The Rev. Noah Van Niel
May 6th, 2018
St. John the Evangelist
Easter 6 (B): Acts 10:44-48; Psalm 98; 1 John 5:1-6; John 15:9-17
If you’ve been paying attention to our Sunday readings this spring, you will have noticed that ever since Easter our first reading has been taken from the Acts of the Apostles, not from the Old Testament like it usually is. And if you’ve been paying really close attention you will have noticed that the readings are not progressing in order. We’ve been jumping around, from chapter 4 to 3 to 4 to 8 to 10 (today) and next week we’ll be all the way back in chapter 1 before ending up at chapter 2 on Pentecost. The reason for this is not to make you dizzy, it’s to chart the gradual shift that occurs across Eastertide from focusing on the Resurrection to focusing on the work of the Holy Spirit. Readings like today’s passage from Acts Chapter 10 are like mini-Pentecosts that prepare us in heart and mind for the main event.
In today’s passage Peter has gone to the house of Cornelius, a Gentile, which is a bit of a surprise to his companions, since before this Peter’s preaching had only been to his fellow Jews. But that’s not the biggest surprise of the encounter. The biggest surprise is that the Holy Spirit is poured out upon them just as vividly as it was on the disciples themselves and these Gentiles begin speaking in tongues and extolling the God of Israel, the Father of Jesus Christ. Peter and his compatriots are astounded to see that the Spirit of God is bubbling over and filling the hearts of even those who are not of their chosen tribe and who have never even met Jesus before. The Spirit is breaking out all over and it’s out of their control.
This out of control nature of the Holy Spirit has made the institutional church a little bit wary of it, historically. While they acknowledge the Holy Spirit as an essential part of the Trinity, it’s so hard to pin down, it doesn’t get half as much attention as Jesus or God most of the time. Part of the reason for that is that the Spirit is disruptive, and darned if the Church, ours included, doesn’t finds disruption loathsome. Just think about what happens to those Gentiles in Cornelius’ house, they start speaking in tongues and extolling God. It’s loud, it’s noisy, it’s uncontrollable and it’s incomprehensible. That’s why speaking in tongues is not usually one of our practices in The Episcopal Church (though I am aware that some of you here have had that experience). For those of you unfamiliar with the practice, there are many, what are called “charismatic” denominations that practice speaking in tongues as part of their worship. And what it is, very generally speaking, is an ecstatic experience in which one is so lost in reverie that language breaks down and they start babbling, speaking incoherently, and sometimes running up and down the aisles, and fainting from the rush of it all. It’s an experience of being overwhelmed by the Holy Spirit and the service is anything but the orderly affair we so enjoy. It’s fascinating and frightening to behold.
Now if what I just described makes your toes curl from the chaos of it all, and you would find such a disruptive display of spiritual ecstasy offensive to your finer sensibilities, then you are in the right place. It is not without reason that Episcopalians are sometimes referred to as the “frozen chosen.” But just because we are without the hollering of holy rollers and people
running up and down the aisles speaking in tongues, that does not mean we are without Spirit. No, we have our own ways of making people stand up and let their emotions rule the moment and cause their mouths to pour forth incomprehensible utterances because we, my friends, are a tradition that sings.
By my rough calculations, in our standard Episcopal service we spend more than half the time singing or listening to singing. More than half the time! That’s a lot! And that’s why having a good choirmaster as well as a good choir—both of which we are blessed to have—can really make or break the worship experience.
Why is that? Why do we sing so much? Well, historically our English heritage has imparted to us a love for choral music in the cathedral tradition as well as a commitment to recovering the ancient musical roots of Christian worship and we try to do our part to uphold that legacy. Aesthetically, it adds beauty to our worship and beauty is a well-worn avenue to the divine. But I’m going to proffer another reason we sing so much in church: because when it comes to something as grand as God, talking just doesn’t cut it. For us, singing is what we do when the emotions are too important or too intense and normal speech patterns fall away and new sounds, beautiful sounds, maybe sometimes frightening sounds, break forth from us as we too extol our God. Now, to be fair even our singing is measured and well ordered, but for an Episcopalian, singing is as close to speaking in tongues as most of us are going to get.
And that’s okay. Not everyone connects with God in the same way. There are many gifts, but the same Spirit. And what is singing but breath (spirit) and flesh working in consort to create sounds we don’t usually express, kind of like speaking in tongues. Singing is a sign of the Holy Spirit moving in us, breaking forth from us, which is why we do it so much in church, and why it has always been such an important part of the worship of Almighty God.
Now I recognize that not all of you are singers nor do you experience church singing as a spirit-filled moment. But if we allow ourselves the liberty of broadening the definition of the presence of the Holy Spirit beyond just speaking in tongues, and instead think of it as an overflowing of emotion given form in our bodies, I wonder what else might be considered the Holy Spirit’s work in us. What other mini-Pentecosts are breaking out in our lives? Rocking out to the car radio? Letting loose on the dance floor? Shouting out in delight? Clapping for joy? Singing isn’t the only way to let the Spirit that I know is in you, come bubbling out.
My concern for the work of the Holy Spirit is not that it’s absent in us, but that for some reason we work so hard to keep it buttoned up. We often stifle the rambunctiousness, the FUN that is the Spirit working in us. When’s the last time you just hooted and hollered? When’s the last time you jumped for joy? I’m not saying we have to get all happy/clappy, I’m saying that if we see such activities as immature or indecorous and thus needing to be restrained then we miss out on the fact that letting the Spirit of joy flow from us is an essential part of the life of faith. As Jesus says to his disciples, “I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete,” that is full, full to overflowing. We need to have moments in our life when the Spirit breaks out in us. Moments of exuberance and enthusiasm. Did you know that the root of the word of “enthusiasm” means to be possessed by God; {en-theos} to have God in you? And what have we been talking about in all these passages from John this Easter season but Christ being in us, and us being in Christ and Christ being in God etc.? Enthusiasm, that’s what we need.
We need moments in our life when we are possessed by God. We need to find ways in our lives to allow the Holy Spirit to permeate us and take us over a little bit. There’s a holiness in that experience that we run the risk of repressing by trying to keep every aspect of our life too closely in line. So
1 Sing to the Lord a new song, *
for he has done marvelous things.
5 Shout with joy to the Lord, all you lands; *
lift up your voice, rejoice, and sing.
6 Sing to the Lord with the harp, *
with the harp and the voice of song.
7 With trumpets and the sound of the horn *
shout with joy before the King, the Lord.
Let yourself be en-theos-ed. Do something that gets you shouting for joy, clapping your hands, tapping your feet, singing a song. Let the Holy Spirit that has been poured out upon you bubble over and take you over, so you may know the joy, the enthusiasm, the fun of being in God and having God in you. {Woooo!} Amen.