“Extravagant, Furious Love”
Christ Episcopal Church, St. Joseph
Year A, Pentecost
Acts 2:1-21; 1 Corinthians 12:3b-13; John 20:12-23
I have wracked my brain for the past two days trying to come up with an experience or story to begin this sermon with that would enable you—and me; all of us—to connect with and experience fully the drama.. and the trauma.. of the first Pentecost—the coming of the Holy Spirit.
And I have come up empty handed. I have not thought of a single thing that would do that trick any better than the words St. Luke came up with to describe those events of the first Pentecost.
But simply rereading those words doesn’t make for much of a sermon, right? So I did what any other self-respecting academic would do. I looked up what some other people said about it!
And I found some gems. Here’s one:
Pentecost reminds us that Christ's spirit is not mild or temperate but a disrupting force, a caring love that disconcerts and unsettles the systems of this world, redefining power from the inside out and from the bottom up.
That was said in a sermon by Ivan Nicoletto, a Benedictine monk.
Remember that I referred to the drama and the trauma of Pentecost in my opening sentence. Did you ever think of Pentecost as a traumatic event? But it was and that is what Brother Nicoletto is talking about.
See, to the extent that the Holy Spirit is “mild and temperate,” WE have made it that way. And not just us; most of Christendom has conspired in making Christianity safely and solidly middle class, confirming of the status quo, all about pretty buildings and stained glass and candles.
And, boy, we Episcopalians are really good at “mild and temperate”! We like our religion calm, orderly, even a little boring. Certainly better boring than on fire with the Holy Spirit!
But as Brother Nicoletto says, the Spirit of God is a disrupting force, a love that disconcerts and unsettles and redefines the systems and the forces at work in the world.
Look what it did to those first recipients—the disciples of Jesus—and by “disciples” I do not mean merely the 12 Apostles but ALL of the many followers of Jesus. Remember the stories we have been reading since Easter.
The disciples were in disarray. Some headed back home, like the ones on the road to Emmaus. The fishermen went back to fishing. Jesus had to go cook breakfast for them on the beach to get their attention again. They huddled fearfully in upper rooms with the doors locked. Jesus had to appear to them over and over to keep them from fading into the woodwork.
Finally comes the ascension, and they stand their gazing up into heaven as Jesus disappears. An angel has to come jar them out of their stupor and tell them to go on into town and get ready for the next big thing.
Then comes the Spirit and builds a fire under them. Artists always depict the coming of the Spirit as dainty little flames dancing over their heads, and that’s kind of what Luke says, but… I’ve always thought building a fire under them a better description of what happened! There they were: Propelled onto the streets to preach and carry on so wildly that people thought they were drunk at 9:00 in the morning.
The Holy Spirit of God is a disrupting force. It changes things—all things. It transforms lives.
What was the miracle of Pentecost anyway? We tend to think it had to do only with language. We read this story every year and marvel that this bunch of English speakers—I mean, they must be English speakers because there it is in the Bible in plain English, right?
So we think the miracle is that this bunch of English speakers suddenly could speak a bunch of different languages! No, no. The miracle is that this bunch of people who had been moping around for weeks thinking and acting like the story was over..,, that the story had died with their friend…, suddenly these people are on fire for sharing the good news of the living God., the God who is up to something new under the sun, the God who snatches victory from the jaws of death and builds a fire under ordinary people such that they go out and change the world.
Hear that again. A bunch of ordinary people are lit on fire by the power of the Holy Spirit and they go out and change the world. That is the miracle of Pentecost.
Today, we wear our red and say “happy birthday” to the church.
Oh, my. We are sooo boring. Nobody will ever accuse US of being drunk at 10:00 on a Sunday morning, right?
Another of the gems I found in my search for words to convey the meaning of Pentecost is a guy by the name of Brennan Manning. I’m paraphrasing here in order to pull out a couple of phrases that strike true to me today.
Manning says that the whole story of the New Testament, the very life of Jesus, is absurd and meaningless, unless we get that God’s purpose was and is to make something new in the world—a new creation.
And that new creation, he says, is not just people with better morals. We get so tied up in morality, don’t we? And in evaluating people and judging whether they are sufficiently moral—according to our standards—and with trying to get others to live by our moral code. But that was not and is not God’s purpose.
Rather, God’s purpose, says Manning, is to “create a community of prophets and professional lovers.” Think about that. That’s what God wants us to be, a community of prophets and professional lovers who speak the truth of God’s love in a hurting world.
Manning goes on to describe that community as ‘men and women who surrender to the fire of the Spirit, who enter into the very heart of Christ, which is a flame that consumes, purifies, and sets everything aglow with peace, joy, boldness and extravagant, furious love.’
Imagine that! “Extravagant, furious love” afoot in the world. That’s the miracle of Pentecost. And that, brothers and sisters, is our call today. What a different world we will create, with God’s help and extravagant, furious love!
In the name of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. AMEN.
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