May 31, 2020 (Pentecost)
Acts 2:1-21
Pentecost! The Holy Spirit is here! It’s the church’s birthday! Woohoo!
What an amazing experience. There they all are, gathered together for over a week now, praying like crazy because Jesus has told them that something’s coming.
And then everything just goes crazy! Crazy like violent wind! Crazy like tongues of flame!
And the Holy Spirit begins to speak through them.
This was the birth of the church. And like almost every other birth there’s ever been, it wasn’t a neat and tidy experience. It didn’t happen the way we Presbyterians prefer—you know, decently and in good order. Because when the Holy Spirit shows up, things can get wild!
Now, we most often think of the Holy Spirit as a gentle breeze, a whispered urging. We have many words for the Holy Spirit. Comforter. Advocate. Counselor. Breath of God. As in the song:
Breathe on me, Breath of God,
fill me with life anew …
Calm. Gently persuasive. Like the dove that Christian artists have always used to represent the Spirit.
And surely the Holy Spirit can occur in our lives that way. But not always.
I love the representation of the Spirit in Celtic Christianity. The image they use is not a nice, gentle dove but a wild goose. And a wild goose is more like the Spirit on that ancient Pentecost … and what the Spirit can be in our lives—honking, squawking, dive-bombing us—roaring like a tornado, flaming like fire—so that we pay attention.
I don’t know about you, but I can ignore a dove. Coo coo. But a wild goose? Squawk squawk! When the Holy Spirit wants to get our attention, the Spirit honks. Pushes. Gets in our faces.
The role of the Holy Spirit—on that first Pentecost and on this Pentecost—is to disrupt our lives. To show us that we’re not in charge—God is. To squawk us into action when we’ve gotten comfortable or complacent or stuck—or scared.
And oh, don’t we need the Holy Spirit in this country today! For this is a difficult time, a frightening time. Political dysfunction, racial inequality, a deadly and uncontrolled disease, a devastating blow to the economy … people trying to protest peacefully, in order to be seen and heard in their grief and anger, and others smashing windows, burning buildings, wreaking chaos.
“The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters.”
That was the first line Friday night of Heather Cox Richardson’s online newsletter. Richardson is a professor of American history (and if you want a clear view of what’s going on in this country, from a historical perspective, I highly, highly recommend her).
“The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters.” That’s a quotation from one Antonio Gramsci, who wrote from prison under Mussolini in the 1930s, but oh, doesn’t it resonate today!
The time of monsters. We grieve. We lament. We wail and sob … we protest, and we pray. And the Holy Spirit is right there with us.
Richardson ended that same letter with this:
Chaos does not have to destroy us. … At this crazy, frightening, chaotic moment, it is possible to reach across old lines and create new alliances, to reemphasize that most Americans really do share the same values of economic fairness and equality before the law, and to rebuild a “government of the people, by the people, and for the people.”
The old world is certainly dying, but the shape of the new world struggling to be born is not yet determined.[i]
Holy Spirit! May we do that work—that reaching across old lines and creating new alliances. May we be part of that healing, that shaping of a new world.
You see, we play two roles in the Pentecost story. The first is that we are the visitors to Jerusalem: Parthians and Medes … Blacks and Whites, indigenous and immigrants … Republicans and Democrats … progressive Christians and fundamentalists. We come from our own “bubbles”—our own accumulations of values and fears, saints and demons, stories and truths.
Across our “bubbles” we don’t speak the same languages, but the miracle of Pentecost is that, through the Holy Spirit, we can all hear the message of the Word.
Thanks be to God, the Holy Spirit keeps squawking at us—honking and sometimes dive-bombing—so that we pay attention. For the Spirit speaks in the languages of all our bubbles.
The disciples spoke the Word—the love of God through Jesus the Christ—and through the Holy Spirit, that Word cut through the differences, burst the bubbles. And “those who welcomed [this] message were baptized,” we read a little later in Acts 2, “and that day about 3,000 persons were added.”
Our second role is to heed the coo coo nudging and the squawk squawk pushing of the Holy Spirit, so that we proclaim the mighty works of God—the love of God for all people, across all our differences—in words that others can hear and in acts that show them God’s love in ways they can understand.
In these days, God says,
I will pour out my Spirit on all people.
Your sons and daughters will prophesy.
Your young will see visions.
Your elders will dream dreams.
Even upon my servants, men and women,
I will pour out my Spirit in those days,
and they will prophesy.
Through the Holy Spirit, we have the power to prophecy and to shape the new world that is coming. To reach across old lines and to create new alliances, to work for economic and political and social justice for everyone. To create a world in which no one need declare bankruptcy because of medical bills, a world in which no family has to balance putting food on the table and paying the rent, a world in which no one—of any race or color or sexual orientation or gender identity or immigration status or religion—no one need fear for their life when jogging or driving or bird watching or sleeping in their own bed.
Come, Holy Spirit!
Alleluia. Amen.
[i] Heather Cox Richardson. “Letter from an American,” May 29, 2020.
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