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Good
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 Sermon
05/23/10
If There Is Anything Worthy of Praise ~
by Reverend Thomas Cary Kinder
May 23, 2010 Pentecost Sunday
First Congregational Church in Thetford,
Vermont, UCC
Psalm 104; Philippians 4:4-9; Acts 2:1-17
Later
in this service we will sing two hymns about the ongoing work of the
Holy Spirit. The sermon hymn,
“They Did Not Build in Vain,” says,
Yet still the
Spirit’s power
in wind and fire
of love
pours gifts upon
the church
for service in this
hour.
The
final hymn, “Spirit, Spirit of Gentleness” says,
You call from
tomorrow,
you break ancient
schemes,
from the bondage
of sorrow
the captives dream
dreams;
Our women see
visions,
our men clear their
eyes.
With bold new
decisions
your people arise.
Pentecost
did not happen once and then was over. Pentecost is meant to be a
continuous way of being for the church. We are meant to have the Spirit
flowing through us constantly, guiding and empowering our giving and
serving, breaking us free from the past and keeping us working to
establish God’s realm on earth.
There are churches where the Spirit does not seem to be
present, churches that have become captive to old schemes and blind
to new visions, but Jesus came to free the captives and give sight to
the blind. All a church needs
to do is commit more deeply to the ways of
Christ, and it will open itself to new life in the Spirit. With bold new decisions, its people
will arise.
Paul
is the authority on this. He
taught his churches to open to the Spirit and seek the Spirit’s
gifts. As a result they broke
ancient schemes, they broke social rules, they
became communities that challenged the empire around them. The same holds true today. If we want to live successfully by
society’s rules, then the church that Paul envisioned is not
for us, because Paul calls us to create a Spirit-led counter-culture
within the violent, greed-driven culture around us. But if we want to live successfully
by the Spirit’s rules, if we want to live in the
counter-culture of God’s realm here and now, then we should
take Paul to heart. He can
help us see how to live in the Spirit, and help us see how the Spirit
is living through us.
This
is important because many of us today are feeling bad-news
fatigue. I will not spoil this
day of celebration by mentioning any of the numerous troubles that we
heard about this week alone.
But I will say that we do not need to feel hopeless when we
hear such things. Paul shows
us how we can remain a force of positive energy and light.
Paul
says, “Rejoice in God always.
Again I say, rejoice.”
Paul listed among his ministerial qualifications
“afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments,
riots, labors, sleepless nights and hunger.” Yet he said that though he might be
expected to be sorrowful, he was always rejoicing. (II Corinthians
6) The clues to how he did
this are in the rest of today’s passage in Philippians.
It says, “Let your gentleness be known
to everyone,” but the word translated “gentleness”
is too gentle a word. It has
much more force in the Greek, more like humble, generous,
compassionate lovingkindness. We can rejoice always if we make it
our job in every circumstance to be an instrument of humble,
compassionate lovingkindness. As the Dalai Lama said, “If
you want to help others, practice compassion. If you want to help yourself,
practice compassion.”
In
communist Eastern Europe there was a prisoner in solitary confinement
who was going out of his mind from the removal of all sense of
meaning and connection to life.
Then one spring day ants began making regular visits to his
cell through a tiny crack in the stone wall. He was overjoyed to have contact
with another life form. He
poured out all his love toward them.
He made sure there were always crumbs for them from his scrap
of bread. Caring for those
ants saved his sanity and his life.
Because of them he still had his soul intact when he
emerged. For other Eastern
European prisoners not in solitary confinement, offering lovingkindness toward other prisoners and having
compassion even on their torturers preserved their humanity and
connection to God. Giving love
can always be a source of rejoicing, even in the worst of
circumstances.
Paul
did not say just to rejoice always, he said to rejoice in God
always. The passage goes on to
say, “God is near.”
God is always present.
As Muslims say, God is closer to us than our own jugular
vein. Paul is saying that
whatever we are experiencing, however caught up we are in worldly
care or concern, in fear or pain, in rage or despair, we are still in
God and God is still in us.
Paul
knew what it was to suffer. He
suffered as much as anyone with his shipwrecks and floggings and
prison time, not to mention his struggles with his own
weaknesses. But he also knew
that if he turned to God and opened to the Spirit, he could find
reason to rejoice in God’s presence always with him, whatever
was happening.
As
a result, he was able to say, “Do not worry about anything, but
ask God for whatever you need, giving thanks at the same
time.” Paul could
rejoice because he could let go of all worry and turn to God in
trust. Turning in trust may
not seem to make any difference on the outside—our troubles may
remain—but it makes a huge difference inside.
You
may recall the story of the woman in the emergency room, waiting for
a doctor to come out and tell her if her teenage daughter would
survive the car accident she had been in that night. The mother was praying frantically
as they operated, saying over and over, “Please God, be with
her. Please God, be with
her.” Around three in the
morning, as she still was saying that prayer, she felt a change come
over her. She suddenly felt
completely certain, ‘God is
with her, God will be with her no matter what happens, whether she
lives or dies, and God will be with me,’ and that thought took
away all her anxiety. She felt
what Paul promised will come of letting go and trusting—she
felt the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, guarding
her heart and mind.
If
you have ever felt that mysterious, irrational transition within you
from panic to the peace of trust, you know exactly why Paul advises
us to rejoice always.
But
then Paul offers one more reason.
He says, “Whatever is true, whatever is honorable,
whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is
commendable, if there is any virtue and if there is anything worthy
of praise, think about these things.”
It
was as much human nature in Paul’s time as in ours to focus on
the catastrophes in the world and the hardships in our lives, but
Paul tells us to turn our minds from the bad news to the good news,
from the shadow to the light.
If
we want to be light and feel light, we need to fill our mind with
light. It is as simple as
that. There will always be
plenty of reason to get discouraged or angry, but if we look, we will
also find plenty of reasons to rejoice and trust and be at
peace. We tend to think it is
important to be informed about all the awful things happening in the
world, but Paul challenges that assumption. The truth is,
if there is a trouble that the Holy Spirit wants to guide and empower
us to do something about, we can be confident that the Holy Spirit
will make sure we hear about it.
All the other terrible news is just getting in the way of our
filling with the Spirit’s light. We have to be careful what we let
in and what we pass along to others.
On
this Pentecost we could look at all the daunting challenges facing
this congregation. We could
bemoan all the money we need to raise to repair the roof and paint
the walls. We get discouraged
at how overpowering the forces of violence are in this world that we
are trying to counter. We
could let grief paralyze us at how many of us are facing
life-threatening illnesses or the losses of those we love.
But
Paul would suggest that we look at these things from a different
angle to see if there is anything worthy of praise. He would suggest we think about how
the Holy Spirit has been moving among us as we confront our
challenges. We can think about
how the Trustees got a matching grant to pay for half of the roof
repairs. We can think of the
strong leadership that is stepping forward to raise the rest of the
money we need. We can think
about the extraordinary energy that is coming out of the group that
began meeting just three months ago when the Holy Spirit moved over
forty of us to sign the King Center pledge of nonviolence. Already that group has helped solve
the town beaver crisis, put on a major workshop on Restorative
Justice, and begun researching how to teach meditation, conflict
resolution and nonviolence to the town’s children and
youth. Or we can think about
the support group for those suffering illness or loss that Jody
Biddle has organized, a group that has
brought comfort and strength to a number of people in our midst.
If
you think back over the year, there are so many things worthy of
praise for the Spirit that flowed through them. Think of the deep spiritual
experience of Prayer of the Heart every Thursday. Think of that extraordinary Yes We
Can Do musical extravaganza last July. Think how often we feel the Spirit
flowing through the choir’s voices and Patricia’s
fingers, moving our souls Sunday after Sunday. Think of Joyce McKeeman
and Linda Weiss boogying here on the dais to “Goin’ to the Chapel (Goin’
to Get Married),” on September 1st, becoming legally
wed on the day the Vermont law changed. Think of Doug and Valerie
Miller’s little grandson swinging on the rope up behind the
organ as a couple dozen of us rang the bell for action on climate
change last December. Think of
Fiona standing up and being the spokesperson for the children’s
efforts to raise money for Haiti after the earthquake, and all the
work and enthusiasm the children poured into that project. Think of all the meals this
congregation made for those going through cancer treatments and other
hard times, think of all the people who have stood up and told us how
much our support has meant to them, think of all those our Floyd
Dexter Fund has kept from being evicted. This is all the Holy Spirit’s
doing and it is worthy of praise.
Think
about the individual people you know in this church who embody the
Holy Spirit, think about those we are celebrating today, Susan Kowalsky and Bob Hagen, think about Nicky Corrao who will sing out of gratitude for her
healing at the end of the service, think about all those in these
pews who are true, who are honorable, who work for justice.
Paul
says, “Keep on doing these things that you have learned and
received and heard and seen…and the God of peace will be with
you.” Peace comes
through thinking about all the Spirit’s goodness in others
here. Peace comes from
practicing that goodness ourselves.
Peace comes from knowing that the Spirit is always with us and
that we can trust in the Spirit’s power.
Pentecost
reminds us to expect the Spirit.
Paul reminds us to keep looking for it, and if there is
anything worthy of praise, praise!
So
let us praise in silence, in a spirit of prayer…
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