April 7, 2024 - Second Sunday of Easter
"Beards, Breath, Honi, Haoles: Building Community in Difficult Times
Rev. Gary Percesepe
The Christian year is delightfully out of sync with the secular calendar. The Christian year begins with Advent in late November, then Christmas, which is not merely a day but a twelve-day season ending with the feast of the epiphany on January 6th. Hence, the song, “The Twelve Days of Christmas.” Twelve days! Remember that next year when you’re behind on your makana--gift giving-- and forget Uncle Joey on Christmas Day! Hey, I’ve still got eleven days, right?
Keawala’i Church follows the Revised Common Lectionary, celebrating each season in the Christian year, with specific texts, or lections, for each week. This is a good practice; it keeps preachers honest, preventing them from lazy recycling of sermons based on their favorite texts.
But did you know there are different lectionaries? The Roman Catholic church follows a lectionary slightly different than the Revised Common Lectionary, with lections emphasizing theological truths central to their tradition, And did you know that there is a Womanist Lectionary? Created by Professor Wilda Gafney, this lectionary includes scores of lections generally ignored by the church, scriptures that Professor Gafney has organized to show how central women are in the story of the Bible, and to counter the patriarchal culture that still works to exclude women’s voices, their voices and visions. In our new “Voices and Visions” series, which Sue Nygren inaugurated today, we see the power of the Holy Spirit working through women and come to understand again how without women there would be no church! So hurrah for the Womanist Lectionary.
But did you know that there is also a “Season of Creation” lectionary, which is used by many churches during the month of September? The lections chosen for each Sunday are centered on the marvels of creation, aina, kai, kanu, holoholona—land, sea, plants, animals—a celebration of God’s beautiful creation. You may be wondering: who makes these decisions, which lectionary to use, and when to use them? Well, in a hierarchical church, with pope or bishop, the decision might be made by highly placed prelates, but in our Congregational tradition, the decision would be made right here, locally, by our deacons in consultation with the pastor, and with the full participation and voice of the congregation.
We are currently in Easter, or “Eastertide,” a fifty day season that will take us to the Day of Pentecost on May 19. During Eastertide, the first lection is taken from the Book of Acts, sometimes called “The Acts of the Apostles,” a book filled with exciting and dramatic stories highlighting the role of the Holy Spirit who empowers ordinary people to do extraordinary things; all of these stories have in common the deep conviction that Jesus —though risen from earth—is nevertheless present among the disciples. We witness the mana—the power of the Holy Spirit, who pushes the disciples beyond their fears into the world, out of locked rooms, beyond their comfort, spreading the good news of the gospel to the four corners of the earth.
In the lection from Acts 4, church is described as a community that showed its solidarity by sharing its possessions. The lectionary editors also give us Psalm 133, which we read together this morning in Hawaiian and English, a song of praise to God for the gift of unity and harmony. This gorgeous psalm is a prose poem filled with word pictures depicting brotherhood. We’re given an image of precious oil poured over the head of Aaron, running down the beard and onto his clothes, an image derived from the ordination rite of the high priests. Now, if you are a woman, you might question the relevance of a long, oil-stained beard to your life, and clamor for Professor Gafney’s womanist lectionary, saying, surely there is a more inclusive image for harmony and unity than a Brooklyn beard, or ZZ TOP! But then the psalmist gives us another image, the dew of Hermon, which might put us in mind of Haleakala, as the lā, the sun, rises in the morning to kiss the dew that waters the aina and gives life to all created things. The psalm is a testimony to kindred living, to aina as our ohana, and a reminder of how often the world has been scarred by a lack of brotherhood which tears at the social fabric, often pitting brother against brother, as in the American civil war, or sematic people against each other, the current and ongoing tragedy of Gaza. Reading this psalm we become aware of how precious unity is, and how it cannot be attained through human effort alone; rather it arrives as a gift, when we recognize that having God as our common parent makes all of us sisters and brothers, a big, inclusive interconnected ohana where all are loved, accepted, cherished, and adored, as we profess each week in the reading of our ōlelo mikiona, our mission statement. Our church is called to be a parable of true communion, a visible place on earth where widely separated people can come to find rest for their souls, and discover that though they may differ by race or gender, nationality or level of educational attainment, all are welcome, all are blessed, all are invited to the table, and if the table is too small, we will go out and make a bigger table.
This morning, I’m captivated by John’s story of how Jesus imparted the Holy Spirit by breathing on his friends. In our Wednesday Zoom Room this week there was a spirited discussion of the Hawaiian practice of honi, which involves the pressing together of foreheads, and the exchange of ha, or breath. The word can also mean kiss, or to give a complimentary salutation to someone, e ha’awi I ko’u honi ala aloha ia lakou, “give them my sweet loving kiss.”
Honi is a mana exchange, an exchange of both power and essence. Hawaiians believe that ancestral DNA is contained within the bones. When Hawaiians connect bone to bone, forehead to forehead, the lineage of both persons is connected on a deep level. And when breath is exchanged, when we conspire, the ha, divine breath, is held within each of us. When we exchange divine breath through the nose, it is the breath of God, the Holy Spirit.
As I listened to Auntie Edie and Bob Nelson and others in the Zoom Room, I marveled at the historical significance of what must have happened when Hawaiians first had contact with those who sailed in from the west in the 1780s and were greeted with a handshake rather than honi. A handshake is a gesture without ha—without breath. One way to think of the haole then is to split the word, ha’ole, that is, one without breath. One imagines the perplexity of Hawaiians encountering Captain Cook and his soldiers without honi, a foreshadowing of what was to come, the troubling image of two uncomprehending people, shaking hands without breath.
Which brings us to Peter. The last time we saw Peter in the gospel story he was cursing in the courtyard, denying three times that he even knew Jesus, a betrayal that must have hurt just as much as Judas’. But behold the honi—Jesus pulls Peter to himself, presses foreheads, and exchanges breath, and Peter and the others receive mana—the power that would turn the whole world upside down. The mana acted like dynamite, thrusting the disciples out of a locked room where they’d been huddled in fear. The Holy Spirit exchanged in the honi released mana to propel the church forward into the world, the mana of God unto salvation. The last, best hope of this world for the unity, harmony, and reconciliation of widely separated people, the power still available to us in this room today, when we are ready to receive it, and be an Easter people. Amen.