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Acts 2:1-21

Holy One for all that has been thank you, for all that will be, yes.

“When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability. Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each.” (Acts 2:1-6)

Pretty wild story eh?! It is this story that gives us the modern day experience you might see on TV or in a revival where people are ecstatically jumping up and down and even “speaking in tongues.” I have a different experience of this story. You see this story is seared into my memory because of another Pentecost sermon. It was June 16, 2002, the day after the diocesan synod of that year. That synod was an historical one. Bishop Michael had consented finally, after the third majority vote in four years, to authorize a rite for the blessing of same sex unions. The preacher that morning was Eric Law, a longtime friend of this community’s, and then a priest of this diocese.

Eric noted it was not simply that the disciples were speaking in different languages, but that the people in the city were hearing in their home languages. This story has two miracles, if you will. One that people could suddenly speak a different language and second that people could hear in a language that made intimate sense to them. And that is pretty extraordinary when you think about it. Ellen notes every time she preaches, “between the words that are spoken and the words that are heard….” There is always a tension between what we say and what is understood and interpreted. As we hear later in the story, some of the listeners assume there is a problem with the speakers. That tension lead Eric into a wonderful exploration about the need to honour and respect the minority. How, he wondered, do Gay, Lesbian and Transgendered people, for so long the minority, now partnered with friends, family, and supporters and suddenly the majority, live into this new found majority power? Would we repeat the tired cycle of verbal and physical violence, would we seek revenge on the few folks who walked out of Synod that weekend? What would we be hearing? what would we be speaking? How would we be, who would we be?

It was an important sermon in my life, and I am thankful that I heard it.

And then a couple of weeks ago, I was listening to a CBC Ideas podcast called “The Myth of the Secular” http://www.cbc.ca/ideas/episodes/2012/10/24/the-myth-of-the-secular-part-3/ and I thought again of this tension between speaking and hearing, but from a different perspective. One of the thinkers interviewed was an anthropologist who teaches at Berkley in California, named Saba Mahmood. She was born and raised in Pakistan, and her doctoral dissertation had been based on a study she had done of ‘pious’ (her word) women in Egypt.  Her work reminds me of Ellen wonderful book, “Theology by Heart” http://www.amazon.com/Theology-Heart-Women-Church-God/dp/0716205874  exploring the experiences of particular women inside of a faith tradition.  In the interview, Dr. Mahmood spoke about the importance in Islam of the balance between the interior and exterior experiences of spirituality. In the West, she argues, we have moved into a very ‘interior’ expression of spirituality; that is, what is important is inside me, my personal spirituality is a very private matter, and that outward expressions are somehow ‘odd’. Islam she says, and Christianity in other parts of the world, is more often exterior as well as interior. How I behave, how I act drives my spirituality as much, if not more, than just believing a particular thing.  To put it bluntly, if not too simplistically, a woman wearing a burkha may not be simply hiding her physical features from the prying eyes of men, she is rather externalizing her spirituality. Every time she gets dressed she is reminded of who she is spiritually, what is important to her deep down inside, and so her behaviour drives her spirituality as much as her spirituality drives her behaviour.

For most of us western Christians spirituality is very, very private. Even those of us who wear crosses, an exterior expression that consistently reminds us of the interior expression, most often wear those crosses inside our clothes. Outward expression of our spirituality is at best odd. I remember on the choir trip to Mexico a number of years ago, standing outside a Basilica and watching people walking by, crossing themselves as they walked by the doors of the church. I suggest you could stand for days outside of this building and not see anyone crossing themselves as they walked by! And that is not to say that crossing oneself is the right or wrong thing to do, it is an example of how here in our part of the world, spirituality is largely an interior function, it is private, and is about me and my relationship with the Divine.

And interestingly, there is ample evidence in the psychology literature that shows our outlook on life is not simply driven by what and how we think and believe, it’s also driven by our actions and our physical experience. The exterior drives the interior. In short how you behave drives your beliefs as much as your beliefs drive how you behave. So for example, if you need to feel strong and powerful, particularly if you don’t usually feel strong or powerful, like for an interview, stand up tall (as you’re able) with your arms outstretched wide for 2 minutes. Even better, do that every morning for a week before the meeting. You will feel and look stronger.  There’s a great TED talk on this by researcher Amy Cuddy; http://www.ted.com/talks/amy_cuddy_your_body_language_shapes_who_you_are.html)

Consider too what happens here at CCC where we include exterior, external expressions of our spirituality through music, through liturgy, through service and action as a community and as individual actors. The feeding of 100 people a day here feeds the spirituality of those who serve the food as much as the food satiates the physical hunger of the recipients. I know from conversations with choir members that the singing (an exterior experience) of some pieces is as, if not more, profound than the hearing (an interior experience). In Western terms we here at CCC an alternative space. Perhaps we’re even an odd space. A place that says yes, our spirituality does include a vital interior aspect, and we ask, at the same time, how do I activate my spirituality? what does my spirituality mean for me as a citizen, as a member of the community.  What is the impact of my spirituality on me and my neighbour? How does how I treat myself and my neighbour impact my spirituality?  How does building and enhancing healthy communities feed my soul, and how does my soul build and enhance healthy communities for all people?  It becomes vital that we are not just spiritually private and interior, we must physicalize our spirituality, we must act, we must participate in order to most fully nurture our spiritual selves. And we do that every day here through worship and liturgy, and through that countless acts of service and action by us as individuals and as a community. And we, each and everyone of us, have lot’s more to do to bring our interior spiritual lives out into the everyday actions of building, nurturing and caring for ourselves and each other, so that our everyday actions of building, nurturing and caring for ourselves and each other builds our spirituality.

This story in Acts is a deeply profound story of community and individual activity and action, and how religious experience at its best manifests itself in both interior and exterior ways. Wisdom, the breath of life, the Holy Spirit, how ever we call this spiritual experience, is as much about the external and the community as it is about the internal and the private.  The text in Acts says both that the individuals were “speaking in other languages”, that is an exterior experience, and others “heard in their native language,” an interior experience. This balance of interior and exterior is vital. It is important that I have interior experience, I need to hear, I need to be open to new life, to new possibilities. And at the same time, I am called to act, to speak my truth, to be a little odd even. And no, I’m not saying go and start banging on neighbour’s doors and telling them what to believe. Rather I am called to act in a way that names me as trustworthy, as care-full as loving, as forgiving.  And when I act as trustworthy, care-full, loving and forgiving, I become more trustworthy, care-full, loving and forgiving and so my exterior informs my interior which informs my exterior which informs my interior and so on…

And so Eric Law’s questions from 11 years ago still reverberate today; how will we be, who will we be? If we want to see more trust, more care, more love in the world, bring more trust, more care, more love into your life and your actions. When you do you’ll find that you trust more, care more and love more. And that will bring more trust, more care, more love into the world. And this story reminds us that the language of trust, of love, of care is universal; everyone hears it in their native language. It doesn’t matter if you’re from Toronto, Tel Aviv, Tehran, or Tokyo, you hear it.  It doesn’t matter if you’re gay, straight, brother, sister or sibling, you hear it. It doesn’t matter if you’re NDP, Liberal, Green or Conservative, you hear it. What you do with it, how it informs you, how you practice it becomes the question. As Bishop MIchael benediction says, it is about our actions, as much as our beliefs.  If my spirituality simply sits in my heart and doesn’t get out into the light of community, if I don’t actually go out to the places where God has given me responsibility, to have courage, to hold onto what is good, to return no one evil for evil, to support the weak and to honour all life, I’m not actually living fully into my spiritual self. And that’s ok, I get to try again this afternoon.

Amen.

Amen.

INFORMATION SESSION:
Tuesday, May 28, 2013
7-9pm in the Parish Hall

The Cathedral Parish will begin celebrating its 125th Anniversary in November 2013. The indigo quilt is envisioned as a community project for the Cathedral and the diocese, including the participation of all ages and experiences. The concrete outcome is to enhance the parish hall acoustically and aesthetically by creating and installing a series of quilted panels on the walls. Along the way we want to have fun, make connections and build anticipation for anniversary celebrations.

We are using natural indigo to dye linen, cotton and silk for the main part of the quilts. Indigo is the only natural dye for the colour blue. It is derived from various plants around the world and has spiritual, healing or transformative attributes in most cultures that use it. It is especially suited to tie-dye (shibori) techniques.

For the quilts, we will supply the dyed fabric for the quilt tops along with appropriate batting. Some backing material will also be available. Quilters may also add a small amount of fabric from their own “stash” to the top if they wish. Each quilt will be designated a specific location in the hall, and will contain a segment of a red line that visually connects all the quilts around the room. While the finished quilts will belong to the Cathedral; if they are ever permanently removed, makers will have the option of reclaiming them.

The project stages:

• Introduction to indigo and shibori. Stitched or bound areas resist the dye to create wonderful patterns, textures and variations of color. (Complete)
• Indigo dyeing of resisted fabrics. (Complete)
• Block printing by children in the church school to embellish some of the dyed fabrics . (Complete).
• Portioning fabrics for panel construction. (Coming Soon)
• Installation of completed panels in the hall (2014).

If you are interested in finding out more about the project, there will be an information session on Tuesday, May 28 from 7-9pm in the Parish Hall. As the project is designed with consideration for a wide range of skill levels, we invite you to come along and find out how you might participate.

Sheila Wex and Thomas Roach
Project Coordinators

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CLICK HERE to visit our project website at www.common-threads-125.tumblr.com for inspiration and pictures of the project in process.

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CLICK HERE to visit our project website for inspiration and pictures of the project in process.

Click Here to listen to an audio mp3 of the sermon

Do you ever play that game with yourself of wondering ‘what if’? Inventing alternate realities for yourself where you make different choices and live a very different life. What if I had chosen a different career? What if my parents had been Italian? What if I had never met my significant other, or never formed that particularly deep friendship? I know I would be a different person if any of those what ifs were the case – I particularly like the idea of having come from an expressive Italian family rather than an introverted English one. And especially I know I’d be a very different Ellen if I had never met Jeremy – deep, intimate relationships are bound to change us and influence the way we grow and develop.

Our gospel reading today is inviting us into this sort of deeply transformative relationship, but not just with another individual. Instead it is an invitation to be one with God and with one another – not in a pair-bond but in a whole deeply loving community. Listen again to this invitation to intimacy – indeed to a unity that lies beyond all purely human intimacy: ‘As you, Father, are in me and I am in you may they also be in us.’ ‘I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one’ ‘the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.’ Me and you are being asked to become one with each other and, amazingly, one with God in Godself.

This is hard to get our minds round at the best of times. It sounds more like the mystical dreaming of an unworldly mind than anything that actually touches our own mundane reality. But we also make it harder to understand by neglecting one of the great feasts of the Christian year – the one that happened just this past week – Ascension Day. It doesn’t help that Ascension is always during the working week – it’s timed to be 40 days after Easter Sunday which is always a Thursday – and that, unlike Good Friday, it isn’t marked with a public holiday. It also probably doesn’t help that the images of the ascension tend to lack impact – look at our very own ‘Jesus floating on a cloud’ at the front of the church. In one of the shrines in England the image is of two feet sticking out of the ceiling – not inspiring!

But we lose a crucial part of the understanding of Christ’s transformative work if we forget the ascension. Most of the time our focus is on how Christ transforms us – how God chose to sanctify our bodily reality by becoming flesh like us; how in Jesus we see a new openness of loving, forgiving being; how through death and resurrection Jesus broke chains of violence and death to offer us new life and freedom. But the ascension offers us a new perspective – that it is not only we who are changed by Christ’s loving presence among us. God is also changed. The passionate intimate relationship that Christ formed with humanity works its transformative power both ways – on God as well as on us.

We can see this if we get away from pictures of Jesus on clouds and get to the heart of the meaning of the feast of the ascension. What is happening is both very simple and at the same time deeply difficult to get our heads round. Jesus the Christ is leaving this earthly time-bound form of existence and returning to the eternal from which he came. But he isn’t returning unchanged. Christ does not shed his bodily existence and leave it behind but takes it with him into the heart of God. To use the butterfly analogy often referred to at Easter – Jesus’ body is not the discarded chrysalis but the transformed caterpillar. It does not remain behind on earth but finds its way with him into the nearer presence of God.

So now, right at the heart of who God is, there is the human. Right at the heart of who God is there is the experience of finitude, of suffering, of laughter, of embracing friends, of loneliness, of sleepless nights, of shared jokes around a table, of tears, of failure and of hope. All the chaotic loveliness and pain of human life is not shrugged off but brought into the heart of God’s being. God is different because of the feast of the ascension.

Now this would be anathema to many early Christian theologians who taught that God does not change, does not experience emotion, is the unmoved mover, the untouched touch-er. But that is not what we see in the one who reveals God to us – Jesus the Christ. We see someone who learns from his experience, who cries and celebrates with friends, who is open to feeling and to change. The passionate, intimate relationship God has with us in Christ is such that it brings new possibilities for God as well as for all humanity.

The ascension means that whenever we look at God we are also looking at the love-filled life of Christ. Whenever we look at God we are looking at a divine reality which has made room for us and which invites us into the fullness of life that dances at God’s heart. But when we bring our gaze back from the heavens to look at ourselves and at our world we know that we are not there yet.

These last days of Easter are like a mini-Advent – as in Advent we cry again ‘Come, God, Come.’ What we are waiting for now isn’t the incarnation but the coming of the Holy Spirit – the one who continues God’s work among us, breaks down our ego-barriers to give us new intimacy and union with one another and with God. This week is almost like a pause.  It’s as if God is drawing in a breath filled with the delight and transformation of Christ’s ascension and then lets it out in a breath of life-giving potential and presence to animate all the world.

The ascension can easily feel like a festival of withdrawal, of absence. Of God finished with the incarnation returning to the state God was before – more remote from this world, more detached from our concerns, more absent than present. But this is actually the reverse of what is happening. God is allowing our experience into the heart of who God is, God is welcoming humanity into the dance of divinity, God is receiving us in Christ and allowing Godself to change. God is letting the loving, intimate relationship established with humanity in Christ transform divinity as well as humanity.

We don’t need to stand, as the disciples do in our window, gazing at a God who seems to disappear from them. God is not becoming more distant – in fact, in the gift of the Holy Spirit, God is about to become nearer than God has ever been. God has taken us into God’s heart and God is about to breathe Godself into our hearts – God in us as us in God that we may be completely one.

I want to finish with an Ascension blessing poem by Jan Richardson. It addresses this in between time when we are tempted to stare after Christ and to fear that God has gone away. It tells us to stay, to wait, to be together in the pause – and to accept the new gift that the God who has taken humanity to her heart is waiting to give us.

I know how your mind
rushes ahead
trying to fathom
what could follow this.
What will you do,
where will you go,
how will you live?

You will want
to outrun the grief.
You will want
to keep turning toward
the horizon,
watching for what was lost
to come back,
to return to you
and never leave again.

For now
hear me when I say
all you need to do
is to still yourself
is to turn toward one another
is to stay.

Wait
and see what comes
to fill
the gaping hole
in your chest.

Wait with your hands open
to receive what could never come
except to what is empty
and hollow.

You cannot know it now,
cannot even imagine
what lies ahead,
but I tell you
the day is coming
when breath will
fill your lungs
as it never has before
and with your own ears
you will hear words
coming to you new
and startling.

You will dream dreams
and you will see the world
ablaze with blessing.

Wait for it.
Still yourself.
Stay.

A chance to engage with intelligent and articulate people who have something entertaining, stimulating or challenging to say to Cathedral parishioners and friends. Our diverse speakers are from: the arts, including drama, writing, television, film; government and politics; religion; education; not-for-profit organizations; etc. Free admission, free beverages. Sundays, 9:15AM, in the Park Room.

On June 2nd you are invited to join The Rev. David Gustafson

Topic: SHATTERED LIVES, HOPE OF HEALING

In this 40 minute forum, Dave will share about the development of Canada’s Victim Offender Mediation Program, a restorative justice program which operates at what seem to be beyond the limits of what one would conceive to be human capacity to cope with the aftermath of unspeakable criminal victimizations, enabling victims and the prisoners responsible for their harms to dialogue, to transcend the past, to heal and to thrive once again.

About David

Dave is first of all ‘rich’ in most of what matters to him: valued relationships and opportunity to make a contribution in areas of his life-long passions.  These include trauma recovery and healing, creating social structures that contribute to the making of a justpeace and assisting others who languish (trauma survivors, in the main) to discover their own gifts, to recover hope, to grow and to flourish. Dave is Director of Fraser Region Community Justice Initiatives Association (CJI), in Langley, B.C., an Adjunct Professor in the School of Criminology at SFU and a Registered Clinical Counsellor.  The primary focus of Dave’s work at CJI is on facilitating ‘therapeutic dialogue’ in prisons between victims and offenders in crimes of severe violence. (Dave’s sermon on these themes at CCC is available on the website (February 19, 201, titled “Transfiguration and Transcending).”

In what time remains, Dave is a sailor and a fervent ‘wannabe’ in areas as disparate as: social justice and justice reform (especially in Latin America), fine-woodworking, classical music, blues guitar, and desire to test his celestial navigation skills somewhere under the Southern Cross. He hopes never to grow up.

UPCOMING FORUMS

June 9 – Peter Wing and Claire Weeks
June 16 – Randy Murray
June 23 – Christopher Gaze