The Reverend John E. McGinn, Rector
Saint John’s Episcopal Church
Sandwich, Massachusetts 02563
May 11, 2008 Pentecost
The sermon today is taken
from the scripture lesson from Acts, chapter 2, verses 1-11.
First of all, this morning I’d
like to say welcome on this Mother’s Day for 2008. I realize that this is a holiday created by
Hallmark, but yet I think it is an important one that we shouldn’t forget and
that does deserve mention. I think that
all moms are unique, and Joan says that her mother is notorious for her lead
foot. Joan was not at all surprised to
hear that Georgia state trooper pulled her mother over for speeding as she
raced through the state on the way to her home in Florida. Hoping to get off with a warning, Joan’s mother
tried to appear shocked when the officer walked up to her car. “I have never been stopped like this before,”
she said to the officer. “What do they
usually do, ma’am,” he asked, “shoot the tires out?”
It’s not easy sometimes being
a mom. Consider that case of one
stay-at-home mom: One evening she went
to a PTA meeting and her husband and her oldest daughter decided they would
clean up the kitchen for her. So they
did. They put up all the food and wiped
all the counters and washed all the pots and put them away. They put the dishes in the dishwasher and
they ran it. They swept and mopped the
floors, and they sat down and, overcome by their own nobility, they awaited
mom’s arrival. Two hours later she
returned from the meeting, took off her coat, hung it up, walked through the
kitchen into the den, grabbed the remote control and began watching
television. They followed her over to
her chair and stood by her side; and finally she felt them looking over her
shoulder and looked up at them and said, “What?” And her husband said, “The kitchen.” “The kitchen what?” “The kitchen - we cleaned up the kitchen. Didn’t you notice? It’s sparkling clean - we cleaned it for
you.” The woman replied, “Yes, I
noticed. Thankless job, isn’t it?”
Sometimes being a mom is a
thankless job; and that’s why we honor them today with a special day. Mother’s Day gives us an opportunity to say a
much deserved “thank you” to our mothers.
On the church calendar this
is also a very special day. This is the
day of Pentecost. And what happened on
that Pentecost - that birthday of the church some two thousand years ago? When the Holy Spirit came upon the disciples,
they started to act strange; so strange that outsiders accused them of being
drunk - the same way in which the parent of an infant might be accused of being
crazy making baby sounds and using exaggerated expressions on his or her
face. And even more peculiar, the
disciples began to speak in different languages, as Shirley Cross read this
morning in the book of Acts. The
interesting thing is that these uneducated Galileans were not making strange,
babbling sounds. Rather, they were
speaking in recognizable languages; not their native language, but in the
tongues of strangers from far off places.
Strangers visiting Jerusalem from other lands suddenly heard the
disciples speaking to them in their own tongues. It was an amazing event. No wonder the disciples attracted so much
attention, and that day they won so many converts. There’s no earthly explanation for something
like this. Only God could touch people
in such a way that they could communicate with strangers from other lands in
such a profound way.
Pentecost, I think, says to
us that the Gospel - the good news - is for all people. And that is as plain as can be from this
story, I think. They spoke in foreign
languages because the Gospel isn’t just for people who speak Hebrew or Aramaic
or Latin or Greek. It isn’t for people
who speak English or Spanish or French or Japanese. It is for all people everywhere - rich
people, poor people, people of every color and nationality; people who are
saints and people who are sinners. The
Gospel is for everybody - no exceptions - no ifs, ands or buts. Everybody.
A journalist once interviewed
a man about his service to his community.
This man was known for his outreach to those who were considered
outcasts. He reached the homeless, those
who were in prison and those who were HIV positive. The journalist asked him why he did these
works of compassion. “The reason I do
what I do,” he said to the journalist, “is because of Jesus’ body
language.” “His body language?” asked
the journalist. “Yes, his body
language,” said the interviewee. “Think
about Jesus hanging on the cross. His
arms are stretched to their fullest extent; and now I realize that his arms are
stretched because they are nailed to the cross.
But I deeply believe that his arms are stretched to their fullest
extent, not primarily because he is being crucified. All his life Jesus stretched out his arms so
their fullest extent because that was the only way that he could welcome
absolutely everyone into the full embrace of God’s family.” The man added, “And that needs to be our body
language too.”
That should be our body
language. The Gospel is for all people,
and that, I think, is the message of the cross.
That is the message of Pentecost.
Strangers from all over the known world heard the Gospel in their own
language. It’s not a new thought, of
course; but many, many people, both inside and outside the church, still do not
understand the significance of that truth.
I read about a man crossing
the street near his parish in New York City, and a taxi came roaring around the
corner, and it knocked him to the pavement.
A crowd gathered and an ambulance was called, but it took an unusually
long time to arrive. It was forty
minutes before he was actually put on the gurney. In the meantime, this man lay on the asphalt. He was aware of a lot of people standing
around, and they were looking down at him.
What he remembers most about that long wait was the great distance
between himself on the concrete and the faces high above. In those minutes he said he very much needed
someone to get down on the ground with him, to put a coat under his head, to
hold his hand and stay down with him until help arrived.
I have this feeling, don’t
you, that many of the neediest people in this world look at church people in
general as being way up there and themselves being way down there. And somehow they get the idea that Christian
faith is for the up and ins, and not for the down and outs. But, of course, just the opposite is
true. Jesus came for those who are lost,
not for those who are found. Jesus came
for those who are sick, not those who are well.
And how do we help them understand that?
We help them understand that by doing what Jesus did to each of us - we
go down to where they are. We do not
wait for them to make themselves respectable enough to come up to us. We go to them. Pentecost tells us that the Gospel - the good
news - is for all people.
A few years ago I talked with
one of my best friends, Dennis Hayward, who is a priest at St. Albans Episcopal
Church in Vermont. “How is your building
program going?” I asked. “Oh, we ran out
of money before we got to the worship space,” he said. I thought to myself, what could be more
important than the space that you worship in, but I kept my thoughts to
myself. “We renovated the basement,”
Dennis said. “You know, we have a
shelter there for homeless men. We put in new showers, and we renovated the old
kitchen. The basement was so drab, and
there was only one shower, and it was awful.
On the Sunday before the shelter opened, the worship service began as
usual in our sanctuary, and when it came time for communion, the people carried
the bread and wine downstairs to the basement.
The whole congregation gathered around the empty beds, and they passed
the bread and the cup around the circle:
‘The body of Christ, the bread of heaven. The blood of Christ, the cup of salvation.’”
My friend’s final statement
was, “That night the shelter beds were full and the worship space still needed
a lot of work.” But, you know, I thought
for a moment…I said to myself…there’s a church that understands God’s priorities. I don’t know about you, but that story speaks
to me.
The Gospel is for the whole
world, and that’s good news. You know
why it’s good news? It’s because that
means that the Gospel is for you and for me.
Sometimes we are the ones who are lost, and sometimes we are the ones
who are sick, and sometimes we are those who are needy. And what good news it is to know that the
Gospel is for us.
There’s a story about a young
man who got in serious trouble. He tried
explaining his situation to his high school guidance counselor. He did it with these sad words: “You know what I am? he said, “I am a comma. When I talk to my dad, he’ll say something
and then when I start to talk, he makes me a comma. He doesn’t interrupt me, but when I’m
finished talking, he starts in right where he left off as if I didn’t say
anything.”
Do you know what this young
man is talking about? I think some of
you know. Maybe you have been a comma at
some time in your life. Maybe in your
family, maybe in your work, maybe in your group of friends. People don’t really listen to you. People don’t really value you. Listen.
There is one who listens to you.
There is one who values you. And
what a great thing to know that you and I are not commas to God. Jesus’ arms are stretched out wide enough to
include us. Now we are to open our arms
to the world. That is what Pentecost is
all about.
Amen