"Wake Up! Open Your Eyes!"

The Church of St. Paul and Incarnation, Jersey City NJ

May 31, 2020

Year A: The Day of Pentecost

Acts 2: 1-21

Psalm 104:25-35, 37

1 Corinthians 12:3b-13

John 20:19-23

“Wake Up! Open Your Eyes!”

            Alleluia! Christ is risen!

            The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia!

            As I’ve mentioned to you before, one of the unexpected blessings of this time of quarantine has been our three daily prayer services over the phone. It’s been so good to hear many of your voices and a real gift to pray together.

            Since the first service is at 7:30am, each night I’ve set my alarm for 6:00. Since you can’t see me, I don’t have to look totally put together but I also don’t want to sound like I just woke up.

            But, over these past few months of mornings, I’ve never once needed my alarm to wake me up.

            Partly that’s because I’m an early riser by nature.

            And, partly it’s because of one of our cats.

            Each morning, sometime between 4:00 and 5:00, our cat Diego decides that I have slept long enough and it’s now time for me to wake up.

            And, he uses every tool at his disposal to achieve this mission: meowing, jumping on and off the dresser, stepping around the items on my nightstand sometimes “accidentally” knocking stuff to the floor, jumping on my chest, licking my hair.

            Each morning, Diego gives everything he’s got, saying:

            “Wake up!”

            “Wake up”

            “Open your eyes!”

            Today is Pentecost, the day we especially celebrate the gift of the Holy Spirit.

            And, as always, we heard two different Pentecost stories.

            There’s the one I just read from the Gospel of John. The way John tells the story, it’s the first Easter Day and the Risen Christ appears to the disciples who had been hiding in fear behind locked doors.

            The Risen Christ offers the frightened and awe-struck disciples peace, and he also breathes the Spirit on them, sending them out into the world to continue his work of teaching and healing and forgiving.

            And then there’s the second Pentecost story that Sue read for us from the Acts of the Apostles.

            It’s fifty days after Easter, ten days after the Ascension, and the disciples are once again in a room, waiting for a sign – a sign that is given in a very big way with wind and tongues like flame and the ability to make themselves understood to people from all over the place – the Spirit drove them out from their room and into the city – they are no longer afraid to share the Good News.

            It was such a sight that at least some people speculated that they must be drunk!

            Hearing these two different Pentecost stories reminds us of a great truth: Pentecost is not just a historical event that we remember once a year.

            No, Pentecost happens all the time – God gives us the Holy Spirit all the time and in so many ways.

            God gives us the Holy Spirit all the time, giving us the gifts of faith and wisdom and courage, and, maybe especially important for us today, the Spirit wakes us up, opens our eyes, and allows us to see things – to see people - as they really are.

Pentecost happens all the time.

For example, on March 18, 1958, the monk and writer Thomas Merton was on a rare trip away from his quiet monastery, running errands in the bustling city of Louisville, Kentucky.

That day, while standing at the busy intersection of Fourth and Walnut, the Holy Spirit breathed on Thomas Merton, woke him up, opened his eyes, allowing him to see things – to see people – as they really are.

Here’s how he described the experience:

“I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers.”

Merton continues,

“And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.”

That day in 1958 in Louisville was Pentecost for Thomas Merton, when the Holy Spirit opened his eyes, woke him up, to see things – to see people – as they really are.

I was reminded of Merton’s experience because of the protests that have erupted over the past few days in cities across our country, including Louisville, which has been on edge since March when a black woman named Breonna Taylor was killed by police in her home, with, no surprise, the police and Ms. Taylor’s family in total disagreement about how and why this happened.

But, I don’t need to tell you that the protests that are intensifying across the country have been sparked by the brutal and, let’s be honest, not shocking killing of a black man named George Floyd under the knee of a white police officer on a Minneapolis street.

We didn’t want to watch the video but we watched wide-eyed and in horror, as bystanders begged the cops to stop, and as Mr. Floyd gasped the haunting but familiar words, “I can’t breathe…”

Much of the grief and frustration and anger that’s usually bottled up has exploded into these protests, with extra fuel apparently supplied by outside, often white, agitators who like nothing more than starting trouble.

And again, let’s be honest, in many places law enforcement is responding a lot more forcefully to these protests than when white people recently got mad about the stay-at- home orders and put on their camouflage outfits, armed themselves to the teeth, and marched on – and sometimes into – government buildings.

Pentecost happens all the time.

And, especially during these past few days, these past few months, these past few years, the Holy Spirit has been blowing and burning and shaking and pawing at us, using every tool at the Spirit’s disposal to wake us up.

Wake up!

Wake up!

Open your eyes!

Open your eyes and see that we are sisters and brothers. We can’t be alien to each other even if we are strangers.

Open your eyes and see that if one part of the community is in danger, if one part of the community is at risk, if one part of the community is sick, then we are all in danger, all at risk, all of us can get sick.

Open your eyes and see that there is more than enough of God’s blessings for everybody, the problem is a few people have hoarded way too much abundance for themselves, leaving not enough for the rest of us.

Open your eyes and see that character really does matter, our own character and, yes, the character of our leaders.

Open your eyes and see that, as Jesus understood and taught so well, it’s a quick trip from our hearts to our actions, that our hard hearts can produce so much pain and suffering for us and for the people around us.

Open your eyes and see that God has a special love for the poor and the suffering and the vulnerable, for the black men and women crushed under the knee of oppression, the refugee fleeing poverty and oppression, the people who have, in the middle of a pandemic, no choice but to work in stores or factories or warehouses or slaughter houses – the people forced to deliver the mail or drive trucks and buses – God has a special love for them – they matter - not because they’re necessarily better than anybody else, but because they’re poor and suffering and vulnerable and oppressed - and so often they haven't really mattered to us.

Open your eyes and see that – really, really – all of us – the people we like and the people we don’t like – the people whose bodies are brutalized by violence, the people whose faces and souls are twisted by hate – all of us - our true selves are shining like the sun.

Pentecost happens all the time – including right now in our time of trouble.

Wake up!

Wake up!

Open your eyes!

And then, what?

It’s a hard question to answer because the answer is probably a little different for each of us.

But, I’ll say this:

My hope is that the Spirit will inspire us all to pray even harder.

My hope is that we will all do the hard work of looking into our own hard hearts to see our own sins and to ask forgiveness.

My hope is that the Spirit will inspire even more of us to get involved in our communities - with Jersey City Together or to support our Triangle Park Community Center or, at the very least, respond to the census and definitely vote in November.

But, we all have to figure out for ourselves what we can or should do.

Or, we can choose to do nothing.

Because, you know, the Holy Spirit is definitely persistent, but the Holy Spirit always gives us a choice.

It’s like when my cat is doing everything he can think of to wake me up, I can still just roll over, put my head under the pillow, and eventually go back to sleep.

And, the first disciples, they could have just returned to their old lives, maybe sometimes nostalgically thinking back to that big and noisy day in Jerusalem when they were able to make the Good News understood to people from all over the place.

And, Thomas Merton, he could have shaken off his experience in Louisville as some kind of illusion, thinking that, wow, he really had been cooped up in the monastery for way too long and needed to get out more often.

And, in the same way, we know that, although we are definitely wide-awake right now, we can easily put our heads in the sand, go back to our usual routines, eventually drifting back to sleep once again.

It’s happened before.

But, God still gives us the Holy Spirit all the time, giving us the gifts of faith and wisdom and courage, and, the Spirit uses every tool at the Spirit’s disposal to wake us up, calling us to open our eyes, allowing us to see things – to see people - as they really are.

So, maybe, this year in our time of trouble, the best way to celebrate Pentecost is by staying awake and keeping our eyes open.

Amen.