The Spirit Speaks from February 25

Sermon from 1 Corinthians 2:1-16

Do you have a piece of paper in front of you? If you do, or better yet your cellphone, write this down: “God has given us his Spirit!”

Paul says in verse 12, “That’s why we don’t think the same way that the people of this world think. That’s also why we can recognize the blessings that God has given us.” Why?

Because, “…God has given us his Spirit.”

I want you to look around this room and see all the amazing people God has sent to worship with us today. I want you to notice their skin color, their age, their accent, their gender, their height (not their weight - thank you), I want you to notice their birth order in their families, where their family originated, their education, the neighborhood they live in, their life experiences, the places they have traveled, their greatest joys, their greatest sorrows, their wisdom, how they laugh, even the ways they have been hurt by life, by the failure of others to see how precious they are, other who couldn’t see past their age and color and nationality, who couldn’t see how wonderfully made, delicate and fragile, crafted by the master craftsman they are.

And I want you to say to them with all of your heart, Man, I am so glad you are here! And that God has given you his Spirit!”

If there is one way to grieve the Holy Spirit, one way to make God sad, one way to bring tears to God’s eyes - and there is - it is to not recognize God’s presence in one of his children.

Black Heritage Sunday, if nothing else, is an opportunity for us to remember. It is an opportunity to remember how awful we have been at treating other children of the most High God.

One of the commands given to the Jewish people was to remember. To remember things like the Holocaust of course, when 6 million Jewish lives were terminated by the Nazi’s and collaborators in World War 2.

But also commanded to remember in the Seder meal and at many other times where they have come from, who and whose they were, what they were to do and to be found doing, and to what destiny they had been fashioned.

In the Seder to remember that they were captives in Egypt, freed to go to a Promised Land to live for and serve God. Just as we are reminded in the Lord’s Supper, the sacrament of Communion that we are the Lord’s freed by his death and resurrection to live and serve God.

Remembering is essential.

Not forgetting is imperative!

Why? Because we do it so easily.

We forget the slave ships.

That slave owners were given payment for all the slaves freed from their farms, as if the people freed were property.

We forget that there were two Presbyterian Churches started in Middletown in part because one was pro abolition and the other wasn’t.

We forget that here in Otisville, King’s Lodge resort was a place top black entertainers could stay who worked at the Catskill Resorts because they couldn’t stay at those resorts because they were black.

We forget.

Or, we don’t even know.

Because we have not experienced life as a black man pulled over again because they looked suspicious, or groped, or whistled at, or leered at like I was a potential sexual conquest.

I have never been mocked because of my Buffalo/Midwestern/Canadian accent, well except in Boston, which was eye opening since it was by the people who “park their car in Harvard Yard!”

On the other hand, I have used unkind language, not having any idea what it meant to call another boy a faggot, because what it meant was unknown to me.

I have learned a lot because of the patient love of others who believed they saw God’s Spirit in me and were willing to take a risk to help me see the Spirit in them.

This church has been blessed again and again by folks who have stepped out of their comfort zones to share the Spirit in them with us.

In the 1950’s The U.S. Army hospital in Otisville that had become a Sanitorium, became a Boy’s Training School for young men who had gotten in trouble with the law.

The story goes and I may have some facts twisted, that the then Superintendent Benjamin Hill decided to recruit teachers from the All Black colleges in the South.

They came to Otisville not only to teach, but to mentor black young men who had gotten in trouble, believing that seeing and working with upstanding and successful leaders, they would, perhaps, choose a different future.

And when many of those college educated leaders came to Otisville, they were invited to and made welcome in the Otisville – Mt. Hope Presbyterian Church, who saw in them the Holy Spirit, not just the color of their skin.

Lest we forget, we choose to remember, to intentionally remember, to awaken in ourselves the reality that God has given us his Spirit, and lots of others too.

Did you know that in the Middle East, there are a great many Christians who speak Arabic. Somewhere between 10-12 million!

Coptic Christians in Egypt, Palestinian Christians in places like Nazareth, Christians in Turkey as well as other countries, while often small in numbers, all practice the Christian faith.

In fact, Coptic Christians can trace their faith community all the way back to the Apostles, with much greater assurance than any Northern European or American Christian. And do you know what the name for God is in Arabic? Allah. In fact, Allah was used by both Christmas and Jews for 500 years before Islam.

But we forget. We make assumptions. And we close the door on brothers and sisters in Christ, whose only fault is they are not exactly like us.

So, lest we forget…

We declare that:

On this ark, the door is open.

Around this manger, any can come and worship.

And at the foot of this cross, all are welcome.

May it be so. Amen and Amen.