Spirit of Life
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SPIRIT OF LIFE
The Rev. J. Donald Waring
Grace Church in New York
The Day of Pentecost
May 19, 2024
But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them: “Men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to what I say. Indeed, these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o’clock in the morning. (Acts 2:14-15)
A character from literature who often comes to my mind on the Day of Pentecost is Miss Havisham, from Charles Dickens’ novel, Great Expectations. The story goes that many years ago, at twenty-minutes to nine on the morning of her wedding, Miss Havisham was one shoe shy of being dressed and ready. In the dining hall of the house a great cake and feast awaited the guests. The bride’s maids were ready to put on their gowns, and the household staff was making last-minute preparations.
At twenty-minutes to nine, however, Miss Havisham’s hopes and dreams came to an abrupt end. Just then a cruel note arrived from the groom, informing the would-be bride that the wedding was not to be. At that moment Miss Havisham stopped her life. She stopped all the clocks at twenty-minutes to nine. She pulled the drapes over every window to block off all sunlight. She vowed to spend the rest of her life sitting in her wedding gown – minus one shoe – among the rotting cake and yellowing decorations of a day that almost was.
Miss Havisham’s chosen way of being turns her into a living corpse. Years later a young boy named Pip is brought in to meet her, and he reflects on the encounter: Once I had been taken to see some ghastly waxwork at the Fair, representing I know not what impossible personage lying in state. Once I had been taken… to see a skeleton in the ashes of a rich dress, that had been dug out of a vault under the church pavement. Now, waxwork and skeleton seemed to have dark eyes that moved and looked at me. I should have cried out, if I could.
You may be wondering: of all the people to think of on the Day of Pentecost, why Miss Havisham? True, she’s fictional. True, she’s a caricature. But do you know her? Have you met her? Today we celebrate the gift that she and all of us need – God’s gift of the Holy Spirit. In the reading from the Acts of the Apostles (2:1-21) we heard the account of what happened in Jerusalem. It had been ten days since the risen Jesus had departed from the company of his disciples. He was gone. Whatever the Easter experience was, it was over. At twenty minutes to nine, the disciples were huddled in a room with others who spoke different languages. They had no purpose. They had no fire. Then came nine o’clock in the morning. Suddenly a sound like the rush of a mighty wind filled the house, and they saw visions of divided flames of fire resting on each of them. Everyone began speaking about the mighty works of God, but those who listened heard the proclamations in their own native language. It was Peter who eventually stood up and declared that God has poured out his Spirit upon them.
But what, you might ask, or more appropriately, who is the Holy Spirit? The Holy Spirit is the Lord, the giver of life, as we affirm each week in the Nicene Creed. The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of God, the Spirit of Christ who was present and active at the moment of creation. The Holy Spirit is God’s personality that powers and animates the whole creation. The Holy Spirit is the mystery within you. You lie on your bed on a sleepless night and you sometimes fleetingly grasp in yourself a presence that is more than yourself, distinct from yourself, yet impossible to disentangle from yourself and your history. What is it? Who is it? Is it merely excess static from the firing of your own brain chemistry? No, assuming you are not filled with new wine, chances are this is the Holy Spirit. This is the Spirit of God whom Jesus promised to send. This is the Lord, the giver of life, who has entangled and entwined his Spirit with your spirit. This is the Spirit of God in you. The Holy Spirit is the mystery within you.
The Holy Spirit is the mystery within the church. When God poured out the Holy Spirit upon the disciples in Jerusalem, they received new and abundant life that you will find in the church still today. In fact, Pentecost is often called the Birthday of the Church, because it is the Spirit of Christ in our midst that makes us unique. The Spirit gets us going and gives us purpose. But where do we find the Spirit of Christ, and how do we share it with the Miss Havishams of the world? Must it be a dramatic experience that overpowers your personality? No, not at all. My experience of the Spirit is a slow and steady process of God’s giving divine life to me. I see – I detect – I experience the Holy Spirit in Christian community all the time. Jesus promised that whenever two or three – or twelve or two-hundred of us gather in his name, he is in the midst of us. I believe him. By the power of the Spirit, he is here, lifting us up through the Christian community.
I remember a time years ago when our youngest son, Luke, was a baby. When Luke was born he required a number of complicated surgeries to correct a cleft lip and palate. The procedures were emotionally draining for Stacie and me. What is more, we had three-year old James who needed our attention. We were exhausted beyond the normal fatigue of sleep-deprived young parents.
One Sunday evening in Advent, the youth group of the church where I was the rector was sponsoring a spaghetti dinner. They gave it the Advent theme: Christ is coming. Be Ready. Eat Spaghetti! So the whole church gathered in the parish hall to eat spaghetti, as if eating loads of pasta was exactly what Jesus would want to see us doing were he to return. Luke was eight-months old at the time, and we had him in our lap. Another major surgery was about a month away. Suddenly, a member of the church asked if she could hold the baby. Then the person next to her wanted a turn, as did the next person. Before we knew it, Luke was crowd-surfing through the spaghetti dinner. I looked halfway across the large room, and people were holding him up, making him laugh, and passing him along.
It was a moment of deep relief for me. I saw our baby son not as one under the threat of another surgery, but as if he were walking in the air – flying through the air like the little boy in the British animated film, The Snowman (listen for the song during Communion today). I’ve always remembered the scene as a parable of Christian community at its best. And I thought of it last weekend, when that baby, now all grown up, walked across the stage and received his college degree, with honors. The Spirit of God lifts us up through each other.
The Spirit of God is to be found in the Word – in the Scriptures. What we say in the Episcopal Church is that the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments contain all things necessary for salvation. But not all things in the Scriptures are necessary for salvation. Do you see the distinction? It takes gatherings of two or three to discern and learn where the mind of God is in the passages. Lately, we are studying four short books of the Bible: Ruth, Jonah, Titus, and Jude. Last Wednesday twelve of us read Ruth together, and I was stunned by what a salacious tale it is. Naomi, who is actually the main character, is a bitter widow who believes God has taken everything from her. Yet God’s will is that she not wind up like Miss Havisham. God works through imperfect people, and even Naomi’s schemes to bring her salvation. Imagine: God works through imperfect people to bring about salvation. That was our takeaway. There was the will and the way of God. There was the Spirit leading us into all truth. We decided that the story was saucy enough to be made into a Hollywood film, starring Jennifer Lawrence as Ruth, George Clooney as Boaz, and Kathy Bates as Naomi.
Where else in the church do we find the Spirit of the Lord? The Spirit of the Lord comes to us through the water of Baptism, and the bread and wine of the Eucharist. Indeed, we trust in the ancient wisdom of the church that the outward signs and the inward grace of the sacraments are inextricably bound together, whether we happen to feel it or not. When we baptize Theo and William this morning, they will receive the Spirit. When you receive the bread and the wine of the Eucharist today, the Spirit will come to you. If your heart isn’t strangely warmed in the moment, relax. The Lord of hosts is with you. The Spirit of the Lord warming the church is not like a microwave oven. The Spirit is more like a crock pot, or a slow cooker. Slowly does the Spirit help us to grow into the full stature of Christ.
That being said, sometimes the power and the presence of the Spirit will dawn on you. On a recent, non-descript Sunday, when I was presiding at the Eucharist, reading the prayer of consecration, the Spirit of the Lord fell upon me. It was sometime between nine and ten o’clock in the morning. For an instant the full magnitude of what God was extending to us through the bread and wine became strikingly real: deliverance from evil, error, sin, and death. Meanwhile the door to worthiness, truth, righteousness, and life – life eternal – is being held open for us. I saw no flames of fire, nor did I feel any rushing wind. But I knew for a certainty the truth of what we’ll sing in our final hymn: the Spirit and the gifts are ours.
Sadly, Miss Havisham stopped her clocks at twenty minutes to nine. What I would say to her is come, receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. Come, be part of this community that will lift you up. Come, immerse yourself in the Word and learn of the surprising ways that God works to save us. Come, receive the bread of heaven and the cup of salvation. Be filled with Christ’s heavenly benediction, so that he may dwell in you, and you in him. For these reasons and more I am excited about Grace Church. I’ve been here for twenty years, but I am now more excited than ever about the particular gifts we we have to offer to all sorts and conditions of people. And yes, I am excited about our capital campaign. I hope you will participate in it. I hope that Grace Church is here for centuries to come. Why? Well, the church is hardly a perfect institution, but it is always poised toward divine possibility. Nine o’clock in the morning is always at hand.
Last week was Mother’s Day. In addition to watching Luke’s graduation, I was admiring Stacie’s fierce love for our two sons. Also I was thinking about my own mother, who died a few years ago, just shy of her 91st birthday. My father was an Episcopal priest. He was always busy, always frugal. My mother was his loving wife and faithful companion. She always looked forward to retirement, when they could travel, go on cruises, see the world, and enjoy a leisurely life together. Then, just a week before Dad was going to announce his retirement to the vestry, he suffered a cerebral hemorrhage and died in his sleep. My mother was a widow at 65. Her grief was devastating. All of her hopes and plans, dashed.
Mom easily and understandably could have stopped the clocks at twenty minutes to nine, and spent the rest of her life bemoaning was taken from her. But she did not. After an appropriate season of mourning, she arose. She threw open the curtains and started the clocks. She downsized the house, moved close to two of her three sons, and immersed herself into being the unfiltered, unfettered matriarch of the family She spent money in a way that Dad never would have allowed: taking the extended family on annual vacations that pulled us together and gave us memories we’ll never forget. She allowed nine o’clock to come. It didn’t look the way she expected it, but the last 25 years of her life were an incredible blessing. I was always tremendously proud of the way she embrace life again.
What was the source of her arising? What it force of will? Was it the power of positive thinking? No, it was the quiet, steady gift of the Holy Spirit. She believed in the Holy Spirit, who is the Lord, the giver of life. She trusted in the Communion of Saints. She looked for the resurrection of the dead – especially in herself – and the life of the world to come. She was filled with the Spirit of God.
That same Spirit of Life is available to you and me every day – to lift us up, to lead us into all truth, and to draw us into fellowship with the Father and Son. In the kingdom of God, nine o’clock in the morning is always just at hand. Wait for it!