Preached on the Day of Pentecost (Year A), May 28, 2023, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, Washington by The Reverend Stephen Crippen.
Scripture readings: Acts 2:1-21, Psalm 104:25-35, 37, 1 Corinthians 12:3b-13, John 20:19-23
Andrew and I in Paris, September 2016.
Let me begin by saying that I do thoroughly love the City of Light, Paris, one of the greatest world cities, perhaps the greatest world city. I love walking in Paris, exploring a market in Paris, gazing at stained glass in Paris, figuring out labyrinthine museum floor plans in Paris, and above all drinking espresso and eating baked bread in the morning on L’Île Saint-Louis in Paris.
I love it all.
But I struggle with Paris. Specifically, I admit with embarrassment that I struggle with the language in Paris. I was a careless and inattentive French student. In high-school French class, I focused less on the House of Être and the genders of nouns, and more on the thrilling and vexing crush I had on one of my classmates. (But you know, that’s kind of French of me, now that I think about it.) And then I moved through young adulthood without studying languages other than English, and now I am right down the middle, a disappointingly average adult who finds it hard to learn new languages.
Andrew and I would go places in Paris and I would not even need to open my mouth – they knew I was a U.S. American. My clothes, my temperament, my failure to understand fluently how they carry themselves, how they do things, how they express their thoughts and feelings: they knew I didn’t fit in. Now, they happily took my money, and again, I did love being there! So there was really no downside to all this, in the end. But I struggled.
Not Andrew. Andrew loves Paris without complication, without reservation, without any scrap of doubt. And his French is good enough that even if his Parisian conversation partners know instantly that he’s not a local, he nevertheless can carry on a conversation with reasonable skill. We were in a shop on our way back to the hotel one afternoon, and Andrew conversed at some length, in French, with the shopkeeper. The shopkeeper was polite, even friendly, not the cliché smug Parisian who looks down on Americans. Often the French will anticipate an English speaker and stop the tourist with an English “May I help you?”, but this person allowed Andrew to speak to him in French. I believe he respected Andrew’s ability, and whatever strengths of character empowered Andrew to look away from cute classmates and pay attention in French class.
I do not think Andrew would say he is fluent in French, but I would say Andrew is fluent in Paris. He knows how to visit that great city. I know how to follow a good visitor, so back in 2016 we enjoyed a good trip there together. But London is next.
Except London is problematic too, because like all cities, like all places, many languages are spoken, literal languages and figurative ones. If the television show Ted Lasso is true to life, Londoners verbally abuse each other as a particularly passionate love language. In one scene, after three tweens yell obscenities at one of his close friends, the character Roy Kent looks them over, pauses, and says, “Good lads.” I do not speak this language. I am prone to feel hurt when someone who loves me expresses their love in such a rough way. I can learn this language! Even now I can understand it. But I am not fluent in it.
But on that same show, another language is spoken in London that I know well. It is the language of Judas Iscariot, spoken by the most troubled character on Ted Lasso, poor, suffering Nate Shelley, who attacks his friends and then betrays them. It’s immodest to say it, but the therapist in me correctly predicted the dramatic arc of Nate’s character. “He’s hurting so much,” I thought to myself. “So many wounds, inflicted by his father. Oh, Nate.” I have witnessed Nate’s grievous, frustrated rage. Of course I have heard it in the therapy room, but I’ve also heard it in parish life, including here at St. Paul’s. It is the language of a spiritual malady. And so, if people speak that language in London, I will immediately hear it with understanding – understanding both what it is and why it is.
Today the Holy Spirit gives us fluency, fluency in languages other than our favorites, deeper fluency in languages we know and love, curiosity about languages of whose existence we are only now becoming aware, and a humbling education in languages we’ve avoided learning because our privilege allows us to ignore those who speak them. The Holy Spirit is sometimes a slight tug inside us, other times a fireball billowing toward us, leading us up and out of our usual languages, our usual dialects, our usual ways of doing and being and relating.
I hear many languages here in this faith community. Some of us are fluent in technical languages that help us fix what’s broken, most recently our parish-hall coffee machine. Music is a language – a beautiful language of mathematics – and it is fluently sung here. Liturgical movement is yet another mathematical language – the mathematics of dance, visible in this room as a ballet of prayer. And of course many of us fluently speak the provocative language of spoken scriptural proclamation. Some of us are fluent in group dynamics and make for dynamite vestry members; some of us hear easily the quiet, often silent cry of those among us who are lonely and in need of pastoral care. And some can spot a newcomer’s body language from yards away, and know exactly what to say and do, and not say, and not do.
Going deeper, St. Paul’s is home to many who are fluent in the language of deep feelings and profound moral values, a language of empathy for those who suffer, the God-given language of compassion, the language spoken eternally into the cosmos by our wounded yet risen Savior, Jesus Christ, the Word of God.
I hear this language whenever we are faced with a dilemma. Someone is languishing, unsheltered, on our parking strip: what must we do? Many of us, fluent in the language of compassion, prayerfully discern how we can honor the dignity of the person first, and respond to practical challenges second. We care about our troubled friend, and that care empowers and directs our actions.
This fluency in compassion that so many of us enjoy is a gift of the Holy Spirit, and it is a treasure more valuable than any earthly asset we possess. These buildings and grounds one day will pass away, but the Spirit-led language of compassion, spoken here for generations, will reverberate through the universe until the Last Day. I mean this: are you aware how few people in the world are fluent in the language of compassion? I suspect grievously few. But the Spirit moves here at First and Roy in Seattle, and she makes us fluent in the one language this world so desperately needs. I assure you, those most in need of it can hear us speaking it.
Every week at our Sunday-morning prayer meeting we call the Holy Eucharist, we invoke that same Spirit to dwell here, to keep forming us in the language of compassion. The fancy word for this (a word borrowed from the language of Greek) is epiclesis. The epiclesis is the moment in our Eucharistic Prayer when we ask God’s Spirit to descend upon the gifts of bread and wine, making them the Body and Blood of Christ; and the second epiclesis when we ask God’s Spirit to descend upon us, making us the Body of Christ in this world so starved for compassion.
We make the sign of the cross to mark this moment, to trace the descent of the Spirit on our own bodies. And whenever we do this – whenever we pray the epiclesis – we participate in a great recurring pattern in the universe, a Trinitarian pattern. Here’s the pattern: “Where[ever] the Holy Spirit moves at the will of the [Creator], the Word of God becomes incarnate in history.” That is how it was described by the theologian Michael Raschko. I’ll say that again. Michael Raschko writes, “Where[ever] the Spirit moves at the will of the [Creator], the Word of God becomes incarnate in history.” The Spirit moves over Mary at the will of the Creator, and the Word becomes embodied in Jesus Christ. The Spirit moves over the chaotic waters at the will of the Creator, and the Word brings all creation into being. The Spirit moves over the bread and cup at the will of the Creator, and the Word becomes Christ present with us at the Eucharistic Table. The Spirit moves over us at the will of the Creator, and the Word becomes flesh in you, in me, in all of us together, the Body of Christ, God’s embodied Word, broken open in compassion, creating the world anew.
So, come to this Table, come to our troubled parking strip, come to this complicated city of Seattle, come to the glorious and ever more complicated city of Paris: travel boldly across this universe, and do not be afraid. The Holy Spirit is moving over you at the will of the Creator, and the Word will teach you exactly what to say.