Sermon for Pentecost Sunday Yr A
May 31, 2020
St. Michael’s Episcopal Church
The Reverend Canon Michael J. Horvath
Gospel: John 20:19-23
Today is Pentecost Sunday. As we heard in the reading from the Acts of the Apostles, today celebrates God’s revelation of his life, his breath, his Holy Spirit. With the Holy Spirit the Apostles and disciples are filled with gifts of the Holy Spirit - the same gifts we are filled with upon baptism. Now, on Pentecost Sunday most preachers use the text of the Acts of the Apostles for their sermon. We all know this story and we expect that it will be preached on Pentecost Sunday. We know the disciples gathered in the upper room. We wait for the sound like the rush of violent wind to fill the house. In our mind’s eye we see the divided tongues, as of fire, appearing and resting on each disciple. We might be amused at the drunken chaos in which people are speaking, hearing, and understanding strange new languages.
If you were one of those who were expecting a sermon on this text, I may have to disappoint you a bit today. You see, there is always a Gospel reading that makes up part of our lectionary – words of Jesus Christ that give us insight into who he was and how our lives might reflect his. Jesus is always present in our Sunday readings and I'm not allowing him to exit stage left just yet.
Today, just after Jesus’ resurrection, his disciples are hiding in a room, locked for fear of retaliation from local authorities. The man and God whom they loved has died and they were all in a state of disbelief, fear, anxiety and angst. And, despite the locked doors, Jesus appears amongst them and offers not once, but twice the blessing of “Peace” and breathed the Holy Spirit on them.
It’s this peace that I want us to focus on today. So what is this peace that Jesus offers? The ancient Hebrew concept of peace, rooted in the word "shalom," meant wholeness, completeness, soundness, health, safety and prosperity, carrying with it the implication of permanence. It’s more than just having a nice walk in Colt State Park; it’s more than just the absence of an annoying noise; it’s more than a problem that needs to be solved and when you can’t focus on anything else until you’ve solved it. The word peace that we normally throw about has its basis in the Latin word “Pax”, also meaning peace, but of a kind that is more of a cessation of conflict. It is fleeting, impermanent.
Shalom Peace, on the other hand, the kind Jesus offers to the disciples, has a deeper meaning that is more enduring in its context. When it is offered to others it means that we are offering and dedicating ourselves to bringing about wholeness, the completeness in them. God offers all the qualities of shalom – wholeness, completeness, soundness, health, safety – to those who will look to Him. In our relationship with Christ, this Shalom Peace is made tangible. We are not just receivers of peace, but we have the capacity to embody peace. And every once in awhile we experience this whole, embodied Shalom Peace, I hope.
One of the great difficulties of this lockdown is not being able to regularly receive the elements of communion. It is a defining moment of peace for many of us. We consume the bread and wine and for some reason, we feel a momentary wholeness about ourselves. We’ve come home. We have been made complete. Does it make you feel that way? It does for me. It may last only a second, but I have embodied Shalom Peace.
The truth is that God’s peace is always available, we are full of it. We are complete and whole if we would only but open our eyes and hearts. We don’t need to practice peace, we are peace. We don’t need to practice compassionate love, we are compassionate love. But we push those natural tendencies down and they get covered with the debris of everyday living and we fail to embody those things. In that instance, we need to remind each other of the peace that the Good News of Jesus brings to us. We forget that we are good, we forget that we are compassionate, we forget that we have the capacity to love deeply and when that happens we need to be reminded. “The Peace of the Lord be with you”. Some of my favorite words of the Sunday liturgy. We offer it to those we worship with – our families, friends and fellow parishioners. That part is easy, but what about those from whom peace, as a sense of wholeness, has always been withheld? Some for their lifetime, some for generations. In today’s Gospel, Jesus says “As the father sent me, so I send you.”
You see, the gift of God’s Peace comes with an obligation on us to ensure that it is passed on and that we are seeking wholeness and completeness for others, with the enlightened understanding that we will only ever experience peace when everyone else can experience that same peace. How seriously do we heed that obligation, I wonder?
The story of race and race relations in the United States has been plagued by our inability to seek and offer the blessing of God’s Peace because of the color of their skin. Our reluctance to share that Shalom Peace comes with a price and African-Americans have paid dearly for it in the recent weeks. Ahmad Arbery, a man jogging while black in Georgia and who was killed vigilante style after being pursued by two white men in February, was denied the Peace of God. Breonna Taylor was sleeping while black, when plain clothes policemen mistaking her home for a drug den opened fire and killed her. She was an EMT and an essential employee. She was denied the Peace of God. This Memorial Day, four Minneapolis police officers fatally injured George Floyd, a Black man, while under their custody. Within hours of the incident, a video surfaced of one officer pressing his knee into the back of Floyd’s neck. Floyd can be heard wheezing out, “I can’t breathe.” Floyd George died, denied the Peace of God. And in NYC’s Central Park, a woman threatened to bring down the machine of the police force on Christian Cooper, a man birdwatching while black in Central Park, simply because he asked her to leash her dog. He was denied the Peace of God, she was fired from her investment firm immediately thereafter.
We can sit here and say that of course the Peace of God should have been extended and say “What a pity.” but we’re past that, aren’t we? The breath of God that flows as the Holy Spirit through you and me, flowed through Ahmad Arbery, Breonna Taylor and George Floyd, and flows through Christian Cooper. Jesus has sent us to offer the Peace that passes all understanding to one another, regardless of our race, gender, social condition, sexuality, you name it. How can we not be ashamed that the killing of unarmed black people continues to be a regular and regularly televised event in our society? How can we ignore the cumulative effect of death after death, murder after murder, of African-Americans. Why do we continue to retain the sins of our history with impunity?
I can’t breathe thinking about it. Can you? Jesus has sent us out. At times like this we need to ask ourselves what are we sent out to do? It can’t simply be to ignore what’s happening in our world and pray for peace. We can’t compartmentalize peace like some commodified new age mantra. We have to embody it, heart and soul. The Zen buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hahn, said that we cannot be observers of peace, we have to be participants – meaning, that the existence or non-existence of God’s peace rests squarely on our individual shoulders. We play a part in all of this. You and I were in Georgia, you and I were in Kentucky, you and I were in Minneapolis and you and I were in Central Park.
What are you sent out to do by the Holy Spirit? How will you Embody Peace? How will you participate in helping break in the kingdom of God in this broken world?
However way you plan to do it, please do something. However way you plan to embody peace, embody it fully and for everyone. And however way you plan to participate in ushering in God’s kingdom, do it with every fibre of your being. For indeed, there is a rush of violent wind come to fill our houses, calling us to act like Apostles.
Peace be with you. Amen.
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