The Reverend John E. McGinn, Rector
Saint John’s Episcopal Church
Sandwich, Massachusetts 02563
May 4, 2008 7 Easter
Today’s sermon scripture is
from the Acts of the Apostles, chapter 1, verses 11-14.
Next Sunday we will celebrate
one of the most important days on our church calendar. It is, of course, the day of Pentecost, the
day that the Holy Spirit fell upon the church.
Pentecost occurs fifty days after Easter, but an important event took
place ten days before Pentecost. Ten
days before Pentecost Jesus ascended to be with the Father; and before he left,
he said to his disciples, “Do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift my
Father promised which you have heard me speak about; for John baptized with
water, but in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit. You will receive power when the Holy Spirit
comes on you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and all Judea and
Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”
So we have Jesus bidding his
disciples farewell and promising them that the Spirit could come upon
them. Ten days later, we have the Holy
Spirit coming upon them and transforming them into a tremendously powerful
force in the world. And what did the
disciples do during those ten days as they awaited the gift of the Spirit? The writer of the book of Acts tell us this
morning: “Then they returned to
Jerusalem from the hill called the mount of Olivet, a Sabbath day’s walk from the
city, and when they arrived, they went upstairs to the room where they were
staying. Those present were Peter and
John, James and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, James son
of Alphaeus, and Simon the Zealot, and Judas son of James. They all joined together constantly in
prayer, along with the women, including Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his
brothers.”
Ten days they spent in prayer
preparing to receive the gift that Jesus had promised them. For ten days they shut out the concerns of
the world including their fear of the authorities. For ten days they humbled themselves,
surrendered themselves, emptied themselves of anything that might impede their
service to Jesus; and no wonder they were so responsive to the Spirit when
Pentecost came. They were prepared; they
were focused; they were united in a common cause. Now, it would be easy to imagine that
Pentecost would not have happened if that early group of Jesus’ followers had
not humbled themselves for those ten days in prayer. I wonder what might happen to St. John’s
Church if each of us would enter into an intense season of prayer. You pray regularly for your church; you ask
for God’s guidance as we seek to be God’s people in this church; you pray about
God’s plan for your own life. I am not
talking about frivolous prayer, selfish prayer, or unrealistic prayer.
Some of us who are all called
“baby boomers” probably remember Janice Joplin’s song, “Lord, please give me a
Mercedes Benz; my friends all drive Porsches, I must make amends. Worked hard
all my life with no help from my friends;
Oh, Lord , please send me a Mercedes Benz.” And, come to think of it, that was the
perfect boomer prayer.
Of course, baby boomers are
not alone in frivolous, self-centered prayer - it is a universal
phenomena. Some years back in Britain, a
national lottery inspired so many Brits to pray; that the BBC, in its coverage
at one stage, included what it called the lottery prayer: “Lord, I know I’m a sinner, but make me a
winner.” And that’s pretty catchy, come
to think about it….”Lord, I know I’m a sinner, but make me a winner.” It’s catchy, but that’s not what prayer is
about. Prayer is about opening ourselves
to the purposes of God; prayer is about humbling ourselves before God; prayer
is about opening ourselves to the power of the Holy Spirit.
The disciples praying in the
upper room for those ten days were asking for the gift of the Spirit. What would it mean for our lives if we were
to seek that same gift with that same kind of intensity? First of all, it would give us a new purpose
for our lives. So many people lack a
sense of purpose. They may be
extraordinarily successful by society’s standards, but inwardly they know
themselves to be empty vessels - rudderless ships tossed and turned by every
wave.
I think back to my own
life. In my last year of college at a
time in 1969 when the world was, as we would say even today, somewhat upside
down. The war in Vietnam was
raging. The Tet Offensive had already
taken place and America was already beginning to withdraw from Vietnam. But, yet I wondered…what was I going to do
after graduating from college? I knew I
was in ROTC, and I would be commissioned an officer in the United States Army,
but I worried about the purpose for my life.
One of the places in my life
that was a very special place was my grandfather’s barn. I had spent many, many days there during my
childhood, and so I returned there in my lovely Volkswagen. I drove down and said I really need to have
some time alone. So I went to my
grandfather’s barn, and I braved all my fears, including a considerable fear of
heights, and climbed up to the top of my grandfather’s barn. Perhaps I would be able to pray a prayer that
would give me some direction for my life; so I did. I climbed to the top, one shaky hay bale at a
time, my heart was in my throat; but once I calmed myself, I began to pray
asking God to reveal his purpose for my life; asking God to point me in the
right direction, to give me some sign.
At first there was nothing but silence, and this made me angry. What good was God if he would not even answer
a simple prayer? But I kept praying; I
prayed until my words ran out, and I was reduced to wordless moans. It was not until I came to the end of those
moans that I had an answer. It was
nothing specific, but the answer I got was the deep conviction that I was
loved, and what I was called to do was to love back in whatever way I
could. God spelled out no specific plan
for me, but I left my grandfather’s barn with the knowledge that God was with me
and with the courage to live as God’s person.
Now that would be a beautiful
thing to happen to any of you. The first
thing that would happen to you if you asked for the gift of the Spirit would be
a new sense of purpose. Praying intently
for the gift of the Spirit would also give us power to be what God wants us to
be. And isn’t it true that our biggest
problem isn’t our lack of knowledge about what God wants us to do. Our biggest problem is the power to live out
what we already know. The problem is one
of motivation and of will. We know what
we ought to do, what we lack is the power to follow through.
I read about a woman in
Dallas, Texas, named Althema Arroyo who one day stopped for gas in a service
station, and a man came up to her car and demanded her purse. She said no, and he jumped into her car
intending to steal it. The man screamed
at her to jump out of the car, and she did, and her older two children jumped
out too; but her eighteen-month-old daughter was still strapped in the car when
the man began pulling way. This spurred
Mrs. Arroyo into action, and she ran along side the car fighting for control of
the stirring wheel; and the robber gunned the car and tried to pick up speed,
but this determined mother would not let go of the car. She was dragged along beside the automobile
still trying to rescue her little girl.
Somehow she pulled her self to the window of the car and began clawing
at the man who was trying to drive off with her child. The man somehow stalled the car and fled the
scene. Obviously, he had had enough of Mrs. Arroyo. No one looking at this humble mother would
think that she had that much power in her body, but she did. She simply needed the situation that called
that power from her.
You and I have much more
power than we are aware of. Our problem
isn’t one of knowledge or of good intentions; we need the Spirit of God to come
into our lives and to transform us into the kind of dynamic men and women that
God has created us to be. The secret, I
think, is prayer - intensive, determined, persistent prayer - that the Holy
Spirit will come into our lives to give us a sense of purpose and to fill us
with power. But praying for the gift of
the Spirit will do one more thing for us:
I think it will give us a sense of peace.
So many times Jesus promised
his disciples peace. In John 14 we read,
“Peace I leave with you, my own peace I give to you:
not as the world gives you, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled,
neither let it be afraid.” That’s what
Jesus promised us when the Spirit came upon us - not only power, but
peace. That does not mean that Jesus
will lift us out of a troubled world. It
does mean that a Spirit dwelling within us gives us a sense of calm, a sense of
deep assurance that we are loved and that we belong to God.
Now a man who was
over a hundred years old was interviewed and was asked about his earliest
experiences. He remembered as a child
being introduced to his great-great grandmother. “I’ll never forget that day,” he said. “It was hot and humid Sunday afternoon, and
it was a long trip. I had never met her
before, and I wasn’t really excited about going all that way just to see some
old woman. And to make matters worse
when we finally got to her house and went inside, I saw that not only was she
old, but blind; and not only blind, but actually kind of mean looking. And so, at first, I was afraid of her.” ‘We brought Vernon along to see you,’ my
father said, and she turned in my direction with outstretched arms and long and
bony fingers and said, ‘Bring him over here.’ “They practically had to push me across the
room.” And Vernon told the interviewer
with a chuckle, “But when I got there, I saw that those same hands which I had
been so frightened by were surprisingly gentle.
She carefully traced the outline of my face and ran her fingers through
my hair, and then in a voice filled with love and acceptance; I heard her
whisper, ‘This boy is one of ours. This
boy is part of our family. This one
belongs to us.’”
And, you know,
that’s the message that the Spirit whispers to us when it dwells in our
hearts: You belong to God; nothing can
defeat you; you can meet every challenge by God’s might. All this and more is promised to the person
who prays intensely and continuously for the gift of God’s Spirit. Purpose, power, peace - these are promised to
all who have humbled themselves and have opened themselves and pray.
Amen