May 15, 2005 At Saint Mark Church in Norman, OK
Acts 2:1-11 + 1 Corinthians 12:3-7&12-13 + John 20:19-23
In the next three weeks, we shall celebrate three gifts:
The Gift of the Spirit The Gift of Relationship The Gift of Food
The Church calls these: Pentecost
Holy Trinity Corpus Christi in the old language, and Body and Blood of Christ in today’s.
It is Paul in that first letter to the Corinthians who makes this week’s gift most obvious. He insists that the Spirit is given to each member of the community not just a few leaders or gifted prodigies.
All are gifted not for their own personal enjoyment or enlightenment,
but for the good of all. Yet somehow in our competitive driven world, it is always the gifts of other that get our attention
either by way of admiration or by way of envy.
Knowledge of the gifts of others may enrich our lives from time to time, especially when their gifts are used for the good of all.
But ignoring our own gifts because we have our eye on the gifts of others is not just foolish. It is wrong. It robs us of life, and it diminishes the glory and generosity of God. The opportunity we have this week from the Word we proclaim is not to sit here and imagine what happened in Jerusalem a long time ago; nor guess what tongues of fire look like, or how that language thing worked.
This day is about gifts, our gifts, and not just those seven we memorized at the time of our Confirmation. It is about the gifts we often take for granted, or wrongly assume are just for us for our comfort, entertainment, or security.
The Corinth Paul writes to could just as well be Norman, Oklahoma.
It was a wealthy place. It was full of pretty people who looked good, had a lot of stuff, and were very, very comfortable and secure when they were not worried about how to keep it all.
They were a people who were smart, educated, had options, and used them. Paul was writing to you and me. He writes to any people who have come to faith; to people who say: “Jesus is Lord.”
But for his contemporaries saying those three words amounted to treason. To publicly proclaim Jesus as “Lord” is to declare that Caesar is NOT! So, we are left to wonder what it means for us,
for people who put those words on bumper stickers, banners, and bracelets.
That proclamation is not about an idea, it announces a way of life.
It does not describe Jesus nearly as much as it says who we are,
how we live our lives, define our values, and inform our decisions.
Just as much today as it was then, saying that “Jesus is Lord”
may cost us our jobs, some relationships, some prestige in the eyes of others. It will mean we see things differently than others,
value different things, and use our time and all our gifts first of all for others since we know they have not been given to us for anything other than the good of all.
We will begin to get the point when the teachings of Jesus Christ show up in our lives not as ideals to strive for but as principles and values by which we live now. To think of them as ideals is to build ourselves an excuse for not embracing them now. We have no excuse. We have no reason for settling for less or pretending that what Jesus has given us, taught us, and shown us is beyond human reach.
If we dare to celebrate the Feast of Pentecost, then we know and acknowledge that what we have in faith makes all things possible:
Justice, Peace, Charity, Forgiveness,.. it’s all there. It is not beyond our reach. These things are all the consequence of living as if Jesus was Lord. They are the consequence of living with the wisdom and the knowledge that all we have is pure gift, and not one of those gifts is our own. What a difference it shall make when we all get that right! On that day, we shall truly be able to say:
Christ has died. Christ is Risen.Christ HAS come again.