Sermon preached by The Reverend Dr. Harold T. Lewis

SERMON PREACHED BY THE REVEREND DR. HAROLD T. LEWIS, RECTOR CALVARY EPISCOPAL CHURCH, PITTSBURGH, PENNSYLVANIA ON THE DAY OF PENTECOST 27 MAY 2007


"How is it that we hear them, each of us in his own language?" (Acts 2:8)


A few weeks ago, at Polly Manning's funeral, I poked a little fun at her for her well-known propensity for being a pack-rat. Those who assisted her in her move several years ago can attest that it was well nigh impossible to convince Polly to leave anything behind. Well, the joke is on me, as I have now become the beneficiary of Polly's penchant for saving stuff. Last week, her daughter Weezie delivered to me a bag full of sermons preached by Samuel Shoemaker, the distinguished twelfth rector of this great parish. They were, of course, since Polly was a librarian, neatly packaged in rubber bands and in chronological order. In poring over Dr. Shoemaker's homiletical offerings, it became obvious to me why some fifty years ago, Time Magazine declared that he, Billy Graham and Norman Vincent Peale were the most outstanding preachers in America.

But of course I have been reading other stuff recently, such as a press release reporting an important diocesan meeting held last week, in which a priest complained of the current state of affairs in these words: "I don't believe anything I didn't believe 40 years ago. Then I was smack-dab in the mainstream. Now I'm on the outside looking in." The clergyman's contention was that the church had moved off center, away from the faith once delivered to the saints. He saw it as his duty, and that of the diocese, to return to the basics and to hold up his forty year-old beliefs as a standard for his fellow Christians. My reaction was this: Could it possibly be that the church's understanding of certain things has changed over four decades? Could it be that the church, led by the promptings of the Holy Spirit, has a deeper understanding of the implications of the faith, such that things held to be incontrovertible in 1967 are seen through a different prism today? Religion aside, do we all hold exactly the same views we held in 1967 with respect to questions, say, of race, gender and sexuality? And if our societal views have changed, does it make sense for our religious views to have remained immutable? As I was fumbling for the words to express myself, I remembered something I had just read in one of Dr. Shoemaker's sermons --- a sermon, preached, amazingly enough, just over forty years ago. I rummaged through the bag and found the one I was looking for. It was entitled (and no, I am not making this up) "Conservatives are Destroying Themselves." Allow me to quote from it: The basic ingredients of our Faith do not change. They were given in essence by God in His revelation of Himself in Christ. But our understanding of them in our lives and application of them to our time, are progressive. Without new insights, convictions, experiments, we live on ashes.

Then Dr. Shoemaker, in a not-too-veiled warning to religious conservatives then and now, relates the wisdom of one of his English professors at Princeton, who was also his crew coach, who opined that he would rather be the coxswain of a crew moving forward while looking backward, than captain of a football team looking forward while being pushed backward. And then, for those few in the congregation who could not grasp the sports analogy, good ol' Sam, grounded in the classics, quotes Heraclitus: "There is nothing permanent except change." I would add that Heraclitus illustrated this truth with his famous maxim, "You can't step in the same stream twice."

What has all this to do with Pentecost? Today's feast, the so-called Birthday of the Church (although I prefer to call it the Church's birthday party) celebrates the Descent of the Holy Spirit on the disciples. The Holy Spirit is perhaps the least understood of the persons of the Trinity, but if you want to understand the Holy Spirit, remember that the Greek word for spirit is pneuma (as in pneumatic tire). Pneuma is also the word for wind. When we see the branch of a tree moving, we cannot see the wind, but we see the evidence of the wind. Likewise the Holy Spirit, whose work is seen in the winds of change blowing in the life of the church.

But to grasp the significance of Pentecost, we must look to the 11th chapter of Genesis, for the story of the Tower of Babel. In that story, some guys got together to build a city with a tower in the midst of it, which would reach to the heavens. They started to build it, Genesis tells us, "to make a name for themselves." They wanted to be lords of the earth, little gods, if you will, petty tyrants in control of everything. It was nothing short of a power play. But God decided to thwart their plans by confusing their speech, making it impossible for them to communicate with each other, so the building project came to a grinding halt. The Day of Pentecost is exactly the opposite. After the Holy Spirit swooshed through the room, all the different ethnic groups from every part of the then known world found to their astonishment that they were able to understand each other. So whereas at Babel, the babble of languages confuses and frustrates, on the Day of Pentecost, the speaking in various languages serves to enlighten and inspire. The thing to remember is that the Holy Spirit, beginning with the Day of Pentecost, is an agent of radical change. The Holy Spirit is the Comforter of whom Jesus speaks, who would lead us into all truth. I think the word "lead" is significant." If Jesus had said the Holy Spirit would "show us the truth," we could reasonably expect one big once-and-for-all revelation. But leading suggests that the fullness of truth is revealed over time.

My friends, I think the church today is closer to the experience of Babel than it is to the Day of Pentecost. We are divided today by the existence in the church of different languages, unintelligible to each other. Now there has always been diversity in the church, and we never expressed theological opinions in exactly the same way. But I think that there was a time when the church spoke the same language but in different dialects. There was the Anglo-Catholic dialect (of which I am not entirely unfamiliar) which emphasized the sacraments, and the evangelical dialect that emphasized Holy Scripture, and so on. (Those were the days in which the greatest divisions in the church were among the low and lazy, the broad and hazy, and the high and crazy.) But there was enough commonality among the dialects to enable us to understand each other. Now, however, we are speaking different languages entirely, and in too many instances, there is no desire for the services of the Holy Spirit the Interpreter.

And is there not evidence, however subtle, of Tower-of-Babel-like power plays? I am disturbed by language in the diocesan communiqué which laments the fact that the diocese is at the periphery of the church. Must the Diocese be in the mainstream in order to exercise effective ministry? People of color, women, and gays and lesbians have long been at the periphery of the church's life and have nevertheless worked effectively from the margins to usher in the Kingdom. Indeed, even a cursory reading of the New Testament will show that Jesus held up the halt and the lame, the poor and oppressed, the sick and the widowed --- all of whom were among the least, the lost and the last of society, as examples of what the Kingdom of God would look like. Equally disturbing is the lament on the part of the diocesan leadership that the diocese has not prevailed, and that the House of Bishops has not countenanced an international plot which would have made the Tower of Babel attempted coup look like small potatoes indeed. Is it not possible that the Holy Spirit has continued to move in the life of the church in such a way that the church is at long last articulating a Gospel that is more inclusive than the version of the Gospel that this Diocese has for the most part embraced?

Back to Father Sam. On the Feast of Pentecost, 1959, Dr. Shoemaker preached from this very pulpit a sermon entitled "The Holy Spirit and the Race Question." It is a brilliant piece of exegesis. He cites the baptism of the Ethiopian eunuch and other passages as proof that the Gospel message was brought to people of color. Pointing to Peter's testimony that God is not a respecter of persons (in the new translation "shows no partiality") he challenged his flock, saying "If people really are what they are to God and in his sight, then increasingly they must be such to us, and be so treated." At the end of the sermon, Dr. Shoemaker (providing further evidence that Calvary Church has always been in the trenches) asked the people of Calvary to support a bill before the City Council which would end discrimination in the sale, rental or financing of real estate. (It must be remembered that in those days, it was quite legal for homeowners to prevent members of certain racial or religious groups from buying their house.) Dr. Shoemaker described such action on the part of the church --- supporting the bill before the Council --- as "a logical and a necessary deduction from Pentecost."

It is no small comfort to me, and I hope to you, to know that our ministry, a half century after that sermon was preached, is to fill in the blanks, as it were, to make sure that this parish sees as "a logical and necessary deduction from Pentecost" the inclusion of all sorts and conditions of men and women who stand in need of the healing balm of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Today, through the sacrament of Holy Baptism we incorporate a holy quartet into the fellowship of Christ's Church. Have you read their names? They are right out of central casting. We have Noah, the faithful patriarch and builder of the Ark of Salvation. We have the faithful and selfless Naomi, mother-in-law of Ruth, who would become an ancestor, through King David, of Jesus. We have Eli, the faithful priest in the Temple responsible for the call of the prophet Samuel. And finally, we have Christian, a follower of our Lord and Savior. My prayer is that their parents and godparents will see to it that they live into their baptismal vows to "seek and serve Christ in all persons," and "strive for justice and peace among all people and respect the dignity of every human being." In so doing, these infants, as they grow into the full stature of Christ, will ensure that this church, fifty years hence, will continue to be an oasis and a place of refuge for all who profess and call themselves Christians.

Let us pray: Holy Spirit, ever working, through the Church's ministry, Quickening, strengthening, and 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. The Hymnal 1982, 511.