sermon excerpts: "Fire and Water: Faith in Formation"

(Acts 2: 1-21, John 7 : 37-39)
With baptisms at one church and not the other, I had prepared two slightly different sermons to suit the particularity of the respective situations. What follows is a hybrid version of this morning's messages:

Our readings this morning relate the traditional story of Pentecost, the rushing wind and tongues of fire filling the household enabling the disciples to speak every language on earth so that the gospel story might be told to new people. And earlier in the gospel story, Jesus is telling of lifegiving water that was the spirit. And the literalists reading the lessons for this Sunday scratch their heads and wonder, is the Spirit water or fire?

But we should know better than to try and limit or define the working of a holy presence into a simple symbol or image. The fullness of God’s goodness and grace defies description. So while the marvel of Pentecostal tongues of fire is a dramatic and evocative attention-grabber, we are still limited by the inability of words to capture the real meaning of faith in Christ.

It is not the fact that we can speak and describe our story with words and language that is the miracle of this day. It is the wonder that that God’s own self, the Holy Spirit rests upon us and within us. It is the fact that we speak and describe our story with spirit and energy. In this way, the church is born each time we share of ourselves.

Jesus in the gospel lesson is defending himself from some of his critics, suggesting that because the Holy Spirit had yet to arrive, people would not understand what he was talking about. In a crowded house in the middle of a crowded city, the promise of the spirit come has been fulfilled in a way that no one expected and with a purpose that should not have been a surprise.

What have we done with the spirit? We’ve boxed it up and tried to contain it in a box of the church. It is fairly safe to say that the institutionalization of the church has distracted us from the Holy Spirit’s call to purpose and passion expressed in our faith. The spiritual leaders of our denominations are more bureaucrats and politicians more than pastors and preachers. That sounds a lot harsher than I intended, but the fact is that we lose many gifted ministers to administrative positions because that is how the ladder of success is seen in the church.

At the heart of the matter, is the truth of Christ, God’s very self come to earth, continuing to guide and support us through our days in the form of the Holy Spirit. In Pentecost we see the Spirit equipping the disciples with the tools to share their passion and story with the wider world.

The only way the Spirit’s work could be done is if they left the building. They needed to get outside and among the people of the world, risking ridicule and physical harm, with hearts and tongues aflame offering news of lifegiving water. And if that’s a mixed metaphor, it confirms the fact that in a complicated world of conflict and pressure many different visions, images and stories need to be shared.

So we work within the knowledge that our faith continues to grow and refine. Our spirits are shaped and formed continually. At no point can we profess to have all the answers, to know everything. God, as Father and Mother of us all, assures us by spirit, family and faith community that we are not alone.