Anybody watch the royal wedding yesterday?
I have to admit—I
didn’t have any interest in it –watching
a wedding on TV for me seems like going to work—But I did get interested in the
royal wedding when it was announced that
our presiding Bishop Michael Curry was going to preach. If you’ve never seen him preach you must—he
is amazing and you will not be disappointed.
I have to tell you though that I wish I hadn’t watched—not
that his sermon wasn’t amazing or that the ceremony wasn’t beautiful, but that
when it was all over—I realized that I was going to have to rewrite my sermon. You see I had this idea—that I wasn’t able to
flesh out until I heard Bishop Curry speak yesterday.
Today is the feast of Pentecost— we celebrate Pentecost by
reading this fantastic story from the Acts of the Apostles. Let me re-read a little bit for you.
When the day of
Pentecost had come, the disciples were all together in one place. And suddenly
from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled
the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared
among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with
the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them
ability.
I am not going to read any further because this is where the
hard words start— you begin to hear the places the people were from Cappadocia
and Pontus—the lector’s nightmare— of course there is also a bit of humor as
people try to figure out just what’s going on— as people sneer—they must be
drunk.
But the focus of the story is on how God’s Spirit infused in the
disciples this ability to speak in a language they didn’t know. The power of the moment is so fantastic that 3000 people are
converted. That’s powerful preaching folks.
Now I have studied languages —Spanish in High school and biblical Greek in seminary and I don’t have to
tell you—it’s really hard to learn another language isn’t it—it’s hard to
master a foreign language—it takes hour upon hour of work—it takes immersing
yourself in the language and speaking it and reading it and hearing it
sometimes going to a far off country and immersing yourself in the culture
before you can really master it.
So in someway we can all appreciate the miracle of this
Pentecost story that somehow the disciples are filled with the power of God and given an ability they couldn’t have possibly
done on their own.
Now I don’t think that the spirit will ever fill us with the
ability to spontaneously speak Spanish or Chinese or Swahili-but I do think
that the spirit gives us the ability to speak in language that the entire world
knows— we are given a language that is
cross cultural---week and week out we come here and receive training in this
language— we read about it, we pray about it-we sing about it-we confess before
God when fail at it and then we are urged to take this language with us back
out through doors and use that language—we are urged to make it the bedrock of
our lives—we are urged to allow it to transform the way we act in our
schools and our school bus and our
boardrooms and our homes- we are urged to share it—to pay it forward—to speak
it.
Of course the language that I am talking about is—love.
The spirit gives us the ability to speak this language—it has
taught us and it is teaching us to love—to love God, to love neighbor-to love
sinners and to enemies.
It is quite obvious that we still have a long way to go—just
turn on the news shootings-stories of racism or violence but it isn’t just on
our television sets all we have to do is turn inward and be reflective—and we
could write a novel about the times when we were less than loving.
Bishop Curry yesterday at the royal wedding mentioned probably the most popular reading at weddings--
St. Paul’s writings on Love in I Corinthians.
Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or
boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not
irritable or resentful; it does not
rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things,
hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.
Bishop Curry said, “This love, this is the way of Jesus. And
it’s game changer.
Imagine our homes and families when this way of love is the
way.
Imagine our neighborhoods and communities when love is the
way.
Imagine our governments and countries when love is the way.
Imagine business and commerce when this love is the way.
Imagine our world when love is the way.
No child would go to bed hungry in such a world as that
Poverty would become history in such a world as that.
The earth would be as a sanctuary in such a world as that.
We would treat one another as children of God, regardless of
differences.
We would learn how to lay our swords and shields down by the
riverside to study war no more.”[1]
Folks--- how do you imagine that love might change the
world? Where might you be called to
bring today, tomorrow this next week?
We all know the power that love has—the spirit is teaching us
to use it—the spirit has given us the ability - to speak the language of
compassion, to speak the language of justice ---to speak the language of love now
is the time to open our mouths and speak it—now is the time to open our lives
and live it—and when we do ---we can help bring heaven to here to earth—we can bring heaven here to
Dover to our homes and our workplaces.
Folks it’s a game changer.
AMEN
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