In the Spirit of Pentecost, The Reverend David R. Williams, The Day of Pentecost--Year B--June 4, 2006

Give us grace, O Lord, not only to hear your word with our ears, but also to receive it into our hearts and to show it forth in our lives; for the glory of your name.
 
The people of God gather together.  They pray quietly.  Something very unusual and disturbing is about to happen.  Hearts pound as word flows through the room.  A voice of the Church is discerned. 
 
Some people are aghast and disbelieving. Some are gleeful. Others are just uncertain about the meaning of this new voice for all the churches across the land. 
 
No, this is not the moment we know recorded as the Christian Pentecost – when the disciples, gathered in their comfortable space, feel a sudden, violent wind blowing through the room. Hearts pound, eyes are wide open.
 
Three years ago the Deputies of the Episcopal Church, lay and clergy gathered to discern the will of God through prayer and decision-making.  Their decision would affect the church like a violent wind blowing through the entire church body. 
 
The decision seemed to be simple enough: whether to give Church consent to a certain Diocese’s choice of its own Bishop. Some were vehement that this Diocese’s Bishop-elect did not fit certain traditional standards of the office of a Bishop, a contemporary Apostle of the Church. The Bible was referenced.  The tradition and orthodoxy of the Church was held up as a standard.
 
But the statement made in a close vote by the Deputies and the Bishops of the Church agreed with the decision made people of New Hampshire.
 
Some Episcopalians were mad.  Some were hurt. Some were encouraged and hopeful.  Some were unsure.
 
Since then – since that violent Pentecostal moment in our own Church, many people have talked, discussed and reviewed many difficult and uncomfortable issues of the Episcopal Church and even about our human nature and sexuality, about the authority of the Bible, about discerning the will of God. 
 
This dialogue has been worldwide and is similar to the debate of many mainline denominations.
 
On that special day 2000 years ago, the witnesses of the Jesus story – witnesses of Jesus’ dynamic ability to tell stories, to be a prophet, to shake the foundations of Roman government, Jewish law, and cultural wisdom – meet in a room together.  The disciples meet to discern the will of God now that Jesus has left them, departed the world.
 
There is nothing calm and serene about the Pentecostal moment in that room.  Up to that time, Pentecost for the Jews was a celebration of the gathering of grain in the fields, a ritual scheduled for fifty days after Passover.
 
Fifty days after Jesus shares his bodily presence through bread and wine and another Passover meal--after Jesus dies on a cross, reappears as a Resurrected presence, ascends to the heavens--the followers of Jesus meet and are blown away by a new Spirit. 
 
Since the General Convention of the Episcopal Church met in 2003, the foundations of the Church have been rattled and shaken as if by a new Spirit. What new shape, if any, might our Church take?
 
In ten days, the Deputies, lay and clergy, and the Bishops will again gather, and each will prayerfully discern what God may be asking of us, the people of God’s Church. 
 
Every three years, the Episcopal Convention meets – usually during the early summer months and in a different city. Columbus, Ohio will be the host city beginning on June 13.  The Convention will adjourn on June 21. 
 
Who attends?  Who are these people of the House of Deputies and House of Bishops?
 
Every Diocese of the Episcopal Church has one Diocesan Bishop.  Many dioceses, in order to carry out the vast responsibilities, have additional bishops entitled  ‘Coadjutor” (one in line to assume the role of Diocesan Bishop) or “Suffragan” (one who assists fulltime in the role of Bishop) or part-time “Assisting Bishops.”
 
Our Diocesan Bishop is the Right Reverend Michael Curry.  Two assisting Bishops work part time for Bishop Curry, The Rt. Rev. Gary Gloster and the Rt. Rev. Chip Marble. 
 
All Bishops serve as voting members of the body called the House of Bishops.  Four clergy and four lay people are elected in every Diocese to make-up the deputation for the other body, the House of Deputies. 
 
At our annual Diocesan Convention in North Carolina, we democratically elect this deputation from a slate of nominees.  The current deputation was elected a year and a half ago. 
 
The Deputies and Bishops do not know specifically what will be on the agenda for the Convention until a few months before the convention convenes.  As we speak, many are reading over resolutions, budget proposals, and other potential action of the 2006 General Convention.  The study material is in a half-foot-thick folder called the Blue Book.
 
It is appropriate on the Day of Pentecost that we again celebrate who we are as a Church.  The church is greater than what we see, what we hear, what we can touch.  We have been asked by those preparing the Convention, namely our Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold and our Diocesan Bishop Michael Curry and others to mark off the next eight days as an Octave of Prayer. 
 
“Something happened one day when a small group of people found themselves swept up beyond the limitations of the probably, into the limitlessness of the possible,” our own Bishop Curry write in a letter to the churches of the Episcopal Diocese of North Carolina.
 
Historically, the celebration called Pentecost was a moment of a new revelation.   
 
“The new Pentecost pushed beyond the boundaries of Israel,” Bishop Curry says, “to the corners of the world, beyond the limitations of race, clan, and tribe, to the limitless vision of the entire human family born of the one God.  Beyond the probabilities of custom and culture and class and kind, these first disciples found themselves part of a movement of the Spirit of God which would push them to follow Jesus and discover a new humanity, a new creation, and a to make a new world more resembling God’s dream and vision for creation.”
 
During the Octave of Prayer, Bishop Curry asks that we as a church and world be swept up by the Spirit of God, beyond the limitedness of our probabilities, into the limitless love and possibilities of the Triune God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
 
We experience that Spirit today as we bring forward our Hope boxes – our alms going to needs  beyond what we see in front of us—and into the outer margins of the Church and world. 
 
“All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages as the Spirit gave them ability,” the writer of Acts says.  
 
“All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “What does this mean?”  But others, not convinced, sneered and said, “They are filled with new wine.”
 
Almighty God, on this day you opened the way of Eternal Life to every race and nation by the promised gift of your Holy Spirit: Shed abroad this gift throughout the world by the earth; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit on God, for ever and ever.”

Amen.