Come, Holy Spirit! Break open our hearts with love for each other.

Good morning.  As some of you might recall, I was with you last year on this Sunday of the Memorial Day weekend, which last year was the sixth Sunday of Easter.  Here we are again on this weekend that we remember people who have died in service of country… and this year we’re also celebrating the ‘birthday of the church’ – the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. 

The two occasions have a couple of things in common.  1) They’re both occasions that aren’t observed with the intentionality and focus they deserve.  If we take these days ‘to heart’, they change how we appreciate our common life together. And, 2) both days encourage communal reflection on self-sacrifice in service of the whole.  Both days go against the tide of individualism.  Pentecost specifically pushes toward new life together as diverse yet interdependent parts in one shared body. 

First, let’s remind ourselves of the original intent of Memorial Day.

MEMORIAL DAY

First observed as a ritual of remembrance and reconciliation in the latter part of the 19^th Century to honor fallen Confederate and Union soldiers following the Civil War, it was originally known as Decoration Day.  By the late 1960’s it had become a federal holiday and within a few years it was officially set to be honored nationally every final Monday of May.  For many people now it’s simply become a marker of the ending of the academic term, the unofficial beginning of summer, a day off, a weekend of car races and family vacations.  For others, however, it will always represent something more deeply personal and challenging – a memory and reality of mixed emotions about war, duty, honor, and country.  At its heart, it’s about honoring self-sacrifice in service of a communal good.

On Memorial Day, we’re to honor the millions of women and men who have dutifully given their lives defending and protecting our country’s liberty and freedom in an earthly sense. 

Tomorrow, as a nation, we observe in solemn reverence remembrance of our valiant dead.   Indeed, “My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command.” (John 15:12-14)

And, this particular year, these Memorial Day sentiments should only momentarily eclipse an even bigger, fiery Feast of Pentecost, during which we’re called to embrace a holy gift from God, given for our continued protection and guidance following the ascension of the one who died for all the nations of the world – Jesus Christ.

From life-giving to life-saving.  We began in ashes at Lent… we’re now being brought to new life with fire.

PENTECOST

Today, in a nation under God, as a church gathered in Christ’s name, we’re to celebrate new life – spiritual liberty and freedom – that has been given to us collectively (as the church) through the coming of the Holy Spirit after the death, resurrection, and ascension of our Christ Jesus.

Our Jewish ancestors observed Pentecost (which means ‘fiftieth day’) first as a harvest festival fifty days after the Passover.  It was an occasion of giving thanks for the first fruits of the harvest (also called Feast of Weeks or Shavout) – not focused on thanking the laborers, but on being thankful for the bounty from God.  Post the agrarian age, it becomes more of a celebration of God’s gift of the law (torah).  Jews from all over the area would have converged on Jerusalem for this festival celebration. 

So, we can imagine that along with the faithful followers of Jesus who were waiting further signs from their messiah who had just ascended, there were people from all over the region gathering in Jerusalem, coming from different places and speaking different languages and dialects.  It’s into this diverse gathering – amid confusion, expectancy, joy, and fear - that the Holy Spirit comes as spiritual fire and inspirational wind.

Granted, if we’re honest, just like many of us neglect the opportunity of Memorial Day and instead of indulge in pursuits of self-interest and recreation, many of us have domesticated Pentecost into a whimsical tale of a one-time event long ago that brings an annual splash of color into the church as we flip the fabrics from white to green.

In truth, however, the Holy Spirit is saying to us as God’s people that the birthing of Christ’s church is still in process and that we’re invited into this holy labor and all its starts, stops, pains, hopes, and expectancy.  As our early Christians ancestors were in years past, we are to serve in this age as Christ’s hands and hearts, midwifing the birth of a church (and kingdom) that the Spirit is still bringing into being.

This brings me to a parable that I invite us to consider as we contrast some of what’s called ‘church’ today with the awe-inspiring cacophony of Pentecost’s life-giving potential. This story has been called the “Parable of the Lifesaving Station.”  Has anyone here heard this?  Listen and consider the potential of the Holy Spirit at work as well as the perils when we attempt to domesticate it.

Parable of the Lifesaving Station

On a dangerous seacoast where shipwrecks often occur, there was once a crude little life-saving station. The building was just a hut, and there was only one boat, but the few devoted members kept a constant watch over the sea, and with no thought for themselves went out day and night tirelessly searching for those who were lost. Some of those who were saved and various others in the surrounding area wanted to become associated with the station and gave of their time, money, and effort to support its work. New boats were bought and new crews trained. The little lifesaving station grew.

Some of the members of the lifesaving station were unhappy that the building was so crude and poorly equipped. They felt that a more comfortable place should be provided as the first refuge of those saved from the sea. They replaced the emergency cots with beds and put better furniture in the enlarged building.

Now the lifesaving station became a popular gathering place for its members, and they decorated it beautifully because they used it as a sort of club. Fewer members were now interested in going to sea on life-saving missions, so they hired lifeboat crews to do this work. The lifesaving motif still prevailed in the club’s decorations, and there was a liturgical lifeboat in the room where the club’s initiations were held.

About this time a large ship wrecked off the coast, and the hired crews brought in boatloads of cold, wet, and half-drowned people. They were dirty and sick. The beautiful new club was in chaos. So the property committee immediately had a shower house built outside the club where victims of shipwrecks could be cleaned up before coming inside.

At the next meeting, there was a split among the club membership. Most of the members wanted to stop the club’s lifesaving activities as being unpleasant and a hindrance to the normal social life of the club. Some members insisted upon life-saving as their primary purpose and pointed out that they were still called a life-saving station. But they were finally voted down and told that if they wanted to save the lives of all the various kinds of people who were shipwrecked in those waters, they could begin their own lifesaving station. So they did.

As the years went by, the new station experienced the same changes that had occurred in the old. It evolved into a club, and yet another lifesaving station was founded. History continued to repeat itself, and if you visit that seacoast today, you will find a number of exclusive clubs along that shore. Shipwrecks are frequent in those waters, but most of the people drown. 

I read that this parable was written in 1953 by The Rev. Dr. Theodore O. Wedel, who was ordained an Episcopal priest in 1931, served as Canon of the Washington National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., and also served for a time as president of the Episcopal Church's House of Deputies. (http://www.ecfvp.org/vestrypapers/death-and-resurrection/parable-of-the-lifesaving-station/)

What does this story have to do with the lessons we’ve heard this Pentecost morning and what the Spirit continues to say to God’s people?

We are called to look around us and consider what kind of church we’ve built vs. what kinds of missions we continue to help birth.  Are organized for ‘club maintaining’ or are we gathered for life-saving.  Lord knows the waters remain perilous and rough out there and real life-saving missions are not undertaken in vain. 

And, for these life-saving missions, we’ve been given the paraclete of God to serve as our advocate, counselor, and comforter – a Spirit alongside us for help. 

The Psalmist says, “You send forth your Spirit, and they are created; and so you renew the face of the earth.” (Psalm 104:31)

The author of Acts says that “suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting” such that they were thrust out beyond their safe room into the streets where they began to speak after tongues of fire rested upon them. (Acts 2:1-4)

Paul says, “We know that all creation is still groaning and is in pain, like a woman about to give birth. The Spirit makes us sure about what we will be in the future. But now we groan silently, while we wait for God to show that we are his children… And this hope is what saves us…. In certain ways we are weak, but the Spirit is here to help us. For example, when we don’t know what to pray for, the Spirit prays for us in ways that cannot be put into words. All of our thoughts are known to God…. the Spirit prays for God’s people.” (Romans 8:22-24, 26-27, Contemporary English Version)

Jesus says earlier in the Gospel of John, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments [to love one another and Jesus has loved us]…. I will ask the Father and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever.  This is the Spirit of truth… You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you (among you).” (John 14:15, 16-17)

What do you say?  Have you experienced the Holy Spirit alongside and within you?  Where are you in this Spirit-driven mission?  Are you in need of life-saving?  Are you committed to the saving of lives? 

Today is a day to invite the Spirit to bring cleansing fire upon our business of busyness, to strike us with awe, and to breathe new life into us as people gathered in Christ’s name.

Let us pray.

God, before we remember tomorrow those who gave their lives for our country, we remember today that you gave the life of your only son for the entire world.  And, after His death and resurrection, before He ascended back you, He promised us the gift of your Holy Spirit.

Indeed, today we remember that your Spirit came to us, and continues to come to us to burn away barriers that separate us from each other and inspiring us in new ways of connecting with each other so that we might understand as well as be understood as a new community, as diverse living members of the one body that you intend for us to become.  Grant us the patience and endurance for this work.

Continue to break our hearts for what breaks yours.  Help us not to fall into comfortable complacency in clubhouses while so many of our neighbors are in need of mission-driven life-saving stations. 

Come, Holy Spirit! 

Take our tongues and speak through them in ways that others can understand.  Take our hands and work through them to continue redeeming the world.  Take our hearts and set them on fire with new love for each other. Strengthen our resolve to follow the command of God’s love incarnate, to love each other even more than we love ourselves, loving our neighbors as Jesus would have us to love them. 

AMEN.