PEOPLE'S CHURCH OF DOVER

Romans 8:14-17                                                                      The Third Face of God
Sermon May 23, 2010:  People’s United Church of Christ, Dover, DE:  The Rev. Dan Griggs

            As you can tell from the scripture lessons and the worship bulletin, today is Pentecost—fifty days after Easter.[1]  Today the church commemorates the beginning of the church’s mission in the world—the story we heard in the First Lesson.  But I’ll bet most of the time when you hear somebody use the word “Pentecost” they  mean speaking in unknown tongues and maybe other miraculous gifts of the Holy Spirit.  In fact the very term “Holy Spirit” reminds us of miracles, and “Pentecost” has come to mean an emphasis on miracles almost exclusively.  That’s not what this day is about, and it’s not what the Holy Spirit is about in your life.  Yes—“in your life.”  When you were baptized, you too received the Holy Spirit. 

            In the ancient creeds the church acknowledges that there is “one God in three persons,” the Creator, the Redeemer, and the Holy Spirit; and we sometimes call the Holy Spirit “the Third Person of the Trinity.”  Since we are logically minded people, this doesn’t make any sense.  How can you have one that is three, and the three are one?  The intellectual answer to that question is all tied up with the history of ancient Greek philosophy and how the ancient church used it, so I’m not going there this morning. 

I want to say something about the Third Person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit.  The English word “person” in this phrase is really  not what we usually mean by the word:  in the creeds “person” translates the Latin word persona, and the Latin translates the Greek word prosopon, which literally means “face.”  The connotation is that there is an experience of presence, an expression of character; and so, to be a little bit literal, the Holy Spirit is “the third face of God.”  And this is what I want to say about the way the Holy Spirit is active in your life:  In all the turnings of your life you have beheld the third face of God. 

            God the Father, we say, is the Creator—the Origin and Destiny of the world and of ourselves.  Jesus Christ, “the Son of the Father,”[2]  is the Redeemer of the world:  the Gospels present a “witness” to his teachings and his deeds, his crucifixion because of sin, and his eternal life that we describe as “resurrection.”  But it’s the Holy Spirit who today works in our lives, indwells us, comforts us, guides us.  From that first Pentecost until today our most direct and personal experience of God has been with the Holy Spirit—in providence, in prayer, in life choices, in illness and trouble, in worship:  the Holy Spirit is the “face” of God that comes near your life.  We are living in the Age of the Spirit; and as the Gospel of John has Jesus say:[3]

The Holy Spirit is God-with-us, and saying it that way leads to a question:  How do I experience God-with-me?  Is there some kind of feeling, or should I be speaking in unknown languages, or performing miracles?  What does it mean to “be led by the Spirit,”[4] or to be “moved by the Holy Spirit”?[5] 

God can do whatever God wants to do, but in my experience and in the lives of most of the people I know, there are some basic patterns God uses in leading us and in moving us.  It is so comprehensive, it fills our lives so completely that we can say, “In all the turnings of your life you have beheld the third face of God.” 

            When you stood before the church and made your confirmation, when you claimed your baptism for yourself, you weren’t just responding to the expectations of your family, or going along with the other young people your age; you heard the voice of God deep within you, calling you to turn to the way of faith; and you answered, “I believe.”  In that moment you beheld the third face of God.

            Do you remember the name of Chuck Colson?  He was President Nixon’s lawyer—“Special Counsel to the President”—from 1968 until 1972.  In the Watergate hearings he became known as one of the Watergate Seven, although he didn’t participate in the break-in planning.  What he did was help in the cover-up:  he went to prison for obstruction of justice.  It was a terrible time in our nation’s life, and it was an awful time in Chuck Colson’s life.  Knowing his own contribution to the pain of the country he turned to God (or would it be more accurate to say that God turned him).  It wasn’t just some kind of self-medication; when he was released from the Maxwell Prison he discovered that God wouldn’t turn loose of him:  he went on to found the Prison Fellowship, a Christian ministry to inmates; and he has continued in that work ever since.[6]  You may or may not agree with his theology, but that’s “head stuff”:  the Spirit of God took hold of his life, and he beheld the third face of God.

            The same week in 1980 that John Lennon was assassinated, there was another death in New York City—someone else died who had more influence on people’s lives than the Beatles ever dreamed of.  Her name was Dorothy Day.  She grew up in a nominally religious family and rejected everything about it.  She became an American Communist, ran with the intellectual elite who held all values in contempt, published a novel, started nursing school and dropped out, had an affair, then went through a bad marriage that ended in divorce, and finally moved in with one of the in-crowd, Foster Batterham.  When she gave birth in 1926 to a daughter, Tamar, something came over Dorothy Day.  At first it was just a desire to have her baby baptized—she didn’t know why.  That ended her life with Batterham.  To have Tamar baptized in the Catholic Church, she herself had to be a Catholic, and she struggled with that—struggled to be honest.  She called it “a harsh and dreadful love.”  Something had hold of her.  And now that she and her daughter were baptized, what next?  It was as if Francis Thompson’s “Hound of Heaven” were pursuing her.  She looked around her and saw “the glories of creation, the tender beauty of flowers and shells, the songs of birds, the smile of my baby,” she wrote, “and these things brought such exultation, such joy to my heart that I could not but cry out in praise to God.”  Oh she still believed in the priority of people’s needs.  She started an inner city mission house around which grew the Catholic Worker Movement; and under her guidance this organization went on to serve the needy, inspire the well-off, shame the greedy, and influence the theology of such later twentieth century leaders as Daniel Berrigan, Thomas Merton, Michael Harrington and Cesar Chavez.  Somehow, in the middle of her life, Dorothy Day beheld the third face of God working actively through her.[7] 

            Why do you conduct your life with self-control?  It’s not all up to you, you know.  Listen to what Paul wrote about the Holy Spirit in his letter to the Galatians:[8]

Without our realizing it, at some turning in the life of each one of us, we have beheld the third face of God. 

            What I’m trying to say is this:  Just maybe the reality those apostles experienced on Pentecost 1,977 years ago and said so much about  is really true and really true for us, too.  The Holy Spirit has not retired.  In all the turnings of your life, you have beheld the third face of God, just as they did—not with miracles and unknown tongues necessarily, but really, truly, certainly. 

            We pray the Lord’s Prayer together every Sunday, and you probably pray the same prayer through the week.  Listen to what Paul wrote to the Roman Christians:[9]

Though you may feel no emotion in prayer, you have beheld the third face of God.

            Think about where you’ve been and how your original intentions have been changed or turned into other roads you never dreamed of.  The man who started out to be a teacher discovers engineering. The woman who thought she would always be a homemaker had to face a crisis, went back to school and became an attorney.  You had childhood dreams, but somewhere along the way you were empowered to live and to work and to love otherwise; and those turnings are like mile-markers of the Spirit—you can look back over your life and see them, see how God has led you. 

And now you know what the word “providence” means:  it’s the work of the Holy Spirit in your life. 

            How is the Holy Spirit yours?  In all the turnings of your life, you have beheld the third face of God.  And by the grace of God you will continue to do so all the days of your life. 

            And so on Pentecost we gather to celebrate the beginning of the church, the age of the Spirit who has touched our lives and allowed us to behold God at work on us.  And we are amazed.

AMEN