A Sermon Preached at St. Stephen’s May 11, 2008, by the Rev. Cork Tarplee

            The great Church Historian of the present age, Jaroslav Pelikan says that he overheard his six-year-old daughter singing “Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so,” and realized in a flash that it wasn’t true.  While perhaps pastors and Sunday School teachers and her own noted father might have helped, it was the little girl’s MOTHER who had taught her that Jesus loves her.

            Today, on the Day of Pentecost, Mother’s Day and the baptismal day of Ethan Heiberg, let us celebrate the power of God’s Holy Spirit working in the world in the traditionally feminine modes of intuition, relationship and community. You know the old joke that if Three Wise Women had visited Jesus at Epiphany, they would have asked directions, arrived on time, helped deliver the baby, cleaned the stable and brought practical gifts.  You may not be so aware that the third person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit, ought to be referred to as “she” not “he.”  Both the Hebrew and Greek words for Holy Spirit—the original words of the Bible—are feminine in gender.  Thank God intuition, relationship and community are not qualities given only to those of the female gender: God pours out the Spirit on men as well as women, but the Spirit does seem to work through these qualities of intuition, relationship and community.

            The Bible records the action of God’s Holy Spirit as often working outside the expected norm.  In our Hebrew Scripture this morning, God helps Moses share his heavy pastoral duties by placing the Holy Spirit on 70 elders.  Two of those elders miss the ordination service at which the Spirit is imparted, but begin to prophesy anyway.  The rule-conscious folk of the day ask Moses he to put a stop to this behavior, but Moses replies: “Would that all the Lord’s people were prophets.” In his description of the coming of the Holy Spirit on the early church, St. Luke remarks that people were amazed and astonished at the ability of the disciples to communicate.  The rule-conscious of the day accused them of being drunk, but Peter replied that this was always part of God’s plan that “your sons and your daughters shall prophesy.”  Apparently God’s Spirit has never been controlled or confined by the bounds of class or race or gender, but always works through women and men inspired from a source outside of the expected pathways.

            The Bible also records the action of God’s Holy Spirit as building relationships.  God always works through the bonds between people.  In our Christian tradition, God works primarily through the establishment of a family, and through the calling of disciples.  In the Pentecost event, God acts decisively to take away the barriers of language that keep people apart, and people of varying races and nationalities hear the Gospel in their own languages.  Apparently God’s Spirit has always forged a closer bond of understanding and mutual support between people. Where God is, differences fall away.

            And the Bible records the action of God’s Holy Spirit in creating communities.  Our Hebrew ancestors were called into community, Jesus created a band of followers, and those followers opened their doors and hearts to others, and the Church was born. If the American icon is the strong silent lone cowboy, God’s icon is always the community.

This is where we learn to love, to share, to bind up the wounded and to encourage each other with hope.  The huge redwood trees of California amaze people. They are the largest living things on earth and the tallest trees in the world. Some of them are 300 feet high and over 2,500 years old. One would think that trees so large must have a tremendous root system that reaches down hundreds of feet into the earth. But not so! The redwoods have a very shallow root system. If you were to get down on your knees and examine the redwoods’ root system, you would find that all the roots intertwine. They are locked to each other. When the storms come, the winds blow, and the lightning flashes, the redwoods still stand. They are not alone, for all the trees support and protect each other. Each tree is important to all the other trees in the grove.

            Intuition, relationship, community: these are the qualities we pray will inspire and lead every child baptized into our faith.  Ethan Heiberg, I pray that you will be filled with the quirky and intuitive spirit of the living God.  May you learn to form deep relationships and to live in the power of community.  I hope I will be able to impart to you some of this spirit.  I hope your church school teachers and the members of St. Stephen’s will help impart this spirit.  I know your dad will help.  But, being realistic,

I know that most of this spirit will come to you through the love and nurture of your mother.  With you as our teacher and guide, Ethan, I think it is appropriate today for all of us to honor who taught us and nurtured us, our mothers, grandmothers, sisters, aunts, and neighbors.  For the love we have received from them is nothing less than the amazing Spirit of God.                                                                                        AMEN