The Episcopal Church of the Epiphany

Pentecost, May 24, 2009

God whose breath is love, send your Spirit into our lives with the power of a mighty wind, and inflame our hearts with your wisdom; open the horizons of our minds. Teach us to communicate with the tongues of love that go beyond our human limitations. We pray in the name of Jesus, your Son, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, One God forever and ever. Amen.

It is interesting to note what brings people together, but more than that, what binds them together. What type of things or conditions inflames people's hearts and provides the impetus and power to move them out of complacency into action as one body?

Well, there are a number of things that have the power to do this. I am going to put them into two categories, and I am going to use the metaphor of fire for both of these categories, because the flames of fire connote amazing power.

The two categories are the fire of hate and the fire of love. These two fires communicate very differently and they are very different in their outcome. We are all acquainted with both.

The seasons we have just been through in our liturgical year, the season of Lent ending with the murder of Jesus, the season of Easter, with the resurrection and ascension of Jesus, and now Pentecost, reveal these two very different ways of how people become bound together.

First, let's begin with the fire of hate. I would like to share with you what Eric Hoffer, the philosopher, had to say about this unifying force in his book, The True Believer, Thoughts on The Nature of Mass Movements.

Hoffer writes, "Hatred is the most accessible and comprehensive of all unifying agents. It pulls and whirls the individual away from his own self, makes him oblivious of his weal and future, frees him of jealousies and self-seeking.

"He becomes an anonymous particle quivering with a craving to fuse and coalesce with his like into one flaming mass. Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a God, but never without belief in a devil.

"Usually the strength of a mass movement is proportionate to the vividness and tangibility of its devil... . Every difficulty and failure within the movement is the work of the devil, and every success is a triumph over his evil plotting. Finally, it seems, the ideal devil is a foreigner... .

"We always look for allies when we hate. It is understandable that we should look for others to side with us when we have a just grievance and crave to retaliate against those who wronged us.

"The puzzling thing is that when our hatred does not spring from a visible grievance and does not seem justified, the desire for allies becomes more pressing.

"It is chiefly the unreasonable hatreds that drive us to merge with those who hate as we do, and it is the kind of hatred that serves as one of the most effective cementing agents... .

"To wrong those we hate is to add fuel to our hatred. Conversely, to treat an enemy with magnanimity is to blunt out hatred for him.

"The most effective way to silence our guilty conscience is to convince ourselves and others that those we have sinned against are indeed depraved creatures, deserving every punishment, even extermination.

"We cannot pity those we have wronged, nor can we be indifferent toward them. We must hate and persecute them or else leave the door open to self-contempt."

Those who crucified Jesus were inflamed with this fire of hate. And it was the most unreasonable of hatreds; it drove those who were inflamed by it to find others, and to convince others to join them. It drove them to exterminate the one they hated, and to treat the Son of God as the very devil.

We've all heard the phrase, "the people, person, or the thing, we love to hate." Anytime we come together against someone or a group of someones, we have defined who our devil is, and we are being inflamed by the fire of hate.

It is a very easy and compelling alliance to fall into. We do it without fully being aware that we have formed an alliance of hate. It can be quite subtle. It can be manifested in our gossip, and in all kinds of alliances we form against a person or group of people.

When we are inflamed with the fire of hatred we fail to communicate with full knowledge. Full truth and knowledge is absent when we respond to others from a limited perspective, with intolerance and a lack of empathy and compassion.

When we are unified in the fire of hate we share a common fear and also our common failures that we refuse to acknowledge. And it is a very powerful and destructive fire. And we know this destructive fire is very prevalent in our world -

So much so that the fire of love that happened that day in Jerusalem seems like an amazing miracle. Everyone who experienced it said it was an experience of extraordinary Power.

It was a driving force! Yet this powerful driving force did not engender fear or destruction. It in fact dispelled fear. And the power of this fire of love was able to communicate above and beyond all boundaries, divisions, and differences.

God's deeds of power, God's breath of love, results in deeds of love, and is never for only a select group; they are for all creation. Without the breath of God's love in this world nothing would ultimately live.

The direct experience of this powerful breath of love, the fire of love, was and is the gift Jesus promised. It, and it alone, has the power to dispel the fire of hate. Jesus had just been murdered by the unifying power of hate, but it did not ultimately have the power to destroy him.

If it had, then destruction and chaos would always remain victorious. Forgiveness, redemption and renewal can only come from God's saving breath of love, and nothing in this world is more powerful.

When we view our world today, our political scene today, in which we hear on the news over and over again, that we are so angry, and we are joining together in anger and making decision from our anger and hate, it would be easy to come to the conclusion that the power of hate seems to be far greater than the power of love.

We hear statements like, "If God is so powerful and so good, then why do such bad things still happen? Why is there such evil in the world?"

When we hear this or think this, we are being gripped by the fear and the belief that there are more powerful things than the love of God at work in the world. It seems that evil is in fact more powerful than God.

But when despairing questions like this arise in our hearts we need to seriously consider, "What leads me?" The fire of love overcame Paul, the man who was first led by the power of hate. This is what led him to say, "All who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God." So what leads us? Who leads us?

We need to seriously ask ourselves this important question most especially when we feel negativity, dislike or hate toward any other person or group of people. We need to ask ourselves most especially when we join with others in this dislike or hate.

My late friend Fr. Sherm Gagnon use to tell his children as they started their day, "Remember who you are. You have been marked as Christ's own forever." Pentecost challenges us to (re-member), remember who we have promised to follow, to remember who leads us.

Jesus said, "If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him."

In order for us to see and receive the Spirit of truth we must reject the limited perspective of hate and be open to the powerful gift of love God has sent to reside within the church and within each member of the Body of Christ. To follow Jesus is to be led by Him, and to obey his commandment to love one another. Amen.