Readings for Pentecost:
Acts 2
May 11, 2008
The Rev. Canon James W. McLeod, D.Min.
St. Jude the Apostle Episcopal Church, Cupertino, CA
“And suddenly a sound came from heaven like the rush of a mighty wind and it filled the house ... And the disciples were filled with the Holy Spirit ... ” (Acts 2)
Happy Mother’s Day! Happy Pentecost! Seldom do these two celebrations fall on the same day, but this year an early Easter has given us a double blessing. In the Old Testament, the earliest word for the Holy Spirit is feminine in gender, Ruach. The Hebrews thought of the Spirit of God as feminine. It is a reminder to us that we humans, male and female, were created in the image of God who has qualities both masculine and feminine. Today I want to talk about Ruach, the Holy Spirit of God and the winds of change.
When I was seven, my family moved from Hayes Street in San Francisco to Visitacion Valley in the southeastern corner of the City. The government had built a new housing project for poor people. We lived there for eleven years. The project was located near the head of a valley in the midst of a large, undeveloped park. That first Summer I learned about the wind which poured through a large gap in the hills. Every afternoon from two to seven the mighty wind would arise and blow steadily and sometimes furiously from the West. It wasn’t long before the housing authority installed weather stripping around the front and back doors because people complained of the ill begotten blasts of air that blew dust into their apartments through the door cracks. This brought some relief, but now the wind was given sounds because the weather stripping would vibrate and sing with each gust of wind. Walking or biking against that headwind required an extra effort, but with the wind at your back, it was literally a breeze. Later when I played baseball I learned to adjust for the gusting wind. Many years later, I learned that the African-American kids who lived in the housing project had a name for that powerful afternoon wind. They called it, “The Razor,” because the wind was so sharp and cutting, even making your uncovered skin raw. The Razor.
Our Hebrew forebears had their own name for the wind. They called it Ruach. It is the same word that named the Spirit of God. Ruach. It also means human breath and the Breath of God. I’m reminded of a Confirmation hymn, “Breathe on me, Breath of God.” And so on Pentecost a mighty rushing wind filled the house where the followers of Jesus were sitting. God breathed on them and filled them with His Spirit and they spoke in different languages.
This same Holy Spirit, this Ruach, blows the winds of change. Just as the wind blows in ways we neither understand nor control, so the Ruach of God, the Holy Spirit, cannot be put in a box and controlled. Many religious people want to keep the Spirit confined, at least within the church, but God’s Spirit blows wherever the Spirit wills. The Spirit is at work everywhere like the wind and fills the whole earth. The Holy Spirit is a wind of change.
Certainly, God’s Spirit works in and through large and encompassing movements. Surely, the Spirit has touched our humanity in such great changes as the elimination of the slave trade, in the founding of democracies, in the establishing and protecting of human rights, and in the struggle for the liberation of women. Now, today, does God’s Spirit have anything to do with the candidacies of a woman and a black man for the Presidency of these United States? You decide. In such movements, the winds of change, have brought us to this time, I believe, and they are the work of the Ruach of God.
God’s Spirit has been active in this Episcopal Church that we know and love. During the almost fifty years of my priesthood, I have seen great changes and so have you. The Triennial General Convention that governs our church is no longer the sole prerogative of men, and particularly, men of wealth. Ann McElroy from this parish was one of the first women deputies only thirty-five years ago. In addition, the whole priesthood of our Episcopal Church has been strengthened by the inclusion of women priests. Now, God’s Spirit seems to be prodding us to open our leadership to persons who are gay. And we are being pushed by the Spirit, I believe, to be an example to the whole Anglican Communion. I believe that those of us whose minds have been changed in these matters have been shoved and pushed by the Holy Spirit. Our understanding of what is humane and just has been expanded often by no will of our own.
Change does not come easily. Each week we read about the struggles and disputes within this church of ours. Some parishes want to leave the Episcopal Church because of differences in the ways we interpret and understand Holy Scripture. Our leadership has said they are free to go. Hopefully, however, we will part as friends. But, sorry, you can’t take the church buildings and property with you. Alas, there have been and will be court battles. We do live in a world that involves human relationships, property and a legal system. I believe that God the Holy Spirit is present in this struggle, too.
Nor can any change be brought about in the absence of power. Right now there seems to be a push in the Anglican Communion by some of the primates of the national churches to appropriate power to themselves, even to set out rules as to who is in the Anglican Communion and who is out. Many of us will resist this assumption of power by the primates and others. The Holy Spirit has not given power to the all Christians, lay and clergy, to now take it away and give it to a few. The Spirit of God is involved in matters of relationship, property and power.
I have spoken of changes on a large scale. But the workings of the Holy Spirit reach also into our personal lives. Two instances.
When I was ten years old, the mother of my best friend asked my mother and me if I’d like to join the boys’ choir at Grace Cathedral. She knew I could sing and she wanted Bruce to have a friend for the long bus trips. She had friends who were searching throughout the City for boys who loved to sing. Well, I wanted to join and my mother agreed. So, three times every week Bruce and I would take the Muni from Visitacion Valley eight miles to Nob Hill. Grace Cathedral was a whole new world for two kids from the Sunnydale project. Bruce left the choir after one year. I stayed on for thirteen. I joined the Scout Troop, enjoyed the Youth Group, and was an Acolyte. Because I spent so much time at the Cathedral, I ended up going to a different high school than my friends in the project. And managed to stay out of trouble with the law. And I didn’t get married at 16 like my big brother and some of my friends. Looking back, Bruce and I were the few project kids in our age group that made it to college. Because I joined the choir, my life had taken a totally different direction than young people I had known there. Was it chance? Was I lucky? You bet. I believe the Holy Spirit opened some doors and gave me a shove.
Another example. Most of us here have seen unexplainable changes at work in our personal lives. A friend of mine has been planning to give up smoking for a long, long time. Something happened to convince him to finally act after forty years of smoking. And so he made detailed preparation to stop smoking on a certain day and he began to cut back accordingly. Do some of you remember the day you stopped smoking? I do. It was August 18, 1976, at Two O’clock in the afternoon. My friend took his last puff on a Thursday evening after choir practice and then asked us to bless him. I believe that besides the cues and prodding of his family and friends, the Holy Spirit was and is at work in Tom’s life. He has stopped. The time was right.
The Holy Spirit, the Ruach of God, is prodding and pushing the world for renewal, and bringing changes both great and small. On the evening before Jesus was to die, he had supper with his followers. Near the close of the evening, he said to them, “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all truth." (John 16:12-13)
“When the day of Pentecost had come, the disciples were all together in one place. And suddenly a sound came from heave like the rush of a mighty wind and it filled the house ... And they were filled with the Holy Spirit and they began to speak in tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance.” (Acts 2)
O Holy Spirit, by whose breath
Life rises vibrant out of death;
Come to create, renew, inspire;
Come, kindly in our hearts your fire.
Amen.
(Hymn 501 – Hymnal 1982)
| Updated May 13, 2008 |
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