by the Rev. Dr. Craig Lemming, Associate Rector
In the name of the Triune God who opened the way of eternal life to every race and nation by Christ’s promised gift of The Holy Spirit. Amen.
How do you find words to express the inexpressible? Preaching on Pentecost is an honor that demands one’s best efforts to find words to describe the indescribable Holy Spirit. Quests for language about the ineffable Holy Spirit lead us to “sacred stumblings.” Alan Bennett says it best in his film The History Boys when the old teacher says:
“The best moments in reading are when you come across something – a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things – which you had thought special and particular to you. And now, here it is, set down by someone else, a person you have never met, someone even who is long dead. And it is as if a hand has come out, and taken yours.”
Theologians have tried to understand the incomprehensible Holy Spirit for millennia. I stumbled upon Cyril of Jerusalem’s beautiful attempt. St. Cyril wrote:
The Spirit comes gently and makes himself known by his fragrance. He is not felt as a burden for God is light, very light. Rays of light and knowledge stream before him as the Spirit approaches. The Spirit comes with the tenderness of a true friend to save, to heal, to teach, to counsel, to strengthen, and to console.
The five-year journey through my doctorate was made possible by the tenderness of The Holy Spirit in many of you, and in countless souls, past and present, who showed up to save, to heal, to teach, to counsel, to strengthen, and to console me through some of the most grueling years of my life. There was also a quote by Willie James Jennings that I returned to often, especially when I was tempted to give up on my thesis. I discovered that the grounding theological discipline of my doctoral dissertation is Pneumatology – the theology of the Holy Spirit articulated by Jennings in his biblical commentary on the Acts of the Apostles. His words encouraged my seemingly impossible quest to discover spiritual practices that can enable those inside and outside the church to build kinship across lines of difference. Willie James Jennings wrote:
Where the Spirit of God is, there is divine desire not simply for God but for one another and not simply for one another but for those to whom we are sent by the Spirit, to those already being drawn into communion with God and sensing the desire of God for the expansion of their lives into the lives of others. The deepest reality of life in the Spirit depicted in the book of Acts is that the disciples of Jesus rarely, if ever, go where they want to go or to whom they would want to go. Indeed the Spirit seems to always be pressing the disciples to go to those to whom they would in fact strongly prefer never to share space, or a meal, and definitely not life together. Yet it is precisely this prodding to be boundary-crossing and border-transgressing that marks the presence of the Spirit of God.[1]
To save you the trouble of reading 208 pages of my doctoral dissertation, (talk about a spiritual gift!), I’ll skip to the conclusion. My thesis demonstrates that decolonial, antiracist spiritual practices can meaningfully support individuals and communities seeking healing and kinship across lines of race, gender, and class in a post-George Floyd Minneapolis–St. Paul. Through my analysis of thirty-five interviews from members of St. John’s and alumni of Circle of the Beloved, a set of spiritual disciplines emerged that helped people inwardly and outwardly reckon with the betrayals of racist coloniality. Organized through the Anglican framework of Scripture, Reason, and Tradition, these practices revealed how Christian spirituality can be reclaimed as a transformative resource for justice, reconciliation, and communal belonging. My analysis of the qualitative data argues that resisting racist coloniality requires a turn toward the inner life as well as communal action. The spiritual practices identified by interviewees provided pathways toward truthful relationship, courageous self-examination, and renewed covenantal love of God and neighbor. In doing so, Saint John the Evangelist Episcopal Church and Circle of the Beloved contribute to a practical theology capable of sustaining antiracist, decolonial healing within and beyond the Church.
I am grateful for all of the interviewees who participated in my research study. I give thanks for “Pentecost moments” during those interviews, when interviewees spoke about “God’s deeds of power” in their own lives. In today’s lesson from the Acts of the Apostles, Luke the Evangelist reports that people from every nation under heaven said, “in our own languages we hear followers of Jesus speaking about God’s deeds of power.” When we are courageous enough to speak to another person about God’s deeds of power in our life and when we are humble enough to listen to people very different to us speak about God’s deeds of power in their lives, that is when, in the Prophet Joel’s words, God pours out the Holy Spirit upon us. In those Pentecost moments we experience that divine desire for spiritual kinship. We suddenly find ourselves belonging to people completely different to us. Our differing lives become extraordinary when we speak of, listen, and respond to God’s deeds of power together.
Now, perhaps you’re like me, an introvert with a shy soul, who has to work to be this extroverted about my deepest-held spiritual beliefs. The good news is, our spiritual differences are not only a blessing but vital to The Holy Spirit’s recreation of all things, seen and unseen. Saint Paul writes,
Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of services, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good[…] For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body… and we were all made to drink of one Spirit.
Our lives thirst and long to be saturated by the varieties of The Holy Spirit’s gifts. Gifts can only be gifts when we give them entirely away. The true meaning of our lives emerges when we humbly receive and generously give The Holy Spirit’s Love Divine to everyone. This Love Divine that flows generously through us is Christ’s deep river of living water. As Jesus says in today’s Gospel,
“Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink. As the scripture has said, ‘Out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water.’” Now Jesus said this about the Spirit, which believers in him were to receive.
In his book, There Is A River, African-American historian and scholar of religion and society Vincent Harding traces the centuries-deep Black freedom struggle in America, portraying the movement not as a series of isolated events but as a continuous river of resistance, faith, and hope flowing across generations.[2] To join that timeless river of souls who loved God and loved their neighbors as themselves, we are now entrusted with their unfinished quest for “justice to roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.” As our lives contribute to that river, we may stumble, but the Holy Spirit makes our stumblings sacred. Even in today’s hellscape of cruel colonial chaos, trust the Holy Spirit. Listen to God’s deeds of power in the lives of those very different to you. Speak boldly about God’s deeds of power in your life. And The Holy Spirit will make new kinship.
In a few moments, we shall celebrate the sacrament of God’s Holy Spirit flowing creatively into and through the lives of Ellie Mae, Loukas, and Maizy. We celebrate the desire of God for the expansion of their lives and our lives into the lives of differing others. We celebrate God’s deeds of power working through each of us to save, to heal, to teach, to counsel, to strengthen, and to console. May God pour out Christ’s river of love upon each of us, like this bevy of Pentecost doves, so that our lives shall be bold proclamations of The Holy Spirit’s deeds of power. Amen.
[1] Willie James Jennings, “ACTS” in BELIEF: A Theological Commentary on the Bible, eds. Amy Plantinga Pauw and William C. Placher (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2017), 11 and 12.
[2] Vincent Harding, There Is a River: The Black Struggle for Freedom in America (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1981).
