In January Bishop Dan Edwards of the Diocese of Nevada invited me to be the keynote speaker for their 2017 diocesan convention (October 5-7). He and his wife had visited St John’s in December 2016 for a week or so, and they were impressed with what they found here. When he issued the invitation, +Dan said to me, “I want all my parishes to have something of what you have at St John’s.” With that extremely broad directive in mind, I was challenged to reflect on what it is we have here at St John’s and to articulate what I think is working and why, and to draw forth some universal truths that could be useful for the mostly small rural parishes in the diocese of Nevada.

The main conclusion I reached was that here at St John’s we have managed to keep the windows of our hearts and church community open to the in-rushing, unpredictable Holy Spirit (or wind or breath) of God, and we have welcomed the presence of that Spirit into our life together. This may sound obvious or simple, but it is actually rather ground-breaking. St John’s stands apart from many other parishes as a place where Christians at all points on their faith journeys are making room for and welcoming the Holy Spirit. So, well done dear parish!

As part of my work at the Nevada convention, I was asked to preach at the convention Eucharist at Trinity Cathedral in Reno. I sat down to write that sermon the morning after the horrific shooting in Las Vegas. My sermon would be the first one many people in the diocese would hear since the shooting, and that fact guided the direction my sermon took. I also knew I would be preaching to many people who live in very small towns, people for whom guns are simply part of rural life.

I have been asked to share that sermon with St John’s and I do so here in this special edition of The Rector’s Pen. Please continue to hold our brothers and sisters in Nevada in prayer. And as the Holy Spirit moves in you, please consider joining our Gun Violence Prevention ministry. For more information, contact Kathy Ashworth.

It’s been a helluva week in Nevada. On Monday your Episcopal friends in Colorado were reeling in shock with you. On Tuesday morning my parish tolled its bell in solidarity with your parishes. In Colorado life has felt a bit surreal. I cannot begin to imagine how it has been for you. Please know that there are a great many people of faith in Colorado and beyond who are holding you in love and prayer.

I had planned to preach this afternoon about the Holy Spirit, and perhaps after this morning’s keynote address you are wondering what in the world there is left to say! But there is much to say. And it has bearing on the lives of you in Nevada and the lives of everyone else in this country.

This morning I touched upon the different roles the Spirit plays: as creator and life-maker; as teacher and guide; as the manifestation of God’s presence with us; and as the holy energy that empowers us to do God’s work. There is one more role: that of Holy Spirit as the one who exposes the sin of the world. The reading from John [16:5-15] says the Spirit will prove the world wrong about sin, but it’s one of the tricky bits of Greek that can mean a bunch of different things: to prove, to convict, to judge, to expose.

How does the Spirit expose the sinfulness of the world? By shining light into the dark places. That’s what holy energy does—it illumines the dark and exposes what is lurking there. It is as if the Spirit is a beacon that shines everywhere at every time. On the web there’s a statement that you here at Trinity Cathedral once made about your role as Christians in Nevada: you said “we serve Christ as a spiritual beacon.” I really like that. Beacons illumine the dark places and expose what is lurking there. Think of the old movies you’ve seen where people bust out of prison, hide in the shadows, and time their run for the woods according to the moment when the rotating guard tower beacon has moved past them to shine somewhere else.

Beacons also attract attention and provide information. So each time the Spirit lights up the darkness and exposes the sinfulness of the world, that same Spirit is providing the information that God is, that God is good, and that God is here in this time and place, despite any evidence to the contrary.

In addition, beacons serve as navigational aids to travelers. For us who spend our mortal lives journeying home toward God, the Holy Spirit is our GPS, guiding us toward this, steering us away from that, and patiently declaring “recalculating” as often as it is warranted.

I had planned to stop right about there, say Amen, and sit down. But then a man with an arsenal of automatic weapons opened fire on a crowd of unsuspecting concert-goers in Las Vegas and that changed what needs to be said today. This past year, preachers have been criticized by some people for being too political, and criticized by others for not being political enough. The balance beam we preachers walk has become as thin as a piece of thread. So I apologize to you if what the Spirit is leading me to say rubs your political fur the wrong way. I can’t help it. There’s a really powerful beacon sweeping our nation right now and we can crouch in the shadows or we can stand upright in the light and say something. As Christians, we’re asked to do the latter.

You don’t know me, other than the fact that I serve a church in Boulder, Colorado, a city [delivered jokingly] with a reputation for being affluent, educated, and extremely liberal where apparently all of us smoke marijuana and practice yoga. The piece you don’t know about me is that I lived off the road system in Alaska for 21 years. I owned a hunting rifle and shot big game to help feed our family. I was part of a culture where people are fiercely independent, where folks get outraged at the perception that someone is trying to curtail what they believe are their God-given rights. I am neither pro-gun nor anti-gun. I am both. I am pro-Second Amendment, and I am also anti-automatic-weapon and anti-high-capacity magazines.

When I look at the events of this past week in Las Vegas and I consider what sinfulness the Holy Spirit might be trying to expose I have to look beyond whether tragedies like this are the fault of one side of the gun debate or the other. That’s too small a perspective and it lets too many of us off the hook. I think instead the sin may be that too few of us are trying to bridge the divide. Too many of us are aligning with one side or another instead of standing in the middle and asking both sides to come in and sit down and have a conversation. Too few of us are pestering our legislators to take some sort of bipartisan compromise action. Too many of us have bought into the narrative that says violence is the price of freedom. Too many of us have thrown up our hands in despair and are caving in to weariness in the struggle for civility. Too many of us are privately thinking, “As long as my family and I are okay, to hell with the rest of the crazy world.”

Any time we allow ourselves to be polarized we are part of the sinfulness of the world that the Spirit exposes. When we abdicate our place in the struggle for justice and peace and instead retreat quietly into our homes, we are part of the sinfulness of the world that the Spirit illumines.

Convicted as we are, where do go from here? Where do we go from here? We stay in the light, bright and uncomfortable as it may be. We pray that the same Spirit who exposes in us all that is selfish or small minded or weary or polarizing might also fill us with that holy light. We pray that the same Spirit who equipped the prophets to speak truth to power, the same Spirit who took David the sheepherder and made a Temple architect out of him, the same Spirit who from 70 elders made a council of leaders for Moses, the same Spirit who animated Jesus of Nazareth, Mary, Elizabeth, Zechariah, John the Baptist, and all the people standing around at that first Pentecost—we pray that that very same Spirit who is alive and well right here and now, who filled each of us to overflowing at our baptisms, we pray that that very same Spirit will equip us now to partner with God in the healing and reconciling and spiritual formation of the world around us.

By virtue of the promises we made at our baptisms, you and I consented to let the Spirit empower us for the work of God. We consented to be the living beacons of God. You already have everything you need to do this work and in the Holy Spirit you have the most powerful Advocate and Guide as your companion. So, come Holy Spirit, fill those who are grieving this day with your peace. Comfort those who are living with the residue of terror. As for the rest of us, set our souls ablaze with your light and let us neither rest nor retreat until violence shall no longer be heard in our land. Amen.