Pentecost

(This is some of what I said--and some I didn't say--in my sermon at St. Andrew's, Northford on the Feast of Pentecost.)

Today is Pentecost.

It is the day the wind blew and the fire fell. The wind blew and the fire fell and the Holy Spirit inhabited the lives of the followers of Jesus.

The wind blew and the fire fell.

No one in Connecticut doubts the power of the wind--not after this week when tornadoes touched down around the state. The wind is Power incarnate.

The first week I spent as Rector of St. John's, Waterbury, where I spent 21 years, tornadoes came across Connecticut. They took out every tree on the campus of Albertus Magnus College in New Haven. And one of them sheared off two crocheted pinnacles around the spire of the church. One fell on the sidewalk and one came through the roof of the church and destroyed to organ.

We didn't know they were called 'crocheted pinnacles' until the wind blew and they fell down.

I often tell people that the best way to begin a long ministry is with a natural disaster. People tend to focus on a hole in the roof and a destroyed organ rather than small things....

On Pentecost, the fire fell. No one should doubt the power of fire. Remember the fires that ravaged the West Coast in the past year. Ask the people of Hawaii how powerful fire bursting out of the earth can be.

Wind and Fire are beyond our control, beyond our ken--their power is undeniable. Their power is beyond our ability to resist.

And on Pentecost, the fire fell and the wind blew and the Spirit descended on the followers of Jesus.

Imagine that--our God is as Powerful and Wind and Fire. And that power falls on us this day.

When my son Josh was 4 or so, I was driving him home and he asked me, "Daddy, what is the Spirit?"

"It is like the wind," I told him, "and it is like fire."

He was in the back seat in a car seat and I looked at him in the rear view mirror. He was blowing on his hand. Wind and breath and heat--the Spirit falls today.

Here is my prayer for us on this Feast of Pentecost--that we realize that the power of wind and fire and Spirit are within us. Here is my prayer today-that we realize our God is more powerful than we imagine...more powerful than we can imagine. Here is my prayer today--that we can realize in some way that we have that Power within us.

We can burn away injustice and prejudice.

We can blow away the differences that divide us.

We can burn for hope and equality.

We can blow for peace and harmony.

None of us can, on our own, change the world--this dark ling world we live in, this world of pain and suffering and loss and cruelity.

But the wind has blown on us and the fire has fallen on us and the Spirit of our God of Wind and Fire is within us.

We can be the wind of Change and the Fire of Justice and equality each moment of our lives. We can 'make a difference' in this oh so troubled world.

We can.

We can.

The fire falls and the wind blows and we carry God's Spirit into the world.

Blow! Flame! Be the Spirit. Be Christ's body in this world.

That is my prayer for each of us and all of us.

Amen and Amen.