permeance

In preparation for officiating at a wedding I consulted a long out-of-print book, The Oxford American Prayer Book Commentary, and in the marriage rite I found a prayer that begins,

 

O ETERNAL God, Creator and Preserver of all mankind, Giver of all spiritual grace, the Author of everlasting life;  (1928 BCP Marriage)

Reflecting on that prayer, I realized that it applied well beyond that moment - that special moment indeed when we invite the blessing of the spirit upon the now-to-be wed couple. It applies to all sorts of occasions. And I noted that the spirit, the holy spirit, is there in the marriage rite, as it is in pastoral and episcopal offices of all kinds, from marriage to baptism to burial, reconciliation of a penitent and ministrations to the sick or dying, from confirmation to ordination to the celebration of a new ministry and the consecration of a sacred space. Some of these may come up soon in this congregation. 

And of course in our new (1979) prayer book all of these rites and offices take place in the context of the community that is gathered in the Eucharist. We are one body, and we are one in the Spirit. 

The Spirit gives us utterance in different ways, expressions in different gifts. The Spirit gives us understanding and inspiration in different ways and by different means. This is the one Spirit that God breathed upon the waters at creation, that inspired ecstatic prophesying - dancing and exclaiming in praise - inside and outside the camp on Sinai, that frightened the prophet Joel. 

This is the same Spirit that reversed the babble of the Tower into coherent speech for a diverse multitude on the first day of the church, the day of Pentecost.

It’s amazing! It’s as if you’ve been running around a foreign country and you’ve finally bumped into people who are speaking your language. 

We remember, as every school child must, that the feast of Pentecost expands for us the meaning of an earlier festival, the Jewish feast of Shavuot, that was a harvest feast at first, then became the day of thanksgiving for the giving of the Law to the people, through Moses, on Sinai. 

How is the gift of Law, of Torah, to a distant people at a distant time, almost mythical, to help us today? How is the experience of the gathered disciples and their hearers on the day of Pentecost, two thousand years ago, to make a difference to us now? 

Will we, gathered or scattered, hear, each in our own heart language, the word of God? Will we be inspired? Will we act - apparently crazy - as the Israelites did, dancing and singing and praising God? Will we - apparently sober - go out and do the things Jesus commanded us to do?

Will we visit the sick, pray with the despairing, speak out for justice, reach out to the lonely? Will we listen to each other in solemn assembly, seeking the guidance of the Spirit in our decisions? 

Will we have reason to? And how will we encounter the Spirit in our own life and times?

The Rev. Kaji Douša, senior pastor at Park Avenue Christian Church in New York City, traveled to Tijuana, Mexico, in 2018 to provide pastoral care to asylum seekers. Douša has said, “To reject a migrant is to cast away God’s angels, which I am unwilling to do.” https://theconversation.com/when-faith-says-to-help-migrants-and-the-law-says-dont-203087

On the border now they talk of encounters with migrants, asylum seekers, refugees, and the desperate wanderers who lose their way. Encounters. Better perhaps than simply saying arrests, as many have entertained angels unawares. This week I encountered a man who asked directions to the bus station. I gave them to him. Then I thought, too late, that I could have given him a ride in the heat of the day. 

There is a story in the book of Genesis. In the heat of the day, while he was sitting in the door of his tent, Abraham encountered three men, strangers to him, who came to him at the Oaks of Mamre, and he offered them hospitality. The hospitality of his tent, his household, his family. 

Genesis 18:1-15, (21:1-7)

Sometimes all someone asks of us is directions. Sometimes we are offered the chance to do much more. If we have eyes to see. The three strangers were indeed grateful for the hospitality they received and in turn gave a blessing only they could give. Your wife, they said, will at last bear to you the child you both have sought. And that child - through its descendants - will become the host of the world.

We do not meet God in the person of three angels, dressed as strangers who wander through the desert. (Do we?) We do not meet Jesus in the flesh. (Though sometimes we wonder.)

The Holy Spirit is the God we encounter. We have not seen the Father, and Jesus, since his Ascension, has left us in the care of the Comforter, the Advocate, the Teacher; the one who comes alongside us, and yet remains unseen. Unseen, that is, except through permeance. 

Permeating through all of our encounters with each other, and, all unawares, with angels. Pervading too all our days, ordinary and especially significant. 

Look through the prayer book pastoral offices and you will see the Spirit landing upon the baptized, inhabiting the confirmed, blessing the married, consoling the bereaved and accompanying the sick even unto the death bed. And it is the Spirit of God that enables us in turn to comfort, celebrate, cajole, and encourage, the baptized, the married, the bereaved, the sick and dying, the joyous and even the oblivious. 

Look through the Episcopal offices and you will see the Spirit invoked upon the ordained, and the presence of the Spirit called upon to bless new ministries and sacred places.

Listen as we celebrate Eucharist, or say our daily prayers. You will hear the Spirit speaking. For the Spirit is here present among us, and through that invisible permeating influence God is here.

Hear the Word. Touch the cup. Taste the bread. Say “peace” to your neighbor. Come Holy Spirit. Come to us. Amen.

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Sunday, May 28, 2023: for the Episcopal Church of Saint Matthew, Tucson, Arizona.

permeance

'Cause I feel like I-I've been running around a foreign country and I've finally bumped into two people who can speak English.  (https://transcripts.thedealr.net/script.php/yesterday-2019-XtmS)

Veni Sancte Spiritus (Taizé) Come Holy Spirit... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8yOAxWyfvA 

A meditation based on this sermon appeared on the Arizona Daily Star website June 4th 2023: https://tucson.com/lifestyles/faith-and-values/encounters-with-the-spirit-are-all-around-us/article_a00ae510-ff02-11ed-a83c-2788b4905516.html

The Lessons Appointed for Use on the Day of Pentecost (Whitsunday) Year A:

• Acts 2:1-21
• or Numbers 11:24-30
• 1 Corinthians 12:3b-13
• or Acts 2:1-21
• John 20:19-23
• or John 7:37-39
• Psalm 104:25-35, 37

O God, who on this day taught the hearts of your faithful people by sending to them the light of your Holy Spirit: Grant us by the same Spirit to have a right judgment in all things, and evermore to rejoice in his holy comfort; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.Amen.

majestic harmony

Psalm 104:25-35 (Coverdale)

25  So is the great and wide sea also *
 wherein are things creeping innumerable, both small and great beasts.
26  There go the ships, and there is that Leviathan *
 whom thou hast made to take his pastime therein.
27  These wait all upon thee *
 that thou mayest give them meat in due season.
28  When thou givest it them they gather it *
 and when thou openest thy hand they are filled with good.
29  When thou hidest thy face they are troubled *
 when thou takest away their breath they die, and are turned again to their dust.
30  When thou lettest thy breath go forth they shall be made *
 and thou shalt renew the face of the earth.
31  The glorious Majesty of the Lord shall endure for ever *
 the Lord shall rejoice in his works.
32  The earth shall tremble at the look of him *
 if he do but touch the hills, they shall smoke.
33  I will sing unto the Lord as long as I live *
 I will praise my God while I have my being.
34  And so shall my words please him *
 my joy shall be in the Lord.
35  As for sinners, they shall be consumed out of the earth, and the ungodly shall come to an end *
 praise thou the Lord, O my soul, praise the Lord.

Balance, proportion, harmony: day and night, land and sea, boat and sea creature, all are part of the progression of images of nature in harmony. What drives imbalance in this imagined world? Only humankind can break this Eden’s heart.

And so we do. But who shall free us from these bonds of sin? Only the same Spirit that breezed across the face of the waters of the primordial sea, only the Spirit that comes upon the assembled multitude of disciples like wind and tongues of flame, only the same Spirit that took Moses up into a cloud to receive the gift of Torah, only the same Spirit that Jesus, ascending into a cloud, bestowed upon his people.

Majestic in its sweep, magical in its harmony, the 104th psalm is a song of a world made by God and dependent on God. We, all creatures, depend on God for our being.

A marriage prayer in an old prayer book addresses God as “Creator and preserver of all humankind, Giver of all perpetual grace, Author of everlasting life” and in all those modes it is the Spirit that makes God known and makes the will of the Father and the obedience of the Son efficacious in our daily lives. 

We are confronted with a choice: to praise God and take our place in the natural order, or to consume ourselves with greed, ambition, folly, as we fend for ourselves – as if we could. All creatures, great and small, are part of the realm of God, made by God. Only humankind can ignore it - for a time. That is our unique freedom, a role we do not share. 

Unlike the lilies of the field, that gather not nor do they spin, humans are blessed - not cursed - to have a role in their own provision, in bringing forth bread for strength, wine for joy, oil to make faces shine, as co-creators in partnership with a heavenly partner. We alone can disrupt the harmony but we can also take conscious part in the song.

That is part of the message conveyed by the psalms, especially Psalm 104. 

In his visionary poetry William Blake conveys both the majesty and the mystery of God’s creative power. In one poem he calls us beyond the physical surface of things to its mystic meaning: what are the tents of Israel that shine so bright on the Red Sea shore? It seems that like the psalmist the poet sees a created world that has its source beyond itself, and to apprehend that source requires religion to mediate between other modes of perception and experience, including scientific, religious, aesthetic, and moral. That is, between cognitive - rational, emotional - affective, social-political, moral-ethical, and all other scopes of human experience, there can be one that, Spirit-infused, takes us past our own limits as creature or creatures, to apprehend in the light of divinity a purpose beyond the immediate, or indeed an inapprehensible mystery beyond the knowable.

Mock On, Mock On, Voltaire, Rousseau

Mock on, mock on, Voltaire, Rousseau;
Mock on, mock on; 'tis all in vain!
You throw the sand against the wind,
And the wind blows it back again.
And every sand becomes a gem
Reflected in the beams divine;
Blown back they blind the mocking eye,
But still in Israel's paths they shine.
The Atoms of Democritus
And Newton's Particles of Light
Are sands upon the Red Sea shore,
Where Israel's tents do shine so bright.

-- William Blake (1757 – 1827)

Baptism on Pentecost 2018

What does it mean to be baptized? How many of us even remember the occasion? If we don't we are blessed if there are some around us who do: who can say to us later, we remember when you were baptized and this is what we undertook. Not only to remind you of your baptism, of your Christianity, but to remind you of your humanity. Baptism is an occasion to call each one of us and all of us to our best selves - in the presence of Christ. It is a call, as we will find when we recite four baptismal promises, to become fully ourselves in several ways, not as individuals only or tribal members but as human beings. Alone and together we are all in the image of God. In baptism we are called to remember this solidarity - and this individuality. Will you - on behalf of the newly baptized and as members of the house of faith, recall the devotion expressed in the body and bread, the cup and the blood, the oil, the water, the story, and the people, that mediate grace to you - that bridge you between sacred and simple? These little things - these words, these actions, these tastes, and touches - draw us near to the holy - and nearer to being fully ourselves. So go now and prepare - for a life of joy and sorrow, of hope and faith - of hope beyond any surrender, and of faith in what is beyond imagining but abundant in each of us - the enduring presence of a gracious and faithful - and loving - God.

Pentecost 2011

The lessons on Pentecost all encourage new openness, openness to the spirit and to ways of being the church, the people of God in the world.

There are many ways of being church. As there are many gifts but one spirit, for individuals, so for congregations, there is one spirit expressed through many collective gifts or charisms - ways of being church, of manifesting the grace of God in the ministry of the church.

Diana Butler Bass, in her book, Christianity for the Rest of Us: How the Neighborhood Church is Transforming the Faith (Harper San Francisco, September 2006) described her research into the many ways local churches manifest the work of the spirit.

Hospitality, discernment, healing, contemplation, testimony, diversity, justice, worship, reflection, beauty: these are aspects or charisms of ten particular neighborhood churches - Lutheran, Episcopal, and others - that have found in finding and celebrating the gifts God has given them, new ways to be transformed in the renewing of their minds and the refreshing of their faith.

Congregations find ways of being church that are theirs - and yet are gifts to the neighborhoods around them. All the different ways of doing church have a similarity. They are ways of being church in openness to the Spirit and in obedience to the word of God.

Make disciples among all the peoples of the earth, our Lord commanded: baptize them and teach them all Jesus taught the disciples, and remember him - remember him in the breaking of the bread and in the prayers. Be open to God’s leading, leading into new life.

What we find in the lessons of Pentecost, the lessons for today, are invitations, exhortations, and examples, of how to be open to the Spirit.

Open your selves to the spirit’s presence.

Open your self to the experience of God to be had in welcoming the stranger, visiting the sick or the prisoner, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, giving water to those who thirst.

Open your selves to the continuing work of the Creator, doing a new thing now in the midst of the earth.

Open your hearts to receive God’s love.
Open your hands to give that love on to others.

Open your lips and proclaim God’s praise.

Open the shades and let light stream in.
Open the windows and let the Spirit blow through stale corridors.
Open the doors and go forth to love and serve the Lord.

***

The breath of God that moved across the face of the waters on the first day of creation is still moving, moving where it will. Through the open doors of our souls and churches a fresh breeze is blowing - it is the Spirit, enlivening us, enlightening us, and filling us with the light of Christ.

In the first lesson we hear today Eldad and Medad are prophesying in the camp. Moses, tell them to stop! Joshua says. But Moses says: Are you jealous on my account? Would that all God’s people would prophesy.

When a portion of the spirit that had been given to Moses was taken and distributed to seventy, the gift was not diminished. It is not a limited quantity. There is no scarcity of the grace of God; there is no limit to the power of God.

The gift of the Spirit is a gift that grows in the giving; it is a flame that grows as it touches on each of us.

It grows in blessing God’s people.

And the people of God, gathered all in one place on the day of Pentecost, awaited the coming of the Spirit. All began speaking one message, with many voices, in many languages - so it was for those who heard the word of God, the proclamation of God’s mighty deeds.

Each heard the good news in the language of their own heart. That is the real miracle. Each of them heard the word in the way that reached them, that touched their souls.

The people of God were proclaiming God’s sovereignty, the coming of the reign of God, and to all people. For, as Joel said, everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.

This is the birth of the Church, in the experience of the Spirit, a gift that grows in the giving.

What it tells us is that we live in a world ruled by a generous God, a life-giving, hope-renewing, boundless God. And the gifts of the spirit are all given for one reason: mission.

The gifts of the Spirit are not an end in themselves, and certainly not an excuse for wallowing in self-importance.

(You are significant, for one and the same reason: you are precious in the sight of God, the God who made you, the God who redeems you in the death and life and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the God who loves you. You are significant because you are God’s child and his Beloved ones.)

The gifts of the Spirit are not a privilege for a select few, but a gift that grows in the giving. They are gifts for the whole church, and for the whole world.

Even in the Gospel story, when wind and fire are hushed and quiet, Jesus comes into the room where they are all gathered and says, Peace. Peace be among you. And receive holy Breath.

He sends them into mission - and he gives the Spirit to carry out the mission.

They were gathered, locked together in fear, but they became open to a new possibility - the new possibility that the continuing presence of Christ brings.

Receive holy breath. Open your souls to the holy One, the one who, through wind and flame, and peaceful presence, comes to you, empowers you, and sends you forth, renewed, to spread the good news - to be the good news - and to bring others into the celebration.

In the spirit’s power. Amen.

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a fresh start

Pentecost 2010

Come Holy Spirit and kindle the fire that is in us.
Take our lips and speak through them.
Take our hearts and see through them.
Take our souls and set them on fire. Amen.

In the name of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.

The kingdom is within you, waiting to emerge in your mind, your heart, your words, your deeds; the kingdom is all around you, waiting to break in to this world, through your mind, your heart, your words, your deeds - and the unbridled work of the Spirit.

In the prayer that Jesus taught us, we pray both 'deliver us from evil' -praying for ourselves- and 'thy kingdom come' - praying for the world.*

We ask for our own needs - give us this day our daily bread - and for the needs of others. We ask forgiveness for ourselves, as we ourselves forgive others.

But above all, and first of all, we have the temerity to address the Holy One as 'Father' - not in our own merit but in the name of Jesus. And we, having gone so far as that, then praise his name - and ask for his will to be done.

That will, the will of God to be carried out by the action of the Spirit in the world, has implications for us both as individuals, in our experience of God, and as members of the body of Christ, who are charged to carry forward his work in the world. Love’s redeeming work is at work in each of us, transforming us into the image of holiness each of us is to bear, and it is at work in all of us, transforming our work in the world into the work of the Holy Spirit - if we let it.

In our prayers sometimes we focus on one or the other - our own need for God, our own desire for God, our own intention to live a life that is worthy of our calling to be people of God; or on the need to transform the world in his service, to reach out to others with the good news of Christ, or to work for transformation of that world into the peaceable, righteous kingdom of God.

These two elements, personal and corporate, inward and outward in focus, seem lost in tension. And yet both are present in the day we celebrate today, the day of Pentecost. For in the upper room where they stayed, and where they prayed, the disciples, men and women, the assembled multitude of brothers and sisters, gathered to await what Jesus had promised them: an Advocate, the Holy Spirit, who was to lead them into all truth.

They did not know what to expect. Neither do we. But on that day, some 1980 years ago, there came upon them a noise like a great wind, filling the house, and then the apparition of tongues of fire. What came upon them then was the gift of speech in languages not their own; not their own, but known to others. For soon, these, summoned by the sound of the mighty wind, gathered.

What is going on? Are these people drunk? They cannot be! The bars are not even open yet--it’s only nine o’clock in the morning. What is going on, Peter said, is what Joel foretold. The spirit of God is being poured out upon all flesh. The old will dream dreams; the young will see visions. There will be portents of fire and blood and drifting smoke; the sun shall be blotted out.

It was a vision of apocalypse--of the end of the age. And it was the end of the age--the age of the rule of the Prince of this world. For the kingdom of God was clearly at hand.

What the people witnessed, what they experienced, when they came to investigate, was this startling phenomenon: no matter where they were from, no matter what their native language was, they heard the disciples talking in it, speaking of the great deeds God had done. The good news spoke to them in the language of their hearts.

And they heard the good news--and responded to it. Once Peter explained to them what was really going on, how the Lord had called to them through Jesus whom they had despised, they turned and repented, seeking to do what was right. Call upon the Lord, Peter said, just as the prophet told you. And be baptized in Jesus’ name for the forgiveness of sins.

In the upper room, in the midst of the wind and the tongues of flame, Peter called upon them to repent and be saved. And he gave them the charge of seeking baptism.

(What does baptism mean? What does it do? What does it imply? How does it empower the people of God? How does it call upon them to act?)

Baptism we so often remember is a dying to the old self, the self that lays claim to the world in its own desire. Baptism is a washing-away of the stain of sin, of self-centered living, of pride. But it is also a rising--a rising to new life in Christ, made new, reborn, in the Spirit’s power, a fresh start.

It is a fresh start--but not on the old path. For in baptism we are called to leave the old ‘me’ behind, and to seek the kingdom of God first. For we are assured that all we need will come from that.

What we need then, is to carry out the mission of our baptism, the mission given to the disciples and their hearers so long ago, that is encapsulated for us in the promises we make at Baptism, and take again as our agenda in the renewal of the baptismal covenant. Pentecost is a day for that; just as much as it is a day to welcome new converts, it is a day to renew ourselves in Christ.

Conversion can be seen as taking responsibility for our own growth and development. You can take that personally; we can take that corporately, together, as the people of God called together in this place, at this time.

The people gathered in the upper room, in that place, at that time, felt individually spoken to and corporately called, as the body of Christ, into new relationships with each other, God, and themselves. They needed to know what to do, where to start, how to make a new beginning.

And they began with taking on the new life, the life in Christ, that we are promised to. And that we, too, promise to lead, as we take on ourselves the task and the glory and the joy of Christ.

Here today we have a chance to renew our own baptismal covenant, in the words that echo the creed - the Nicene Creed - and in the promises that follow, to flesh out and make real in our own lives the words that echo the words spoken so long ago, as Christians of old, in the baptismal rite, took on the life of Christ as their own.

Let us now renew our own baptismal covenant.


The Baptismal Covenant (Book of Common Prayer, USA, 1979, p. 304-305)


May the Lord, the God of hope, the God of peace, the God of joy, and of strength, fill us with the Spirit, giving us the gifts to share that we may bear the fruits of the Father’s will in our lives. AMEN.


Come Holy Spirit and kindle the fire that is in us.
Take our lips and speak through them.
Take our hearts and see through them.
Take our souls and set them on fire. Amen.


Acts 2:1-21
Psalm 104:25-35, 37
Romans 8:14-17
John 14:8-17, (25-27)

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*Dorothee Soelle, Thinking about God: An Introduction to Theology (Trinity Press International, 1991)


John Carlin, Playing the Enemy: Nelson Mandela and the Game That Made a Nation (Penguin, 2008). Basis of the film "Invictus" directed by Clint Eastwood (Warner Bros., 2009).

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