St. Luke's Episcopal Church
Cleveland, Tennessee

Pentecost Sunday
May 31, 2009
The Rev. Deacon Art Bass

The Spirit and the Church

In July of 1991, several years before I was ordained a deacon, I had the privilege to be a lay member of our diocesan deputation to the General Convention of the Episcopal Church, which met that year in Phoenix, Arizona.

In the hall in which the House of Deputies met, there were about a dozen platforms or stands, each with a microphone, spread out across the floor at regular intervals. On each stand was a post, topped with an light bulb. If you wanted to be heard during open debate, you would go to the nearest of these stands and move a small switch to the “on” position.

The order in which those switches were activated was automatically recorded. When it was your time to speak, the light atop the post on your stand would come on, and all other microphones on the floor would be silenced until you finished speaking and returned your switch to the “off” position.

I won't go into the issues which were debated at the Phoenix Convention, but suffice it to say that the debate was often intense. In fact I think at times the debate in the meeting hall became as hot or hotter than the 110 degree temperature outside the building.

We were in the middle of an especially heavy and stressful debate, when the microphone light on the stand in the very middle of the hall suddenly came on - - and no one was there.

None of the other microphones would work and that one could not be turned off. Debate was halted for almost fifteen minutes until just as mysteriously as it had come on, the light went off.

As it happened, the next deputy to speak was the Rev. Don Johnson, who then was a priest of our diocese. He is now the Bishop of West Tennessee. Fr. Johnson simply said, “I think the Holy Spirit has spoken.”

Of course, everyone laughed at that remark, and then the debate resumed. But I noticed a change, for at least the rest of that day, in the tenor of the debates. The issues were still just as difficult as before, but I no longer heard angry tones in the voices of those who spoke. There seemed to be more civility, more listening, more dialogue than hard debate.

Today, of course, is Pentecost, sometimes still referred to in the Episcopal Church as Whitsunday. But the name “Pentecost” is especially appropriate because it is biblical and because in liturgical reckoning, which counts Easter Sunday as the first day, this is the fiftieth day and the end of the Great Fifty Days of Easter. Pentecost means “fiftieth”, the fiftieth day. Besides, Whitsunday means “White Sunday”, and I don't see much white on display in the church today.

The liturgical color for today is red ---fiery red --- for those divided tongues of fire that came to rest on each of the apostles on this day almost two thousand years ago.

In today's gospel reading from John, we find Jesus, in his farewell discourse on his last night before his crucifixion, telling his disciples that he will be leaving them, leaving them to return to his father in heaven, but not leaving them alone.

He tells them he will send them a “ parakletos ”. That's a difficult word to translate into English because there is no single English word which covers all its meanings. Our gospel text uses the word “advocate”, but other translations use “counselor”, or “comforter,” or “helper”. All are equally appropriate. Jesus tells the disciples that this advocate will be the Spirit of Truth, and he will come to guide and assist them when Jesus himself is no longer present in body.

Despite this reassurance, you can well imagine the sense of loss and grief which the disciples must have experienced after Jesus ascended to the Father. But then ten days later, on the Day of Pentecost, when the disciples were all together in one place – that is, when they were gathered into community as a body – the promised Spirit came. It came with such power and revelation that there was the sound of rushing wind and fire: the fire of the Spirit of God, among them and resting on their heads.

When this happened, just as the Spirit had driven Jesus into the wilderness after he was baptized, so the Apostles were driven by the Spirit to immediately go into the world and give witness to the power of God and the grace of Christ Jesus. We say that when this happened, on that Day of Pentecost, the church was born.

But there is a danger in just associating the Holy Spirit with this one event. The Spirit's new relationship to us, to the church, began that day, but the Spirit had always been there. Even before creation, the Spirit had coexisted with the Father and the Son. In Old Testament times, the Spirit had inspired and given voice to the prophets. In the Gospels, the Spirit had descended upon Jesus at his baptism.

But the really important thing, and the point which I wish to make this morning, is that the Spirit is still active and still with the church today.

Had the Holy Spirit not come to the apostles on Pentecost, there would be no church. Were the Holy Spirit not still with us today, the church would cease to exist. But we have the promise of Christ himself that the Holy Spirit will always be there for us: the Spirit of Wisdom (which by the way, is feminine in the original Greek), the Spirit of Truth, the Spirit of God, the Advocate, the Counselor, the Comforter, the Helper. All of these are one Spirit, always guiding us, always empowering us, and always driving us to do the things God intends for us to do.

This is not to say that because we have the aid and protection of the Spirit, the Church on earth cannot make mistakes or have errors of judgment. To me, one of the most poignant lines in our Prayer Book is found in the Solemn Collects of Good Friday, when we pray for all “who in the name of Christ have persecuted others.”

But if the church does err, we always have the Spirit to guide us back to truth, to lead us out of sin and error, and to place us once again on the right path. There is both great comfort and great strength in that assurance.

At that 1991 Convention in Phoenix, Arizona, I don't know that the Spirit caused that microphone light to come on as it did. But I do think it was the Spirit, working in those of us who were there and using what had happened when it did, which reminded us that anger and animosity are not at all helpful in trying to discern God's will for his church.

I can't say that we ended up solving all the thorny problems with which we were confronted in 1991. Many of those same issues still today remain unresolved in the Episcopal Church and in other denominations as well. On many such issues, men and women of good conscience, persons of sincere faith still hold differing views.

But through that one little event with the microphone, the Spirit led us on that day to listen to one another and to really hear what was being said. The Spirit helped us to remember who we were, and who as Christians we always represent, and in that way we were brought back to our unity in Christ. We were able again to become focused on being a part of God's church and on doing our part of the great work of Christ in the world.