Day of Pentecost
May 20, 2018
Romans 8:22-27
We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.
Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.
Today is Pentecost and I had this really awesome sermon about fire and love with great quotes by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Teilhard de Chardin but didn’t the Presiding Bishop, Michael Curry go and preach it at the Royal Wedding yesterday!
So instead I want to tell you about the first sermon I ever preached that was in the Dartmouth Hitchcock Memorial Hospital Chapel in Lebanon NH. It was July 1993. In the chapel there is a stained glass window designed by Sabra Fields – a well-known Vermont artist. Here is a copy of the window. It is called “I will lift up mine eyes” from psalm 121. I will life up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help, my help cometh the Lord who made heaven and earth.
And this Romans text we heard this morning was my text. Dartmouth Hitchcock Memorial Hospital is a tertiary care, acute care hospital.
But along with being a regular hospital, it is where you are sent, or life flighted, from the back woods of Vermont or New Hampshire if your illness or accident is too much to take care of in a regional hospital. I was doing my chaplaincy training there, which is called Clinical Pastoral Education. I was assigned to the oncology unit, the neonatal unity, and maternity ward which had this posh name of “The Birthing Pavilion.” During the long days and shifts there I sometimes fantasized of sneaking into one of the well-appointed Birthing Pavilion rooms to take a nap.
I don’t remember what I preached word for word, but I am sure it was on the theme of hope. Not only because it is a completely appropriate theme for a hospital chapel setting but also because this is one of my favorite passages of scripture as one of the things that defines my faith in Christ and in God is Hope – a hope that seems to dwell within me empowered and sustained by the Holy Spirit.
Back in my early 20s when I was discerning a call to ordained ministry, I had to explain to virtual strangers why and how I felt called to ordained ministry. And as I started to piece things together, I realized that my call was firmly rooted in my experience of being raised in a church in the middle of urban poverty in South Providence, RI where my father was the minister, and with working with at-risk teens as a college student intern, because it was within those challenging settings that I felt called to be a torch-bearer for hope and share it with others.
Today is Pentecost when we celebrate the gift of the Holy Spirit. From these passages of scripture this morning we learn some things about the Holy Spirit.
We learn from the Gospel of John, that Jesus, when he is no longer with his disciples, he will send an advocate, a helper to help us when we are in need.
We learn from Romans that the Holy Spirit is there to help us pray what is ineffable, those things for which we cannot find the words to say; and the Holy Spirit works on our behalf to intercede with God for our needs before we can even articulate what they are.
We learn from Acts of the Apostles reading that the Holy Spirit helps us relate and to open to people very different from ourselves and that we can through the Holy Spirit understand each other.
We read that the Holy Spirit allows the young to envision the future Kingdom of Heaven and make it come to fruition, and the old can still dream dreams.
The Feast of Pentecost is very much a festival of hope. This is a traditional weekend for baptisms and confirmations for this reason.
For parents, and for all the adults of this church, we, of course, would wish for our children a life of smooth sailing and full of joy. But we know this is not what life is like. That everyone has suffering and pain in their lives – even princes and princesses.
And we know from our own lives that the challenges of life, the places where we failed, made a mess of things, got it wrong, are the very places that made us better, stronger, more resilient, and certainly more empathetic people. And so what we really want for our children is a sense of hope – that failure is never the last word, and that as one wise priest once told me, we are not human beings, we are human-becomings – always a work in progress, never arriving but always growing into the people God.
And I think that is why so many of us felt uplifted by the wedding yesterday of Harry and Meghan – it was filled with hope and love – especially in a world where we are so often reminded of all that divides us. It was a wedding of hope and love that conquers differences of countries, racial divides, and class, and a love and hope that spills out into the world reminding us that the ways things are, are not the way things have to be.
So on that hopeful note, I’d like to end with one of the most beautiful and hopeful prayers from our own prayer book – prayer 47 BCP, 829. And as we say it together – please keep in mind Sophie [who will be baptized in just a few minutes/at the 10am service], and Trevor PinterParsons and Tyler Megathlin who were confirmed yesterday at Trinity Church, Concord, and for Ethan Pracher, Henry Tate, Jake Colburn, and Andrew Rice who will be confirmed on June 16th at the cathedral.
God our Father, you see your children growing up in an
unsteady and confusing world: Show them that your ways
give more life than the ways of the world, and that following
you is better than chasing after selfish goals. Help them to
take failure, not as a measure of their worth, but as a chance
for a new start. Give them strength to hold their faith in you,
and to keep alive their joy in your creation; through Jesus
Christ our Lord. Amen.
0 Comments