The Day of Pentecost: May 24. 2015

Acts 2:1-21

Romans 8:22-17

John 15:26-27; 16:4b-15

I. “Lift Up Your Hearts”: Hope and Truth

  • Hold your ears while I give my imitation of Bishop Duncan: “LIFT UP YOUR HEARTS!”
  • And our reply? “We lift them up to the Lord!”
  • We say this every Sunday, every time we gather to make Eucharist together with God. But do we consider what this means?
  • To “lift up your heart” is to offer oneself, one’s deepest, truest being, to God—and also, crucially, to have hope. By that I mean to set aside the cynicism cultivated in us by the inundation of negativity in what we read on the internet and what we hear over the airwaves, and likewise to forego the Pollyannaish default flip-flop of believing that things will magically “work out.” And, instead, have genuine empowered vision of a better world and the grace-filled determination to work in helping it come about. [1]

II. Paul on Hope

  • Paul’s words on hope in our reading today from Romans are perhaps the most reverberant evocation of hope in the Bible: “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.”
  • Interestingly, we do not experience hope as a bright ray of warmth and good feeling. Rather, we know hope’s presence in us through our inward “groaning,” our longing, our yearning—with pain, even—this is the testimony of the Spirit working in us, generating our prayers. Think of the “growing pains” of children, as the continuing miracle of the body’s growth happens, stretching them and drawing them into the fullness of the creature God intends them to be. The same is true of all of us—and of all creation, Paul says—as we wait for “adoption,” for becoming in our (new) bodies the children of God.
  • We hope for “what we do not see,” what is not yet there, for the full flowering of life, for meaningful work, for wholeness, for life lived “in God.” We hope for justice. We hope for clear knowing of the truth, and following it. We hope for God’s kingdom, come completely.
  • The patience that Paul speaks of in our hopeful waiting saves us from giving up, losing the faith, burning out and turning away. The patience we experience is not our own doing (as those of us with no patience know very well—my mother always told me I should have lots of patience, since I’ve never used a bit.) It is the “Spirit helping us in our weakness,” teaching us to pray and guiding us when we don’t know what to do, or how.

III. Jesus On the Spirit of Truth

  • As he prepares his disciples for his departure, Jesus promises them that one will come to guide them into truth; this is the one he calls the Advocate.
  • Jesus says to them, “It is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Advocate will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you.” There are many things that Jesus has not told his disciples, he explains, because they were not yet ready to hear them, to “bear” them. But the “Spirit of truth” will come to “guide you into all the truth,” Jesus says, declaring “the things that are to come.”
  • This Advocate, this Spirit, will be the presence of God with and within Jesus’ followers to lead them, guide them, keep their hope going and growing as the coming of God’s kingdom takes place.

IV. The Day of Pentecost and the Coming of the Spirit

  • The arrival of the Spirit is seen in the second chapter of Acts. The Day of Pentecost had come, the Feast of Weeks, the spring barley harvest that falls fifty days after Passover. In Jewish tradition, the law was given on this day. In the sequence of events surrounding the death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus, this day is now fifty days past the paschal sacrifice and the resurrection. All the followers of Jesus are gathered in one place in Jerusalem. “And suddenly from heaven came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a flame rested on each of them.” And they began to speak in foreign languages (real languages, not babble) they did not know—and people from those places heard the Good News in their own language.
  • The rush of wind and the pillars of fire recall the presence of God in creation, “while a mighty wind swept over the face of the waters” and with the children of Israel through their sojourn in the wilderness moving toward the promised land. John the Baptist had predicted a baptism “with the Holy Spirit and fire.” Here it is.
  • Peter then explains what is happening by recalling what was said by the prophet Joel: that the young, sons and daughters, would prophecy and see visions and that the old would dream dreams. These visions and these dreams all point toward the coming of God’s kingdom.

V. Conclusion: “Lifting up hearts” in the world

  • I think most of us don’t do a particularly good job of trusting our visions, our dreams, our experiences of the Spirit, or even of allowing the Spirit to be fully present with us. We prefer to rely on ourselves, to believe the truth of our own limited and often false and misleading perceptions. This can lead, often does lead, to inert resignation. We can succumb to cynicism, believing that the fallenness and corruption of the world is all there is and that there isn’t anything to be done. Conversely, we can adopt a kind of naïve hopefulness that everything will somehow “be okay” without our intervention or participation. And so, again, we are resigned.
  • There is an alternative, as the words of scripture show us today. There is a balance of what in my previous life we called “critical thinking,” what I would now call knowledge of sacred texts and employment of reason and skill and tradition, a balance between this and hope, the yearning hope God implants in us. This balance guides us into discerning what is true and developing clear vision of and belief in what is really possible.
  • The evidence of lives lived in such a manner is all around us. One such life, nurtured in deep Jewish tradition, is that of Dr. Oliver Sacks. His new memoir On the Move, written in the final months of a full and productive and inspiring life, is the record of his finding a way to live that answered the crucial need he found within himself to do something with meaning.Its title is inspired by a poem by his friend Tom Gunn, one passage from which encapsulates Sacks’ sensibility: “At worst, one is in motion, and at best,/ Reaching no absolute, in which to rest/ One is always nearer by not keeping still.” For him, this meant seeing patients, caring for them, and then sharing what he found with the world through his writing. His account of his life is filled with genuine hope and enthusiasm, as well as compassion and understanding of human frailty and failing. It has been inspiring reading for me, as it has been for others, I know. Sacks does what William Faulkner said all writers should aim to do, help human beings to endure by “lifting the heart.”
  • You may not be a great writer or a great physician or a great orator, but every life can do the same. How can you “lift hearts”? I mean not just spreading groundless optimism, but truly helping others “lift their hearts” by drawing strength and developing courage for fuller life, for life in God? How can you live your life in such a way as to demonstrate the hope that is in you?
  • How can we, as the Cathedral Family, do this in the community and world around us? How can we live our life out of this place in such a way as to demonstrate and share God’s constantly amazing creation and re-creation of fuller life and hope?
  • The day of Pentecost has come again, and the Spirit has come to us again. We will “lift our hearts” and be led by the Spirit out into the world to live as God’s children. AMEN

[1] My thoughts on cynicism, hope, and critical thinking have been inspired and informed by the work of Maria Popova on her brainpickings.org website, “Some Thoughts on Hope, Cynicism, and the Stories We Tell Ourselves,” May 17, 2015.