Pentecost Sunday, Year A
Preached at the Church of the Assumption in Bellingham, WA
Recording
https://moorejesus.podbean.com/e/preaching-your-story/
Transcript
[Thank you to T.V. for editing this transcript.]
When was the last time that you heard a Christian speaking in a language that you knew they should not know? Which is to say, when was the last time you experienced what all of these people experienced on Pentecost, where the apostles were speaking in Aramaic and yet people were hearing them speak and all sorts of different languages. Well, chances are you’ve never experienced that. Which leads us to a difficult question. Has the Holy Spirit changed? Is the Holy Spirit less powerful today than he was on the day of Pentecost? Is it somehow a different Holy Spirit that we are receiving than the apostles received? Because it seems if they were given this gift, and we do not seem to be given this gift, there has to be a disconnect somewhere.
Well, the best resolution I have found to this question comes from a sixth century African homily by an anonymous preacher. He said this gift was not given to the apostles as individuals, but this gift was given to the Church. At the time, the apostles were basically the Church. There are a couple other disciples, certainly Mary, the mother of God, but the apostles were functionally the Church. And so, if the Church had to preach to all nations, then it was the apostles as individuals that had to preach to all nations. But today the church is so much larger, and we encompass people from every culture and every language and every country. So the church maintains her gift of being able to preach to all nations and all cultures, even as individuals no longer need that gift in the same way.
We might ask ourselves then, what languages are present that we need to preach to? Yes, there are different languages. Yes, the Church does need to be able, particularly in this archdiocese, to preach in English and Spanish and Vietnamese and Tagalog and Korean and Chinese. We have this need to still preach in human language. But there are other ways in which we might think about this gift given to the Church, of her ability to preach to people in different ”languages”. For example, I find it’s very easy to preach or evangelize to people with whom I share a lot of life experience. I grew up in a middle upper class family. My family is 4 or 5 generations removed from our nearest immigrant ancestor. And so it was just plain “Wonder bread American culture”. My whole interest growing up was the classroom and I was good at school, I focused on school. All of my interests are functionally academic interests and I find it very easy to converse with and functionally evangelize people who share all of those experiences Those who just have a kind of generic, blended American culture and who are college educated or above, who like to talk in academic ways with $10 words. But I really struggle with anybody who doesn’t fall into that category. For example, I don’t know what it’s like to be an immigrant or to grow up with a lot of economic insecurity. I don’t know what it’s like to experience oppression or discrimination. I don’t know what it’s like to have interests that aren’t in the classroom. Like people who are more into. outdoorsy things or into athletics or sports or whatever else. I struggle with those. But the Church does not. The Church has been given the gift by the Holy Spirit of being able to preach the Gospel into every single one of those interest groups or categories or experiences. And remember, when I say the Church, I don’t mean the hierarchy. The hierarchy is part of the Church with a specific and important role in the Church. But the Church is the baptized. So when I say that the Holy Spirit has given the Church the gift of being able to preach to all nations and cultures and experiences, I mean that you have been given this gift in your Baptism and especially in your Confirmation. The Church’s ability to preach to all nations and languages and cultures and experiences comes from your mouths.
Three notes on this. Number one, a big part of that is because each of you has a unique faith story. I have my own faith story, and that faith story works really well with other people who have similar outlooks or experiences. But my faith story does not unlock the faith of everybody that I meet. Your unique faith story has been given to you for a reason, and I might say that that reason is possibly a specific person. There is somebody in this world who is only going to come to faith because they hear your story somehow. It is your story that they need to understand the role of Jesus and the Holy Spirit in their lives. Less than a year ago we had a parish retreat. Parish mission. And during that mission on night number two, the presenter talked to us about how to tell our story, which our Protestant brothers and sisters would call a testimonial. What does that look like? And it was impressive to me because the formula was very simple. It was, “Who were you before? Who are you now? And what did Jesus do to get you there”? Who were you before, who are you now, and what did Jesus do to get you there? And if you can think, if you can just fill in those three boxes, you have a story. A quick example from my own life. When I started out as a seminarian, I was coming right out of engineering school, and so the words in my mouth all the time were efficiency and sustainability, which means I put very little stock in parish events. All of my formators, the priests I was working for right away were suggesting that I just needed to, like, show up and mix with the people. And I said, what’s the point, it’s not efficient. Like, what am I doing at that event exactly? Am I teaching something? Am I giving a presentation? I thought I should be using my time to try to advance very explicitly the gospel through teaching, catechesis, that sort of thing.
So what’s the point of just showing up and being there today after the 8 a.m. Mass? I was so, so sad that we did not have coffee and donuts because I just wanted to show up and mix it up with people. And now many of you are sad too. And I get it. We can offer that sadness to Jesus. It’s a big transformation for meas I like being with parishioners. I like just being with them. I don’t necessarily like being asked to show up to an event just to say a prayer, because I think you can pray too. But I do like having the opportunity to enter into that relationship. Well, what happened in the middle? In the middle Jesus helped me grow into priesthood. He gave me experiences of people which are holy experiences. He gave me the time and the desire to listen to stories, and to see how important it is for me to understand people’s faith story and faith journey. In a sense, He gave me the time and prayer necessary to grow my heart into his heart. His heart is for people He desires, relationship with us and as his priest. Just being exposed to the priesthood over such a long period of time, my heart now reflects His heart. That’s what Jesus did for me. Now that’s a testimonial, and it’s very simple.
It’s not I was this horrible sinner and now I’m a saint and look, Jesus worked this miracle in the middle. There are slow perceptible changes that happen in our lives over time, through our exposure to and time with the Lord, through our exposure to and time with the Catholic faith by reading a Catholic book. If you have experienced any change at all because of your faith, you have a story. And that story matters. It is unique and the world needs to hear it, because the world needs to know how Jesus works in the lives of believers. By giving them that story, you are giving them a window into faith. You are, as the Apostles did, preaching to people of different languages and cultures and experiences.
Note number two. When I talk about evangelization, it can be very overwhelming because we think that it relies on our own efforts. Oh, Father, you’re asking me to do this thing, but I don’t feel comfortable being vulnerable with people or I’m not a good speaker or I don’t know how to enter into deep relationships. I’ve never been good at making friends, or I just don’t feel prepared enough to talk about the faith. Well, are you Baptized? Have you been Confirmed? Because if you have, you have received the Holy Spirit. And I promise you, this is the Holy Spirit’s work before it is your work. He is the one who wants to work through you. You just have to remove the barrier and believe that he will work. Yeah, you’ve got to do a little bit of work. You have to know your story. Knowing your story helps. You know how the Holy Spirit and Jesus have worked in your life. But the courage to do so, the ability to do so, the fruits of that. are the Holy Spirit. All of those is the power of God. You are not responsible for anything other than showing up and asking the Holy Spirit to work. There have been some very difficult conversations in my life, inviting people into faith or telling some hostile people in my own faith, my own friends or family about my journey to the priesthood. And I promise you, I could not have gotten through those conversations without the Holy Spirit. But I put myself in the situation. I knew I needed to have the conversation, and then I just poured myself out to God. I just laid in front of Him and begged Him for his grace. And He has always come through. He has never let me down. And so that note is that your story is important. Your story is unique, but it is the Holy Spirit who will do the work for you if you meet him halfway. If you take that step out in faith, he will do the rest. You do not need to be intimidated. You do not need to be worried. You have received the Holy Spirit that allowed the apostles to take a small group of friends and expand it into a worldwide religion of salvation.
Final note. Sometimes I give the wrong impression about evangelization because my comfort place is the classroom and I have a tendency to preach , teach and to evangelize like I’m in a classroom. That’s just where I’m at. That’s why I can’t evangelize the world, because not everybody likes classrooms. That’s fine but I want us to remember evangelization looks more than anything else, like relationship. And just like your story is unique, and the way the Holy Spirit will support you is unique. The way you evangelize is also going to be unique. It’s going to be based in your skill sets, and the gifts of the Holy Spirit is given to you. So, for example, one of the most striking statistics I’ve seen in the last year on religion, and particularly the mass exodus from religion that we’re seeing in the United States, is that that Exodus is not happening as strongly amongst the college educated. But we hear stories, go to college, lose your faith. There are plenty of stories like that, and that’s true. I wouldn’t say college faculty are particularly supportive of Christian faith at the moment, but if you look at the statistics, college educated folks are more likely to continue to support institutions like organized religion or another example, the institution of marriage. The people that we’re losing are actually the folks who are not college educated, those who usually would have a high school degree, maybe not, who are going into blue collar work such as going into the trades. Those are the folks who are actually abandoning religion at a very, very fast clip, which suggests to us that we have been unable to evangelize for a generation or more folks in that category. Perhaps because we keep sending priests to post-graduate education and we like to talk like we’re in a classroom. So ask yourself, what would evangelization or what did evangelization look like in the trades? What does it look like in the trades? Well, a lot of the trades are built on apprenticeship and mentorship. My grandfather spent his whole career after he got out of the army as a machinist. He was just in a machine shop working on stuff all the time, and it was almost exclusively men that he worked with. He’d have all of these young men come into the machine shop, and if you know anything about young men, they are zealous and they are hot to trot, and they’re usually living a little rough. They need an older man to serve as a mentor, to teach them what it looks like to be responsible, what it looks like to honor your family, to be good to your wife, to raise your children, and to love God in all of that. And so a lot of times, what evangelization looks like in the trades isn’t conversations with the hypostatic union or the nature of the Trinity. What it looks like isthat you’re not living the example set by your mentor, as a guy that you look up to for your job.
I’m also going to tell you that your life could look better, that I used to live like you, but then my faith helped me be better, helped me to love my wife better, and to love my kids better. Regardless of your work, white collar, blue collar, whatever, there are a lot of people whose faith helped them leave behind addiction, particularly to alcohol. That story matters. That’s what evangelization looks like. This is who I was before, this is who I am nowand this is what Jesus did. Telling that story in the appropriate context, in the relationships we have in the workplace, with our kids, with other school families, with the people that are in our neighborhood. Those stories are the evangelization, helping people see that their life could be better with Jesus. Because your life is better with Jesus. That’s evangelization. You barely even have to know the details of the Catechism to tell that story.
My friends, we read in the Acts of the Apostles about all of these miracles, about these Apostles doing crazy things, speaking in languages that they have no business knowing. Performing all of these miracles. It’s the same Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit continues to work in exactly the same way, but we don’t always recognize it. I promise you, the Holy Spirit today in Bellingham, Washington is speaking in tongues to the assembled masses. The only difference is that those tongues are yours!
Fr. Moore 
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