?By Water and by Spirit?
a sermon by Carol Howard Merritt
Pastor, Western Presbyterian Church
Washington, D.C.
May 11, 2008

Text: Acts 2

Connor grew up in a home full of discord. His parents were always fighting with each other. It was almost as if they relished the opportunity to disagree about everything from how green beans should be cooked or which way the toilet paper should be hanging on the roll. From Connor?s perspective, it was almost like his mom and dad were playing a cruel sport, seeing who could the worst dig in, who could embarrass the other person the most in front of their friends.

The pattern was predictable. This would go on for a couple of weeks: the criticisms, the nagging, the humiliating comments in front of waitresses. Until suddenly, on a Saturday afternoon, when his parents were in the same house for more than three hours, there was an eruption.

Although Connor had lived through countless outbursts before, he never got used to them. It was as if everything surged around him, and it was suddenly out of control. Quickly Connor would sneak out of the war zone unnoticed. Hiding in his room, he sat frozen on the edge of his bed, listening to his parents verbally abuse each other. He would concentrate on the words, in case there was a cue him that let him know that he needed to break the fight up. He listened for shattering glass or the thud of punches. He had no plan, and he knew that the only way to stop his father?s fury was to redirect from his mom to himself. But he would do it if he needed to. And so he listened, as the unseen referee in the other room.

The outbursts usually ended with a bang of the front door and the sound of his father driving off. And the thing was, he never knew if his dad was going to come back. He would sit, his breath was now heaving with fear, but he still couldn?t move from the bed. It was quiet in the house now. The only noise was coming from the kitchen where his mom was loudly doing the dishes, taking every opportunity to bang the pots together and slam the cabinet doors.

Connor?s father would be gone for hours. And when Connor would finally find the courage to get up and go into the kitchen, he would ask his mother where his dad had gone, she would exhale sharply and say, ?He?s looking for apartments.?

Connor was sure that it was over this time. His dad was going to leave. And if he did not leave the home, Connor wondered if his father would go through with his regular threats to kill himself.

In this situation, there was one thing that would always run through Connor?s mind. Connor could understand why his father would leave the marriage, but he couldn?t understand why his father would leave his child. He would constantly think: Am I not enough to make him stay? Don?t I give him enough reason to live?

After several hours, deep into the night, Connor?s father would come back. And the trick would work. His dad would immediately get his way, and there would be a tenuous peace in the home for a couple of days, until the cycle began again. Even though his dad would make it back home, that didn?t keep Connor from going through a cycle of abandonment. Each time, he felt it was the last time. And so it became Connor?s personal goal to become enough for his dad. He would give his father a reason to live and a reason to stay. He would become nice enough, smart enough, successful enough, and funny enough. Whatever it took, he would become enough.

Of course, we all know that the problem wasn?t with Connor. There was nothing that Connor could do, but in the confusion of the habitual abandonment, no one bothered to explain that to him. And so he began to live his life, hoping that somehow his father would see just how special he was. But it never worked. His Dad kept leaving.

As Connor got older, his emotional attachment to his father broke. Somewhere, the hungry love and even hatred that Connor felt toward his dad was replaced by a benign numbness. It was as if the pain had simply become too much to bear over the years, and so his body responded by cutting off any feeling toward the relationship.

But his early lessons of love were embedded deep within him. And when he got married and had children of his own, the insecurity was all he knew, and so he feared abandonment, and he was in a constant struggle to win their affection. To prove his love. 

Oh, what am I doing? Here we are in this day of great celebration. The students are done with their finals. Families are celebrating Mother Day. It?s Pentecost, the birthday of the church. We have this brand new baptismal font, and here I am, talking about this depressing story of abandonment.

But, you know, I wonder if that?s how Pentecost began. I wonder if that?s how the friends of Jesus felt that day when they gathered. I imagine they were pretty young when they left their jobs and families to follow Jesus. Nothing turned out the way it was supposed to. Jesus was killed. And when they were hiding, afraid for their own lives, Jesus appeared to them, at really random times. He showed them his torn flesh, his hands, his side, and he breathed on them. He told them, ?I will not leave you orphaned.?

And then after a few weeks, he leaves again. He walks up on a mountain with his followers, he tells them that he will always be with them, even until the end of the earth, and then he leaves them. He ascends into heaven. Just like that. His followers stand there, stunned, staring up at Jesus? ankles.

And I bet it was not long after that when followers began saying, ?Oh, he?ll be back. He?s got to come back. We don?t know exactly when, but he?s coming back.?

We?ve been saying that for a couple thousand years now.

I think that Jesus? friends feel abandoned. It would make sense if they did. They are gathering together, sharing meals with one another, and telling stories about what Jesus said and did. They are praying, eating, planning, when all of a sudden, there is a sound like a rushing wind, and fire appears above their heads, and they begin to have courage that they never had before. And strange miraculous things happen.

The Holy Spirit descends upon on these men and women, and as it blows in that place, old men begin to dream dreams, and the young women to see visions. People who were in the bonds of slavery stand up and speak along with the free. The wind blows over them all, and they go out, and speak in other languages, so that they could understand one another. 

The Holy Spirit came.

We read about the Spirit throughout the Scriptures. In the Hebrew Scriptures, the word for breath, wind, and spirit are all the same. We read the great myth of creation, and we understand the Spirit blows over the watery chaos. And then, God forms us from the dust of the earth, and blows life into us. And so we realize that our life, our breath, our movement rely upon the Spirit.

Jesus speaks about the Spirit when he talks to Niccodemus, how we will be born again of the Spirit. And Jesus paints this beautiful maternal sense of God, giving us new life, a new beginning, even though we are old.

And, Jesus explains to his disciples, that he is going to prepare a place for them, but he will not leave them orphaned. They will not be abandoned. He will send the Spirit.

Bernard of Clairvaux, the French mystic from the 1100s, uses a wonderful metaphor when he talks about the Holy Spirit. He describes the Spirit as the bond of love between the God the Creator and God the Christ. The Spirit is like a kiss between a parent and child.

And I know that there is nothing quite like when a parent draws her child upon her lap, when she smells the top of her head, when she holds her long and tight, and kisses her cheek, and that flood of emotion overwhelms her, and she knows that there is nothing in the world that that child can do to stop that love.

And there is no feeling quite so secure as being drawn into the lap of your parent, being surrounded by those big, loving arms. There is something that flows in that exchange, something that gives a child sustenance to live. I have heard that babies need to be held almost as much as they need food and water. They must have that love.

Yet, we don?t always have it. Our lives are imperfect and broken, and there are many of us who spend the rest of their years trying to make up for the love that we did not receive when we were children. Whether our parents were stoic, or drunk, or unable, or simply not there, many of us have felt orphaned and abandoned.

And it is as if Jesus knew this, as he walked among us, he could see the crowds. He touched the blind eyes and the deaf ears. He smoothed the leprous skin, and yet, he knew there was something else that was broken. He knew his followers, and how so many of them felt abandoned, orphaned.

Which brings me back to Connor. As Connor grew older, he married, and had children, but he did not ever break free from the patterns that he learned as a child. In his work, and in his home, he had a bit of insecurity that colored everything that he did. It made him feel like he was never quite enough. So he did some important things He sought therapy to begin to identify and break the patterns of codependency that he was nurturing in his home. He received some coaching from a human resources counselor, to find out the basic mistakes that he was making in his workplace as he constantly sent out the message that he was not enough.

But the real shift did not occur until he began to see his relationship with God differently. He began to explore how much he saw God as a father who would pick up and leave each time he was not pleased. When Connor surveyed his life, he realized that at each time that he didn?t get a particular job, each time he had financial struggles, each time he opened a letter of rejection from a school, he did not just feel the failure and the sting of that particular rejection, but he felt abandoned by God.

When Connor?s reliance on his father could not be maintained, Connor began to see God in the same way. He experienced God as cruel man who left at just the moment when Connor should have been comforted. He understood God as a celestial being who needed to be satisfied, but never could be. And so Connor was constantly trying to be enough for this God of his imagination, and there was no way that he could ever be enough.

But then a shift occurred. And this is how it happened. One afternoon, during a particularly difficult time at work, Connor left for home. And in the silence of his house, he sat, closed his eyes, and expected to feel the same sensations of abandonment and failure.

Instead, the miracle of Pentecost occurred right there. But this time, it wasn?t in wind, or fire, or strange languages. Instead, Connor began to understand the Holy Spirit as that kiss. Connor began to understand that God?s love was not stingy. It was not only reserved for the moments that Connor performed well, or made his way up the corporate ladder. But God?s Spirit surrounded him, held him, comforted him. And Connor began to remember the words from his baptism, that he was God?s child. And he began to understand that God was pleased with him. No matter what he did.

And slowly the broken bits of his childhood began to mend and heal. Slowly, he began to understand himself, not as a little boy who was trying to earn love and affection from everyone around him, or as a child pleading for his father to stay. For the first time in his life, he did not feel abandoned in his failure, but he began to understand that kiss. That kiss between a parent and child, so tender and kind. The one that said, ?It doesn?t matter how much you succeed or fail, you will always be my child, and I will always love you.?

That is a message of Pentecost that often gets lost in the wind, and the tongues of fire, and the miraculous languages. But it is a miracle that can sustain us and heal us. It is that on this day, Jesus did not leave us orphaned. God sent the Holy Spirit, this uniting bond of love has been poured out upon all of us. And it does not matter if you are young or old, a man or a woman. It does not matter where your family came from or what kind of education you have. It does not matter if you got into the graduate program that you wanted or not. It does not matter if you have a high-paying job waiting for you after you graduate.

Because the miracle of Pentecost is that by water and by Spirit, you have been marked and sealed by God. God has a claim on your life. God will not leave you or forsake you. God will hold you and surround you. You are God?s child, and there is nothing that you can do to change that reality.

To the glory of God,
our Creator, our Liberator,
and our Sustainer. Amen.