Sermon Delivered at Church of the Good Shepherd
Fort Lee, New Jersey
Sunday, May 23, 2021, at 8:00 and 10:00 a.m.
By the Rev. Stephen C. Galleher
The Day of Pentecost Is Come!
“When the Feast of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. Without warning there was a sound like a strong wind, gale force—no one could tell where it came from. It filled the whole building. Then, like a wildfire, the Holy Spirit spread through their ranks, and they started speaking in a number of different languages as the Spirit prompted them.”
(Acts 2: 1-21)
“[God] on this day you opened the way of eternal life to every race and nation.”
(Collect, Day of Pentecost)
The appearances of the risen Christ are completed. Christ has taken his place in heaven, at the right hand of God. His earthly pilgrimage, we are told in the story, is over. But something quite cataclysmic happened, in fact, is happening. This story won’t go away. This drama has more unfolding to do. Has the Christ, in fact, gone anywhere?
Let’s suppose that you have been invited to the most wonderful party in your life. Perhaps you have already gone to such a party. Perhaps you only dream of such an ecstatic event. But you go and you have the time of your life. If you’re having that much fun, then it stands to reason that you don’t really want the party to end, right? “Let the party continue!” you yell. And, guess what? It does continue.
This, in a word, is Pentecost. It is one of those events that you simply never forget. The promise of this event, the Pentecost event, is that it need not mark one event in your life, but can be a prescription for a life of continual joy.
Well, we demur, let’s not be so fast. Every good thing comes to an end, we argue. Ok, if we want to be sourpusses, but is this what the risen Christ said? He said, “I am with you always, even to the ends of the earth.”
That may be, but remember at that party, there was a lot of babbling. Everyone seemed to be talking at once, and we couldn’t understand a word—or at least, so it seemed. We’ve been to parties like this. We look for a quiet corner or an empty room—or even better, we just leave.
Indeed, if we look at the various standoffs in our lives, there is a lot of babbling, people talk at and past one another with no one really being heard. Husbands and wives, parents and children: lots of talking, lots of scolding, lots of unpleasant sounds. Is it any wonder that there is more talking than listening?
And what about what is taking place between the political parties in our country? Isn’t it remarkable that hearings are held, interviews conducted and yet one side talks and talks and the other side seems not to hear much of what is said. What gives? How can there be conversation, much less harmony, when both sides are blocking hearing what the other side is saying? I know in my own observation of the political scene, that one side seems unreasonable, obstinate, even obtuse—and, yes, a danger to the future of our democracy. But the sad irony is that this is precisely what that side thinks of the side I am on! A lot of babbling but not enough listening.
And then there is the international scene, fraught with tension, bombings, outright war. Do you think that Jews and the Palestinians will ever make peace with one another? I feel very strongly about this issue, and I’m sure both sides in that decades-long conflict feel that their case is the just one, in fact, perhaps the only right one. Goodness, think of the bloodshed over thinking we are right! A lot of babbling, a lot of screaming, but very little listening.
What does it take to stop the babbling and start listening, start attending to what is being said.
I am not sure that tensions in conflict, whether in the family, in our national politics, or among peoples and nations, can cease until we start listening in a new way. You know and I know that the important things that have happened to you in your lives took place above or around or in spite of the words communicated.
The Pentecost event took place when people from many tribes and nations started understanding one another, even as they spoke their own language. How did this happen? What was going on? What was going on was that their hearts were opening? The silence below the words was breaking forth in song.
This can happen in the home. One of my favorite stories is that of the couple who were on the brink of separating. Tension had been building for months. One morning, the husband came down the steps in his usual sour and defensive mood and he found his wife sitting at the breakfast table scribbling frantically on a piece of paper.
“What are you doing?” he inquired.
“I’m writing down all the things about you that drive me crazy!” she replied.
“Oh, you have a list too?” he blurted out.
This was all that was needed to break the tension. They looked at each other and began to laugh. Perhaps the healing could then begin. Something deeper than words was communicated. They listened in that moment and understood one another.
In East Jerusalem this week, a lot of protests were broken up by Israeli soldiers. And you know who was participating in those demonstrations? Jews and Palestinians together. Jews and Palestinians shoulder to shoulder, sick and tired of age-old differences leading to mayhem and death. That is precisely what was going on at Pentecost.
What have been your Pentecost experiences? Have you had one? I would bet you have. And I wager that you have had more than one, when something broke through that transcended words.
Do you realize that music transcends words? Sure, our songs and hymns most often have lyrics, beautiful, inspiring lyrics. But the music itself has no lyrics. It speaks for itself, or rather it sings for itself.
Songs without words. That is Pentecost.
There was a medieval mystic named Mechthild of Magedburg. I had never heard of her until recently. She lived in the early 13th Century in present-day Germany. She was the first mystic, in fact, to write in German.
She writes:
Lie down in the Fire
See and taste the Flowing
Godhead through your being;
Feel the Holy Spirit
Moving and compelling
You within the Flowing
Fire and Light of God.
This is Pentecost. It is about a fire that does not go out. It is about a joy that never leaves us. It is about the promise of Christ that love is permanent. It does not ever go anywhere.
On a YouTube interview with Gene Wilder, the Hollywood actor and comedian, the interviewer noted that in Gene Wilder’s book, he seemed to be quite happy after living through a lot of ups and downs and tragedies. Gene Wilder replied, “I am happier than I have been in my entire life.”
How many of us can say, honestly, “I am happier than I have been in my entire life!” Is this not the theme and the promise of Pentecost?
Amen