Let me tell you where statements of faith come from. In our confirmation class, at least, they come from the Saturday afternoon of our spring retreat to the Poconos. After several months and half a weekend of exploring how we know about God, who our Triune God is, and how we can faithfully respond to God, we turn the eighth graders loose on the camp. They each find their own spot – on rocks, under trees, inside playground equipment – and they start to write about what they believe. And the statements vary. Some are written in twenty minutes. Others run for pages and pages. Some are flowing narratives beginning at birth; others are almost lists (“God is a majestic being. God is a peacemaker. God is my Mother Bear”). (That last one’s in Hosea 13:8 – look it up.) Some statements have extended metaphors, and others have three-word sentences. Some begin with the frank admission that parents are the reason that someone has gone to confirmation class. The statements of faith I get to read (and you can to – copies are outside of the church office) are as diverse as the people who write them. About the only unifying characteristic is this – the shortest section is always the one on the Holy Spirit. Always. Every single year.
For all the rich images in the Pentecost story – and where else does the Holy Spirit shine as she does in this Pentecost story? – the confirmands don’t have a lot to say about the third person of the Trinity. Despite all the fire and languages the Spirit bestows, regardless of all the smoky mist and bloody moons that are promised, she gets a sentence, maybe two. Not as much as Jesus. Definitely not as much as the first person of the Trinity. This year, not even as much as pledging or human sinfulness. (Although I like that we have 14-year-olds talking about pledging.) In so many of the statements of faith, the Spirit is the one to simply mention and move on, because on average, they don’t really understand her.
And in that respect, they are no different from most of the rest of us. As good Reformed, Presbyterian folk, we know our part about the Holy Spirit – Pentecost, Jesus’ baptism, God’s breath at creation – but we don’t comprehend who the Spirit is – not like we do God or Jesus. And so we don’t spend much time with the Spirit, because as good Reformed, Presbyterian folk, we tend to lead into our faith with our heads. If you’re like me, you’re apt to think through your faith in your mind before you feel it in your heart. I love the words of faith that I can sink my brain into – Jesus’ teachings, God’s pronouncements from on high, the stanzas upon stanzas of the prophets. The Holy Spirit has no words of her own. Even here in the Pentecost story, where the fresh-out-of-oven-new church is speaking all sorts of words, we don’t here the words themselves. Not a syllable of Parthian, Cappadocian or Egyptian for us to listen to and absorb. So the Holy Spirit gets a Sunday each year, maybe two.
Friends, let’s come at this a different way. Let’s tap into our Phrygian and Elamite selves and try to experience the Spirit as they did. Let’s listen for the rush of the violent wind, slamming doors and shattering windows, and be a little scared. Let’s hear the language of home after years of living abroad, and be bewildered, amazed and perplexed. Let us feel as odd about the whole thing as to suspect folks have had some wine with breakfast. Let us feel what it’s like when God wants to communicate directly with us.
Anne LaMott, who also wrote the book we’ll give to our high school seniors in a few weeks, tells a story from teaching Sunday school about what it’s like when God calls us out individually. She writes…
So I started off the class as I always do, by separating the known offenders, two brothers who are four and five and from whom one can expect more or less muffled explosions. We had only boys that day – the brothers, two six-year-olds, and a three-year-old wildman we’ll call Frederick – and Frederick’s mother. … Next, as always, we did Loved and Chosen. I sat on the couch and glanced slowly around in a goofy, menacing way, and then said, “Is anyone here wearing a blue sweatshirt with Pokémon on it?” The four-year-old looked down at his chest, astonished to discover that he matched this description – like, what are the odds? He raised his hand. “Come over hear to the couch,” I said. “You are so loved, and so chosen.” He clutched at himself like a beauty pageant finalist. Then I asked if anyone that day was wearing green socks with brown shoes, a Giants cap, an argyle vest? Each of them turned out to be loved and chosen, which does not happen so often. Even Frederick’s mom – anyone in red shoes today? – leapt toward the couch with relief.
That’s what it must have felt like to hear about God’s deeds of power in your mother tongue. God Almighty became a human just to be with us – to teach us and heal us. When that human was executed, God raised him from the grave, to end the control that sin and death have over us in the end. God loves you that much. And God has chosen you to hear this good news in words you can understand. Loved and chosen. The Holy Spirit is glancing around in a goofy, menacing way, sizing up the crowd and making sure that the tongues and the crowd match up. You are loved and chosen, and the proof is that this Galilean follower of that Galilean man is speaking your native Cappadocian, the language of a place over 300 miles away to which he has never been and will never go. The proof is that you are wearing green socks with brown shoes and you are sitting on the loved and chosen couch. When we come upon God’s Holy Spirit – or rather, when the Spirit comes upon us – she has no words of her own because God’s message is the experience. Our spot on the couch is the statement that we are loved and chosen. The apostle speaking our language is the Gospel enacted as well as just spoken.
LaMott continues…
My Jesuit friend Tom once told me that this is a good exercise because in truth, everyone is loved and chosen. That God loves them, because God loves. “This – more than anything else – does not make sense to me,” I said.
And it doesn’t make sense to us either. Grace, forgiveness and love never make sense, even when we feel them from our scalps down to the soles of our feet. Even after we hear the good news and experience it as well, we still want to know now what they wanted to know then – "What does this mean?" That is the question of faith – the question that defines our faith – the question that our ever-changing and ever-the-same faith strives nobly to answer. What does this mean? What does all this grace, all this forgiveness, all of God’s love – what does it all mean? The faith we have – what we trust in our hearts and think in our heads, and how we live because of it – is a response to this most basic and haunting of questions.
This answer of faith that we give to others, to ourselves and ultimately, to God, doesn’t come all at once or once and for all. "What does this mean?" isn’t an equation to be solved, but a hunger to be fed. And when it’s right, we are satiated as on Thanksgiving night. In those moments of faith, we are whole and fed and complete and full of meaning. And I pray for those moments for each of us, moments like Pentecost, moments when the faith that we think and feel and do calls us to action to serve God in the world, using our gifts given to us by the Spirit, using them here in the church and out in God’s world. That is what answering this question can do.
And you, confirmands, have already begun to do some of that answering, and in that way (as in others) you are becoming active, adult members of the church, because that is what church membership involves. What does this mean? We all strive to answer this question with our faith. And you, confirmands, have done it as we all do it – in the worshipping you have done and the mission outreach you have performed, in the Christian education you’ve participated in and the way you’ve grown together into a family of sorts.
But most of all, you’ve done it in stating your faith right out loud. You’ve said for your families, your church and God’s own self to hear – what you believe about our Creator, about our Christ and even, however briefly, about our elusive Holy Spirit. What’s more, you’ve made promises in those statements that you’ll worship regularly (Emma Salsbury), try to live for others especially those in need (Aidan Molloy), continue to learn about God (Nathan D’Ignazio), share the good news through evangelism (Marissa Lee), sing in the choir (Emma Hartley), serve on church committees (Adam Sisson), be good stewards of the earth and even pledge your money to the church and God’s work in the world. Over time, your responses of faith may get more complex and creative, but you’ve already got the gist of it. You already have the basic elements of living a Christian life right here. All of that, starting with your ability to state your faith in the God who “loves us, who is the Alpha and the Omega, who created us in the beginning and will be there in the end,” is what this means. In the name of God the Creator, the Christ and especially the Holy Spirit, Amen.