Scripture: Matthew 28:16-20; 1Corinthians 12:4-7.
In all honesty, I have been thinking that my words this morning would probably turn out to be pretty generic. Last week was Pentecost and I didn’t get to preach on Pentecost, so I have been thinking all along that I would give some kind of a Pentecost message this morning, something that has to do with the Holy Spirit. However, I haven’t really known what I was going to say about the Holy Spirit, and when people have asked me what I was going to preach on this Sunday, I’ve had to say that I didn’t know, because there was nothing particularly I was feeling about the Holy Spirit that I was just burning to say this week, nothing I felt particularly inspired about.
This is a little ironic because of course what the Holy Spirit is supposed to do is set people on fire with something that needs to be done or said. It is supposed to inspire us, inspirit us, breathe into us the breath of God, the spirit of God, infuse us with some powerful, life-giving force. So I’ve been feeling a little sheepish about the prospect of preaching on the theme of the holy spirit when I haven’t felt led in any particular direction, when there is nothing particularly that I’m on fire to say, when I’m not feeling particularly inspired, or breathed into by God in a way that I’m compelled to speak about. So I figured I would probably have to speak some standard words this morning, mouth some religious thoughts, say that the holy spirit is a good thing, and hope for something better in a couple of weeks.
As it turned out, when I sat down to actually write the sermon though, I found that I did have some things I was feeling compelled to say at least a word or two about. I know that what I am feeling compelled to say something about this morning will not take the form of a sermon about the Holy Spirit in the way I had been imagining. In fact what I need to say will not come in the form of a sermon at all, which will be all right because we have other things to do this morning. So just a few words—more like prayer concerns I guess than anything else.
Timothy McVeigh is scheduled to be executed tomorrow morning. Someday you will hear a sermon from me on the topic of the death penalty. But that’s not today. Partly because I’m not ready. I can tell you today that I’m opposed to the death penalty, but as far as gathering together all the thoughts and feelings and reflections that go into that and presenting them in the context of faith, I’m not ready to do all that this morning. It’s a serious issue, which deserves serious reflection, not an off-the-cuff treatment that is all I could do this week.
But also I don’t want to preach on the death penalty today because what is weighing on me is not the need to discuss an issue of public policy but the people I’m feeling a need to pray for. Timothy McVeigh himself. His family. The families, colleagues, friends, lovers of the people who were killed. The people who will have a role in this killing. The media people whose job will be to produce stories that feed off the execution. And all of us who will read, look, listen, and in some way respond, even if only by turning away.
From the perspective of faith one way to respond is to hold people in prayer and as we do perhaps we will be lead also to pray again and to reflect on the issue of the death penalty. In fact all the people to pray for in connection with the execution of Timothy McVeigh, that’s just the beginning. There’s all the other people on death row, people we mostly don’t know and will never know, people who have been executed, all the people connected with them, people who have been harmed by them—a very long list of people to pray for today. I feel compelled not to let this service of worship go by without at least acknowledging this very public execution and all the not so public ones that have taken place or will take place and at least asking for prayers for the people involved.
I also feel compelled not to let this service of worship go by without saying something about the firing of nine people from the university hospitals because of having felony convictions in their past. Women are raped in the psychiatric ward of the hospital. The hospital is found to have allowed the accused rapist to have contact with patients even after the initial accusation had been made. The accused is found to have a felony conviction in his background. The response is to fire everyone else who has a felony conviction in their background, everyone that is who is fire-able because of being still on probation. I have to say that I believe in this case the initial wrong was not addressed or corrected but compounded by another wrong. One injustice was compounded by another.
But my point here is not to preach a sermon on why what the university did was wrong, not to plug the next meeting or advertise the next rally, or to suggest that it is impossible to have another opinion than the one I hold on this issue. My point is that there is something not right about coming into a church service and saying some nice words about the Holy Spirit and pretending that none of this was going on in the community around us.
I know we do it all the time. In one sense we need to do it, that is leave behind all the activities and causes we may be involved in elsewhere, and at Sojourners there are lots of those. We leave unspoken all sorts of concerns when we come to worship, partly because we just can’t name them all and partly because we need to do other things in worship besides identify issues. There is always a danger of losing the dimension of the spirit when bringing the concerns of the day into worship, but there is also always the equal danger of losing the integrity of the spiritual dimension by disconnecting it from the concerns of the day.
And so I am led to at least ask your prayers today for patients raped by a university employee, for the people who care about them, for people who lost their jobs and the families that depend on them, for convicted felons who at this point are headed for further convictions, and for convicted felons who are in need of a legitimate chance to turn their lives around. Again there are a lot of people to pray for here.
I am also compelled today to raise up hotel workers around Charlottesville who are working for less than $8 an hour. Although I have now and then been one of those standing outside the Marriott on Main St. on Friday afternoons asking for the Marriott and others to pay all their employees at least $8 an hour, I have not said anything about it in church…until now, when something told me, maybe it was the Holy Spirit, that I couldn’t not say anything any longer. Again I cannot presume everyone will agree, or care about this issue. I can ask for prayers and for acts of conscience on behalf of those who make much less than a living wage.
There are lots of Sundays when I would feel no particular need to lift up a high profile execution, the firing of nine people with felony convictions, or the refusal of the well off to pay employees even $8 an hour. As I suggested earlier there is good reason not to let our worship become slave to the current social issue or news headline. But then there are times like today when the prospect of a generic sermon on the Holy Spirit just seemed to be spiritless.
So maybe today the thing to do is not to talk about the Holy Spirit and what it is and how to define it and understand it—but just to pray that it come upon us and send us to seek justice in some specific place and some specific way, to bring healing to some person’s heart that has been broken or some person’s spirit that has been crushed, or to speak some word that needs to be spoken or break some silence that needs to be broken. Come, Holy Spirit. Amen.
Jim Bundy
June 10, 2001