Voice of the Stranger Among Us

Receive the Holy Spirit.

Last week you might remember I mentioned that

Father Ron Rolheiser considered the feast day of the Ascension

not only a feast day but a new spirituality, a new way of living;

living what Jesus had asked his disciples to do.

If that's the case, then Rolheiser says

that today's feast day of the Pentecost

is the beginning of that discipleship

and the launching of that discipleship in our own lives.

It starts with a gift;

the gift is the gift of the Holy Spirit that is given to all.

That is all who are willing to receive it.

The only thing that we are required to do

is to accept the gift of the Holy Spirit and we receive it.

It is what we do in our baptism.

It is what we do in our confirmation.

and if we live our discipleship, it is what we do every single day

to live with the fire of the Holy Spirit.

My fear is that in the Catholic Church

we rarely talk about the Holy Spirit.

It’s almost like the forgotten person of the Holy Trinity.

We talk about Father.

We talk about Jesus.

But when we get to the Holy Spirit,

we all get a little bit nervous.

We just tend to say, “Oh yeah, you know, I believe in the Holy Spirit.”

It's not that we don't believe

but I don't necessarily want the Holy Spirit firing us all up!

Then it becomes a little unpredictable, right?

If we allow the Holy Spirit in,

then we might feel moved to say things and do things!

We get fired up!

And you look at me just like a crazy person!

You might say, “OK, take it easy, Father.

Have you had too much coffee?”

The challenge is we are called to live in the fire of the Holy Spirit,

to live life full of energy, full of joy and full of zest

because life is a gift.

The Holy Spirit animates our life

so that we can come to experience that reality

and come to live it in our day-to-day life.

This Holy Spirit is a constitutive element of discipleship.

We really can't do all that's expected of us as disciples.

We need that energy.

We need that fire.

We need that joy to keep us going.

The danger is that without the Holy Spirit,

Church becomes just a place to come to attend.

The danger is that church is more than a place to come and belong.

It is not a bad thing to come and belong

but that is the whole story of community of faith.

If you're going to do something on Sunday morning,

it’s good to come here and get a sense of belonging.

But that's not the Church of the Holy Spirit,

the Church of the Pentecost we hear about today.

Instead we come here to receive the gift of Christ and to be set on fire

with a mission to go forth from this place to do something,

and to be somebody who's kind and gentle,

who points the way back to Christ.

Now you know all that requires energy

and requires some willingness to allow it to happen in our own life.

Thomas Merton, the Great Catholic priest and Monk,

said many years ago that we meet God in three places.

We meet God in scripture,

which we do every single time we come here;

we meet God in the deeper recesses of ourselves

which we talk endlessly about the value of prayer

and how we must allow for silence so that we can hear God.

The third place we meet God is in the voice of strangers.

Now you might say that's odd.

But there is a long tradition in our church

and in our forefathers and mothers in the faith,

the Jewish faith of recognizing God in the voice of the strangers;

that God can come in any stranger who comes our way.

This could be the voice of God.

In fact, this is how Abraham was called;

it was in the voice of a stranger that comes and visits him

and then disappears from his life.

That one stranger changed his life forever.

There are tons of stories in scripture, and they are powerful.

The Jewish tradition is actually constituted in the law,

that you must welcome a stranger.

You must welcome the stranger, the immigrant, the poor;

that's the Jewish law.

Then Jesus comes along, and he emphasizes that part of the law

and says we must tend to the voice of the stranger among us.

At any one point in time,

a stranger could bring us a message directly from God

and that is the Holy Spirit at work.

I read recently a very smart little anecdote about a homeless person.

A young homeless person put on a sign:

“I could be an angel, and this could be your test. I want food.”

It's pretty ingenious!

But every stranger could be a messenger from God.

Every person who is broken person or ill

could be our opportunity to tend to an another Christ among us.

And it's not just outside our community

it is also inside our community too.

I recently read a poem by a Catholic Mexican American

called José Oliveraz and it's a beautiful poem.

It's called “No Time to Wait”.

He talks about the voice of the stranger in amongst us.

It's stunning so listen carefully.

“No Time to Wait” by José Olivarez“

“kneeling in the pews, my parents prayed

to the statue of Christ for protection.

“we were new to Chicago. we were new

to the United States. alone you might think,

“but it wasn’t just Christ in that church.

there was the Mexican family that housed us.

“the Mexican family that connected us

with immigration lawyers. the Mexican family

“that got my dad a job. the Mexican family

that invited us to birthday parties. the Mexican family

“that showed us how to make calls back to México.

there was the Mexican family gossiping behind

“our backs. alone? my parents couldn’t drink a beer

without someone’s primo asking for a sip.

“kneeling in that church, there was salvation everywhere.

give Christ the credit if you want, but he never did

“whisper the winning lottery numbers in our ears.

in that church there was a priest offering salvation later

“& there were Mexicans with no time to wait.”A[i]

This talks about how we are part of the salvation

and how we are the ones who bring the message to the stranger among us.

My vision for our community is that we come to church

to not only belong,

as that is super important that we belong and greet one another as friends and get to know each other and know each other’s stories

and then we can ask when somebody is sick.

But even more important is

that we seek out the stranger among us here.

And seek to find and to help them.

To ask them in what way can we serve them?

What are their needs today?

How powerful that would be that if we had such a reputation

that no stranger could come into this church,

no one could come in without being greeted by a number of people

who were trying to help understand the gift of the spirit in their lives

and to live the spirit in their lives.

That is the message of Pentecost;

that is the living discipleship that we are called to have.

Today we are going to be giving a blessing to the missionaries

who go forth to bring the message to Uganda.

But more importantly, to receive the message

from those strangers there as you will be a stranger in foreign land.

You're not there to bring Christ to them,

but to receive Christ with them and be the presence of Christ in their world.

It's a mutual a mutual reality.

Christ and his spirit have arrived there way before you got there.

Remember that you were not there to bring Christ,

but to receive Christ from those who are there.

Today we celebrate the gift of this Holy Spirit in all of our lives.

Let's not be afraid to invite that Holy Spirit into our hearts

and to set our hearts on fire

so the whole world can know that no one is a true stranger.

No one is a true stranger in the body of Christ.

All are welcome, and we are called to bring that message alive

in how we pay attention to the voice of the stranger among us.