Sermon Pentecost 3, year A, 2026

I have always had an affinity for wind.  The cooling wind on a hot day.  The damp, cold wind after a storm.  The refreshing, scented wind of the first storm in spring.  The deeply crisp and biting wind of winter and this past year I felt the giant sweeping swells of wind on the ocean.  The wind has always felt alive to me, alive and rejuvenating. 

When scripture speaks of the breath of God in action, the Holy Spirit moving like a wind over creation.  This has always made sense to me…I could feel it in my bones.  So all of those passages of scripture that refer to the Spirit as wind and breath speak to me.  All of those places in scripture where people felt God’s presence and built up monuments, cairns, stone altars to mark a sacred space makes sense. 

This is especially true in the Old Testament as we follow Abraham’s journey through Genesis.  Abraham was a member of a herding people.  They moved with their flocks, finding fodder and field with the seasons and God travelled with them.  It wasn’t until Solomon’s time that a permanent temple was built in God’s honour.  Not to house God, but to be a focal point for God’s people. 

Since then we have built many churches, many Houses of God, place that seem not to be built to honour God…but to house God.  Over time we have taken the idea of a Holy Structure that marks a sacred place or provides a place to gather and boxed God in.  We have lost the idea that God travels WITH the people of God and have taken up the idea that we have to travel to a church to find God. 

 

Our buildings are incredibly useful.  Places that keep us warm and comfortable.  Locations that house ministries and provide a gathering place.  Buildings that allow us to others what we believe, or at least what previous generations believed, through architecture and art.  However, the buildings have too often become the focus.  Much like how once the temple in Jerusalem was built, access to God became increasingly restricted.  Not because God remained only in the Holy of Holies, but because the people were taught and believed that God remained there.

Similarly our culture has been taught by the church that to meet God you must go to the church.  Even within the church our focus on attendance teaches us that your faith only counts if you are in the pews.

In our gospel today we read of the commissioning of the disciples and the sending of the apostles.  Someone recently asked me what the difference is between a disciple and an apostle…today we get to read the transitional moment.  Jesus, we read, gathered his disciples (student), commissioned them, authorized them and sent them out…and thereafter they were referred to as the 12 apostles (messenger or envoy).

 Jesus sent out the apostles to proclaim the good news and heal the sick…because Jesus had compassion for the people he met and Jesus met a lot of people.  Some he met in temple and synagogue, but a very great many Jesus met along the road, in his travels.  

Because Jesus travelled at lot, like his ancestors both human and divine, Jesus was nomadic.  He did not own property.  He did not have a house of his own.  He stayed with other people, friends, family, strangers.  Jesus met people where they were, Jesus traveled with the people and having taught his disciples and commissioned them, Jesus sent out those apostles to people further afield. 

Where there had once been only one teacher speaking God’s word to his students, now there were 12 teachers spreading the word to any number of students.  Exponential communication of God’s Good News, the Holy Spirit blowing to every corner of the world, starting in Jerusalem.  The Christian message centered in Jerusalem, began with the people of Israel, but quickly the message spread as more and more apostles preached the Good News.  Teaching, preaching and travelling to where the people were, following where the Winds of the Spirit led.

Times change and eras change and politic change.  Christianity became so widespread as to become politically powerful, wealthy and institutionalized…that changed the way people viewed God.  More churches were constructed more elaborately and apostles became bishops shepherding congregations.  God became viewed as sedentary…if you wanted God you went TO God, and priest and cathedral.  Travelling with God on the road became viewed as a Christian specialization done by missionaries.  Most people looked for God in the confines of there own parishes.

However, we have come to a time when the wind is blowing once more outside our parish walls.  Not the still small voice, but the wind and fire of the Holy Spirit calling us out and sending us.

“Then Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and curing every disease and every sickness. When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, ‘The harvest is plentiful, but the labourers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out labourers into his harvest.’ Then  summoned his twelve disciples and gave them authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to cure every disease and every sickness.”

The world we live in is full of crowds, harassed and helpless…in need of compassion.  The wind is blowing throughout the world, the Spirit is breathing life over creation and to feel it we need to be in it.  The church may be a training ground, but the mission field has always been out in the world at large.  Once again we have to ask the Lord of the harvest to send out labourers into the harvest. 

Churches have always been places where you can abide with God, but they have never been able to restrict God’s Spirit.  God is where the people are.  Here in a parish church, in the parks, in the hospitals, in the city center and in the halls of power.  The question is what have the people been taught to believe…do people remember that God is with them everywhere they are and on every road they take. 

God has always been nomadic.  A wind of life blowing over creation and breathing faith into all places.  Which means we too have to look at what we were taught and what we believe.  We heard the phrase ‘the church is not a building’ a million times, we know that the church is the people.   However, we still expect the people to come here.  To be here.  In the parish in the pews.  To grow the church still is thought of in terms of attendance. 

Jesus spoke of an abundant harvest and faithful labourers… he did not tell those labourers to bring the harvest in.   Perhaps we are not meant to preach and teach and proclaim Christ to bring new Christians home… perhaps that new harvest is also to be sent out on the Winds of the Spirit.   To blow into places we cannot go…to venture out to people and places we cannot labour in…the harvest is plentiful and so must the labourers be.

These are the days of change when membership and buildings are falling away for much of the church.  The Holy Spirit is blowing us down unknown paths.  The winds of the Spirit are blowing open the doors and reminding us that God goes unconfined and travels with the people of God where ever they may be. 

That the harvest is plentiful and doesn’t often grow indoors.  God is here among the windows and the altars, but never boxed in.  The people of God may come here to gather and worship and minister, but they must always be sent out again, labourers in the fields of creation.  Traveling with God along the way where the wind of God blows us.  The Harvest is plentiful…therefore let us ask God to send out the labourers…us into the fields of the future because there will be an abundant harvest everywhere God is to be found.