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The bulletin today has a little explanation of the Feast of Pentecost and reminds us that this was a Jewish feast that celebrated the entire process of liberation from the time of Exodus from Egypt to the giving of the Law to Moses on Mt. Sinai.

Well, those early Christians, of course, were Jews and they continued to celebrate this feast, but then they transformed it, or took it to themselves, and made it the Feast of the Spirit, commemorating the new Dispensation, the new Law, the new Liberation that came in the Person of Jesus Christ. And so, we celebrate it fifty days after the Resurrection, just as the Jews celebrated it fifty days after Passover.

Three weeks ago, we had our Parish Festival. Those of you were at the Festival will recall one of the attractions that was there. It was the climbing wall. I didn’t try it., but I watched the young, and sometimes the not-so-young, making the effort to scale that wall and triumphantly ring the bell at the top. Some of them slipped, recovered, tried again. And I am sure that when they succeeded, they felt the same sense of exhaltation as Sir Edmund Hilary and Tensing Norgay on Everest just fifty years ago. Now, the climbing of the wall was facilitated by the fact that they wore a safety harness, and the rope went from the harness over the top of the wall and down to a hidden mechanism that kept a certain tension on the rope and gave them the sense of security that they needed in the climbing of the wall. Now, they could not see the mechanism. They weren’t quite sure how it worked, but they trusted that it was there. And that made all the difference.

As I stood there watching them, it occurred to me that here was a very good anology of the Christian endeavor. The Christian life also is a constant upward struggle. Sometimes, we feel like giving up....just too difficult. Sometimes, we just scramble for a foothold. Sometimes, we just hang on by our fingernails. What gives us the confidence? What gives us the sense of security and supports us? It is our lifeline, God’s Holy Spirit. And we are not sure how the Spirit works. The mechanism, you might say, is hidden from us. But our experience tells us there is something there. And our experience also tells us that we need that something, that we need help if we are to make the climb successfully. And that help is from God. Indeed that help is God’s Holy Spirit itself.

It is the Holy Spirit that gives us the hope and the confidence and the trust to continue our efforts to lead the Christian life to its fullest. We see the effects of the Holy Spirit in people’s lives vividly illustrated in the readings from the Acts of the Apostles that we had just a few moments ago. The people who had denied Christ, who had run away and then locked themselves up in fear.... They are now out in the streets! And they are proclaiming that Jesus is the Messiah, that Jesus is the Lord. And they are saying that “your sons and daughters shall prophesy. Your young men shall see visions and your old men shall dream dreams.” The work of the Spirit!

What are your visions? What are your dreams for yourself, for your family, for this community? Whatever they may be, this feast today is saying, “They can happen, through the power of the Holy Spirit.”

Archbishop Anthony Bloom, an orthodox archbishop, was one day discussing Christianity with a Japanese scholar. In the course of the conversation, this man said to the archbishop, “I think I can understand about the Father and the Son. But I cannot understand the significance of the honorable bird, the Holy Spirit.” Do we grasp the significance of the Holy Spirit? Can we understand the working of the Holy Spirit? It is extremely difficult to capture a bird in flight. It is impossible to cage the Spirit. Scripture says, “It is like a mighty wind. It blows where it wills.” We do not know where it is coming from or where it is going. But we do know when it has been around. We sense the creative energy, the inspiration. And this is what filled those early disciples. This group of dis-spirited people became spirited people. Their lives were absolutely transformed by the power of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit, can likewise transform our modern-day church and can transform our own personal lives, if only we are open to the Spirit.

Last week was the fortieth anniversary of the death of Pope John XXIII. He himself said that he was going to open up the windows of the Church so that the mighty wind of the Spirit could just blow all the dust out. And that was the work of the Second Vatican Council that he called. We must keep the windows open. There are some apparently who want to close them. They seemingly prefer the old stale air to the fresh breeze of the Spirit.... Let’s keep the windows open.

And in our own personal lives we must be open to the working of the Holy Spirit. This is risky because the Spirit may be bringing us to a place where we really don’t want to go. That mountain is high. That cliff is scary. We don’t want to climb there. The Holy Spirit is saying, “Try. Try. Reach up. Reach higher. You can do it.” We must stay open to the urging of the Spirit in our lives. There is no easy way. There is no ski lift that will suddenly carry us to the top of the mountain. We have to strive. We have to scramble to reach higher, always higher and higher. And above all, we must have faith in our life line, God’s Holy Spirit. Amen.