"A Richer Life" | VJ Sathyaraj | June 8, 2025

Greetings to you on this blessed morning of Pentecost, where we mark the 50 days that have passed since Easter and are reminded to be open to the activity of God in the form of the Holy Spirit.

Pentecost powerfully answers the question of how a small, obscure group of followers of an executed Messiah created a group of assemblies—churches—all around the Mediterranean, in the vastness of the Roman Empire.

How did the survivors of suppression and a massacre grow into an unstoppable movement that now includes us, rejoicing in the Easter story?

Secular historians have a hard time explaining the spread of the gospel because of their discomfort with the idea that God can act in the world and move people in particular ways—that the gospel of the Messiah can lead to transformation, and that there can be peace in the world that is founded on love and not on the violence and hate of authoritarians.

The telling of this story of the founding of the church occurred long after the events had taken place. But drawing on different sources, the writer gives us a dramatic account of the forming of the church.

It begins in a grand way, with Pentecost and the excitement of experiencing the Holy Spirit in a way that was physical, emotional, intellectual, and above all, spiritual.

Describing the experience of God has to include the body in some way, because that is how we interact with the world.

And God may speak to us through music, the words of people—written and spoken—and through the beauty of the created world. But only if we have eyes to see and ears to hear, thus responding with our bodies in some way.

Next, Acts makes it very clear that this first recorded experience of the Holy Spirit was a collective experience, not individual—leading us to appreciate the universality of God's grace across languages, cultures, and history.

This collective experience brought about a transformation that led to an ongoing reliance on God's presence, inspiration, and guidance. From this reliance on God grew a living, thriving, vibrant church in many towns of the Roman Empire in just a few years—and then continuing across the world on every continent.

And we continue to see this growth this morning, in the form of all our candidates for baptism, seeking to live a life richer than that offered by the world.

How did first-century powerless people manage to change the world, other than through the power of God seen at Pentecost?

Today, people trying to create global movements, as many corporations [Music] do, rely on crafting strategic plans using the best consultants available, developing vision and mission statements, and hiring properly compensated executives to chart a course for global expansion.

It was thought for a long time that globalization would spell the end of regional clashes in culture and values. The political scientist Francis Fukuyama famously proclaimed in 1992 that the world had reached “the end of history,” when all countries would adopt liberal democracies and free market capitalism.

Thomas Friedman, the well-known columnist, suggested only half-joking that once a country acquired a sufficient number of McDonald's restaurants, peace and democratic values would follow.

However, some corporations—like Walmart—found that overseas markets like Germany and South Korea were different from the United States, and that the Walmart culture of effusive greetings and friendliness of salespeople was thought to be very weird. So much so, that the stores had to close, and they eventually lost $2 billion.

Peace and respect for other human beings do not come through corporate or political striving. In fact, it may be the opposite.

That is true.

The human yearning to be lifted out of the despondency of difficult circumstances is universal. And it is sadly true that a life devoted primarily to one's own success, comfort, and security does not bring fulfillment and joy.

And so we have people seeking community, seeking fulfillment, who address this problem in quite bizarre ways.

Some so-called spiritual experiences come from ingesting hallucinogens. Michael Pollan describes researchers who set out to answer questions about psychedelics and religious experience. Assuming that such experiences are purely internal and individual, they managed to recruit faith leaders from every major religion—including an Episcopal priest—to find out if a high-dose psilocybin trip would improve their sense of spiritual well-being and vocation.

In other words, they were trying to find out if something like the Pentecost experience could be recreated in a lab, suggesting that spiritual experience is nothing more than chemical interaction.

In fact, a scientist, V.S. Ramachandran, suggested some time ago that if you were to take a human brain and preserve it in a vat and stimulate it with a variety of electrical stimulations, would that constitute a fulfilling life?

In this experiment, for the Episcopal priest, he describes it as an electrical sensation intensified. He says, "It blew out to the top of my head, and then I started making these sounds that felt religious and spiritual and sacred. I realized I was speaking in tongues, which I had never done before. Speaking in tongues is not an Episcopal sort of thing."

And he goes on to say, "It looked completely different. I was a new creation."

It's hard for me to equate this experience with that of Pentecost—the fundamental difference being the difference between individual self-gratification and the transformation of a community.

The priest in this experiment later gave up his holy orders to found an organization that advances the sacramental use of psychedelics.

And so we have the danger here of reducing an experience of God's grace to a repetitive act of self-gratification—that individual feelings of warmth and well-being are the end goal.

This is no different from the range of activities that human beings have invented for our pleasure and have nothing to do with the creation and sustaining of a community that lives into the transforming power of God's love.

We cannot make our body and our desires the central focus of life. This inwardly focused life is a form of idolatry, focused only on gratification of self to the exclusion of all others—the exclusion of all meaningful relationships.

The rising popularity of spirit-filled worship and emphasis on personal experience is exactly the same as what society offers individuals: It's all about me and what I want.

This movement away from seeking and building community has serious negative effects upon trust in institutions and trust in areas like medical expertise.

"I feel it. Therefore, it's my truth," says a prominent leader of this kind of theology—leading to the outlook that facts are not only disputable, but irrelevant.

In contrast, we have our baptismal vows:

How might we proclaim by word and example the good news of Jesus Christ?

How might we continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship?

How might we persevere in resisting evil?

How might we seek and serve Christ in all persons?

These are questions that we have to answer together as a community, bound by confession and receiving the Eucharist.

And so this Pentecost, we rejoice.

We rejoice in the miracle of children—especially the children gathered here—the gifts of God being received in the church, along with adults.

This is the continuing miracle: that we can be united as one body, remaining open to the transforming power of God, renewing our baptismal vows together.

Amen. Amen.