Christ Church

Eureka California
Pentecost Sunday
Acts 2:1-21, Psalm 104:25-35, 37, Romans 8:14-17
John 14:8-17, (25-27)
May 23, 2010
The Rev. Ron W. Griffin
“Missing the Obvious”

O God, who on this day taught the hearts of your faithful people by sending to them the
light of your Holy Spirit: Grant us by the same Spirit to have a right judgment in all things,
and evermore to rejoice in his holy comfort; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who
lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.
Amen.

John 14:8-17 (25-27)

Philip said to Jesus, "Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied." Jesus said to
him, "Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me? Whoever
has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, `Show us the Father'? Do you not
believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not
speak on my own; but the Father who dwells in me does his works. Believe me that I am in
the Father and the Father is in me; but if you do not, then believe me because of the works
themselves. Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I
do and, in fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father. I will do
whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If in my
name you ask me for anything, I will do it.

"If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will
give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. This is the Spirit of truth, whom the
world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, because
he abides with you, and he will be in you." "I have said these things to you while I am still
with you. But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will
teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you. Peace I leave with you;
my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be
troubled, and do not let them be afraid."
Good morning.
How do you make $.30 with two coins if one of them is not a nickel, the answer in
a minute.
This newspaper report comes from the Hudson Register-Star, “The Columbia
County courthouse in Hudson, N.Y., finally has a handicapped-accessible water fountain.
The fountain was installed after a now-7-year-old report noted deficiencies under the
Americans with Disabilities Act. "We're doing that for every building," promises Public
Works Commissioner David Robinson. "We want to satisfy the settlement agreement."
The new fountain may not fully satisfy the law however, they seemed to have
missed the obvious, and it’s on the courthouse's second floor, which is accessible only by
stairs
Ok, how do you make $.30 with two coins if one of them is not a nickel? You have
a quarter and a nickel. The quarter is one of the coins that is not a nickel. Obvious when
you think about it, but the Obvious is often missed.
Today is Pentecost Sunday and in our first scripture from the Acts of the Apostles,
this reading is part of our lectionary every year. The author Luke who is also the writer of
the Gospel separates the events of Resurrection, Ascension and Pentecost into three
distinct highlights and the Holy Spirits arrival on this major Jewish harvest holiday is
recounted here. As the crowd gets noisier and more confrontational, the disciple now
Apostle Peter steps forward to interpret all that is happening. Luke portrays this as new
uncharted energetic territory for the disciples. The Church has returned again and again to
this scripture and refers to Luke’s account as the “church’s birth day", reminiscencing how
powerful the Holy Spirit once seemed, and how strong the witness of the new church once
appeared.
Our gospel today takes us in a very different direction. This section in John’s
gospel is like a great fishing spot. We have been returning to this portion of John again and
again. These words sometimes printed in red type, mark the words of Jesus in the farewell
discourse. Our gospel begins with Phillips frustration "Show us the Father," "Show us the
Father and it will be enough for us." Jesus seems to be taken back. How could they have
missed the obvious? If you've seen me, then you have seen the Father."
As today’s Pentecost text, John is telling us not to miss the obvious. The focus is
not on the bizarre or paranormal but on transparency of the Son to the Father—and by
extension the transparency of the disciples to both the Son and the Father through the Holy
Spirit.
Phillip however speaking for the others is calling for something else. The disciples
had seen Jesus, walked with Jesus, watch Jesus. They had seen him weep at a friend’s
grave. They probably remembered Jesus laughing, playing with little children, expressing
surprise, nodding off to sleep from fatigue, talking after a meal over a particularly good
glass of wine.
Is that like God?
 They recalled the times his chin quivered; his eyes filled with tears, his voice thick
and wooly with emotion.
Is that like God?
Jesus who personified God and was promising to leave a transparent transforming
connection, for all future generations of believers, a lot of it was so seemingly….well
normal. John’s gospel goes on to tell us the disciples missed this transforming gift of the
Holy Spirit in such seeming normal ways as they projected Jesus in a different role. Only
much later after Easter did the disciples piece it together and realize that theirs had been a
sacred journey in time with God, transparently revealed in Jesus and now would be
revealed and transformed in them through the Holy Spirit.
Of all the persons of the Trinity, I suppose the Holy Spirit is the hardest to define.
Most of us can begin to describe the other two; God the creator of all things. Only a very
small percentage of all human beings believe there is no God.
Jesus who was human like us, yet God who was here for a particular time on earth,
the gospels the first four books of the New Testament are dedicated to telling us this good
news of what God did through Jesus.
But how do we describe God the Holy Spirit; to our friends, to our children, to our
grandchildren?
When we speak of the Holy Ghost, that can bring up references of the bizarre, and
Holy Spirit implies something without substance. Characteristics of steam, fire, and a
Dove, are brought to mind but the obvious that is often missed is the Spirit’s human
connection. Even Jesus had a hard time helping us with a definition we could hold on to.
“The Spirit blows where it chooses”, you hear the sound of it but you do not know where it
comes from of where it goes.” It’s as if the Holy Spirit appears to reside on the Dark Side
of the Moon, from some past history, obscured and often miss recognized, and in our day
more emphasis placed on the gifts than for the giver.
In the late second century Theophilus writing to a friend in Three books of
Autolycus is persuading him of the truth of Christianity, Theophilus is the first Christian
author to use the word Trinity.
This early Bishop of Antioch does not use the name, Father, Son and Holy Spirit,
rather the Trinity is God, God’s Word, and God’s wisdom. As Jesus is united with God,
the church will be connected to the wisdom of God the Holy Spirit. What was God
breathing in Jesus the Word, will become God’s Wisdom breathing in Christians. The Gift
of the Advocate and counselor Jesus promised would begin a time for God to be born
again-not in one body but in a body of believers.
There have now been many books written about the Holy Spirit, and you can’t go
through the TV channels and stop on any religious programming for very long and not hear
about the Holy Spirit. In a day when Pentecostal power and Pentecost is connected nine
times out of ten with the bizarre, fantastical, and the paranormal it’s important for us today
not to miss the transformational, quite normal role that Jesus suggests for the Holy Spirit in
today gospel. So what does a truly Spirit-wise person look like? Well, perhaps more earthy
and normal than we have been led to believe.
 Jesus says the Spirit will help the disciples recognize the presence of God the
Father that has been there all along. And though the disciples initially missed it because of
the normalness of Jesus—God’s Wisdom, to use Theophilus descriptive word, would
remind the disciples of everything Jesus had said. All of which seems to mean that even
people who are full to the brim with the Holy Spirit of Pentecost may end up looking fairly
ordinary to the unsuspecting and the undiscerning.
The saint, Teresa of Avila once said, "Christ dwells among the pots and pans." This
is far from a complacency of Christianity, it is about noticing, a greater awareness of how
God in Christ is already at work in you and in others by the indwelling presence of the
Holy Spirit of Pentecost and how, by becoming more aware of that, we become more
intentional in following Jesus along the way. The Holy Spirit is in the texture of everyday
life--the kind of life the disciples had led with Jesus all along, the kind of life in which we
sometimes miss in the obvious that everything Jesus did was transformed.
And that becomes our goal, with the help of the Wisdom of God. When the Holy Spirit of
Pentecost is within us, in our work, with our families, in our leisure and in our worship.
everything we see, say, and do—as well as everything we hear, receive, and perceive—is
transformed in the Human Connection of the Holy Spirit.