Once again, welcome to St. Chrysostom’s on this very special day in the life of the church! It’s the Day of Pentecost – a major feast day on which we commemorate the gift of the Holy Spirit to the church, a day we often refer to as the birthday of the church. Our celebration this morning marks the end of our Easter season and the beginning of the long season of “ordinary time” which will carry us through the summer and the fall.

It’s a time of transition as we move from spring into summer. It’s also a time of renewal and an opportunity to recommit to the life of which we all are a part. Pentecost is one of the days especially recommended by the church for baptism and indeed this morning we celebrate the baptism of Angelica Sasieta as we welcome her into our community. This day is also one of the few “red” Sundays we have on our calendar so it is – for me – a perfect opportunity to wear my favorite clergy stole.

This stole was a gift from my home parish in Atlanta on the occasion of my ordination as a Deacon in June 2004. Two important symbols dominate: one, the image of a descending dove, frequently an image of the Holy Spirit and a reminder of the presence of the Spirit at Jesus’ baptism and ours; and the other a colorful interpretation of the tongues of fire referenced in our first reading – also a sign of the presence of the Spirit among the disciples in Jerusalem. The fact that this stole was a gift from the congregation that supported me on my way toward being a priest makes it special. The story behind it, however, makes it even more so.

At the beginning of my formal journey to ordination, in our very first meeting with the Bishop of Atlanta, the Diocesan staff and those who would be my fellow travelers, we were welcomed into the process but given a very sobering dose of reality: By the time we would be ordained, the Diocese of Atlanta did not expect to have any jobs to offer us. We would need to seek a position elsewhere. I remember the Bishop assuring us that the Episcopal Church certainly needed priests, but the demand was different across the country. We needed to be open, to be flexible and to be mobile. He added, with a smile, “I hear that they need priests in Montana!”

Later, talking with my daughter, we laughed at the thought of me possibly ending up in Montana, traveling between small parishes on horseback nearly buried in heavy snow. That was probably not what things would have been like in reality but nevertheless the picture was funny to us. At that moment, I had to ask myself if I was really ready to sign up for this – was I really ready to follow the Spirit – no matter where that might lead… away from family and friends and all that was so familiar? I decided that I was.

About seven years later, at my ordination, the Bishop of Atlanta prayed for the gift of the Holy Spirit upon all of us kneeling at that rail – for the Spirit to make us deacons in God’s church. After a long pause and then another prayer, the Bishop put this stole around my neck, over my shoulders. It was a joyful and bittersweet moment. I knew I was leaving Atlanta and the life I had known. I was coming to Chicago – to St. Chrysostom’s – to a new life that would unfold here as time went by. As I had decided to do years before, I would continue to trust in the Spirit. The dove would be the symbol of my new life and God’s abiding presence in it. The flames would be the symbol of my sense of renewed commitment. Both of them would help reveal the ways in which I would use the gifts with which I had been blessed.

This very personal story was the prominent image that came to mind as I reflected on the readings for this feast day. We are given two different stories of the time and manner in which the gift of the Spirit was bestowed upon the disciples. It’s a gift they had been promised – a gift they had been waiting for. While the stories may differ, there can be no doubt that the gift was given – the extraordinary growth of the early church throughout the Mediterranean basin is our clearest evidence. The gift of the Spirit gave the earliest followers of Jesus new eyes through which to see the world and new energy to work for its transformation.

Luke’s version captured in the Acts of the Apostles seems to be – at least on the surface – the more dramatic of the two accounts. Forty days after Jesus’ resurrection, the disciples were witnesses to Jesus’ ascension into heaven – his return to the one he called Father. For ten days, the disciples had been gathered together in prayer, waiting in Jerusalem as they had been instructed to do, waiting for the gift of the Spirit – whatever that would be or would look like.

Suddenly, with a sound like the rush of a violent wind, a new presence was in their midst. Divided tongues – as of fire – came to rest on each of them and they began to speak in other languages. This group of simple fisher-folk was suddenly gifted with the ability to communicate with the diverse, multi-lingual, multi-cultural crowd gathered in Jerusalem. They began to speak with great conviction about God’s great deeds of power.

And it flowed from there. As we heard during the Easter season, our readings taken from Acts give us a glimpse into the Spirit-driven, unprecedented spread of the church. Testimonies of faith, powerful preaching, conversions of hundreds of people at a time, baptisms, healings – they are all recorded with a sense of new life and new energy. The world had not changed – but the disciples had. Clearly emboldened by this new Spirit, they spread the word of the mighty deeds of God reframed and newly understood as the Good News of God revealed in the life and ministry of Jesus the Christ.

In notable contrast to the vivid account by Luke, the writer of John’s Gospel provides quite a different picture – no less powerful but much more subtle. The evangelist takes us back to the evening of that first Easter Day when the disciples were huddled together in fear behind locked doors because of all that had happened. Suddenly, the risen Jesus was in their midst with words of peace for them. And in a most intimate gesture, their beloved teacher and friend “breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit.’”

The breath of new life was given to those who may have thought they had lost all reason to hope – bestowed upon them by the Risen One who had given them life at the very beginning, who had called them into a life away from the one they had known and who would propel them into a life they could hardly have imagined. This new Spirit would sustain them, defend them, open their hearts and minds to a new reality and lead them into all truth – a new understanding of how God intended the world to be. They would fling open the locked doors and go bravely into new parts of the world because their hearts were afire with the extraordinary promise of forgiveness, salvation and eternal life. For those who believed, God had come to be with them in the person of Jesus and in the ongoing presence of the Spirit.

I love these two stories of the gift of the Spirit – these two very different accounts of how the people of the early church came to understand God in their midst. We are left to ponder which experience it might have been or to ask if it could have been both. Might the Spirit have been bestowed as John describes – in the soft, warm breath of a trusted friend – like the still, small voice we hear in our hearts? Might they have wondered about this new gift in those intervening days until they saw a demonstration of the Spirit’s power in the powerful sound of a violent wind and the fiery image of multi-pronged tongues coming to rest on each of them – the unleashing of gifts, talents and courage they never even realized they had?

Such is the mystery of the Spirit – imaged as a dove descending on God’s beloved child, feeling as close as the moist breath of a friend or loved one, possessing the sound and fury of a mighty wind, containing the fiery passion of new life expressed in new ways in new places for all upon who it comes to rest.

Such is the gift to us all – from our newest Christian Angelica to those of us who have been around a while. Such is the challenge to trust and to believe that God is with us at every moment in every place in every situation. Such is the invitation for each of us to respond to the dove descending upon us as beloved children of God, to be energized by the breath of new life, to follow the wind where it might blow and to use the gifts we have been given with a fire and passion we never knew we had.