Weekly Message from Rev. Matt Handi
Message from
The Rev. Matt Handi
May 15, 2024
I remember thinking that I didn’t remember Pentecost at all. The Lord’s Prayer? Of course I remembered that one, still had it memorized in fact. The Confession. I had to be reminded we used to say that every week but that was part of the wordy bits of church so it made sense I didn’t necessarily recall that one. The opening Collect? Yep. Knew that one. That one came at the beginning so I would have still been paying attention.
The rest, I was kind of iffy about. So many words and songs yet I remembered the Dismissal just as well I recalled the Lord’s Prayer. I mean, hearing the Dismissal was the peeling of the Westminster Quarters ringing on the hour to a child’s ears; the response of “Thanks be to God” was a veritable Adhan’s call to the second most sacred part of the Sundays of my youth: Picking up a pizza to heat up and heading over to my grandparents’ house down in Derby!
But Pentecost? You see, when I returned in adulthood to the Episcopal Church, everything was so familiar. Hearing the kneelers fall to the wooden floor as people paused to pray before mass sounded like a building, a physical structure, welcoming me home. As we all pronounced the esses in the Lord’s Prayer together (…forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us…) reminded me of the joy of shared worship in a community bound together by love. But there were details I didn’t remember or I was not exposed to as a child. Pentecost was one of those things.
What was Pentecost? I only remember we were supposed to wear red. We got that notice in the weekly eNews. (Sounds familiar!) I just didn’t remember the particulars of what Pentecost was all about after having walked into St. Paul’s in Southington just months before. So, I wore red. The whole family wore red, and we went to church. And it turned to be a… birthday celebration of sorts? The birthday of the church? Huh. Thought I would have remembered that, but it turned out to be something deeper.
It turned out to be a celebration of the beginning. The beginning when the apostles came together and spoke in different languages, languages they never spoke before. Tongues of fire appeared and danced above their heads. And people were amazed. And I, well, I too was amazed. Because for me, Pentecost became not a celebration of a single thing, an occasion for cake and ice cream, but celebration of our very being.
We were not formed out of some ethos of individuality but a coming together of all peoples speaking different languages while understanding each other. Our common bond was that of Christ and Christ allowed the apostles to be understood in whatever language was spoken. We were formed, in spite of our differences and, most likely because of our differences, to come together and form this thing we call church.
And we were formed to do difficult things, to heal the sick, lift up the broken hearted, cloth the naked, visit the prisoner, feed the hungry. We were called to prophesy over dry bones with the hopeful expectation that they should rise.
And that call remains. Many years ago, I was reminded of that fact. Many years ago, I returned to church and celebrated my first Pentecost in a very long time. Many years ago, I was reminded that this is a day of formation as much as it is a memorial of that formation.
We are never finished forming as or becoming Christian. Pentecost reminds us that there was once a beginning, but if we do it right, Pentecost also reminds us that we continue to do all that God calls us to do. And we do so though we might speak many languages for we have been given the gift of the Spirit to understand those languages and each other.
Happy birthday, Church! Might we remember that this is a celebration of the beginning as much as it is a recognition that we remain always hopeful, always vigilant, always ready to prophesy that all who call on the Lord shall be saved.
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