St. Charles’ Episcopal Church – St. Charles, IL

The Day of Pentecost – Pentecost – Year A RCL

Sunday May 11, 2008 – Whitsunday/Mother’s Day

Acts 2:1-21 – Psalm 104:25-35, 37 – 1 Corinthians 12:3b-13 – John 20:19-23

Rev. William R. Nesbit, Jr.

In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Amen.

Peace be with you.

Today is the feast of Pentecost, the day when we remember in ritual, the coming of the Holy Spirit to the disciples. Today is also in many ways, the birthday of the church, for with the coming of the Holy Spirit, as we heard in our reading from Acts, the small band of disciples begin to spread the good news that they have found. Today is also the birthday of the Book of Common Prayer, first used in the Church of England on the Feast of Pentecost in the year 1549. This makes the prayer book a venerable 459 years old. And of course today is also Mother’s Day, a national holiday where we are called to remember and honor the woman who gave us birth, and/or raised us and taught us along the road to adulthood.

Last week I spoke with you a little about faith and doubt. As part of that discussion I touched on fear. This week I want to spend a little more time there. That is why I started with peace. You may wonder why I would be speaking of fear on Mother’s Day. One of the best t-shirts I’ve seen, bears the simple phrase, “You can’t scare me. I’m a Mom.” Well, sometimes even Moms need a little help! Since the beginning of time we have struggled with fear. We are born afraid of being alone, afraid of falling, and afraid of loud noises, if memory serves. We learn to be afraid of the dark, afraid of death, and afraid of a whole host of other things. On the one hand it is a natural process that prepares our body to better deal with dangerous situations. Fear triggers the sympathetic nervous system in our bodies, like it does in all vertebrates. In humans, our eyes dilate and our hair stands on end, as our heart and respiration rate increases. Blood flow to the skin is decreased and shunted to the muscles as extra nutrients are released into the bloodstream. Our mouth gets dry and our digestive tract stops digesting food.

All this prepares us to either run from a fight, or fight better and limit the effects of damage from a fight, so I suppose you could say that fear is good. The problem is, that like so many of God’s gifts, it is misused. We are afraid more than we need to be. Much more. I don’t believe this is a particularly new problem, but I do think that many of the ways we have been dealing with our fear recently are becoming a problem.

First I would like to talk about money. Somehow, somewhere, we got the notion that money is a good hedge against fear; if we have enough of it, we need have no fear. Money can surround you with comfort, and it can isolate you from many of the problems of the world, but neither of these outcomes will have much lasting effect on fear. They only delay the inevitable. And there is a greater problem still. We have been living in a time of incredible growth, where money has appeared to grow on trees. It would appear that those times are coming to an end. Many economists say that we have only touched the tip of the iceberg of the mortgage and housing crisis. If this is indeed the case, then it would appear that one of the crutches we have been using to hold back our fears has turned around to bite us, becoming just one more fear to add to the pile.

Another way that we have been trying to handle our fear is through technology. Whether it is drugs, legal or illegal, used to cloud our perceptions, or machines to isolate us from everyone else, and even ourselves, we use our technology like armor in an effort to hold our fear at bay, keep it at arms length. Don’t get me wrong, I like a good movie or computer game for a bit of escapist fun as much as the next guy, but you have to wonder if we haven’t gone a teeny bit far when a computer game that lets you work out your frustrations by shooting police officers and running down pedestrians in novel ways, grosses four hundred million dollars in its first week on sale. Is this really a good way to be spending our money, or our time?

And still fear is rising.

And so I say again, peace be with you. In the face of fear that separates and isolates I say again, peace be with you. As Jesus came to his disciples in the midst of their fear, I come to you. Reminding you that it was this peace that turned the disciples fear to joy. As Jesus breathed on the disciples and gave them the Holy Spirit, sending them out into the midst of their fear, still they rejoiced. Fears that are ignored or suppressed do not go away. They gain power and grow. Fears that are faced and addressed lose their power and die. It is the Holy Spirit working in us that gives us the strength to face our fears. It is through the power of the Holy Spirit that we remember that we are the body of Christ.

Earlier I talked about how fear activates our sympathetic nervous system. Well as often happens in this wonderful machine that is the human body, there is another system called the parasympathetic nervous system that serves to counter-balance all the effects of the sympathetic nervous system, slowing our breathing and heart rate, returning our circulation to its normal pathways as it constricts our pupils and stimulates digestive secretions, in short, returning us to normalcy. A funny thing: Scientists have found that prayer and meditation serves to activate the parasympathetic nervous system and through this action short circuits the power of fear in our lives.

In the short sections of scripture we heard this morning, we see the power of the Holy Spirit in its many forms. Whether it is the violent rush of wind and tongues of flame from Acts, or the gentle breath of peace from John; the creating spirit of Genesis recounted in our psalm, or the activating spirit that Paul describes in his letter to the church in Corinth; all are the Spirit. Paul goes on in his letter to remind us that though separate, we are all one; he re-member us; re-attaches us to the body. Fear always tries to separate us from the body. It is the Spirit who remembers. Jesus as well, used parable and metaphor to remind his followers of the importance of staying attached of the body. “Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing.” Alone we are easy prey for our fears. Together, we are one in the Spirit; the many gifts of the Spirit working together in the body to build up our faith...and to ease our fears. “For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one and we were all made to drink of one Spirit.”

On this Pentecost, do not be afraid. I say again, Peace be with you. Let all who are thirsty drink of this Spirit. Drink deep.

Amen.