Independence Day

Although today is, throughout the Church, the Third Sunday after Pentecost, in Bristol today we used the propers for Independence Day. In those readings, the Old Testament reading comes from the tenth chapter of the Book of Deuteronomy. 

I love the Book of Deuteronomy. Have I told you this before? In fact, it’s one of my favorite books in the Bible. The narrative premise in Deuteronomy is fairly straightforward: we are meant to imagine Moses and the Israelites on the brink of the Promised Land. They have just spent forty years wandering around the Sinai Peninsula (actually, to be more precise, thirty-nine years and eleven months and three weeks!) Their journey began way back in the fourteenth chapter of Exodus, with Pharaoh’s army in hot pursuit as they miraculously crossed the Sea of Reeds. That journey from slavery toward freedom has continued to unfold through the remaining chapters of Exodus and then into Leviticus and Numbers, and then ultimately into Deuteronomy. Now they find themselves at the end of that long journey, dreaming about owning their own little plot of land flowing with milk and honey, and tending to their own vineyards and fig trees and owning their own little homes and having their own retirement accounts.  

Before they leave Sinai behind them, however, Moses gathers the people one last time to preach one last (and very long) sermon. He reminds them that people who have nothing but the shirts on their backs know they are utterly reliant on God and on each other. In the desert, they learned to trust God for daily bread and water. The past four decades have not been easy, but they learned that faith can only be lived one day at a time. In the desert the most basic things (like bread and water) are received as gifts. The most primal faith response to receiving such gifts is gratitude.

There isn’t really any narrative action in Deuteronomy; they don’t go anywhere. Unlike Exodus and Leviticus and Numbers, they now finally stand on the brink of this Promised Land. It's in sight! And the whole premise of Moses’ sermon (which is basically what the Book of Deuteronomy is) hinges on this concern that Moses has about what affluence will do to this people: if they are not careful, affluence will lead to amnesia. They will forget to worship the Lord their God.

Moses is worried that faithfulness to God’s covenant will actually be harder in a land flowing with milk and honey than it was in the desert. He is worried that an attitude of gratitude will give way to greed and fear, as people become more focused on protecting what they perceive to be their own rather than on sharing with those in need. They will start to think more about “me” and less about “us” and when that happens the neighborhood will be in serious jeopardy.

You can pick up the Book of Deuteronomy and pretty much pick any random chapter and that is basically the message you will find there: love of God and love of neighbor are at home in the wilderness. Difficult times make community not only possible, but necessary. And conversely, living on easy street can make you cold hearted.

So there is a paradox here: they stand on the verge of an answered prayer, about to enter a land of hopes and dreams. They will never have to eat manna again, because there will be bakeries on every corner with warm crusty breads and soft pitas. That is a very appealing thought to people sick and tired of manna. But Moses sees that there is a shadow side to prosperity. His understanding of human nature is that it won’t take very long before the bread will be in the hands of a few and the strong will have more than their fair share of the good bread—more than they can even eat before it goes stale and goes to the birds. Meanwhile the more vulnerable members of the community ("the widows and the orphans") will be hungry. Moses is worried that words like self-reliant, self-made, self-centered will start to dominate the conversation and when that happens, the neighborhood will be in trouble.

Moses is not saying that faith is impossible in the Promised Land. He’s simply saying that one shouldn’t be deceived into thinking it will be easy or automatic. I see Moses as a pragmatist, not a pessimist, who simply wants to be as clear and honest as possible about the challenges that lie ahead. The temptation is to think that the hard days are behind them because survival in the wilderness was so difficult. But what Moses is saying is that all of our stuff can actually get in the way of loving God and neighbor. It can make one forgetful about the fact that we need God and we need our neighbors.  The key to being faithful in the Promised Land will be memory. It is a word that comes up again and again throughout Moses’ sermon: remember that you are only ever one generation removed from being slaves in a foreign land.

Freedom, as it is understood in the Book of Deuteronomy, is therefore about something much greater than gaining one’s own liberty or independence. If you flee Egypt and “make it” in the Promised Land, but then promptly turn around and enslave the weakest members of this new society, then all you’ve done is swapped roles from oppressed to oppressor. So that is what Deuteronomy is all about, wrestling with these rather large questions about faith and the economy and politics and the human psyche.  And that is what today’s reading from the tenth chapter of Deuteronomy is about as well. Theologically, the God of Deuteronomy is mighty and awesome. But because God is also good, God isn’t the least bit interested in accumulating more power. God isn’t interested in bribes. God isn’t interested in helping the rich get richer. Rather, God considers it a good day when slaves are liberated and the hungry are fed and the poor are treated with dignity and respect. God “executes justice for the widow and orphan.”

And God loves the stranger. God loves the stranger because God isn’t afraid of what is other—of what is different—of hearing different languages or trying different foods. Since you were yourselves strangers in Egypt not that long ago, Moses argues (on God’s behalf), it would make a mockery of the Exodus if you now turn around and treat the strangers in your midst the way you were treated in Pharaoh’s Egypt. That may be the way the world works. But it’s not the way God’s plan works. It's not how God's people are to behave.  

I realize this is all pretty serious stuff for the lead in to the Fourth of July here in a town where the Fourth of July is a pretty big deal.  But the readings the lectionary gives us for Independence Day invite us to reflect on this ancient Torah text in the context of our own Fourth of July celebrations. So let me ask you this: what kind of nation are we becoming? I’ll leave that as a rhetorical question right now. But I don’t think it’s a partisan question, nor is it out of bounds for a preacher. I think it’s fair to say that we are in trouble and right now we are a long way from great. God is not a Democrat or a Republican nor even an Independent. But can we Democrats and Republicans and Independents all agree that we are living in precarious times, difficult days that test the premise of e pluribus unum – out of the many, one. And if that’s the case then what is the message we, St. Michael’s, have for this community of Bristol and the surrounding towns about what faith looks like in such dangerous times?

We have work to do. As Christians, do we dare to ask whether it is possible for such times to shape and form a more compassionate people by reminding us who our neighbors are? We might step back and reflect on what an immigration policy might look like in a nation that loves the stranger as God does, rather than fearing them. We might step back and wonder what our tax code would look like if it reflected a genuine concern for widows and orphans? We can argue about the details, to be sure. We will have political differences. But the core values come to us from Jesus, not our political parties and not even from the founding fathers.

There is grace in simply asking such questions and maybe it is what we as Christians are intended to contribute to the marketplace of ideas right now. We do well to remember together that true freedom does not come easily and is never finished. Perhaps we can even help to re-frame economic precariousness and see it not as something that instills more fear and selfishness, but as a gift that opens us up to one another in new ways. If we are a people who are at least asking such questions, we stand a far better chance of discovering a healthier form of patriotism rather than falling into the trap of xenophobic nationalism. After all, there is no place in the Bible that says “God bless America!” What it does say is that God so loved the world.

I am fully aware of my own privilege and the knowledge that most days I live in the Promised Land rather than in the Sinai Desert. I am far more familiar with feeling secure and self-reliant and independent. Although I have had my own share of precariousness over the years, I’m deeply aware that it’s not nearly as much as many experience. And let me be clear: I don’t wake up in the morning asking God for more precariousness in my life. I enjoy stability and predictability and living in a nice home.

Yet it does seem to me that those times of precariousness (which even the most privileged among us do face from time to time) are a gift when it comes to our faith. Those times when we find ourselves in the wilderness are also the times when we stand the best chance of experiencing God’s healing presence and the Spirit’s transformative power. Amazing grace that saved a wretch like me…

It is in the wilderness times that we discover (and re-discover) that God is present. It is there that we learn to live life one day at a time and to see all of life as sheer gift. It is in our need that we are able both to give and to receive, and that changes our worldview. It opens us up to become a people with more grateful and generous hearts. When that happens to us, our spirituality can no longer be disconnected from the decisions and choices we make with our lives. How can we learn and re-learn to share this wisdom in the neighborhood not so much by what we say but as to how we live? How do we remember, daily, that it’s all gift and gift and gift and to those to whom much is given, much is expected?

Summertime gives us a chance to slow down and step back. Whether we are out sailing or camping or walking along the beach or hiking up a mountain, it can put us in a place somewhere between the wilderness and the Promised Land, in a place where we can remember that a well-lived life is one that is lived simply, so that others may simply live. We remember what matters (and what doesn’t) and by God's grace we give thanks to the One who is with us through it all. The One who keeps calling on us to remember the whole of Torah in four words: Love God. Love Neighbor.

May we find ourselves, this weekend and always, ready to help this nation to “mend every flaw” until there is justice for all. 

Elijah the Tishbite

A sermon for the Second Sunday after Pentecost on I Kings 19:1-15a, preached at St. Michael's, Bristol

Ahab told Jezebel all that Elijah had done, and how he had killed all the prophets with the sword. Then Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah, saying, "So may the gods do to me, and more also, if I do not make your life like the life of one of them by this time tomorrow." Then he was afraid; he got up and fled for his life, and came to Beersheba, which belongs to Judah; he left his servant there.

But he himself went a day's journey into the wilderness, and came and sat down under a solitary broom tree. He asked that he might die: "It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life, for I am no better than my ancestors." [Then he lay down under the broom tree and fell asleep. Suddenly an angel touched him and said to him, "Get up and eat." He looked, and there at his head was a cake baked on hot stones, and a jar of water. He ate and drank, and lay down again. The angel of the Lord came a second time, touched him, and said, "Get up and eat, otherwise the journey will be too much for you."] He got up, and ate and drank; then he went in the strength of that food forty days and forty nights to Horeb the mount of God. At that place he came to a cave, and spent the night there.

Then the word of the Lord came to him, saying, "What are you doing here, Elijah?" He answered, "I have been very zealous for the Lord, the God of hosts; for the Israelites have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword. I alone am left, and they are seeking my life, to take it away."

He said, "Go out and stand on the mountain before the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by." Now there was a great wind, so strong that it was splitting mountains and breaking rocks in pieces before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a sound of sheer silence. When Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his mantle and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave. Then there came a voice to him that said, "What are you doing here, Elijah?" He answered, "I have been very zealous for the Lord, the God of hosts; for the Israelites have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword. I alone am left, and they are seeking my life, to take it away." Then the Lord said to him, "Go, return on your way to the wilderness of Damascus." 

 +    +    +

The Book of Kings begins with King Solomon on the throne and then plows along under his varied successors until you get to chapter sixteen. That’s where it begins to get really interesting. That is when Omri (up to that point dubbed as “worst king ever”) dies. He is succeeded by his son, Ahab, who will reign for twenty-two years. (16:25) This comment from the narrator pretty much sums up what Ahab’s two-decade reign was like:

Ahab, son of Omri, did what was displeasing to the Lord, more than all who preceded him. Not content to follow the sins of Jereboam, son of Nebat, he took as his wife, Jezebel, daughter of King Ethbaal of the Phoenicians and he went and served Baal and worshiped him. (16:30-31)

 You should know that Baal is a god of fresh water, a rain god. So in chapter seventeen, on the heels of this information about Baal, we are introduced to Elijah the Tishbite, who issues a challenge: “As the Lord lives, the God of Israel whom I serve, there will be no dew or rain except at my bidding.”  Elijah is throwing down the gauntlet: Ahab has built an altar to Baal because he wants rain. But Elijah’s response is that it will only rain when YHWH says it will rain!

The problem with droughts is that they affect everybody, not just the bad people. Even Elijah will suffer the consequences of this drought. At one point in the narrative, he shows up at the home of a widow in Sidon who is down to her last little bit of flour and oil and preparing to die. Yet when the prophet invites himself for dinner, she welcomes him to her table. She chooses hospitality and generosity over fear and xenophobia and shares the little bit she has, which as it miraculously turns out, is enough. (A prequel to Jesus’ miracle of the loaves and fishes…)

By the time we get to chapter eighteen of First Kings, three years have passed and the famine brought on by this drought is much, much worse. Elijah approaches the people and puts it bluntly, the way prophets are prone to do: How long will you keep limping along between two opinions? If YHWH is God, follow God! If Baal, then follow Baal. But make up your minds already! (18:21)

It is at this point that Elijah takes on 450 prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel. They get a bull and cut it in half for a sacrifice and set up two wood piles. No matches allowed; just prayer. Elijah allows the prophets of Baal to go first and to pick their wood pile and bull. From morning until noon they shout: “O Baal, answer us!” Nothing. So then they performed what one translation calls a “hopping dance.” We get to see here that Elijah is a bit of a trash-talker because when nothing happens he chimes in: why don’t you shout louder! Maybe Baal is sleeping and you need to wake him up! Maybe he’s deep in conversation with some other god, or maybe he’s away on vacation. Nada.

Then it’s Elijah’s turn. He decides to make it interesting, filling four jars with water and soaking the whole thing. And then he says: do it a second time. Actually you know what—do it a third time until water is running even around the trench of the altar! Until the whole thing is sopping wet.. And then he prays:

O Lord, God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel! Let it be known today that you are God in Israel, and I am your servant, and that I have done these things at your bidding. Answer me, O Lord, answer me, that this people might know who is God…

And then? Woosh. Fire! An all-consuming fire that devours the bull, the wood, the stones, the earth, the water—everything! And everybody falls down on their faces and says, “Wow! The Lord alone is God. The Lord alone is God.” (18:39)

What happens in the next verse, however, is very troubling. Elijah can’t just let it be. He turns the impressed crowd into a mob and tells them to seize the prophets of Baal and “let not a single one of them get away.” So they seized them, and Elijah took them down to the Wadi Kishon and there he slaughtered every last one. (18:40) It is texts like that which make people say they don’t like the Old Testament. And as much as I do totally love the Old Testament, I totally get that.

This brings us to today’s reading and gives us a much better context to hear what was read a few minutes ago. Ahab has reported to his wife, Jezebel, what happened on Mount Carmel and at the Wadi Kishon. She responds by sending a message to Elijah: "So may the gods do to me and more also, if I do not make your life like the life of one of them by this time tomorrow."  She is issuing his death warrant, saying that he will not get away with what he has done. So Elijah does what most of us would probably do; he runs away. As we heard, he came to Beer-sheba, where he leaves his servant to go on another day’s journey into the wilderness. To say that Elijah is tired and scared is probably an understatement. He wants to die. He asks God to let him die. But an angel comes to him in a dream and tells him to get up and eat, and a little cake and some water are provided. He eats and drinks and falls asleep again and the angel returns and tells him for a second time:

Get up and eat, otherwise the journey will be too much for you. He got up, and ate and drank; then he went in the strength of that food forty days and forty nights to Horeb the mount of God. At that place he came to a cave, and spent the night there.

Elijah is at a mountain that the narrator calls Horeb, but that earlier generations called Sinai. He’s back, in other words, at the very same place where the story of God’s people began, back where Moses got the Ten Commandments and encountered God in the midst of thunder and lightning. Elijah declares how lonely he feels – I alone am left and Jezebel wants to kill me. (As if the God who created all the pyrotechnics doesn’t know this already.) And then the wind, so strong it was splitting mountains. But God was not in the wind. And an earthquake and a fire but God is not there either. And then “a sound of sheer silence.”

When Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his mantle and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave. Then there came a voice to him that said, "What are you doing here, Elijah?" He answered, "I have been very zealous for the LORD, the God of hosts; for the Israelites have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword. I alone am left, and they are seeking my life, to take it away." Then the LORD said to him, "Go, return on your way to the wilderness of Damascus."

Now Episcopalians (including me) love that “sound of sheer silence” (or as the older translations put it, the “still small voice of God.”) We tend to like our worship and our prayer and our spirituality on the quiet side, tending more toward meditation than speaking in tongues or doing any hopping dances around altars. Fair enough. But the reason I’ve taken the time to tell the larger story on this day is that I’ve heard too many sermons on that “still small voice” that forget this larger socio-political context. The point of the story is not to encourage us to pray daily and include quiet times in our lives, although clearly those are very good and important practices. I’m all for those! Rather, the more important point of the story is that being faithful in dangerous times is risky. And sometimes, it can get you into good trouble with the powers-that-be. I think of St. Paul and Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Martin Luther King, Jr. and Nelson Mandela all sitting in prison cells. As discouraging and isolating as that must have felt for them, perhaps they took some solace in remembering Elijah. And perhaps, they, too, in the sounds of sheer silence, were comforted by an awareness of God’s presence, so that they could carry on.

I think of those beloved of God in Tehran this morning, and in Gaza, and in Jerusalem, and in Ukraine - and all war zones across the world. I think of those who have been picked up and deported without any due process in our own country, right now. I think of what others have gone through (or perhaps even now are going through) what the mystics have called “the dark night of the soul”—when we feel like we are in a cave, lost somewhere in the wilderness, and feeling very afraid. And perhaps we, too, are ministered to by angels in those times. God may not be in the wind, or the earthquake, or the fire. But in the sound of sheer silence we know that we are not alone.

This is the larger point of the story and even when there are parts of it that may trouble us or feel unrelatable (or very “Old Testament”) this much holds true across many centuries. Being faithful to the living God can get us into trouble with the law. It got Jesus, and many others who have followed him through the centuries, killed. Sometimes we will feel very alone. Yet, in the silence, Elijah comes to realize that he is not alone. He knows—not in his head only, but in his heart and in his bones - that God is with him. And that gives him the strength and the courage and the hope to go on. The Word of the Lord that comes to him in that sound of sheer silence reminds him that there is work to be done, and he needs to go back and face that. He realizes anew that what God gives us is strength and courage to do the work God has given him to do; not a get-out-of-ministry-free card. His call is to speak truth to power - which will always make clear that there are costs to discipleship. 

And then, just like that, Elijah disappears. In the final chapter of the Elijah story, we hear about how in a whirlwind he passes into the heavenly realms on a chariot of fire, after passing the baton to his disciple, Elisha. The work will continue. He will vanish from our sight, at least until three years from now when we return to this cycle of readings again.

But who knows; maybe we’ll catch a glimpse of him from time-to-time before then? Every year at Passover, our Jewish friends set a place at their Seder tables for Elijah, even as they pray for peace “next year in Jerusalem.” Who knows when he might show up at their table? Or perhaps even at ours?

And as Christians, we catch a glimpse of Elijah every Advent season when John the Baptist suddenly appears in the wilderness, looking and sounding a lot like our friend as he proclaims that message of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. Like Elijah, John points beyond himself to insist that the future belongs to not to the King Ahabs or King Herods of this world,   but to the King of Kings and Lord of Lords: the One who comes to bring peace on earth and good will to all and teaches us to pray, “thy Kingdom come, on earth as in heaven…” May each of us hear, in the midst of our own journeys (and in particular when the road is difficult) that sound of sheer silence: God’s unique call to each of us to find a little more courage, and a little more hope to keep on keeping on, and to not lose heart.

 

Come, Holy Spirit!

This sermon was preached on June 8 at St. Michael's Church in Bristol, RI

We gather today to celebrate the Feast of Pentecost. As in the Acts of the Apostles, the Holy Spirit is the star of the show.

You will recall that Jesus promised to send the Spirit to comfort us, to lead us into all truth, and sometimes to goad us and prod us out of our comfort zones. The Church remembers that promise today. In so doing, we are reminded that the Church is something more than a club or a place of learning or a place to find people to care for us or a social service agency. In and through Holy Baptism, we have been claimed as members of the Body of Christ, as the Episcopal branch of the Jesus’ Movement.

From time to time I am asked “why does the Church matter?” It’s a fair question to ask a priest. Why do we baptize and confirm and teach and send people out in mission?” One could argue, fairly, that over the centuries, the Church has caused as much harm as good. All kinds of atrocities have been done by “Christian” people in the name of God and one doesn’t have to be a historian or social critic to know that.

Certainly God is bigger than the Church, and I think it’s good theology to admit that. The Spirit of God is like the wind, blowing where She will. Nevertheless, the Church claims that through this same Holy Spirit the baptized are called into covenant with God, to bear witness to what God has done in Jesus Christ, and to be agents of healing and reconciliation in the world. It seems to me that when we fall short it’s because we aren’t paying enough attention to the Spirit. That doesn’t make the Church “null and void.” It just means we can and must be intentional about remembering who we are and continue to listen for the Spirit that is trying to lead us into all Truth.

Today is an invitation to imagine what that might look like, if and when the Church is being what God intends it to be.

In the reading from the second chapter of Acts, Luke insists that we find this Spirit when we encounter “the other.” People who speak different languages are all in Jerusalem. But this story isn’t just about people who speak German or Norwegian or French. People can speak the same “mother tongue” and still speak different languages. Sometimes that’s because we come from different generations. Other times it’s because we’re shaped by urban or suburban or rural values. Increasingly it's because we get our news from very different sources, so what we know (or think we know) keeps us far apart. Far too often we talk past each other.

Communication is hard work! Most of us—even when raised in the Church—aren’t accustomed to seeing “the other” as a gift who can lead us into truth. We see them as a stumbling block and so we're tempted to build walls, not bridges. We are tempted to see them as a barrier to our getting what we want or think we need. When that happens we begin to allow fear to influence our words and our tones and our body language, and that blocks our willingness (as well as our ability) to listen. On both sides, conflict potentially escalates and authentic communication is hindered.

The story of that first Pentecost isn’t just about what happened one day a long time ago in Jerusalem. It’s a story about how the Spirit works: about how by the grace of God sometimes people do listen to and even hear one another. Nelle Morton, a twentieth-century Christian educator who taught at my seminary, liked to use the phrase, “hearing one another to speech.” That is to say, when we listen for the Spirit alive in “the other," we are not being passive. Rather, we actively empower “the other” to speak their truth. Where that happens, whether in first-century Jerusalem or twenty-first century Bristol, the Holy Spirit is at work, and all are enriched and amazed in the process.

The Church matters more than ever in a pluralistic society precisely because this story reminds us of what is possible when the Holy Spirit “shows up”—when people do “hear one another to speech” that leads to healing and to mission

Truth—the whole truth and nothing but the truth—is never something that any one of us can possess on our own. It requires community and intentionality. It requires plurality not singularity. “In Christ,” St. Paul insisted, “there is neither Jew nor Greek, neither male nor female.” On the great questions, one side never possesses the whole truth; and I believe it is the Spirit that pushes us into acknowledging that hard reality. Until we are able to hear, “each in his or her own native tongue.”

The Church is called to be an icon of what is possible—that is, an image of abundant life animated by God’s Holy Spirit. That is at the heart of what Pentecost is really all about: the Church learning to be the Church and then showing the world what is possible when the Spirit of God is trusted for guidance, and wisdom, and comfort.

That doesn’t mean there will be no conflict, and in fact the rest of Acts is filled with brutal honesty about just how difficult it is to be the Church. That keeps us from falling into the trap of a false kind of idealism that any of this is easy. But Pentecost insists that our agendas do not get the last word and that always the Church is meant to be a place where the simple question is asked: “what does God desire here?”  Where is the Spirit blowing? 

That doesn’t ensure that we will always get it right. But it does mean that we develop the practice of looking beyond ourselves for guidance. It doesn’t mean that everyone will speak the same language. But it does mean that we are intentionally becoming multilingual, that we are intentional about being a listening community, where we “hear one another to speech.”

Over the past couple of weeks I have been focused in my preaching on the next steps here at St. Michael’s in finding a new rector. I’ve said that this focus isn’t because I’m eager to leave you all – and I hope you know I’m having a lot of fun. I’m grateful for the time that we’ve shared and that we will continue to share. But it is towards an end goal. All of us involved seek to be instruments of God’s peace: the Bishop, the Canon to the Ordinary, me as your interim, the wardens and vestry, the members of the profile and search committees and every person who has participated along the way in the CAT, or showed up at a listening event. The work of finding the next rector includes many – but all of it is empowered by the Spirit. Our work is to be prayerful and open to that guidance – which challenges all of our assumptions.

As we move into summer mode here things will slow down. That’s good, it gives us the space we need. Next week we celebrate Trinity Sunday and Rev. Liz will be here to tackle that with you, as I attend my goddaughter’s wedding in Pennsylvania. It’ll be the choir’s last Sunday until the fall, and since I won’t be here next week to thank them I want to do that now.

The week after next we’ll move to one service on Sunday morning at 9 am, and this summer we’ll stay put here and hope for cool summer breezes. Things will pick up again in the fall, I’m sure.

But in the meantime we pray without ceasing for God to show us the way forward. The poets may be our best guides in this endeavor. So I close with the text of Timothy Rees’ hymn, found in the Hymnal 82 on page 511.  If you’d like to turn there now, I’ll read it as a prayer and you can follow along.

                  Holy Spirit, ever living as the Church’s very life;
                  Holy Spirit, ever striving through her in a ceaseless strife;
                  Holy Spirit, ever forming in the Church the mind of Christ:
                  thee we praise with endless worship for thy fruits and gifts unpriced.

                  Holy Spirit, ever working through the Church’s ministry;
                  quickening, strengthening, absolving, setting captive sinners free 
                 Holy Spirit, ever binding age to age, and soul to soul
                 in a fellowship unending: thee we worship and extol.

Come, Holy Spirit! Fall afresh on us. Come and work through us, so that we might be your faithful people.