Pentecost 2006 June 4, 2006 READING 1:
Psalm
READING 2: Galatians 5:16-25 GOSPEL: John 15: 26 -27; 16: 12 -15
One of our moms was disciplining her little first grade boy and refused to let him go for the end of the school year picnic with his first grade classmates. On the day before the picnic, when she picked the boy up after school, his teacher made one last appeal for our mom to change her mind. Finally, she caved and gave her gave permission for the boy to gofor the picnic with his classmates. But he sighed and confessed, “It’s too late, mom, I’ve already prayed for rain.” On this day of Pentecost we are engaged in acts both of remembrance and of imagination. The disciples, like all people who mourn, were remembering Jesus, their lives with him and all the good things he did in their lives, even as he appeared and breathed the Holy Spirit upon them, giving them a future beyond their wildest dreams. There’s no better time of year to remember and to imagine than in this graduation season. Congratulations to all of our graduates at all levels, but on this big grad weekend for the public high schools, a special congratulations to the graduates of Buchholz, Gainesville, Eastside, Santa Fe and all the schools and all the families of our grads! Graduations always prompt memories. No gate, no tree, no pathway, no song is without its capacity to prompt a memory. Of course there are often a few bad memories that could fall into St. Paul ’s list of evils in the world. But fortunately they are crowded out by moments of love, joy and peace; patience, kindness, graciousness, moments where justice and truth and virtue were experienced if only momentarily. We are to remember these moments because in them we find evidence of God’s presence and activity in our lives. And surprising as it may seem to be in your young lives you have already impressed us with your nobility and yu are a sign of God’s presence to us ancients. If you can remember, you can imagine. If you can look backward with the rediscovery of things once lost but now recalled, surely you can look ahead with some imagination to what might be. At about this time of year, seniors are frequently asked, “What are you going to do next year? What are your plans?” Sometimes, it rudely puts the seniors on the spot. Rita Rudner says that the reason adults are always asking kids what they are going to do when they grow up is that they are still looking for ideas. Nobody knows their future. Even if a scholarship waits at UF or the Air Force Academy , Harvard, Notre Dame, or Georgia Tech you still do not know what the future holds. The reverse is also true: those of you who have no plans beyond lunch today must remember—to quote a famous book (The Bible)—that there is a plan for you with your name on it and it will find you when you and it are ready. The real question to you is not whether or not you have a job or a college or a plan, but whether you have an imagination. Can you think of anything beyond the moment? What do you imagine life will hold for you? What do you want life to hold for you? Do you see an active life, an engaged life, a life you participate in or is your imagination limited to hoping you win the lottery so you can sit back and coast? Anybody can see what is there. Anybody can go where a map will take them. Seeing what isn’t there, however, traveling without a map is what makes life interesting, and that is what the imagination is all about, and it is the use of the imagination that sets the human spirit free. It is the use of the imagination that allows the Holy Spirit—which we celebrate today—to be set free in each and every one of us. That brings me to this magnificent feast. Here’s a fact you may not have thought about, but I find it instructive. Think of this: Christ did not change one thing in the world the Apostles were hiding from when he breathed the Holy Spirit upon them. The Romans still ran the show cruelly, their Jewish families, friends, and neighbors were still difficult; life was still nasty, brutish, and short; death was certain and likely more than not to be painful. None of those facts were changed or mitigated. What the Holy Spirit changed was the Apostles imaginations and by fireing up their imaginations the Spirit empowered them, enabled them to live as personally changed in an unchanged world. That would not have happened for them on their own. They would have gone back to the old routine of fishing for a living. Only the power of Christ in them--the power of the Holy Spirit whose gift we celebrate today--allowing them to remember all he did, to imagine, and finally to step out into the sordid, shabby, dumbed down and tuned out, clueless world and make an impact. To be a Christian is to be a changed man or woman in an unchanged world. Anyone can be a Christian in a Christian world, but, in case you haven’t noticed it, this is not a Christian world. This is a pagan world, a fallen world, a secular world filled with all the evil St. Paul lists in Galatians and also beautiful world filled with potential. It is the only world you and I have. That’s it, then, to be a Christian is to be changed in the middle of that which is unchanged. Frankly, I don’t think the Good News of Jesus Christ’s life, death and resurrection is what made the early few disciples into a universal, which was soon called “the Catholic Church.” I think the friends of Jesus and the Apostles remembered how he went out to the suffering, the sighing, the crying and the dying and cared for them. Then they, with their imaginations, fired up by the Holy Spirit, enabling them the first Christians set up hostels for travelers to be safe in an unsafe time at night, food kitchens for the hungry, they took in widows who had no means of support, they opened orphanages, hospitals and over time, schools and universities. The Roman Catholic Church started the first university in Padua about the year 1000. The most impressive thing about the Roman Catholic Church today is our charity in this uncharitable world. I don’t think people are attracted by our doctrines, our liturgical celebrations, even by the Good News we preach as much as they are by our good deeds. I think the common language the Apostles went and spoke was a message of care for all in a world that didn’t care. We preach best by example. We preach most effectively when we are serving food to the hungry, clothing the naked, providing hospitals and nursing facilities, clinics, schools, and behaving like Jesus would want us to. We might not change the world, but we can do our part as the changed within the unchanged world. What we are meant to do is remember and imagine God’s changes in us, remember how He carried us through the tough times and brought us victories in our struggles and trust God so we can imagine doing good as Jesus did. And in the little inconsequential universe in which we are center preach the Good News with our actions not just words. Pick up someone else’s trash. Surrender your parking place. Call the long winded relative. It doesn’t have to be a big thing. Mother Teresa said, “We don’t do great things; we do small things with great love.” Grads, you have come a long way. Your parents and ancestors have worked hard so that you could live here and live how ell we all do here. You already have a leg up on your future. God has blessed all of us in countless ways already. The power to see that power at work in you is perhaps the greatest power on earth; it has already done wonders in you; it has brought you to this moment. Just remember that, and then imagine what is ahead! It will be good news! Fr. Jeff McGowan |
