Day of Pentecost B ‘24
19 May 2024
Acts 2.1-21; Jn. 15.26-7; 16.4b-15
St. Luke’s Episcopal Church
North Little Rock, Arkansas
The Rev. Carey Stone <+>
Come Holy Spirit and fill us; so that our community might mature in wisdom, understand the language of the Spirit and translate it to those in Cabot, Maumelle, Sherwood, Jacksonville, Little Rock, North Little Rock and beyond. In the Name of Christ, we pray. Amen.
There’s just no denying it. I have a southern accent. There have been times in my life when I did not like this characteristic about myself. In fact, there have been times I have tried to cover it over with a different accent.
I remember getting a hard time about my southern drawl on several occasions in my field parish during my time at seminary in northern Virginia. One of my professors from upstate New York used to encourage me to change my accent by chiding me and saying, “Carey you do have such a heavy regional accent, perhaps you should modify it.”1 Every time they would bring this up, I had the temptation to say back to them in my best ‘hick accent’ – “Ay-und also wee-uth yooo!”
For a semester this really bothered me. I decided I would talk with another prof., my homiletics professor who was, like my other professor, born above the Mason-Dixon Line and see what she thought about it. She took a totally different approach and encouraged me to honor and be true to my southern heritage and to be my authentic self and to use my authentic voice – “It’s the real you that will touch people” she added. I don’t know why but it seems this is a concept that a lot of us struggle with, namely that God wants to use ordinary people in extraordinary ways – just as we are – even if we have a southern accent!
Each of us come from a specific region and speak with a one-of-a-kind voice from a particular point of view. Our personalities all speak differently. Some use metaphors while others prefer the bare facts. Some speak with great emotion while others speak with great clarity of thought. All of our hearts groan in a language that only the Spirit speaks. Only the Spirit can take all our languages of mind and heart, interpret them and translate them into a cohesive and life-giving message.
This, I believe is the master plan that God was starting at Pentecost. Jesus told those first disciples: “It is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Advocate will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you…”2 Because of Jesus’ human limitations and being God incarnate that is God in human flesh, he could only be in one place at one time, but after his ascension the Holy Spirit would come an indwell all believers empowering them to carry out the works of God on a much wider scale.
Jesus, by the power of the Holy Spirit became incarnate from the Virgin Mary and was made man.3 Now at Pentecost, the Church by the power of the Holy Spirit becomes the incarnate body of Christ – his hands and feet in the world. Of this phenomenon, author and my Facebook friend, Gertrude Mueller Nelson writes: “The full revelation of Christ’s mission does not seem to make sense to the apostles until he leaves them –
bodily. Only then are they inspired with meaning, and they receive the understanding, the knowledge that his mission is to be re-embodied through their own ministry…Now God comes again, not as man, but as Spirit to become incarnate in us.”4
Kirk Hadaway, in his book, Behold I Do a New Thing talks about three ways local congregations can miss this point and indicated that some congregations lose focus when they center their attention around one charismatic leader. Another way for a congregation to miss out on their mission is to rely on one powerful leader who functions as a CEO. Hadaway says that a third way he has observed congregations lose sight of their mission is to function like a social club where everything revolves around their dues paying members rather than meeting the needs of those outside its walls. But a congregation who is open to the Holy Spirit and are actively seeking to be used by God to impact the community around them Hadaway calls an “Incarnational Community.”5 That is to say, the church that has rediscovered what business they are in and has ceased to be a social club, or followers of a CEO or followers of a powerful charismatic leader but rather a community of the baptized who, gifted and empowered by the Holy Spirit, take up the message of Christ’s kingdom in the world in new and exciting ways! Each of us in our own language making known in our words and deeds the breaking in of the kingdom of God.
Our call is to incarnate the truth of the Good news, that means for us to translate and interpret the ancient truth of God’s unconditional love for the world in the specific geographic and cultural area where we have each been placed – yea! even in places where people speak with southern accents, that my friends is the opportunity we have been given as the baptized community of Christ.
As we look all the way back to Genesis and the great story of earth’s creation, we see how the Spirit hovered over the earth when it was nothing more than a large sphere of water. Out of this void and chaos would be brought order and design. These raw materials would be acted upon by the Spirit to bring about a new world. This pattern of the Spirit using ordinary matter to bring New Life and order out of chaos continues. Jesus
intends to finish what he started but he plans to finish it through us – his body incarnate right where we are, through the power of the Holy Spirit. God didn’t stop speaking at the end of the book of Revelation – God through the person of the Holy Spirit is still speaking to anyone who will stop long enough to listen because the Spirit knows that all around us there are people waiting to hear the Good News in a language they understand, even some with a southern accent.
Come Holy Spirit and fill us; so that our community might mature in wisdom, understand the language of the Spirit and translate it to those in Cabot, Maumelle, Sherwood, Jacksonville, Little Rock, North Little Rock and beyond. Amen.
1 Comment made by a professor at Virginia Theological Seminary, Alexandria, VA 2005
2 From John 16.4b-15 NRSV
3 From the Nicene Creed, The Book of Common Prayer, p.358
4 Nelson, Mueller, Gertrude. To Dance with God: Family Ritual and Community Celebration, (New York: Paulist Press) 1986, p.188
5 Hadaway, Kirk Behold I Do a New Thing