Loading...Emmanuel Episcopal Church, San Angelo, Texas
The Sixth Sunday of Easter / Year C
The Rev. Dr. William B. Wright, Chaplain
May 22, 2022
Lesson: Acts 16:9-15
Psalm: 67
Lesson: Revelation 21:10, 22-22:5
Gospel: John 14:23-29 or John 5:1-9
It is good to be with you once again today. I will begin with a personal note.
This past week I remembered that Wednesday was the fifty-first anniversary of my ordination as a priest. I began thinking about that and had memories from long ago. On one occasion, after I had been ordained about five years, I was Rector of Trinity Episcopal Church in Demopolis, Alabama. One Sunday I was still dressed in my white robe and walking through the parish hall between services when I encountered one of our three-year-old boys with his older brother. The younger boy looked up at me and said, “You made me”. Instantly, thoughts went through my head as I wondered what conversations his parents were having about their Rector at home. His older brother then spoke up and said, “He isn’t God, Sean. He just works for him”. Later, Sean’s mother called me laughing. She told me that her son told her about what Sean had said to me. She told me that the family had a picture in the living room which had been taken at Sean’s baptism. I was dressed in my white robe and handing him to his parents after the baptism. He concluded from the picture that I had manufactured him and was presenting him to his parents. A serious case of mistaken identity.
For one year as a deacon and fifty-one years as a priest I have never known what was coming next. But I did remember Sean often as I tried to remember that I was working for God.
When Holy Scripture speaks of Heaven, it indicates that to be in heaven is to be in the presence of God. We are reminded over and over again that there is but one God and our call as his people is to worship God, not self or any other golden calf we might come across and raise up for the worship that should go only to God. We are assured that if we do focus on God and worship the real God, then the promise is none other than the kingdom of heaven in our lives. That is why we pray in the Lord’s Prayer that God’s kingdom may come and God’s will may be done on earth as it is in heaven. May God’s kingdom become a daily reality to us.
In short, we do not have to die to get there. We can begin experiencing heaven now and experience it in an even more profound way after we die.
(Story adapted from God’s Trombones). There is a true story about a preacher who had read a rather graphic passage of scripture to his congregation. He finished the reading, slammed his Bible shut and said,
“Brothers and Sisters, this evening – I intend to explain the unexplainable – find out the undefinable – ponder the imponderable – and unscrew the inscrutable”.
Today we have a lesson from the Book of the Revelation to John in which John tries to do just that. He is trying to unscrew the inscrutable. It is a passage in which he figuratively depicts God’s heavenly kingdom in all its fullness. He depicts God’s heavenly kingdom as one in which there is no sun or moon but there is always light because God is there. There is always living water flowing from God’s heavenly throne to refresh his people and bring life, and the Tree of Life which brings eternal life is there. It is a wonderful attempt to show us God’s kingdom in its fullness.
But what has this to do with real life?
PLENTY!
Today we hit the first in a series of lessons which will center on the Holy Spirit and will prepare us for the Day of Pentecost. We will celebrate the great Day of Pentecost two Sundays from now.
Jesus seems to have recruited the disciples he did because he figured if he could get it across to that group, he could get it across to anybody. They constantly misunderstood his teachings and had real separation anxiety when they were apart from him. In the Gospel lesson for today Jesus warns his disciples during the Last Supper in the Upper Room that he is about to leave them, but he promises that there is one who is to come who will make him present to them. In Greek, this one who is to come is called the Paraclete. He is to be Comforter, Counselor, Guide and Advocate for them. It is this Spirit of God who will make Jesus a present reality to his followers.
Throughout the Jewish and Christian Scriptures, we hear the Spirit of God described as the Wind of God or Breath of God. It is wind because wind blows. We can see and feel its effects, but we cannot see it. The Spirit is also described as fire. Fire quickens and excites. It is this description of the Holy Spirit as fire that gives us the shape of the bishop’s hat, or miter. It is literally shaped like tongues of fire to indicate that just as the Holy Spirit has fell on the Apostles, with the guidance of the Holy Spirit they are called to be modern Apostles and to lead the Church.
One of the more graphic stories of the Holy Spirit in the Bible is the story of Ezekiel and the Valley of the Dry Bones. Ezekiel is transported in a vision from Babylon to a valley that is filled with dry bones. The bones are like the hopes of the people of Israel who are in captivity. They are very dead and very dry.
They were exceedingly dry like the hopes of the people of Israel to ever go home to Jerusalem. God tells Ezekiel to prophecy the word to the bones. He does this with real reluctance, but then there is a great rattling and bone is joined to bone, flesh and skin comes to the bones. Now he is not much better off than he was before. He now has a valley full of dead bodies. He is told to once again prophecy, but this time he is to prophecy the breath. He does that and the bodies are filled with the breath of God. He now has a living army which points out that the hopes of Israel are indeed alive. It is God’s spirit which will bring life and return them home.
Jesus told his Disciples that he was leaving them but that he would continue to be revealed to them by the presence of the Holy Spirit in their midst. They would experience the kingdom of heaven at work among them as the experience the presence of God. Then they would be aware of the Peace of God which passes all understanding.
We are the Church of the Holy Spirit with seemingly unlimited possibility of spiritual growth and development. All we have to do it to take the time to drink and enjoy the presence of Christ among us.
AMEN.
