June 3, 2001
Pentacost Sunday

Peace for the Planet

There is a preaching story that I have always enjoyed, especially since I have set aside trying to write a manuscript, and instead have stood before you to preach without notes. The story tells of another manuscript minister who had grown tired of having everything down in front and grown tired of reading the sermon to the congregation. So he decided that he was going to move away from the manuscript, but he wasn't quite prepared to do it all at one time. He was talking with some friends. He said, "I think maybe this next week I'll write out the first part of the sermon, then just see what the Holy Spirit has to say." When he got back with his friends the next week, they said, "Well, how did it go?" The minister said, "Not too well." They asked, "What did the Holy Spirit have to say?" "The Holy Spirit said, "You're Not Prepared!"

Now, I was almost in that situation this morning. To let you in on more behind the scenes workings of the church, usually I do some research, study the Sunday school materials and some commentaries. I do some background reading on the Scripture passage that is lifted up in the Sunday school materials. Every week the Lectionary provided 4 scripture passages and the Sunday school curriculum chooses one of them to be the focus. So I do the background reading and I start to develop ideas for the worship bulletin, in order to give Carla time to complete the work. I choose a sermon title and get a general idea of the direction that I am going to be moving with the sermon. Then I let that simmer thorough out the week. I take the pieces of my experience, the conversations I have with people, the things that I hear on the radio or read in the newspaper, and I let those pieces all work with each other. Usually, I also take some resources home over the weekend. Sometimes previous sermons that I have preached. Sometimes photocopies of some of the commentaries or other background materials that I have. Then, usually late in the day on Saturday, I read through those again and everything starts to come into a sharper focus. Well, this particular weekend at our house happened to be Prom weekend. Leah is graduating this week, so this was her Senior Prom and she and a number of friends had their dates and headed out to Shilshole Bay for their Prom and pictures and dinner. Most of them were coming back to our house to stay overnight. So we spent much of the day cleaning and getting ready. Cindy did a lot of the shopping for food. I was scrubbing the deck and doing all sorts of fun things. It got to be later and later. We were anticipating the kids coming and put the finishing touches on everything. It was about 1:30 in the morning that I said, "Well, I think I'll take a look at my materials before Sunday morning." I went out to my van, and no briefcase! Where did the briefcase go? So, I looked up and down in the house and didn't find it. I said, "You know I would like to find out where it is because I have one piece of poetry that I want to share with the congregation, and I don't want to be scrambling Sunday morning." Last night I drove down here at 2:00 in the morning, checked to see if my briefcase was in my office or somewhere else around the church, and didn't find it. Then, I remembered that on my way home on Friday, I stopped at Holy Spirit Lutheran. Now, do you catch the irony here, for Pentecost? I had stopped at Holy Spirit Lutheran Church do drop off some copies of my sermon from last week, because the pastor, Mike Anderson, said that at one point he had preached a sermon on Dietrich Bonhoeffer that sounded much like the sermon I preached here last week. I dropped a copy of the sermon off for him, then talked with their administrator about their plans for some remodeling at that church, left my briefcase on the floor, and went home. So this morning, at 2 AM I realized where my briefcase was. On my way down here to worship this morning I stopped. They have an 8:00 worship service so the parking lot was half full and the service was in progress. Their office doors were wide open, including the pastor's offices. I walked in and there was my briefcase, right on the floor. I picked it up and actually have the poem I want to share with you. But the Holy Spirit almost had nothing to say this morning.

You may have caught a theme of "breath" in the service. I want you to breathe deeply. Shake it out a little bit and take a deep breath. Become aware of your lungs filling with air. If you were a member of the choir, you would have received some instructions recently about exactly how it is that your lungs fill with air. Ele would explain to you that if your shoulders go up when you're breathing that you are probably not breathing very well. Your diaphragm needs to expand down in order for you to get enough air. Your stomach should go out a little as you are breathing if you are going to fill your lungs completely. Those of you who have listened closely to the doctor, or done reading about healthy living, know that healthy breathing is an important part of a healthy life. You also know that one of the problems for most of us is that we use only a small percentage of our lung capacity. If you imagine your lungs, and breathing off of only the top third, or top quarter, the rest of that capacity is going to waste. As we have more and more trouble physically, if we add weight, it makes it more difficult for our diaphragm to expand. There are obstacles to that expansion. If we put on extra weight we have more difficulty breathing. If we have some bad habits, like smoking, we have difficulty breathing. If we have been living in an urban area with pollution, we have more difficulty breathing. If we have an affliction like asthma, emphysema, we have more trouble breathing. The more problems we have bringing oxygen into our body, the more difficulty we have functioning with the full energy that we should have. It is a gradual, or not so gradual, spiral down. Breath, as we all know is a critical element of our life. If we don't have enough oxygen, don't breath in enough, then we suffer for it physically.

You could say the same thing in our spiritual life. If we don't have enough spiritual energy, enough spiritual power, things start to spiral down in our lives. If we don't take the time to spiritually breathe, if we don't take time for prayer, for reflection, then we have more difficulty functioning as full spiritual beings. More difficulty in dealing with those little annoyances, the problems that all of us inevitably face in our lives. When we are unable to deal with small problems in good spirits, we feelan increasing burden upon us. The burden upon us makes it more and more difficult to respond with balance and spiritual energy. It is not surprising that there is a corollary between the physical breathe of life, and a spiritual breathe of life. If you look at the word that is translated as "spirit" in our scriptures, you'll find that in Hebrew and in Greek it can also be translated as "breath" or as "wind". Hebrew word "ruach" and the Greek word "pneuma" both carry those multiple meanings. Spirit, wind, breath. Critical for our life is to have that in-pouring breath of oxygen. In-pouring breath of the Spirit.

What happens if we don't have that Spirit coming into our lives? What happens when we wall ourselves off? When we become obsessed with the difficulties of our lives? When we take up bad habits or addictions? We get more and more anxious about our life as humans. We start trying to do things to protect ourselves. Start trying to do things to assure that we are going to survive. Even if it's at the cost of someone else. In the passage today about the outpouring of the Spirit onto the disciples as they were gathered together, 50 days after Jesus death and resurrection, we read that the Spirit was poured out on all people. So it wasn't just poured out on the Jewish people. It wasn't just poured out on a few chosen folks. But it was poured out on all humanity. God's Spirit, God's life force poured out on all humanity. Now if we were to be able to open up our lungs and breath fully the fresh air, the cells of our body receiving that oxygen, then we would be physically able to live life with fullness. If we are able to open our spiritual lungs, receiving God's Spirit, feeding our every pore, our every cell, then we can live a Spiritual life fully. If we would be able to live that Spiritual life fully we would live life in balance. Not getting angry all the time that someone was trying to take advantage of us. Not fighting the fear that we were somehow failing, falling short of our hopes. Not afraid that we were going to die with tasks undone, and problems unsolved.

Now if God's Spirit was poured out on all people and all people received that Spirit, there would no longer be a reason for people to fight with each other. No more war in the middle east about who gets. the Holy Land. No more war in Ireland about whether it's Catholic or Protestant. No more war in Africa about who's going to rule. If people would breathe deeply of God's Spirit then peace would come for our whole planet. Unfortunately it's not a simple matter. Even those of us who know about the importance of breathing with our full lung capacity, let everyday life get in the way and continue to use only a portion of our abilities to receive oxygen. Even those of us who know the need for God's presence in our lives allow ourselves to caught up in all kinds of things that distract us. Thinking that we'll get Spiritual tomorrow or next week. Or when the bills are paid or when the kids are gone.

God's Spirit poured out for all people. Bringing peace to the whole planet. What a wonderful vision. We pray that God's Spirit might fill us each completely.
Amen.

Oh yes, the poem! Can't skip the Holy Spirit. I was in Cleveland for a Christian Education meeting and had the opportunity to participate in the installation service for the new director of the Women's Coordinating Center. Poet Vicki Kessler wrote a piece for the service that puts an exclamation point of my message today...

Let the Spirit Sing!

A vestment for Mary Susan Gast

She never took Pentecost for granted,
or anything that was like a Pentecost experience:
Spirit loose and soaring
moving with unfettered abandon,
ecstasy, small or large,
confusion, wonder, energy!
a strange mix of images and voices
breathed into the air
an aroma of impending birth.
She never took Pentecost for granted,
knew it could happen almost anywhere, anytime
in places one would never consider
candidates for birthing a new thing:
South Africa China Russia
countless little towns and churches across the globe
where struggles for survival make people
want to hold on
keep it the same
makes the past a god that saves
hide their hearts for breath of the Spirit
blowing change.

She never took Pentecost for granted,
knew church could be born again and again:
in ceremonies and rituals
greetings and partings,
with many or few,
all it took was believing
that dancing flames are the essence of life,
solidarity a never ending deliverance.

She never took Pentecost for granted,
invited that spirit to live in her,
offered it freely to the humblest one,
nurtured and cared for it like a precious
cloth of gold and red,
woven through with the incense of
murmurs centuries old,
cries of the people she loved so much:

Let the Spirit Sing!