Homily
By The Rev. Marcia McRae
St.
Francis Episcopal Church, Goldsboro, NC, Pentecost, 4 June 2017
Whitsunday;
Year A RCL: Acts 2:1-21; Psalm 104:25-35, 37; 1 Corinthians 12:3b-13;
John 20:19-23
Notice
how much action takes place in our brief Gospel:
Jesus
overcomes physical barriers humans use to keep out other people.
Twice
he says “Peace be with you.”
He
shows the disciples his scars. They
rejoice!
Jesus
gives the disciples work to do & empowers them / us
for
this work he has started.
He
gives the choice to forgive or not.
Knowing
Jesus asks God to forgive us as he dies on the cross, how can the
disciples – who deserted him – not forgive?
How
can we not forgive? We have the Holy Spirit to guide us in the work
of forgiveness.
Embrace
God’s love Jesus expresses by choosing
to forgive you.
Embrace
God's deep love for you, which God powerfully expresses by the Holy
Spirit choosing to live in
you.
Embrace
God’s expansive love with which God our Father chose
to create you.
The
day you were created, the day you were born were red-letter
days. Today
is a red letter day. [Our
term is from the ancient habit of writing Capital
Letters
in red
& later religious calendars & prayer books indicating saint
days with red
letters.]1
Today
we celebrate the birthday of the Church. We also have our
monthly birthday candles for you with June
birthdays to blow out after worship. There’s a
difference between birthday candles &
tongues of flame alighting on disciples so they speak in
ways which make some observers say they're drunk.
When
we encounter something new & powerful, we struggle to make it fit
what we know. Something new & powerful can be like looking from
outside a church at stained glass windows. We don't see clearly.
On
Pentecost we see red which reminds us of the tongues of fire.
We tend to focus on fire's power.
Fire has power to provide light.
The disciples speak in ways which enlighten
listeners' understanding of God's love.
We
often speak of God’s love. What
about God’s laughter?
When
you think of God,
how
often do you think of playfulness?
Notice:
our Psalm today tells us of God's playfulness. God has fun with
creation. It says: “Yonder is the great & wide sea...&
there is that Leviathan, which you have made for the sport of it.”
God makes something just for fun!
I
don't know if I have seen a Leviathan. I have seen the
humorous-looking duck-billed platypus & the funny-moving blue
footed booby. God makes things to enjoy :)
We
enjoy having light when it’s dark. Light
can
have a playful quality.
We speak of how light plays on a window. We see how light plays &
enlivens stained glass2.
Notice the difference in this icon when it has no light & when we
remove what blocks the light shining through it.
We
are like stained glass.
Made
in the image of God, we are crafted to live & love in Holy
Community, to shine the Light of Jesus so our brothers & sisters
in the human family can see God’s love more clearly.
God
who creates with such delight & gives in such abundance yearns
for us to celebrate our love & live in harmony with God, God's
creation, & each other. How?
God
gives us the Holy Spirit so our love may overflow more & more
with knowledge & full insight to help us know how.3
When
we shine the Light of God's Love on our Sisters & Brothers, we
work with God, bringing light into their darkness. That darkness may
be something hard to forgive.
God gives us what we need to do hard
work. God
gives us the Holy Spirit to guide us in our Habit of Forgiveness4,
in our work sharing it so our Sisters & Brothers can
develop
this gift.
God
speaks through authors, who tell amazing experiences of the grace of
forgiveness. This grace brings the Light of God's Love which people
need, like stained glass needs light.
For
inspiring looks into this inner light, I commend to your reading The
True American: Murder and Mercy in Texas,
which I quoted recently; Eric Lomax's book [which is also a movie]
The
Railway Man
“A POW's Searing Account of War, Brutality & Forgiveness”5
& Ed Bacon's 8
Habits of Love.
“The
last words she [hears] her husband [say] before he finally [dies are]
'Father, forgive them.'”7
. . . .
1.
She wants the policeman [Mr.
Van de Broek]
to go where he had cremated her husband & gather the dust so she
can give him a decent burial.*
2.
She says: “Mr. Van de Broek [has taken] away all my family from me
& I still have a lot of love to give. Twice a month, I would like
for him to come to the ghetto & spend a day with me so I can be
a mother to him.”9
[She
wants this murderer “to become her son so she [can generously] pour
her remaining love into him.”]10
3.
She says: “I would
like
Mr. Van de Broek to know
that he is
forgiven by God, & that I
forgive
him too.” And she asks someone to lead her across the courtroom
because, she says: “I would
like
to embrace
him so he can
know
that he is
truly forgiven.”11
This
widowed mother is
a
stained-glass window,
the
image of God's Love,
shining
with God's Light from within.12
Bacon,
Ed. 8 Habits of Love: Open Your Heart,
Open Your Mind. Boston: Grand Central
Life & Style. Grand Central Publishing. 2011.
Giridharadas,
Anand. The True American: Murder and
Mercy in Texas. New York: W.W. Norton &
Co. 2014.
Harper’s
Bible Commentary. General Ed.: James. L. Mays. San Francisco:
Harper & Row Publishers. 1988.
Holy
Bible. New Revised Standard Version. New York: Oxford University
Press. 1989.
Lomax,
Eric. The Railway Man. New York: W.W. Norton & Co. 1995.
Voyles,
Robert J. Restoring
Hope: Appreciative Strategies to Resolve Grief and Resentment.
Hillsboro, OR: The Appreciative Way. 2010. www.appreciativeway.com.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_letter_day
Accessed: 1 June 2017.
2
Note: Influenced from Elizabeth Kubler-Ross quoted by Robert J.
Voyles, p. 44, “Teaching
Forgiveness” based on his Restoring
Hope: Appreciative Strategies to Resolve Grief and Resentment.
3
Paraphrase of Philippians 1:9-10.
7
Ibid. P. 120.
8
Bacon. Ibid. P. 120.
* Note: I do not know why her son's ashes were not in the same place.
9
Ibid.
10
Ibid. P. 121.
11
Ibid. P. 120.
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