This Festival of Pentecost is a celebration of the third great benediction -- the third great blessing -- which God has bestowed upon humanity in order to draw us into union with Him; . . . the third great benediction which God has bestowed on us in order to help us become completely ourselves; . . . in order to help us become who we truly are.  When we recite the Creed, we remember all three of those benedictions.

    The first benediction of God is Life.  In His ineffable love and joy God the Father communicated Himself to the cosmos.  He created us.  Male and female, God the Father created us in His Image and bestowed upon every one of us the sacred and priceless blessing of His own most holy Life.  God the Father has bestowed upon you the blessing of His Life . . . with all of its beauty; . . . with all of its tenderness; . . . and with all of its difficulties.  Because, you see, the great challenge of God’s first benediction; . . . the great challenge of possessing God’s sacred Life is that it is difficult to steer; . . . it is difficult to steer because, while it is a blessing, . . . if we are not attentive and forget that it’s God’s Life we are steering; . . . if we become careless, we can lean too hard or too little on the sacred Life of God and cause it to veer off to the left or to the right and become a Curse; . . . we can get off course and become lost . . . so that sin becomes the result of our living.

    In order to save us from this Curse, God gave us the second great benediction; . . . God gave us Himself.  Jesus, Son of the Living God, came among us to be the “owner’s manual” (as it were) for the sacred gift of God the Father’s most holy Life.  And so, in the life and in the sayings and in the ministry and in the Passion and in the Crucifixion and in the Resurrection and in the Ascension of Jesus . . . are the remedy for sin.  Jesus subjugated sin by conquering despair.  And He taught us to live brave and sacred lives by being simple, detached, and focused upon God’s wisdom, will, and love.

    The third great benediction of God is the thing that helps us to be focused, and it is the thing we celebrate today:  the gift of the Holy Spirit.  The reading from the Book of the Acts of the Apostles suggests that the Holy Spirit burst into the lives of the Faithful, with wind and with fire, on the Feast of Pentecost, a Jewish festival which was kept some fifty days after Passover.  . . . But the other two readings from Holy Scripture suggest that the Spirit’s nature is not simply noise and pyrotechnics.  In fact, Holy Scripture suggests that the third great gift of God has a double motion:  a motion which is contemplative . . . as well as a motion which is active.  And so, the Word of God spoken by the Prophet Isaiah to the people of Israel in exile . . . begins with an interior healing.  The Word of God says, “Fear not.”  And then the Prophet says that the Spirit of God shall make God’s people “like grass amid waters, like willows by flowing streams”; . . . that no matter how arid our circumstances may be, . . . the Spirit of God will keep us cool … and nourish us . . . and cause us to flourish; . . . no matter how frightening our circumstances may be, . . . the Spirit of God will sustain our lives . . . even in the midst of death.  And so, Isaiah ends his prophesy by speaking the words which we hear from the angel at the Empty Tomb of Jesus:  “Fear not, nor be afraid.”

    The great power of sin is fear.  Fear is the thing that makes God’s sacred Life so difficult to steer.  Because, you see, when fear gets hold of you, . . . God’s promises seem so . . . spiritual; . . . when fear gets hold of you, God’s sacred promises seem so irrelevant to the present uncertainty.  And so, when fear gets hold of us, we buy insurance policies from the Devil:  nice, material ways of coping with the present necessities.

    But,

On the evening of [the day of the Resurrection], . . . the doors being shut where the disciples were, for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.”  . . . And when he had said this, he breathed on them, and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit.  If you forgive the sins of any they are forgiven . . .”

The gift of the Holy Spirit bestows God’s Peace; the gift of the Holy Spirit bestows God’s shalom.  It bestows wholeness upon the Faithful; it bestows a healthful unity of body with soul; . . . a healthful unity of human soul to its Divine Father.  And this indwelling of God’s healthful Peace in Christ Jesus . . . gives us power over sin.  It gives us power over sin by driving off the fear-invoking dark with the light of Christ.

    Back when I was some forty years younger and fifty pounds lighter, I worked for our Uncle Sam keeping watch:  . . . keeping watch with a rifle and a hundred rounds of ammunition.  And especially in the wee hours of the morning, when it’s darkest and most silent, . . . I have been most frightened.  My imagination becomes filled with all the malevolent dangers which could be lurking in the dark … stealthily coming upon me in the silence . . . poised to spring the moment I become distracted.  My imagination in the dark has made me very self-absorbed, … very afraid, . . . and very miserable.  . . . And then the dawn comes.  The songs of birds break the murderous silence, . . . and suddenly the sights are very familiar.  Gradually I can see more clearly for greater distances.  The shadows hide nothing unfriendly, . . . and my misery dissolves into joyful relief.  . . . Reality is not as frightening as the dark.  And, that is the first motion of the Holy Spirit.  It is a contemplative motion; . . . the Holy Spirit of God heals the imagination; . . . She heals our fear.

    You see, even though God loves you just the way you are and accepts you for who you are . . . does not mean that He is content for you to remain that way.  God may love you in your darkness, . . . but He has sent His Son to bring you light.  . . . And the Holy Spirit bestows that light.  The Holy Spirit bestows the divine light which reveals to the human heart that conformity to Christ is not unfriendly, . . . and that simplicity and chastity and focus are really quite familiar once the imagination can be disciplined to submit itself to the Peace of Jesus.

    And this leads to the second motion of the Holy Spirit; the motion of which the Book of Acts gives an account.  . . . Being healed by the Peace of Jesus -- being conformed to the reality of God -- . . . the Church is sent as Christ was sent:  the Church is sent to tell the mighty works of God; . . . the Church is sent to tell the mighty works of God to simply everyone!  Because, you see, while I have preached that the ways of the world are hostile to a holy life in Christ, and urged you to cultivate a spirit of detachment from the world, . . . Jesus has never taught us to be indifferent to it.  While we may be opposed to the world, . . . we are not its enemy.  And so, the Holy Spirit sends us into the world to quell fear by preaching Jesus.  The Holy Spirit may be calling some of you to preach Jesus as Deacon or as Priest, and the Holy Spirit may be calling others of you to preach Jesus as a person utterly given over to Christ and living under vows of Poverty, Chastity, and Obedience as Monk or Sister of a Religious Order utterly given over to Jesus; . . . but the Holy Spirit has ordained most of you to preach Jesus by living and working in the world decently and peaceably; by dealing with others fairly and justly; by speaking and acting with forbearance and courage.  Day by day the Holy Spirit is at your elbow with the health of God’s shalom . . . in order that you might illuminate the dark imaginations of profane people with the glorious light of Jesus; . . . in order that you might be brave reality in the midst of fearful conjecture.  Day by day the Holy Spirit is at your elbow with the health of God’s shalom . . . in order that you might be light . . . and so that many people will come to that light . . . and find Jesus.

    This is the day in the Church Year when we particularly celebrate the third benediction of God.  And it is a day to remember the motion of this third blessing.  Our life in God’s Spirit moves back and forth between contemplation and action.  In the daily Prayers and reading of Holy Scripture at the Morning Office here in the Church or in your homes; in our corporate worship when we are all gathered in one place (as the Book of Acts describes it); . . . and in the Sacrament of the Altar; … in all these things the Blessed Spirit  is present to heal our imaginations with the shalom of the Living God which is the Peace of the Risen Jesus.  And then the Holy Spirit is also present to actively adorn the wind and fire which is the business of our lives.  The Holy Spirit goes out into the world with us.  She goes to empower us to tell the mighty works of God.

    Because we have received this third great benediction from God in Baptism, . . . the Church is mindful on this day to remember Her commitment to a life of contemplation and action under the discipline of God’s Holy Spirit by encouraging us to recollect our baptismal promises.  I invite you to do that now, using the form found on page 292 in The Book of Common Prayer.