St. Paul's Episcopal Church 425 Cleveland Ave SW Canton, Ohio 44702 Phone: 330-455-0286 Fax: 330-455-9818 E-mail: office@stpaulscanton.org

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Pentecost Sunday St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Canton OH Acts 2:1-11

May 31, 2009 The Rev. Barbara L Bond

Language is a wonderful instrument.  It conveys our thoughts, our feelings, our hopes, our fears.  Sometimes language struggles to describe events:  It was like this, as if my hair were on fire!  It was like this:  like I was walking on air.  It was like this:  It was like a hurricane blew through the room. The complications of expression go up dramatically when we cross into different languages.  Those of us who speak only English are often tongue-tied when we go to other countries.  Norm, struggling to remember his high school French, was astonished in France, when he heard the children speaking fluent French!  I had a similar reaction the first time I went to Germany.  Even though I had studied German for several years, my mouth remained clamped shut, and I marveled at the fluency of German children. Slowly, I was able to loosen my jaw and bleat a couple of monosyllables in response to what sounded like torrents of germanic sounds.  The fact that I am fluent in German now is only because I basked in the culture for ten years. In May 2005 Norm and I went to Rome.  Ignorant tourists that we were, we decided to go to St. Peter’s on a Wednesday, five days before Pentecost.  It did seem a bit crowded in the square.  Slowly we realized that all those people were waiting to see the Pope!  So we joined them, and soon Pope Benedict drove up in the Popemobile.  During his talk, he addressed the crowd in six different languages – and his German was excellent.  He greeted pilgrims from all over the world, including Pennsylvania.  He gave the crowd a blessing, which he said extended to all our home congregations.  I assumed that included my Pennsylvania congregation.  The languages, the enthusiasm, the blessing, the unexpectedness of this event to us – it felt like Pentecost! The reading from Acts is one of the most exciting in the New Testament.  The author Luke struggles a bit with language, telling us, it was like this:  it was like the rush of a violent wind from heaven; it was like fire landing on all their heads.  It was like a frenzy, and witnesses thought they were drunk!  And then the witnesses heard all these languages – they heard in their own languages, no matter how obscure. Luke is describing the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on 120 people.  That’s about as many as we are here today.  Let’s imagine it – a rushing wind sweeps through this space.  Your jaw, which has been clamped shut, is suddenly loosened and words begin to pour out.  You feel excitement, your hair is on fire, you are swept up in intense feeling and joy., your feelings bubble over.  How about those experiences that transcend words altogether?  Think about a crowd jumping to their feet at the close of an extraordinary musical performance – they feel intense excitement, yet all they can do is clap like mad and yell some crazy Italian word, Bravo! Today we have a chance to immerse ourselves in a language experience – your worship booklet has the Lord’s Prayer in six different languages.  We added Japanese this year in honor of Holly Anderson, our high school graduate who has been studying Japanese.  Maybe you studied one of these languages long ago.  You know this prayer by heart in English – try it in another language today.  We’ll have all those languages, all those tongues, going at the same time.  The buzz should be wonderful! What are we going to do with all this fervor? Share it!  Talk about it!  Take that energy and pour it into work for others!  This Holy Spirit is a gift, meant to be used, not an end in itself.  The Spirit empowers us to serve others, to take us beyond ourselves, to cross barriers of language and barriers of laziness and complacency, and wake us up to respond to needs wherever we see them. Yesterday morning a bunch of us were Downtown planting flowers in the city flower beds.  From this parish Rick and Barbara Anderson and Norm and I were out there with our trowels, digging in the dirt, and helping in a community effort.  Everyone we saw was enjoying their contribution to this civic effort to beautify downtown Canton.  The Spirit was palpable. The Spirit is alive and well in this place, empowering all our ministries.  There are so many needs out there, and there is so much more that we can do.  Let us take this wonderful gift, this outpouring of Spirit, and pour out our talents, our time, our efforts, in reaching out, through music, through dance, through fellowship, through visiting the sick, feeding the hungry.  Let us find ways to respond to the cry of the poor, the pain of the injured, the sadness of the disheartened and the grieving.  Can you cook?  Can you sew?  Can you read? Can you drive? Can you make music?  Can you make art?  Can you help a grieving family with a funeral luncheon?  Can you help a child learn about Jesus? We can do all of this, and more.  We will see the outpouring of the Spirit, right here, in action this year. Thanks be to God!