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Pentecost – May 31, 2020

May 31, 2020 The Rev. Professor Maggi Dawn Pentecost Acts, John

The Rev Professor Maggi Dawn

Our guest preacher this Sunday is The Rev. Professor Maggi Dawn. She is Professor of Theology and College Principal at Durham University in the UK. Also an author and songwriter, her early work in the music business led into freelance work with BBC religion, in which she was asked to write contemporary music and scripts for religious TV and broadcasting. She is a founding member of Holy Joe’s, an early “pop-up” that gathered people who wanted to explore faith outside the bounds of traditional Church. She was ordained in the Church of England in 1999, serving first in a Parish ministry, then at the University of Cambridge (UK) and Yale University before taking her current post.

I woke to the sound of the foghorn this morning in the gray-misted dawn light. Jere and I have never lived by the sea before, and so the foghorn is as exotic and wonderful for me as the muezzin calling Muslim worshipers to prayer in Jerusalem, or the blast of the shofar, the traditional horn signaling the beginning of the Sabbath at sunset each Friday for observant Jews. I have lived within the sound of church bells before, so the sound of Historic Trinity’s bells tolling the hour outside my home office window turns my ear to God, but in a more familiar way — one I’ve known and walked with all my life. This last week has brought new participation in the life of Newport. Yesterday, Jere passed his qualifying test with Sail Newport and is now allowed to rent a boat. He called me to take a short celebratory sail with him yesterday after his practical exam.  And while we could see clearly around the harbor — all the way to the top of the Pell Bridge from down below, and across to Emmanuel’s tower and Historic Trinity’s steeple near our house — the foghorn continued to sound. I felt as much as I heard its rhythmic tone as we sailed. The foghorn was there, I think, for those who were farther away, and couldn’t see. Higher up, maybe, in taller ships — cargo ships or cruise ships, where the captain is making decisions far above the water, where the fog is thicker and it’s harder to see. At the top of the Pell Bridge later in the day, it was pea soup, so it was really clear that what we see has a great deal to do with where we’re looking from. And that the foghorn can guide us back on course, call us back to God, if we are in danger of running aground or wandering unwittingly out into the deeps. I pray that we can all follow the tone of the foghorn — even feel it as a vibrating blast in our hearts — to call us back to God. In lament for the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, along with the ensuing protests and violence, I bid your prayers. O God, you have bound us together in a common life. Help us, in the midst of our struggles for justice and truth, to confront one another without hatred or bitterness, and to work together with mutual forbearance and respect; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.