May 28, 2023

Day of Pentecost, Year A

Epiphany, Winnipeg

Acts 2:1-21; John 20:19-23

In a few minutes’ time Jacqueline and Emily will be up here at the altar rail and I’ll say a prayer that will probably sound familiar to some of you. It was already spoken at their baptisms, and goes like this: “Stir up the gift of your Holy Spirit: the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord, the spirit of joy in your presence, both now and forever. Amen.”

Every now and then someone says, “Be careful what you pray for.” It’s like that now: We’re praying that God’s own Spirit of wisdom will be stirred up again and always in these two, and that means that each of them will sometimes speak wisdom that is wiser than the wisdom of pastors and parents and teachers. The Spirit that God stirs up is like that, you know.

Jacqueline and Emily, today we’ll pray for you, and we’ll be praying that God’s spirit of understanding will be strong in you, and that means that sometimes you might see the world more clearly that the rest of us and sometimes you might have to tell the rest of us what’s what because you understand and someone else might not. And the rest of us will do well to listen. We’ll pray for the Spirit of joy in God’s presence, and sometimes the two of you might just have something to teach the rest of us about enjoying life, or lightening up, or living in the presence of God who just plain loves us and wishes joy and peace for us.

When we spent time together reading through the Bible over the course of eight or nine months I saw and heard wisdom and understanding and good ideas and strength in each of you and you so often just brought joy and laughter to the little screens where we met for confirmation.

Those of you who know Jacqueline and Emily best will have seen, over all these years, that gift of God’s spirit taking shape in them – you’ve seen the kind of wisdom and understanding and counsel and strength and knowledge and reverence and joy they can have…

This prayer has been around for a long time. It’s a prayer that was spoken for two girls named Hannah and Isla when they were baptized back on Easter Sunday. It was spoken for someone a little older named Bernie just a few years ago. It was probably a prayer prayed for parents and sponsors and friends who are here today, it was prayed in Calgary in 1978 over an awkward grade nine student who would one day become a sometimes awkward pastor in Winnipeg. It’s an old prayer, from Isaiah 11, twenty-six or twenty-seven hundred years ago, where a promise was spoken that God would send someone to set the people free from their oppressors. And this one who will set the people free will be filled with the Spirit of…you guessed it: wisdom and understanding, counsel and might, knowledge and reverence for God. Just like Emily and Jacqueline. Just like all of us.

I actually looked this week, at liturgies from our worship books dating back to 1917 – that’s the kind of thing that pastors do sometimes – and I can say with almost absolute certainty that anyone in this room who was confirmed in a Lutheran Church in North America since 1917 had a prayer just like that spoken for them. I’ll be honest and say that I don’t know if that exact prayer was spoken if it was a service from another Christian tradition, or a German service, or at a baptism or confirmation in Tanzania or Zimbabwe or Croatia or Indonesia… But we can be sure that that same Spirit of God has been called for in some way for all of us wherever we’ve been. We could even say the prayer for someone who hasn’t been baptized, because God’s spirit goes places and does things we can’t control or pin down or set within limits.

And since we pray for that Spirit to be stirred up among us, we will find ourselves challenged or comforted or led or encouraged or inspired by the people around us. Like Peter said today when he quoted the prophet Joel: “God says, ‘I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh, and your sons and your daughters will prophesy, and your young will see visions and your old dream dreams. Even upon slaves, on them I will pour out my spirit…then everyone who calls on my name will be saved…made well…made free.’”

That’s what we’re praying for when we pray this prayer: dreams and visions for life and healing in a world that seems to dream and see only anger and hatred. We pray for wisdom and understanding today in a world where wisdom and understanding are written off as “woke” or “elitist”, or where knowledge doesn’t matter as much as what party you belong to. We pray for a spirit of joy where there is sometimes so little joy, because we’re worn out from too much work or too much worry or not enough work or nothing worth worrying about. We pray for a Spirit that will see that the world can be a place where joy and delight are possible.

This prayer – this baptism prayer, this confirmation prayer – it pulls us into that scene with those disciples and all those languages on that first Pentecost Sunday: it draws us into the world God is working on where we understand each other and can speak and hear good news clearly: news of God’s goodness that knows no limits, God’s love for the whole of creation, Christ’s loving and living with us, Christ’s dying and rising for us. It pulls us into a world that God is making, where a zillion languages and cultures and ages and genders and different ways and ideas are all part of the richness of God’s spirit that breathes among us like a wind and burns with warmth and light like a flame.

This prayer we’ll pray for Jacqueline and Emily – for the two of you – is a prayer for us all. It kind of means that we’re all in this together. We’re all a part of the story together, where the risen Christ comes to us in our fear and confusion and sends us into the world in peace. You heard it: Jesus came into a room filled with fear and said “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you: in peace.” And then he said, “Receive the Holy Spirit. You know, that spirit of wisdom and understanding and counsel and might and knowledge and fear of the Lord, and joy in God’s presence that you keep praying for? That Spirit? Receive it, and go in peace, and bring healing and forgiveness into the world that God loves.”

And you know what? When someone prays for God’s spirit, on Pentecost or Confirmation or at our baptisms or any day at all, God’s spirit is already there. Always already doing what we’ve prayed for. Always ready to act and stir up and to give us life.

AMEN.