While attending the Festival of Homiletics last month, I participated in a workshop about the Holy Spirit. It was presented by Rev. William Lamar IV, who is pastor of Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church in Washington, DC. Rev. Lamar, the next night, also led the Gospel worship service. He preached a fiery sermon, one that had everyone, myself very much included, on our feet. It was a passionate call for justice – one that compelled everyone who was listening to work for the realization of God’s Kingdom on earth, and to never give up. His passion, his purpose, his certainty of his call was inspiring.
But, what really struck me was Rev. Lamar’s otherwise quiet demeanor. He is a gentle, intellectual person, which was made very clear during his workshop. It was a stark contrast to the preacher I saw the next night. And, as I quickly became of fan of his and started listening to several NPR interviews that feature him, his thoughtfulness and quiet consideration of whatever he is speaking about was really amazing. How is it, this African American preacher who one evening had 1000 other preachers on our feet shouting and praising God, is otherwise so quiet? At the same time, I wondered where he got his passion from. His sense of purpose. His sense of call to quietly go about the work of justice, no matter the consequences. What made him tick, I kept asking myself?
Rev. Lamar’s workshop, as I said, was about the Holy Spirit. His point was to help us remember that as preachers, we must open ourselves up to the presence of the Holy Spirit – not only while preparing our sermons but while we go about all of our work. I must stop here for a moment and confess something. When I originally saw the title of his workshop, “The Role of the Holy Spirit for Moral Imagination” I did not plan to attend. The language of the Holy Spirit was not something I grew up hearing. And in my seminary, inspiration from the Holy Spirit took a back seat to intellectual theological discourse. Why open yourself up to the whims of the Holy Spirit when you should really be reading a scholarly essay on the topic? I was suspicious of this workshop, but I went anyway. And I will be forever grateful that I did.
I think we struggle, in quiet, midwestern mainline Protestantism with the Holy Spirit. That’s for other Christians – evangelicals, tv evangelists, those traditions that encourage the speaking of tongues. And I have begun to wonder – what is it I, and many of us, have been missing out on? What has the Holy Spirit been trying to say to us that we are too afraid to listen to, in our fear of losing control?
Because, that is the thing about the Holy Spirit. We cannot control it. We cannot predict it. We have no ability to plan for the Holy Spirit. I remember when I was a chaplain intern one of my colleagues was struggling with her inability to plan her day, because as a chaplain, crises come up all the time and we must respond. She was someone who liked a schedule, who liked to plan what her day would look like, and whenever her pager went off it would throw her day out of her control. Our teacher gave her this advice – plan to be interrupted. Intentionally plan your day knowing you will be interrupted, so when it happens, it was expected – it was planned for. I actually loved that advice, though I am pretty sure my fellow intern did not find it at all helpful. But, that was the nature of the ministry – and that is the nature of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit’s role in our lives sometimes feels like a pager going off – calling us to stop what we are doing, change our plans and do the unexpected. But, here is the problem – it can be really easy to ignore the Holy Spirit when she does interrupt us. It can be really easy to say – not now, I have too much going on. Or, you want me to do what?!? That’s ridiculous. We may not have control in predicting when the Holy Spirit will arrive or what she will call on us to do, but we do have the ability to simply ignore that call and move along with our lives. The Holy Spirit, God’s still speaking voice, can be muted, ignored. And I am beginning to think that there is nothing more tragic than when we give into that temptation.
We all have experiences of the Holy Spirit. We all have moments in our lives, that when we look back on them, we realize there was something going on that was completely out of our control. Sometimes we may call them coincidences. Sometimes we call them happenstance. And sometimes we recognize them as God moments, when God intervened or pushed us or gave us courage or simply wouldn’t stop pestering us. As pastor my greatest privilege is to hear your stories. And I have heard so many of your stories that showed the Holy Spirit alive and at work in your lives – the moments, times, experiences when you listened to God’s still speaking voice and responded. Some of the stories you have told me are extraordinary. Some are ordinary. Some are hard to imagine, others I have been completely able to relate too. But, I am confident, you all have a story to tell.
But, let me go back to Rev. Lamar of Metropolitan AME church. His suggestion, actually his plea, for us in that workshop was to not simply look back at a moment and recognize the Holy Spirit was working in and through us. Rather, our challenge is to recognize the Holy Spirit in the moment. In the moment to hear God’s voice. In the moment to say to ourselves and those around us: this is the Holy Spirit talking to me and I need to listen, even though I am not sure what is going to happen next or where I might end up. And Rev. Lamar believes that is something we can practice. Something we can get better at over time. And we can practice with silence.
I said earlier that I was wondering what gave Rev. Lamar his focus and purpose. And I think it may be his intentional practice to listening for and to the Holy Spirit in silence. And I can’t help but remember another influential pastor in my life – Rev. Fred Rogers, otherwise known as Mr. Rogers of Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood. Mr. Rogers believed in the power of silence and worried that children didn’t have enough of it. He, very intentionally, allowed for silence in his television show. When he was doing various activities, he was not afraid to be quiet. He even sometimes had moments of silence during his television show and encouraged his young viewers to try being quiet at home. He was worried, I learned later on, that children were not learning how to just sit and listen to their own hearts, their own spirits. And I suspect, as he was a Presbyterian minister, that he was worried children would not know how to listen for the presence of the Holy Spirit, how to listen for the presence of God.
Our world is loud. Our world is full of distractions. Our lives, both professional and personal, are over-whelmed with voices, noises, diversions – so many things to distract us from the voice of God. And that is maybe the problem with the Pentecost story we hear every year. It is fantastic – an extraordinary moment of the Holy Spirit falling upon the early leaders of the church. Tongues of fire, the ability to understand and speak other languages. Accusations of public drunkenness. It can be easy to read this story about the Holy Spirit and think it only appears in our lives in a cacophony of sound and light, and only if something like that happens we need to pay attention. And maybe the Holy Spirit has spoken to you like that – maybe you have had a fantastic, extraordinary moment. But, I imagine for most of us the Holy Spirit is quieter and we have to listen in order to hear.
So, let’s practice. Let’s practice listening for what God is trying to tell us. We are going to spend a couple of minutes doing a practice called lectio divinia. This is an ancient monastic practice of meditative listening to and contemplation of scripture. I will read a few verses of scripture three times, with silence in between. The first time simply allow the words to wash over you. Let them fall upon your Spirit without analyzing them. When you find your mind wandering, when other thoughts distract you – acknowledge them and then let them go. I will then read the verses again, and I want you to listen for a word or phrase that stands out to you. Something in the scripture you hear that makes you pause, makes you wonder. In the silence, focus on that word or phrase and follow where your thoughts take you. Then I will read the scripture one last time, and in the silence I will ask that you ask the Holy Spirit what she is trying to tell you – where she is trying to lead you. Don’t be afraid of the answer you get, however odd, mundane, fantastic it is. Just let go and see what the Holy Spirit has to say.
So, for this first reading, simply allow the words to wash over you and in the silence try to empty your mind of distractions. From the Book of Romans:
For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, “Abba! Father!” it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ.
This time as I read the verses, listen for a word or phrase that strikes you. In the silence focus on that word or phrase and see where your thoughts take you.
For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, “Abba! Father!” it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ.
I will read the verses one last time. In the silence, open yourself to the Holy Spirit and what she is trying to say to you. And try not to be afraid of the answer.
For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, “Abba! Father!” it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ.
Allow me to draw you back. Beloved Community, the Holy Spirit is speaking to us all of the time – but the loudness of this world can distract us from listening. Or, even when we do hear her voice, it may feel inconvenient – we’ll pay more attention next time, we tell ourselves. The Holy Spirit is God’s voice, God’s presence, the living memory of Christ in our midst. Paying attention is vital. Paying attention helps us to know how God is calling us to act. Paying attention makes God relevant today. So, let’s practice listening. Let’s practice opening ourselves up to God. Let’s be willing to take a risk and follow wherever the Holy Spirit is leading us. Amen.