In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The Orthodox are fond of saying—and correctly—that every Sunday is Pascha. You hear less often, but it is no less true, that every Sunday is Pentecost. In fact, the early Church would have had trouble distinguishing between those two feasts; they would have thought it was just one big feast of 50 days, called “the Pentecost.” The Pentecostarion is something we chant between Pascha and Pentecost. This is the end or the last day of Pascha.

The importance of the descent of the Holy Spirit is brought to our minds each Sunday by hymns about the Holy Spirit, every single Sunday. If you come on time for matins, you’ll hear the hymns. They appear—the hymnography—right before the reading of the resurrection gospel. They’re all about the Holy Spirit. We had them this morning, and of course on Pentecost Sunday itself, a lot more hymnography about the Holy Spirit.

The Church will never let us get too far from this event if, in fact, we pray the normal prayers of the Church, one of which is the prayer at third hour each day. I’ve often asked people, because I think all Orthodox Christians should keep the hours—I’m in no doubt about that—but all I mean by that is by simply keep the hour. It doesn’t mean recite the whole monastic office at that hour; I don’t mean that, but simply mark the hour. Mark the hour by the recitation of the Lord’s Prayer or some other prayer like that, but at certain set times of the day… If it was good for Paul and Silas, it should be good enough for us. It’s the “Old Time Religion,” simply as the “Old Time Religion.”

When did Peter and John go up to the temple to pray? At the third hour. What was Peter doing at the sixth hour? He was on the roof, praying. What was Cornelius doing at the ninth hour? He was praying. These hours of prayer have been observed from time immemorial. Remember that the Muslims got them from us! We insist on this: the Muslims got it from us! We never prayed toward Mecca, but Christians, Orthodox Christians, have always prostrated in prayer, facing the east, at certain fixed hours of the day. You might not be able to do that in your office. Try not to do it if you’re a bus driver. [Laughter] But you pray; you stop and pray at certain fixed hours.

I’ve counseled people over the years. I had a lady back in Pennsylvania. She had a watch, and I just told her to set it for those hours, and the watch made a little noise or something like that, and she stopped and said the Our Father.

But if we do pray at least one psalm at those times—most of you will not have time; I know that—but if you do pray at least one psalm at that time, what is the psalm that the Church puts on our lips at the third hour every day? In the Protestant Bibles that you all read, it’s Psalm 51. In an Orthodox Bible, which you’ll get, I hope, before the year is over, it’s Psalm 50, but it’s the same psalm. It’s known as the Miserere. This morning when I incensed—right before the great entrance, I will incense out here, incense the altar area—I’ll recite that psalm by heart. All priests are supposed to know that psalm by heart, because they’re required to recite it by heart.

Three lines of that psalm make it especially appropriate for third hour. Let me read those three lines for you as they appear in the canonical Greek text. Here’s the way these lines go. You’ve already heard them this morning. They’ve already been said about four times this morning, actually. Here are the words. We had them; it started out with vespers last night. We had them at vespers last night, same words. Three lines from that same psalm.

Create a clean heart in me, O God, and renew the right Spirit—

Capital-S. Your Protestant Bibles are wrong. Capital-S.

—the right Spirit within me. Cast me not away from thy face. Take not thy Holy Spirit—

Capital-H, capital-S.

Take not thy Holy Spirit from me. Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation, and strengthen me with thy governing Spirit.

That’s the way it reads in the Greek: “Strengthen me with thy [pnevmati hegemoniko], with thy governing Spirit.”

Now let me suggest, brothers and sisters, that these three verses of the psalm touch on three points appropriate for consideration on Pentecost Sunday. If the Lord didn’t want three-point sermons, he would never have given so many three-point Scriptures. [Laughter]

First: “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew the right Spirit (efthes) within me.” Now, this verse tells us that the renewal of the Holy Spirit is inseparable from purity of heart. In those impure of heart, there is no guidance of the Holy Spirit, no Spirit of wisdom, no Spirit of discernment, no fear of God. Fr. David and myself, and other former Episcopalians, remember very well—probably like me, you recite it every day; in fact, I can’t believe you don’t—the prayer of St. Leo the Great:

Almighty God, unto whom our hearts are opened, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid (go right to the heart) cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of thy Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love thee and worthily magnify thy holy name.

Apparently St. Leo wrote that prayer to be recited before the beginning of the liturgy itself, which in the West was done for centuries. In fact, the Anglicans did it until very recently, or maybe they still do. It says that purity of heart and the presence of the Holy Spirit are inseparable. It is imperative, after all, that the Holy Spirit not be confused with other spirits. St. John says there’s lots of spirits out there. I don’t know any time in history where more people have thought they were led by the Holy Spirit than right now. It seems to me any time there’s a church convention of some sort, where they bring forth some new innovation that’s never been tried before, or has been explicitly condemned by the Church, they say, “The Holy Spirit is guiding us.” But, you see, the confusion of the Holy Spirit with the evil spirit is the unforgivable sin. Please understand that; that’s the unforgivable sin: the confusion of the Holy Spirit with an evil spirit.

That’s the scariest sin we’ve got in the holy Scriptures. Most of us know very well in our own hearts enough to suspect that most of the spirits that speak to us are not of God. Most of us know that. Only the foolish think that every passing thought they have comes from Jesus, but I’ve met plenty of religious fools. “The Lord told me to do this; the Lord told me to do that,” and all they’re talking about is what they feel like doing.

If our own hearts, however, do not warn of us of the danger, God’s holy word does. St. John writes in a text we recently considered at matins—or not matins: vespers, about a week ago; I preached on this text at vespers—“Beloved, believe not”—the word really means “trust not, give yourself not over”—“to every spirit, but try the spirits, whether they be of God.” The Apostle John perceived even in his own day the peril of confusing the Holy Spirit with every manner of deception and mendacity. The Bible insists that there are many spirits in the world that have in mind to deceive and mislead the children of God.

How is it easiest to recognize this spirit? This is the spirit that tells us exactly what we want to hear. That’s one of the clearest ways of knowing when you’re being misled: if the voice is telling you exactly what you want to hear. Those spirits that tell us exactly what we want to listen to are the ones that are most suspect. Now the biblical example I would give for this is King Ahab, who gathers all these prophets around him. We call these “yes prophets”; these are “yes prophets”: beware of “yes prophets.” “Shall I go up or shall I not go up against the Syrians?” And everybody’s standing around and saying yes. One prophet, Micaiah, says no. That’s the one he should have believed, because that was what he did not want to hear. Micaiah describes the evil spirit who boasts in 1 Kings 22—it’s also in Chronicles—“I will go forth and be a lying spirit in the mouth of all the prophets.” The lying spirit is discerned because he’s the one who tells Ahab exactly what he wants to hear.

You remember how Micaiah is treated by Ahab at that point. He throws him in jail and says, “Keep him there and give him bread and water until I get back.” And Micaiah says, “Buddy, you’re not coming back!” Well, something to that effect. [Laughter] But he says, “If you come back, I’m not a prophet.” I don’t know if Micaiah stayed there for the rest of his life, and all the Scriptures are silent on the point, but we know that he didn’t come back. We are properly warned in God’s word about listening to the spirits who tell us exactly what we want, those evil spirits who encourage us in impurity of heart, which brings us to point two.

“Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew the right Spirit within me. Cast me not away from thy face, and take not thy Holy Spirit from me.” I knew we were on the wrong track back when I was still an Episcopalian; I knew we were on the wrong track when that line was removed from the morning prayers. We’ve been saying it for centuries—at least I had been saying it for centuries. “Cast me not away from thy face, and take not thy Holy Spirit from me.” That line, “Take not thy Holy Spirit from me,” was removed, because that line contains a threat. You see, even though we have been sealed by the Holy Spirit in the reception of the sacraments—it’s been a while since we’ve done this, since we did it on Pascha, where these folks stood here and they were anointed, and I said, “The seal of the gift of the Holy Spirit,” and you all shouted out the imperative verb, “Seal! Seal! Seal!”—even though we’ve all been sealed in the Holy Spirit, we must be conscious that the divine assurance is not an act of magic. The maintenance of this seal is to be jealously and fervently defended.

You see, seals themselves can be violated. Even when we are sealed by the Spirit, by grace and in the sacraments, we explicitly pray that God will protect that seal until our life’s end. In fact, that’s the closing prayer of that service. We pray God, “Safeguard the seal that you’ve put on their hearts.” The Holy Spirit’s guarantee, after all, is from God’s side; it’s not from ours. And this prayer of the psalm reminds us each day of the danger that God will cast us away from his presence and take his Holy Spirit from us.

Let me suggest to you that this is a truth to be pondered every day, because if we do lose the Holy Spirit, be assured of this: it will not come suddenly. It will not happen in a moment. You don’t lose the Holy Spirit by inadvertence. No, the loss of the Holy Spirit is gradual and comes from the accumulation of many small infidelities, many minor grievings of the Spirit, many semi-conscious but then eventually conscious compromises with the world, that world in which there is nothing but the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life in which God does not love, and he who loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.

The example I would give of this—I would have to go back to one of the kings of Israel again—is Saul. We look at Saul whom Samuel anointed in the Holy Spirit. Saul on whom the Holy Spirit poured out even the gift of prophecy. Remember, Saul could prophesy among the prophets. Saul did not lose that Holy Spirit in a moment. His downfall came, rather, at the end of a long string of infidelities. This brave young man who heard the messenger from Jabez-Gilead and rushed to their rescue gradually deteriorated into the craven old man who consulted a witch before the battle of Mt. Gilboa.

Look at the disintegration of this man. Humble Saul, who confesses himself to be the least in his father’s house, by degrees waxed into the arrogant man scorned of Samuel and rejected by God. If you want to know what happens to a man of impure heart from whom the Lord withdraws the guidance of the Holy Spirit and casts him away from his face, there’s no need to look further than the sad career of King Saul.

And finally, point three, drawn from the psalm: “Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation, and strengthen me with thy governing Spirit.” If the second prayer fills us with a healthy measure of godly fear, this third line strengthens us in the hope of godly restoration. The Spirit we pray for is the Spirit of our salvation, the Holy Spirit without whom we are not saved. We are not saved solely by God’s declaring us righteous; we are saved because he pours his Holy Spirit into our hearts and makes us children of God. The joy that fills our hearts, this joy of salvation, comes to the pure of heart. Purity of heart is likewise gained gradually, by small choices, everyday choices.

The Spirit for whom we pray in our psalm is what’s called in the Greek text the pnevma hegemonikon, of a governing spirit. To govern is to lead, isn’t it? This is the Spirit that leads, a leading Spirit.

The place I will go to the Scriptures to meditate on this will be St. Paul. I’m thinking of the eighth chapter of the epistle to the Romans. One should always be thinking about the eighth chapter of the epistle to the Romans. [Laughter] I think it’s the longest of St. Paul’s chapters; I think it is. Maybe 1 Corinthians 15, but it’s pretty long. Let me just read you some verse from that.

They that are of the flesh mind the things of the flesh, but they that are of the spirit, the things of the spirit. For to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace. Because the carnal mind is enmity against God.

The same teaching is in St. John.

For it is not subject to the law of God, neither can it be.

He’s talking about the law of rebellion that’s in our flesh.

So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God, but ye are not in the flesh, but in the spirit, if it be that the Spirit of God dwells in you.

“Come and abide in us,” we say. We’ve said that several times already this morning: “Come and abide in us,” and he will not abide in the fleshly person.

For if ye live after the flesh, ye will die. But if ye, through the Spirit, put to death the deeds of the flesh, ye will live. For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God.

If we want to be led by the Holy Spirit, says the Apostle, there are certain things in us that must die. They must die and be buried, once and for all. Our situation in this world really is, to take the title of a famous book on the subject, either-or. Elijah said that on the mountain. “Either-or, guys. It’s the Lord or it’s Baal.”

This is why we pray, “Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation, and strengthen me with thy governing Spirit.” The Spirit of Pentecost, then, my brothers and sisters, calls each of us as persons and all of us as the Church to purity of heart, to resistance against those many spirits that are inimical to the Spirit of God, to that godly guidance that leads us to the transformation of our hearts and the sanctification of our lives.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.