One in the Spirit

John 7: 37-39; 1 Cor. 12: 3b-13; Acts 2: 1-21

FPC; 5-11-08

          Beginning just north of Sanford and continuing all the way to the coast where it empties into the Atlantic Ocean, the Cape Fear River flows for some 200 miles.  Even though it has dangerous   sections prone to flooding, mostly it is understood as an important life-giving artery.  

          In the 1700’s Scot Highlanders used the Cape Fear as a means to travel to this area and give birth to new communities.  Even today, it provides life-sustaining water for our region. 

A river is probably not the first image that comes to mind when we think of the Holy Spirit.  Especially on Pentecost Sunday, we more commonly attach to the Holy Spirit such images as fire and wind, which find scriptural grounding in the text I just read from the book of Acts.   But according to John’s gospel, the Spirit is like a river.  Like the Cape Fear, for example, the Holy Spirit is powerful and life-giving. With great life-sustaining power, on the first Pentecost, the Holy Spirit flowed into that place where a diverse group of people had gathered. 

          In some ways, the diversity of those who had gathered in Jerusalem mirrors the diversity of the pieces of cloth on a table where a seamstress sits.  Some of the cloth is made of wool.  Others are made of cotton.  There are large pieces and small ones.   There are round shaped, square shaped and rectangular shaped ones.  Some pieces are white colored and others are black.  Some are red and others are blue.  One piece is from a grandmother’s curtain.  Another one comes from a dress that a mother used to wear as a child. 

          The seamstress takes the thread and weaves it through all the many diverse and distinct pieces and binds them together.  The result is a large quilt, beautiful to behold and a refuge against the cold air; an instrument by which the compassion of Christ can be shared with the world. 

          The people who came to Jerusalem on that first Pentecost were as diverse as those pieces of cloth on the table. People from every nation had gathered there.

As the river of living water flows into that place, the varied and diverse pieces are woven together; a community is born.  It is a community where diversity is valued, where all the pieces retain their distinctiveness and yet are bound together as one.  It is a community beautiful to behold and a powerful instrument through which the compassion of Christ can be shared with the world. As one scholar has written:  

“…the people did not cease to be Medes, Persians and Elamites.  They were not reduced to some vague generality without past or place.  No, they did not become less than they were, they became more than they had been…”[1]

The signature mark of that new community, the church, was unity; people began to understand that the things they held in common-their faith and baptism-were far more important than whatever had been keeping them apart.  They began to understand that unity does not necessarily mean uniformity.    The doors of the new community, the church, became more and more open to people who were different.     

          There is a story that comes from the Hasidic tradition.  The story has to do with a rabbi who was asked one day by a student, "How can one tell when the new day has come?"

The rabbi reversed the question and asked his student, "You tell me how you can know."

The student guessed, "Is it when the rooster crows to signal a new dawn?"

          "No," the rabbi answered.

          "Is it then perhaps when one can discern the silhouette of a tree against the sky?"

          "No," he was told.

          "The surest way to know when the night is over and when a new day has come is when you can look into the face of a stranger, the one who is so different from you, and recognize him as your brother. See her as your sister. Until that day comes, it will always be night."[2]                 Surely on this Day of Pentecost, the river of living water is flowing into our lives. Sometimes we try to move against the current.  We become exclusive.  We become egotistical, selfish and overly self-reliant.  We try to captain our own ship. When we surrender to the current, and allow our lives to flow in tandem with the Spirit’s movement in our lives, we are able to lay claim to a new identity, an identity of brother or sister to one another and to any who reside beyond these doors.  

          Not long before he was assassinated, Martin Luther King, Jr. began a sermon by telling a story about a famous novelist who had died and left a series of plots for novels in his desk drawer.  One plot was summed up with this single sentence: “A widely separated family inherits a house in which they all have to live together.”

          “This is the challenge for our time,”     Dr. King said, “We must all live together, even though we are unduly separated in ideas, cultures, and interests, because we can never again live apart. We must learn, somehow, to live together in peace."[3]

          Unity and peace will come in the church and in the world through the river of living water, the Holy Spirit that binds us together and enables us to look into the face of a stranger and recognize that person as a sister or brother.  Until that happens, it will always be night; there will be no peace.  There will be no unity.

          So then, let us allow the river of living water to wash over us and flow through us into the world.  Let us allow our entire being-body, mind and spirit-to be swept up by the Spirit’s current of love and peace. 

written and delivered by Dr. David Sherrod