Sermon for the Day of Pentecost and Holy Baptism - Rev. Elise A. Feyerherm - June 5th, 2022

To view a video of the Rev. Elise A. Feyerherm’s sermon, click HERE.

Genesis 11:1-9, Psalm 104:25-35, 37, Acts 2:1-21, John 14:8-17-27

It is so hard to compose a sermon about the joy of baptism and the Holy Spirit, when just a few days ago this nation experienced a fourth mass shooting in less than three weeks. On Thursday I sat in the Lichtenberger Room and saw through the windows the children of Pine Village preschool in the backyard, immersed in the joyful and serious work that is play, without a care, and I hoped, I prayed, that they would never know the terror that has unfolded elsewhere in this country.

In her poem, Hymn For The Hurting, Amanda Gorman, a practicing Roman Catholic, writes what many of us are feeling:

Everything hurts,

Our hearts shadowed and strange,

Minds made muddied and mute.

We carry tragedy, terrifying and true.

And yet none of it is new;

We knew it as home,

As horror,

As heritage.

Even our children

Cannot be children,

Cannot be.

Everything hurts.

It’s a hard time to be alive,

And even harder to stay that way.

I will not ignore the fact that “everything hurts” these days, and I will not use the celebration of the birthday of the Church as a cover for all the pain in the world. And at the same time, my friends, I intend still to probe the good news that is Baptism and the gift of the Holy Spirit in our lives. I hope not to allow hurt to have the last word.

For there is cause for joy today. We are baptizing two children, Julian and Jackson, in water and the Holy Spirit. In so doing we enact our trust in God’s power to bring life out of death. We bear witness to our confidence that this sacrament is not mere playacting, and that it actually bestows grace upon us. This is our cause for joy today: the power of God, the Holy Spirit, to make all things new.

If you are like me, you may be asking at this point how exactly this works, especially given the fact that after a baptism it is not easy to tell what has changed, what is new. These children will still get hungry and cranky, will still need band-aids for skinned knees, will still be terrifyingly vulnerable to all the temptations and violence in our world. Receiving the Holy Spirit won’t change that, as much as we wish She would do so.

Scripture gives us some clues as to what to look for when the Holy Spirit shows up. In Acts, the disciples are in a house together fifty days after Passover, perhaps celebrating the Jewish festival of Pentecost, which now commemorates the giving of the Torah to Moses on Mount Sinai. The Spirit fills them all and does two things: first it drives them out of the house and into the street, and then it creates community. 

Like a parent whose children have been lounging around inside complaining that they’re bored, the Spirit says, “Go outside and play!” Make new friends. This is precisely what the Spirit does in baptism, activating the gifts of the baptized on behalf of God and sending them out in the world. The Spirit offers not so much protection as propulsion. Remember what the Spirit did to Jesus after his baptism? It drove him into the wilderness!

After sending us out of the house, the Spirit’s main work is in creating relationship, allowing human beings to connect, understand each other, love one another, serve one another. In giving the disciples the ability to proclaim the good news of Jesus in different languages, the Spirit symbolically heals the confusion and division wrought by the builders of the tower of Babel. What was torn asunder is now brought together.

Jeff reminded us last week that the primary work of the Church is that of reconciliation. That same Catechism says this about the Spirit: “We recognize the presence of the Holy Spirit when we confess Jesus Christ as Lord and are brought into love and harmony with God, with ourselves, with our neighbors, and with all creation” (BCP 1979, p. 852). 

Brought into harmony with God, ourselves, our neighbors, and creation. This is not a coincidence, that the work of the Spirit and the work of the Church are the same! It is, after all, the Spirit that has brought the Church into being.

Amanda Gorman’s poem points to this, as it continues from where I left off:

We’re burdened to live out these days,

While at the same time, blessed to outlive them.

This alarm is how we know

We must be altered —

That we must differ or die,

That we must triumph or try.

Thus while hate cannot be terminated,

It can be transformed

Into a love that lets us live.

“We must be altered,” yes as individuals, which is how we come initially to the sacrament of baptism, but also and ultimately as one Body. We come because we know that we must be altered, and need God to alter us because we cannot alter ourselves. We come because the only way we can be altered is in relationship, in reconciliation. We come because only the Holy Spirit can transform hate into a love that lets us live; by empowering us to see each other, speak to each other, listen to each other, abide in one another.

This is why when Jesus speaks of the Spirit, the Advocate, he speaks not only of truth but of mutual indwelling, of abiding in him and in one another. Truth is not enough; where hate is not transformed, truth can cut us to bits.

So this is why we baptize: so that through the Holy Spirit, God can graft us together in Christ for the purpose of transforming hate into love. Jackson and Julian will be grafted forever into Christ, joined irrevocably with us as closely as Jesus is in the Father and the Father in him.

We baptize because it is our way out of the hurt, not just for ourselves but for the world around us. Such love will be our only hope for change – it is the way the Spirit alters us, and through us, alters the world’s apparent hopelessness.

For where the Spirit is, hurt does not have the last word. The Spirit is speaking through Amanda Gorman, in this final portion of Hymn for the Hurting:

May we not just grieve, but give:

May we not just ache, but act;

May our signed right to bear arms

Never blind our sight from shared harm;

May we choose our children over chaos.

May another innocent never be lost.

Maybe everything hurts,

Our hearts shadowed & strange.

But only when everything hurts

May everything change.

Everything may hurt right now. But this is because the Holy Spirit is among us, and in us, and She has tethered us in Christ to one another – to the world. This hurt is how we know we are tethered to the world, and how we know where the Spirit is sending us to bring reconciliation. To bring change.

Jackson and Julian, this is why you are being baptized. You do not know it yet, but God has called you to change the world, to join us as “we choose our children over chaos,” to love the world instead of filling it with weapons. To “transform hate into a love that lets us live.”

Come Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful 

and kindle in them the fire of your love. 

Send forth your Spirit and they shall be created. 

And You shall renew the face of the earth. Amen.

Veni Sancte Spiritus, c. 12th c.