Pentecost Sunday, Year A: John 7:37-39
Episcopal Church of the Holy Cross
May 31, 2020
Jonathan Hanneman
To watch a video of the sermon, please visit this page (about 20:50 in, in case the link doesn’t drop you in the right place).
“Out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water.” – John 7:38c
Quiet and foggy as the city looks right now, today is not the Pentecost I expected to celebrate last weekend—or even the one I planned for yesterday morning. On this day when we commemorate the birth of the Early Church and the descent of the Holy Spirit as tongues of flame, many of us are probably distracted by more immediate fire. Embers of discontent have ignited dry kindling. Police cars sit smoldering near where I stood peacefully in downtown Seattle less than 24 hours ago. And an inferno fueled by decades—even centuries—of pain and rage begins to scorch our land. Again.
I don’t know about you, but even before the riots arrived in our area, I was pretty well worn out. This year just won’t relent, piling on wave after wave of tragedy and disaster. And I’ll admit that I’m tired of it. I’m tired of stay-at-home orders (even though I support them). I’m tired of our violent national discourse and so many people’s willful blindness to and ignorance of the plight of their neighbors and fellow citizens. I look at the world around us—a world I certainly never expected to see, a world I can’t even recognize from one day to the next anymore—and I just feel exhausted. Trapped in the path of what looks like encroaching Hell, helpless and even hopeless in the conflagration of our society’s sins, my spirit wails with the Psalmist, “How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever?[1]”
Why has this day fallen to us? Why has God tolerated this seemingly unabated injustice and death? And why does the American Church so often remain silent to abuse or even become an active partner with the perpetrators? Where can we find the true Spirit of Christ, the spirit of love, compassion, humility, and self-giving? When will we see the power of the Holy Spirit, not just to alter opinions or tidy up appearances, but to re-form how we live, to reforge and purify the core of who we are both as individuals and as a greater body?
This week we witnessed yet another unjustified killing of yet another unarmed black man blaze across national headlines. Responses almost immediately became markers of political affiliation. Clergy have to tread lightly around politics, both because we care for all of our people—no matter their party affiliation—but also because of federal limitations on our ability to speak. However, although this situation has both political roots and consequences, the death of George Floyd is not a political issue. Murder—legal or not, justified or not—is a moral issue, and this week simply gave us the death of yet another victim in the continuing stream of what seems like an endless number of killings, an evil that remains marginalized or unaddressed because of inherited—and in some cases intentionally exercised—cultural dynamics of power, value, and privilege.
I’m pretty sure you didn’t join today’s livestream to be “preached at.” (Or, what with this being church and all, maybe you did!) You didn’t come to feel put down or dejected over our national sins, especially ones that are so often beyond our individual control. Since it’s Pentecost, you were probably hoping to hear about the working and gifts of the Holy Spirit. And you will. However, despite the calendar date, the Holy Spirit has placed this broken body on our doorstep, and I for one can’t stay silent. I can no longer keep doing what I’ve always done, quietly hoping to set a better example for those willing to see. I need to speak up, and I pray that I’m speaking in the Spirit.
We are witnessing the wake of rule of Chaos, the writhing, deathly serpent God overturned in Creation.[2] It’s overwhelming. It’s evil. And sometimes I wonder if the only way to fix things is to somehow hit “reset” on our society like in the story of Noah.[3] Maybe a Hollywood-style reboot could somehow give us a clean slate and a little more hope for a better future. But we can’t expect the world to simply start over right now, nor does God generally manage Creation that bluntly. Instead, God uses people—our hands and feet interpreting God’s voice of repentance and renewal—to begin to rebuild. God empowers our work, slow and heavy as it may be, through the Holy Spirit, God’s insubstantial yet Sacred Breath—the very thing George Floyd died begging for.[4]
It’s easy to recognize the work of the Holy Spirit: she is life-giving, not death-dealing. The Holy Spirit, although often revolutionary, is not bombastic or rowdy. Rarely does she act “like the rush of a violent wind.”[5] Seldom does she shatter stone, uproot trees, or blaze a path of destruction.[6] Despite the enormity of her power, the primal authority inherent in her being, Spirit remains fragile and ephemeral. Momentarily unmasked on a frosty morning, she immediately escapes from view as if she never existed. Like the summer breeze, we briefly feel her calming presence but are soon left to wonder where she went as the heat of the sun begins to burn our skin. Scarcely ever does she speak plainly or give a word of command, instead preferring quick suggestions and incomprehensibly still, small voices.[7]
But despite her subtlety, despite her habit of evading our senses just as we notice her, Spirit—breath—does have a mysterious, nearly immeasurable power. Breath never forces itself upon anyone, yet every body desires it. Small as it is, common as it is, unremarkable as it is, breath is the key difference between life and death. It’s all that separates a human body from a human being. Holding all the potential of a newborn’s cry, the promise of youth and growth and maturity still too come, it retains its brittleness and frailty, the easy loss caused by a knee choking the spirit from a man’s body.[8]
In our Gospel reading this week, Jesus said, “out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water,” which the evangelist tells us was a reference to the Holy Spirit, the Sacred Breath. Despite the distractions of our day and our legitimately divided attention, I want to spend a few minutes looking at this idea.
Two weeks ago we talked about how the word “believer,” while not wrong in and of itself, is an inadequate translation of the Greek word behind “faith” and “believe.” This term refers to someone who is acting with fidelity, not someone who verbally assents or agrees intellectually.[9]
“Heart” here also contains more subtlety and flexibility than our idea of the muscle that pumps our blood or the metaphorical center of emotions. The word, while often used to reference internal organs (particularly the stomach or the womb), really describes an empty space.[10] The source behind this expression actually worked its way into modern English two different ways apart from Greek. “Cave” or “cavity” comes to us through its Latin variation, but the native Old English version of the same root is where we get the words “hole” and “hollow.”[11] So Jesus might be referring to the figurative seat of the emotions, the belly or womb, or even a more philosophical concept of emptiness. All three are valid understandings.
Lastly, the word behind “living” is really tricky to translate into English. About the closest we can get is making it an adjective, but the word itself is a verb. Personally, I suspect there’s a double meaning or play on words happening. “Living” can describe the action of the water itself—the concept being the bubbling of fermentation or the unpredictable stirring movement of water rising up from the depths of a natural spring. But it also appears that the water is acting upon an undefined object. While “living” describes the water’s own movement, this water is also imparting life or vitality to—animating, for lack of a better word—that which it encounters.
What I see Jesus talking about here is almost an alchemical transmutation of Spirit. We invite this Sacred Breath, invisible and intangible, into our own emptiness—our powerlessness and helplessness, our sense of hopelessness, futility, and even despair—and somehow, through fidelity to God, through a commitment to follow the way of Christ that continues to endure across time, those few molecules of air, that unseen spark, transform into something tangible, something active and real. Going back to the “womb” idea, it’s like a silent beginning brought to birth. Where little or nothing once existed, only a cavity or hollow, a place of silence and absence, suddenly life abounds, ultimately breaking forth and bringing joy and vitality to everything it touches.
This is the role of the Holy Spirit, both at Pentecost and in our own day. This is the power of the Sacred Breath: to instigate life and to cause it to flourish even in the face of death. This, then, is also the function and mission of the Church.
So what do we do with this? Where does that leave us at Holy Cross, our relatively small, local expression of the global Body of Christ? In a culture overrun with rage and obsessed with division and exclusion, as heirs of a history soaked with blood and oppression, what can we as Christians do, helpless as we may feel and hopeless as it all might look?
First, we pause, and we take a breath. We invoke the Spirit.
Inhalation and exhalation are the work of the Spirit on its most basic level—and something I frequently forget to consciously exercise—so we start there.
After a few moments, as we catch our breath and oxygenate our bodies, our minds begin to clear and our vision expands beyond the narrow focus of panic and self-preservation.
Once empowered, aware, and settled into our bodies, we can begin to use our breath: to lament oppression and evil, to bring voice to love and life, to speak up for the silenced, and to blow back the curtains shrouding injustice and abuse.
And finally, that same breath—that deeply rooted Spirit—gives us the courage to act, to use our bodies, our hands and feet, our sorrow, our joy, and our strength, to build a better world, to strive for even the dimmest reflection of heaven here on earth: a world where all of God’s creations are valued and respected, a world where physical appearance and centuries of prejudice can no longer obscure the image of God.
In that breathing, that speaking, that acting, as we bind ourselves to the flow of God’s work, as we start to embody the Sacred Breath herself, we can begin to step past our fears: our fear of uselessness or rejection, our fear of pain or betrayal, fear of our own power and privilege, and even the fear of death itself. Because not only have we begun to embody the work and faithfulness of God but, by aligning ourselves with the Spirit, we actually transform, individually and collectively, into the Breath of God, the Breath of Life, the Breath of Love. She is our identity and the reality of our eternal being. And no matter what may happen to us, no matter what oppression, what difficulties or challenges we may ultimately face for faithfulness to the way of Christ, nothing can block the Spirit. God’s Breath, and we along with it, will always and eternally flow.
“Out of [the faithful one’s] emptiness shall flow rivers of life-giving water.”
[1] Psalm 13:1
[2] Psalm 74:12-14, 89:9-10; Isaiah 51:9
[3] Genesis 6-8
[4] Both ancient Hebrew ruach and Koine Greek pneuma are translated “wind,” “breath,” or “spirit.” There is no distinction. “Spirit” as we think of it is actually the least desirable interpretation in a majority of situations.
[5] Acts 2:2
[6] I Kings 19:11-12
[7] I Kings 19:12 (KJV)
[8] What we understand as the “soul” is the same word as “neck” in Biblical Hebrew. An ancient Israelite could legitimately describe the officer kneeling on George Floyd’s neck as strangling George’s spirit or even crushing his soul.
[9] http://www.slouchingdog.com/sermons/2020/5/17/year-a-may-17-2020-easter-06 | I also recognize that “the believer/faithful one” does not appear at this point in the Greek text. However, that term is the clear referent, so I’m dealing with the translation as the NRSV provides it.
[10] http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.04.0057:entry=koili/a
[11] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%CE%BA%CE%BF%E1%BF%96%CE%BB%CE%BF%CF%82#Ancient_Greek