathing on the disciples the same way you would think about God breathing in Genesis chapter 2.

Genesis 2 · chapter mention

God creates the human being out of clay.

It's a Plato model, it's inert, it's lifeless.

And then God reaches over and breathes into the clay and it becomes alive.

And the rabbis say very carefully, it is the breath of God that keeps us alive, whether we know it or not.

It's what's holding us up.

And when we die, we breathe God's breath one last time and we expire.

So Jesus essentially is coming on this high holy day of Shabu to Pentecost and taking some inert, lifeless, faith, destroyed disciples, and breathing new life into them.

I wish, to be honest with you, I could predict that that was going to happen on this day every year.

To be honest, I find that happen a little more haphazardly, but this I think is our celebration day, our formal festival day of God's ability to do that in our own lives and in our own modern context.

And I don't know that it's going to happen today for you, but I do know that the challenges of COVID-19 sort of present us with this same opportunity and need that the disciples faced.

How on earth are we going to get our second wind to get a holy breath that's going to send us out into the world in new and powerful and connective ways?

And this, I think, is what is really helpful again about reading Luke and John together.

In John, Jesus breathes on them.

In Luke, when they get the Holy Spirit, the first thing they do is get out of their locked doors.

They go out into the world.

And of course, the miracle is that they speak in their own tongue, and everybody around them gets to hear the speech in their native tongue.

This is really, really important to hear that these were not charismatic holy rollers speaking in tongues on the day of Pentecost who were rolling around on the streets of Jerusalem and speaking in unintelligible words.

No, according to this text, what happened is the disciples were speaking their native tongue, likely Aramaic, and people from all over the empire, all over the Jewish diaspora, were hearing not Aramaic, but hearing their own native tongue, whether that was Greek or Ethiopic or you know, you have it.

They were able to transcend language barriers and communicate with one another.

It's interesting that the disciples felt extremely divided and compartmentalized.

And upon receiving this holy breath, this creative breath, they sort of come out of their chrysalis and go back out into the world in new and wider ways and come in contact, honestly, with people they may not have even been comfortable shaking hands with the week before.

People who they might have suspected because of their apparent foreignness and different dialect and different way of conversing.

The disciples may have thought those people were just frankly ritually and categorically unclean, or better safe than sorry, stay away from those folks because you don't know what will happen.

And so they go out, speaking their truth, their experience of the resurrected Jesus, their experience of being utterly fatigued and winded, and of course, this is all metaphor speak, exhausted, hopeless, full of despair, and being re-invigorated by, and this is really right on Shavuud, by hearing God's revelation again.

It may not even necessarily be that new, hearing it again in a way that re-enlivens them to go out into the world.

And Peter has this dramatic vision that, hey, um, God has always intended to do something a little different than we settle for.

That the young will dream uh dreams, that the old will have visions, that male and female, Gentiles and Jews, Greeks.

God has an intention to take apparent disparity and diversity and create a holy unity with our world.

And the disciples engage on it that day.

Now, I think sometimes um it's a little bit easier to think about the miracle of people hearing in different languages, be they German or a dialect of Hindi or French.

Uh really neat story, but I want to suggest to you that our world might have a stronger need even than um than language groups right now in terms of unity and communication and inclusion and appreciation.

And um I have to admit I've been very, very inspired by reading this book called Bridges Out of Poverty, in which uh uh Ruby Payne, uh, who is is a PhD, uh, helped describe how it is that we make meaningful transitions for people who suffer from generational poverty.

That is, they didn't just uh lose big in the stock market and they're temporarily uncomfortable.

They've been inborn several generations in and into poverty.

And it's interesting that one of the things that Dr.

Payne talks about in this work is how there is often a different, not only set of values, but even a different way of communicating between people who have suffered generational poverty and those who have not.

I'm gonna flatten this a little bit in order to offer you some of what I'd like to tell you from this book, but I really encourage the book to enliven it and expand really what I think is the need of Pentecost today.

So um, so I want to suggest to you first that if you've ever been a parent, you know, I suspect, well, maybe I'll just speak to my own my own experience.

I know what it's like to say the perfect words.

And when I'm done with this amazing lecture that in which all of the right key action points were done, I feel really good about myself that I said all the right words.

And of course, uh my experience as a parent is I can have it all right, and it doesn't mean I communicated at all.

Um I will tell you that in Dr.

Payne's work, this is sort of the deal that talks about people in generational poverty and people who are used to middle class norms.

She works really hard to say there's different uh silent rules about those groups.

So, for example, um, if uh she says in general that in formal structures like education, um, police work, uh, middle class speak is to get straight to the point.

Whereas in institutional poverty, there is a tendency to sort of talk around and around and around and to spiral in.

And I've had that experience a few times and I've been really bamboozled actually, why we can't just get to the point.

And what she says is actually that when I, uh, from my own middle class background try to talk to somebody who's institutionally been impoverished and try to get them to go straight to the point, they find that not only confusing but abrupt because what they're used to is creating some conversation and getting slowly spiraling in instead of going straight from A to B.

And of course, it's vexing and confusing for both people.

She raises up a few um a few case studies in this book, and I want to share one of you that's really, really interesting.

Uh, she was working with a group of prisoners who are really looking to do some internal and external rehabilitation before they get out, and she shares a story and she asks people to evaluate the characters um financial resources in the story.

So there's a boy who has been maltreated at home, his father throws him out, he's 17, he goes to high school during the day, he works the minimum wage.

Job in the evening.

He has enough money to pay his rent and go to school, but not enough money to buy a car.

His 13-year-old brother has also suffered at home, and so the 13-year-old is looking to move in with him.

She asked at the end of the story for the group to rate this man's financial resources on a scale of 1 to 10, 1 meaning none, 10 meaning like Bill Gates, extremely perfect.

And was extremely surprised to find that out of the eight people in the group, seven of them gave the 17-year-old boy a rating of eight.

She gave him a rating of three.

And she said, What do you mean?

He's got a rating of eight.

He's got a minimum wage job.

He can't afford a car.

He's making rent, but he's getting ready to have another mouth to feed, and he has no insurance and fallback plan.

If he gets hurt, he's going to lose what he has.

Everybody in the group said, Well, okay, but he's got a job.

He's making his rent.

He's not getting an eviction notice, and he's got something to eat.

So that's like an eight.

I didn't know if that example has traction for you, but again, I really do encourage you to look into this book.

There is just an extreme disconnect in vocabulary and unknown assumption and also unknown rules.

And so, like in a positive speech, uh the book invited me to consider how well to rate myself on how well I know which grocery stores have dumpsters that are not locked, that have acceptable fresh food, and on which days of the week I can go in and get that.

Well, I don't have any idea, of course, uh which days certain agencies are serving.

I have a little bit of idea of that because I refer people, but not really much.

So uh his book was really, really helpful in saying there are some really, really different norms, vocabularies, and values.

And unless I seem like I've meandered too far, and and and maybe I have, I think the book really invites the kind of Pentecost, frankly, that we need now more than ever.

With Google Translate, with the Wycliffe Bible Society, I'm not convinced that our greatest need in the world right now, we're in a church, is to talk to somebody literally on the other side of the planet, include them into our worldview.

I see the Pentecost, at least in our community, in the Houston area, in the state of Texas, that we need is for the Holy Spirit to breathe into us a way of going out into the world and making connections where we already live, seeing people that it's just easier not to see, taking time to build actual mentorships that bridge this poverty because God fundamentally loves both those that have and those who are impoverished.

God inspiring us to listen and hear and work with people who are in different denominations or political parties, who even go to different services at our own church or have sort of different notions about what it means to worship, to live, to love.

It seems to me like that is the need that we have before us that is greater than almost any other that I can imagine.

How it is that we reach out to this diversity that we're living in right now and breathe in a holy breath so that there can be unity.

John says something really interesting at the end.

So Luke has this communication across language groups, across native tongues, across, if you're willing to go there with me, different sets of values or socioeconomic language or experiences.

And John says at the very end, listen, if you forgive people, they'll be forgiven, but if you retain their sins, they'll be retained.

And I want to suggest to you, I don't know that Jesus is talking about this theological level where, hey, look, if as a church we tell people that they're sinful and wrong, they're going to hell when they die.

I don't think he means that.

I think what he means is we have this opportunity to go out frankly and either say, in the name of God, you are forgiven.

I'm going to practice, practice, treat you like you are, invest in that myself, offer you either mentorship or solidarity or accompaniment.

We can do that, or we can say, yeah, you know what?

You really should know better about investing in the commodities market.

I can't believe you did that.

Your sins are retained.

I wonder if we don't have an opportunity this year to think about whether or not we as a church, not just St.

Thomas, but as an Episcopal church, as the Christian church, as representatives and agents of God on earth, are we retaining sins of people?

Or are we forgiving them?

And this I think is part of the crucial call.

It's really easy.

I've lived in a few different cultures, not only linguistically, but I've lived in the socioeconomic boundaries that Ruby Payne talks about too.

A silly example, I went out to a restaurant in San Diego with a really, really good friend, and I sat down and I asked the waiter, hey, do you recommend anything?

And the waiter said to me, What's your flavor profile?

I had no idea how to answer that question.

And and um and I eat out frequently, and at least I did.

Uh I've lived in several different countries in the world.

That question was just beyond me.

Uh, those are the kinds of things we can often find ourselves put in that are really small, but they can of course be much, much greater and more and more divisive.

And this, I think, opportunity uh when we think about uh Pentecost and how we might live into it is not just, hey, how can we feel better or hey, look, it's the birthday of the church as we know it.

No, see, on the birthday of the church, the birthday of the church as we understand it in Luke's version in Acts, the church is made up of people who speak all different kinds of languages, not just linguistically like from their native country, but different understandings of God, of what it means to be in community, of socioeconomics.

The church was born out of all of that diversity, somehow being unified by God's salvific breath.

And John tells us we are asked to breathe that breath of life into a world, frankly, that is often comatose and suffering and just stuttering, looking for somebody to forgive sin, to reach across the political and economic and racial and sexual orientation aisles.

We are being asked to say, can we live into the church that God has envisioned?

A church of grace, a church of reconciliation, a church in which we can honor the diversity, but we can do it unified in God's mission.

My prayer is, in fact, that this Pentecost will continue to be inspired here at St.

Thomas, both as individuals and our community, to breathe in deeply the air that God is breathing out on us and then to share it with our neighbor.

Amen.

As we celebrate the gifting of the Holy Spirit, I ask you to join me as we reaffirm our baptismal covenant.

Do you renounce Satan and all the spiritual forces of wickedness that rebel against God?

I renounce them.

Do you renounce the evil powers of this world which corrupt and destroy the creatures of God?

I renounce them.

Do you renounce all sinful desires that draw you from the love of God?

I renounce them.

Do you turn to Jesus Christ and accept him as your Savior?

I do.

Do you put your whole trust in his grace and love?

I do.

And do you promise to follow and obey him as your Lord?

I do.

And so please join me as we reaffirm our prayers in the words of the baptismal covenant.

Do you believe in God the Father?

I believe in God the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth.

Do you believe in Jesus Christ, the Son of God?

I believe in Jesus Christ, God's only Son, our Lord.

He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary.

He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried.

He descended to the dead.

On the third day he rose again.

He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father.

He will come again to judge the living and the dead.

Do you believe in God the Holy Spirit?

I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting.

Will you continue in the apostles' teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread and in the prayers?

I will with God's help.

Will you persevere in resisting evil?

And whenever you fall into sin, repent and return to the Lord?

I will, with God's help.

Will you proclaim by word and example the good news of God in Christ?

I will with God's help.

Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself?

I will with God's help.

And will you strive for justice and peace among all people and respect the dignity of every human being?

I will, with God's help.

Please join me then as we confess our sins against God and our neighbor.

Compassionate God, forgive us.

Though you should guide us, we inform ourselves.

Though you should shepherd us, we control ourselves.

Though you would fulfill us, we console ourselves.

But we think your truth too high, your will too hard, your power too remote, your love too free.

But they are not.

And without them we are of all people most miserable.

Heal our confused mind with your word, heal our divided will with your law, heal our troubled conscience with your love, heal our anxious hearts with your presence, all for the sake of your Son who loved us and gave himself for us.

Amen.

Almighty God, have mercy on you, forgive you all your sins through our Lord Jesus Christ, strengthen you in all goodness, and by the power of the Holy Spirit keep you in eternal life.

Amen.

Your spirit lives in us, and we your spirit.

And hope and the Holy Spirit now and forever.

Amen.

Now the peace of the Lord be always with you and also with you.

And you'll notice if you're following along in our bulletin that the Lord's Prayer is printed in a number of languages.

Today, in the video format, you're going to get to see three or four of these distinctively, so not all at once.

Although if we really were to buy the spirit of the day, the room would be full of the Lord's Prayer in different languages, different ways of expressing and reaching out to God.

So we'll start with English, and then you'll get to see French and Spanish at least, and hopefully another few by the time we get all together.

As our Savior Christ has taught us, we are bold to pray, our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, for thine is the kingdom, and the power and the glory forever and ever.

Amen.

Venga tu reino, hágase tu voluntad, en la tierra como en el cielo.

Danos hoy nuestro pan de cada día.

Perdona nuestras ofensas, como también nosotros perdonamos a los que nos ofenden.

No nos dejes caer en tentación y líbranos del mal, porque tuyo es el reino, tuyo es el poder y tuya es la gloria ahora y por siempre.

Amen.

Notre Père, quiere au Cieux, que ton nom soit sanctifié, que ton reine vienne, que ta volonté soit fit sur la terre comme ciel.

Donne-nous aujourd'hui notre pain de ce jour.

Pardonne-nous nos offense, comme nous pardonons aussi à ce qui nous offense.

Andusomme pas à la temptation, but delivernou du mal, car set attaquet, la puissance et la gloire au Cle de Cle.

Amen.

Father unzo and him, geheilik werde thy name, thine reich comma, thine we in him so of Erden.

Unseclis a broad gib uns heute and forgi uns unserer Schuld, wie auch we forgaben unsere Schulden.

And Führer uns nicht in Versuchung, sondern bösen.

Denn dein is the Reich und the Craft and the Herrlichkeit in Ewigkeit.

Amen.

May God who by the Holy Spirit calls those of many languages to proclaim Jesus' Lord, strengthen your faith, and send you out to bear witness to God in word and deed.

And the blessing of God Almighty, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit be upon you this day and remain with you forever.

Amen.