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Hail Thee Festival Day: A Pentecost Picnic Invitation by The Rev. Hartshorn Murphy
I have tried remembering. When I was a child growing up in the Episcopal Church, I simply don't remember Pentecost being a big deal. In fact, I don't remember it being at all! I think that in those days we called it: Whitsunday. That was the Old English word for the day because it was a "white Sunday" because on that day, theoretically, we did baptisms for which the liturgical color was white. But in those days, baptisms were private, family affairs most often done in the sanctuary on Saturday mornings or Sunday afternoons after church, with the family and godparents gathered with the priest in the baptistery. I certainly don't remember any great Pentecost hymns beyond the one above. (And it's a bit shaky). In short, the great tradition of the Eastern Church that held Pentecost in such high esteem had been lost in the West, especially among the mainline Protestant churches. (For Pentecostals, every Sunday is Pentecost!) Over the last several years, churches have endeavored to recover (and more likely, create) liturgical customs to lift up the day to a place of honor along with Christmas and Easter. I carry a concern that we find a way to make a difference in the thinking of the next generation of Christian believers that they might come to value the significance of this day: a day that symbolically stands for the process by which the church was born following the resurrection of Christ. The Pentecost story, found in Acts 2:1-11, is not a story about the disciples "speaking in tongues" (glossolalia ) so much as it's a story of the missionary expansion of the infant church among peoples of many tribes, languages, cultures and nations, enabled to do this in the decades following the death and resurrection of Christ, by the power of Christ's spirit which was with them and in them and working through them. That this small Jewish sect found appeal across the Gentile world and became a welcoming place for the marginalized and for the powerful, for women and slaves as well as people of wealth and property; is an amazing story. That the Church in our day is mightily challenged to be inclusive, welcoming places for those who often feel excluded and unwelcomed and unloved is obvious. As our nation and communities become more polarized and isolated, as we self-segregate ourselves by ideologies, economics, sexual identity and any of a dozen other descriptors; the Church may be that one place which knows itself to be tasked by God with the tough task of reconciliation and community healing. The story of that primitive church is a story of a community which emerged in a culture every bit as fragmented and diverse as our own. But they lifted up a vision of an oneness of Christ ("one Lord, one faith, one baptism") and were enabled by the Spirit of God to overcome their differences. But how do you celebrate that legacy; how do you lift up that story? In years past, we have tried various schemes: a dove shaped kite which last year got momentarily stuck in a chandelier (surely a metaphor for something!), having lessons read in various "foreign" tongues (languages), on rare occasions with baptisms (rare because Pentecost simply comes too near in time to Easter) and as ever, searching for better Pentecost hymns (please God, inspire a new generation of composers!!). But this year it seemed clear to me that Pentecost as the "Birthday of the Church" should be about .... Having a Party! Join us then as we seek to remind ourselves as well as to reach the next generation with the Power of Pentecost by doing something different: a picnic mass on the lawn. Copyright © 2007 St. Augustine by-the-Sea
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