Dear Friends,
Today, the Day of Pentecost, is the day when Christians celebrate the coming of the Holy Spirit to the disciples. It is also often considered the birth of the church because it marks the moment when the disciples were empowered by the Holy Spirit to take the message of Jesus to the wider world.
Like many of our Christian holidays, Pentecost coincides with a significant Jewish holiday. This one, called “Shavuot” in Hebrew, is the “Feast of Weeks” or “Feast of 50 Days,” celebrated on the fiftieth day after Passover. The Septuagint, which is the most significant Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, translates this feast as “Pentecost,” and that is the term by which Christians identify this day, which occurs fifty days after Good Friday.
Pentecost marks the end of the days of Eastertide and our return to what’s called “Ordinary Time” in the liturgical calendar. Sadly, however, this year seems like no ordinary time.
We will return to Ordinary Time after a singularly tragic and unordinary week. It saw the number of virus deaths in our nation soar past 100,000. Over 6,000,000 cases have now been confirmed across the globe, and close to 370,000 have died world-wide. Every one of those numbers is a unique, irreplaceable human being, with value and beloved by someone. And each of those deaths has occurred in isolation, leaving those who mourn them isolated as well and apart from the company of loved ones. As E. J. Dionne said in the Washington Post last week, “Mourning death is an intensely private act that calls for public ritual.” The pandemic has robbed us even of the comfort of ritual and the solace of a gathered community of shared support.
And Covid 19 has had a cascade effect on nearly all aspects of our lives, making everything far from ordinary. We continue to live in isolation from one another. We wear masks whenever we’re in public. Because of the virus, over 40 million in the U.S. are now unemployed. Countless businesses are at risk of permanent closure.
The pandemic has also revealed immense inequity in our nation, as we see the poor and people of color suffering and dying in measurably greater disproportionate numbers. The injustice thus exposed has become intolerable for many, and fuses are very short. People across the country are demonstrating and rioting in response to the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis; his death is one of far too many in a long string of racial injustice and police brutality. In the first three months of 2020, 228 civilians were fatally shot by police. The demonstrations are as much about that as they are about the singular outrageous horror of Mr. Floyd’s death. And they are one more reality in the panoply of racial inequality revealed by the pandemic statistics. The disproportionate illness and death rates due to Corona virus and to police brutality among our black and brown sisters and brothers are symptoms of persistent, systemic racial inequities of our society.
And as we have been self-isolating to help limit the spread of the virus, it seems that our nation is isolating itself as well, as it continues to withdraw from leadership on the world stage. We’ve pulled out of vital nuclear weapon and arms control agreements. In the midst of a still-expanding, lethal pandemic, we’re threatening to leave the World Health Organization. We’ve withdrawn from the Paris Climate Accords even as the effects of climate change relentlessly continue, with this year’s hurricane season starting weeks ahead of the usual start date. The list of calamities seems endless.
As I write this, our lives are in flames due to this vicious virus. Our cities are in flames because of racism, injustice, and indifference. Our future seems like it, too, is in flames. And yet, God and the Spirit prevail; today, on this Day of Pentecost, we celebrate the gift of flames – the flames of the Spirit that God gives to us all as a call to extinguish injustice in our communities, our nation, and the world. In brief, Pentecost is a call to Christian witness.
Before you read Acts 2:1-21, today’s reading, I invite you to pray the following prayer of illumination.
God of all nations, who sent Jesus among us as a messenger of peace, grant us your living water to quench our thirst for understanding.
Speak your word to nurture our faith, and enable us to hear and understand it.
Send your Spirit to empower our service.
Awaken in us the gifts you have granted us, that your vision for the world may become our vision. Amen.
As Luke relates the Pentecost story in Acts, the coming of the Holy Spirit was clearly a dynamic, life-changing event. The disciples, still trying to understand the events of Good Friday and Easter only fifty days earlier, were gathered together when “suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind.” (Acts 2:2) Tongues of fire emerged from the wind and divided and “rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.” (Acts 2:3b-4)
Can you even begin to imagine yourself as one of the disciples when this occurred? Would you be terrified? So stunned that you were frozen in place and time? Confused? Or, even in the midst of so many conflicting emotions, might you feel genuine peace? Would you be aware of the indescribable comfort and reassurance of the Holy Spirit?
The commotion of this event of wind, fire, and language was so great that the people in Jerusalem rushed in to see what was happening. And all of them were astonished to hear the rag-tag group of disciples speaking in their respective languages. Remember, the disciples were fishermen and farmers from Galilee; they were very likely nearly illiterate and barely able to speak their own Aramaic language well. And the people who came running in had come to Jerusalem from so many distant places that it takes three verses to list all their home countries, each with its own language. It’s tempting to skip over all those awkward, hard-to-pronounce place names, but don’t skip them; try to give some thought to each of them. They include people who came from nations ranging from the southern shore of the Mediterranean Sea to Egypt, to the Middle East, to Europe, and to parts of the Roman empire stretching as far as northern England. In other words, the entire western world was represented, and yet every single person among those many peoples was able to hear the Good News of Jesus Christ in his or her own native tongue.
We hear the term “Good News” so often that its meaning has lost its potency and value. It’s far too easy to take this revolutionary, world-changing concept for granted. With the Holy Spirit to guide us, with wind and tongues of metaphorical fire to cleanse our minds of preconceptions and misunderstandings, it seems like a good idea to consider what the Good News means for us, especially on this Day of Pentecost.
First, the Good News is that God speaks our language. We are known by God, and the Spirit that is God communicates with us in a way and in a language we can understand. God’s ways are not foreign to us but are comprehensible, accessible, and available to each and every one of us. We have only to allow the wind and fire of God to open our hearts.
Second, God’s spirit works to give each of us our own language – our own expression of God – our own witness to God. We Protestants recognize this as the priesthood of all believers. We do not need a translator, go-between, or mediator to interpret the faith to us. Of course, guidance from fellow-travelers is helpful and much needed at times. But ultimately, when we encounter God (or more likely, when God encounters us), we realize that we speak God’s language and God speaks ours. This is as true for me as it is for each one of you. Indeed, it is from you that I often hear the word of God.
Finally, we see in this first Pentecost, and in all the days since then, that though our languages and stories and gifts are dramatically different from one another, all have immense value. Since the first Pentecost, more words about God and faith have been spoken and written in more languages than we can possibly count. Nevertheless, our oneness – our wholeness and our unity – as God’s people comes, not in spite of those differences, but rather in and through them. Complex as it may be at times, our rich diversity mirrors the diversity of our God, who is made known to us as a triune God: Creator, Redeemer, Sustainer.
Thanks be to our complex yet comprehensible God, whose holy breath in the rush of wind and whose holy warmth in tongues of fire descended on us at the first Pentecost and continue to embrace us to this very day.
Joys and Concerns
For the family and friends of George Floyd who mourn his violent death; for the people of Minneapolis; for all the cities and towns of our nation as we continue to struggle with racism, violence, and a lack of justice for all people.
For all our leaders, including the leaders of our congregation, as they and we contemplate how to move safely into Phase 1 of our reopening process.
For those who struggle with unemployment in this emerging economic crisis, and especially for those whose new loss of income means they face hunger and loss of access to the vital necessities of life.
For all whose long struggle with food and housing insecurity is now further complicated by lack of access to health care during a pandemic.
For the birth of the church that we love and that loves us, celebrated this day.
Let us pray together,
O Holy Spirit, Divine Breath, whose very presence sustains our lives: inspire us with knowledge of you. You are the forces of air. Blow open the doors we use to shut you out of our souls; blow away anything that clouds our ability to see you.
O Holy Spirit, Divine Fire, who tempers our lives: ignite in us the desire to witness to your love. You whose voice spoke from the burning bush, use your flames to burn away the dross and chaff of our anxiety and fear so that we may emerge purified and refined, worthy and able to risk taking up our task as disciples.
Burn out of us narrow-mindedness; breathe into us respect and compassion.
Burn out of us dragging apathy; breathe into us quickening vitality.
Burn out of us hunger for power; breathe into us the generosity of love. Amen.