On May 21st each year, the church celebrates the feast day of a man named John Eliot. If that name isn’t familiar to you, this is an opportunity to share a little history that are important to our celebration today of the coming of the Holy Spirit. John Eliot was an Englishman in the 17th century and a clergy person -- and a Puritan.
Being from England and a Puritan in the 17th century, he realized that in order to practice his faith as he believed he had received it, England was not the best place to be. He was coming of age during the reign of Charles I. And so, wanting to have the freedom to practice and minister he decided to come to the colonies, this new world. He assumed that he would be ministering to like-minded people, to other Puritans.
But when he got here, something unexpected happened. He felt called to minister not to English-speaking Puritans that were here, but rather to the Algonquin peoples, an indigenous people that he met. There was a problem – and not a small one: a fairly significant language barrier. He realized that he needed to learn their language. So he committed himself to doing just that. He began spending more and more time with the Algonquin, until he became fluent. He learned it so well, in fact, that he was able to translate the entire Bible into Algonquin.
So you might rightfully assume that the first Bible to be printed on American soil in the United Sates was in English, or maybe French or Spanish. But it was in Algonquin. The first Bible printed in the US was in Algonquin.
John Eliot went on to became a tireless advocate for the Algonquin people that he knew nothing about before he came to this country – he advocated for property rights for them. He advocated for schools for both children and adults. And he is said to have spent many of his days on foot or on horseback going to the Algonquin native communities trying to make certain that they heard the word of God and the stories of Jesus Christ.
John Eliot might or might not have realized that he was following in the footsteps of an important figure in the Anglican tradition, important to us today the Episcopal church, and that’s Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, the architect of the prayer book that is the forerunner to our own Book of Common Prayer. Cranmer, who lived in the 16th century, determined something very important – that liturgy needed to be in the language of the people. If the average person, not just the elite, not the upper classes that had access to formal education, but the average person, the liturgy needed to be in English for them to understand the Word of God and incorporated its meaning into their lives, it needed to be in their own language. The 16th century determination of Archbishop Thomas Cranmer.
Because there’s something to be said about being in community and understanding together and having the word of God available to us in a way that makes sense to us; and that we can absorb into our existence into our lives. That sense that we need to belong to something. That we need to understand and be community; that is what we see in our lesson from the Acts of the Apostles. Here are all these Jews who during the diaspora have been scattered to so many places. And they have come back to Jerusalem with all of the languages and all of the traditions from all of the places where they have lived.
And then there is this miraculous day. There is this miraculous day when the Holy Spirit breathes down onto the Apostles and allows them to speak in all the languages of the people. So that they can understand and so they can be community.
And this gift of the Holy Spirit is not just given to the apostles but also the gift that is given to the hearers. Because those who hear are now part of something bigger than themselves. They are part of a whole community of worshipers who know and share the love of God. All together.
The naysayers said “they must be drunk, how else would you explain this crazy weird behavior of theirs …” But those who experienced the Holy Spirit has come in and made it possible for them to experience God in a whole new way, in an expansive and astounding way. And to be part of entire community of God lovers.
And this feeds some innate within us, something within us – to one extent or another - . something bigger than ourselves, something that has begun before us and will outlast us, will sweep us up within loving embrace and will exist long after we’re gone. We crave this. Even as infants.
Some of you may have seen a wonderful video of a baby who was born unable to hear. She had just been fitted with hearing aids. And she hears her mother’s voice for the first time. It’s only been lips moving until this moment. But with the hearing aids on first there’s a smile, a big broad smile and she looks intently into her mother’s face. But then the tears – of comfort of peace, of being overwhelmed with the feeling through this voice that she belongs, that she is loved; that everything about her matters to the person holding her.
That’s what it means for us to be able to hear that Word of God. That’s what it means for us to be able to know that we are God’s people; that we are loved and included, a part of a community of so many others that love and are beloved of God.
So what are we to do with this today – this day that we celebrate the Holy Spirit coming down and breathing life into those first believers; and helping them shape faith community for the first time.
We are reminded that the Holy Spirit still moves and breathes with us – that the Holy Spirit is still there igniting us and empowering us to create community, to speak the languages of those who are around us. And the languages may be literal languages – it may be learning Spanish or one of the Asian languages or Arabic languages – it may literal languages of the people that are here that are around us. But it may the language of music, of a spiritual language that we speak that reaches out to the homeless the destitute, to those who have lost all hope to remind them that God is still active, alive and caring.
A Native American woman mystic named Mary Standing Otter reminds us with a few simple statements about the work of the Holy Spirit moving and alive in the world: it’s called Right Now.
· Right now there are Tibetan Buddhist monks in a temple in the Himalayas endlessly reciting mantras for the cessation of your suffering and for the flourishing of your happiness.
· Someone you haven't met yet is already dreaming of adoring you.
· Someone is writing a book that you will read in the next two years that will change how you look at life.
· Nuns in the Alps are in endless vigil, praying for the Holy Spirit to align the hearts of all of God's children.
· A farmer is looking at his organic crops and whispering, "nourish them."
· Something is being invented this year that will change how your generation lives, communicates, heals and passes on.
· The next great song is being rehearsed by musicians and singers.
· Thousands of people are in yoga classes right now intentionally sending light out from their heart chakras and wrapping it around the earth.
· Millions of children are assuming that everything is amazing and will always be that way.
· Someone is in profound pain, and a few months from now, they'll be thriving like never before. From where they are, they just can't see it.
· Someone who is craving to be partnered, to be acknowledged, will get precisely what they want — and even more. And because that gift will be so fantastical in its reach and sweetness, it will literally alter their memory of anxious longing and render it all "So worth the wait."
· Someone is praying in earnest for wars to stop.
· Someone is curing the incurable.
· Someone is dedicating their days to protecting your civil liberties and clean drinking water.
· Someone is regaining their sanity.
· Someone is coming back from the dead.
· Someone is genuinely forgiving the seemingly unforgivable.
o You. Me. Some. One. Now.
This is Pentecost. This why we ask the Holy Spirit to come to us and build us up and to give us the power of languages that we cannot even begin to comprehend so that all of God’s people can know what it means to be belong to Love, and to be witnesses together of God’s grace and mercy. That we all may know community – that the lost and scattered who want nothing more than to be included in a place like St. Matthias where God is known and experienced. Amen.