Sermon

It is Pentecost Sunday! And we ask Gods Holy Spirit to come and fill us, ignite our faith, restore our hope and revive your church and us within it.

It is Pentecost Sunday! Today are the third of our three Trinitarian celebrations in church: Christmas, Easter and Pentecost. While Christmas and Easter have an overwhelming appeal and many various traditions in our families and in our church setting, - so it seems that Pentecost is a little forgotten or to put it more precise: more difficult to relate to.

At Christmas the families gather for lunches, dinners and services, and we dance around the tree, the gifts, the children, the food and the joy. The season of Christmas is truly a highlight in our culture and church.

At Easter the families also gather for lunches, dinners and services filled with hallelujahs and daffodils, with joy and many Easter Eggs. The season of Easter is truly a highlight in our culture and church.

The Seasons of Christmas and Easter are big commercial hits too. We buy Christmas Presents and thousands of Easter Eggs. We decorate Christmas Trees and Easter Eggs.

But then Pentecost comes along!

And we don’t really know what to do or what to think!

We might have family traditions of lunches, like my family back in Denmark just gathered for the annual Pentecost Lunch at my parent’s vacation home on Langeland. With herring, snaps, beer and hygge.

But Pentecost is not as big a season as Christmas and Easter. It is simply not as relatable and as commercial.

Pentecost is hard to grasp. Pentecost is hard to explain. As it is the celebration of the Holy Spirit and how on earth to do you explain something as flickering and invisible as the spirit – even the holy spirit!?

Pentecost is the birthday of the Church as we celebrate and remember, as we heard from Acts, the moment when the spirit descended from the heavens on the disciples, so they could understand each other despite barriers of language, opinions and differences. They felt the presence of God even if they could no longer see the child in the manger or the man on the cross.

 

Pentecost is the season of spirit. The invisible spirit, that rushes. The invisible spirit that gives us new breath, new life and grant us new courage, new faith and restores our hope.

Look at the beautiful stained window at the altar. This is a Pentecost painting. Look at the beautiful flying flickering dove, descending like Gods own spirit from heaven to earth, where we are. Down to the green and blue planet of ours. The spirit that moves the nature and us. The spirit that connects us as humans and as believers. The spirit that truly tells us that there are indeed more between heaven and earth that we can see: the spirit of God hovering over the green earth and the blue oceans.

Which reminds me of the story about the shark and the whale. Bot where swimming in the sea, when the shark swam up to the whale to engage in a conversation. As they swam along, the shark said to the whale: “You are so much older than I, and so much wiser too. Could you please tell me where the ocean is?” The whale exhaled and responded: “But the ocean is wheat you are in now!”

The shark would not believe it. “Come on, tell me where the ocean is so I may find it!” The whale repeated:” The oceans is here, now. You are in it!” Unbelieving the shark swam away searching for the ocean.

The moral of the story, I believe, is this: don’t spend too much time looking for God, because the spirit of God is already here in the now of your life, dwelling within you, within me, within this community.

 

The Holy Spirit, God’s Spirit, is here and now. In the gentle wind, in the dancing flames, in the words and in the love.

The holy spirit can open our eyes to see God here and everywhere, in the silence, in this beautiful church, in the stranger we meet or in the loved once we share life and home with.

The Holy Spirit is.

It descends as the stained windows tells us… to the green and blue planet of ours.

 

In our Apostle Creed we confess our faith in the triune God: God as father and creator, God as son and savior, God as spirit and advocate.

“We believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy Christians church, the community of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting.”

When we think about or talk about the Holy Spirit – we try to formulate what this invisible, intangible spirit is capable to do within us and between us. That we can love and forgive, that we can talk and create fellowship. The holy spirit works through love and forgiveness. The creed says it clearly: that we meet the holy spirit in the church, in our community, that the spirit connects us, connects heaven and earth, god and man and humans in between. Without spirit no life, no love, no forgiveness, no hope… nothing worth living for.

Take a deep breath. Breath in and out. Breathe life and spirit in and let it out again to be shared, to be lived and to be passed on.

In the lovely ode to life, mornings, coffee and love, the Danish Poet Benny Andersen says:

 

Look, what a morning!

The sun is red and round

 Nina is taking a shower

 I am eating bread with cheese

 Life is not the worst you’ve got

 And soon the coffee’s hot

 

The flowers are blooming

There a spider is out for a walk

 The birds are flying in a flock

 When they are enough

 Happiness is not the worst you’ve got

 And soon the coffee’s hot

 

The grass is green and wet

 The bees are feeling good

 The lungs are gorging in air

Oh, the smell of bindweed

Joy is not the worst you’ve got

 And soon the coffee’s hot

 

The singing under shower.

 Apparently, she’s happy!

 The sky is quite blue

And I can understand why

 Happiness is not the worst you’ve got

And soon the coffee’s hot

 

Now Nina comes out

Naked with moist skin

Kisses me lovingly and goes

 In to comb her hair

 Life is not the worst you’ve got

 And soon the coffee’s ho

 

The Danish Poet truly captures life, breath, happiness, joy and the essence of coffee!

The grass is green and wet  The bees are feeling good

 The lungs are gorging in air

The lungs are goring in air. The lungs in breathing not only air in but life, happiness and the smell of coffee. Then life is not the worst you got!

The Holy Spirit is the continuing ode go life, spirit, joy, love and faith: that we should fill our lungs with air and smells of flowers, grass, coffee, joy and love.

In the New Testament Jesus says to his disciples:

31 And so I tell you, every kind of sin and slander can be forgiven, but blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven.

The unforgiveable sin is to blasphemy against Gods very Spirit. How do you do that, you might ask. Well, if you do not believe in what the Holy Spirit brings and creates, that the holy Spirit is life giving, forgiving and creating. Then you do indeed blaspheme against the very essence of life. If you do not believe in possible vital conversation and understanding between people, if you do not believe in forgiveness and reconciliation, if you do not believe in the strength of love and hope, if you do not believe that life, happiness, joy and yes even coffee is a gift – then you a mocking the very Spirit of God and life.

Pentecost is an ode to life and the very essence of life.

In todays Gospel the amazed crowd watching the miracle of the Pentecost, thought that the disciples of Christ indeed were drunk – had been drinking too much and now were talking rubbish and in tongues. But the Gospel tells us that the disciples had been drinking something else than wine: they had been drinking the spirit of god, Spiritus Sanctus and were lifted by it.

My little niece, Maria, who is not that small anymore, as she is getting married this August in Denmark, - my niece Maria once said as she was visiting and playing baptism in church: I baptize you in the name of the Father, son and Lucky Spirit! (In Danish hellig and heldig)

It was actually a quite good word. The lucky spirit as we are lucky, yes blessed to live by it and within it and among it. We are lucky and blessed to feel Gods presence among us and in us. So, let us drink and breathe in the joy of life, the faith and the hope – and let Gods lucky Holy Spirit fill us so we believe in the small and great miracle of life, so we listen to the tones of music, the voices of conversations, so we taste the sweetness of kisses and hugs and so we let hope sours high and free.

The grass is green and wet

The bees are feeling good

 The lungs are gorging in air

Amen.