What can we say May 19? Pentecost

    Acts 2:1-21. I’ve heard myself, from the pulpit, declare that Pentecost is the “reversal of Babel.” But then am I saying diversity is a problem to be fixed? At Pentecost, the miracle is understanding, not sameness. God delights in diversity and understanding. A far cry from the dominant ones saying “You must speak our language here.”

   Willie Jennings names Acts 2 as “the epicenter of the revolution,” “the revolution of the intimate.” God breaks everybody open so they can become a radically new, welcoming, fully engaged community. The disciples have no grand strategy. God just did this. It was uncontrollable – like the wind, with immense if unseen power.

   Jennings suggestively reminds us that, even if they’d asked for the Holy Spirit, they never asked for this! This is “untamed grace,” as all grace, ultimately is. He hears an echo of Mary learning the Spirit had “overshadowed her.” The Spirit transforms not just the ears, but mouths and bodies. God is like “the lead dancer, taking hold of her partners, drawing them close and saying Step this way.”

   Clergy dig Pentecost – and yet, as mainline Protestants, don’t we suffer s kind of reticence about the Holy Spirit? Which isn’t wrongheaded: I’ve heard so much sappy chatter in my lifetime about who’s got the Spirit (and thus who doesn’t), where the Spirit is (and thus isn’t), powerful emotional experiences that feel to me to be more about intuition and native-born gushing than a movement of the Spirit – so then, perhaps in the way Protestants have barely spoken of Mary in order not to be Catholic, I’ve shied away so as not to be confused with the emotivism that dominates so much of American religiosity. 

   We’re rightly wary of trivial, emotional claims of the Spirit’s movement – or self-indulgent, closeted views. Yet in our wise wariness, do we miss the Spirit? Or trivialize it ourselves: oh, the Spirit led me to speak to the cashier who was so grateful I was warm to her? Do we dress up the worship space in red – or our people in red – and pat ourselves on the back for having done Pentecost once more?

   Broaden your homiletical thinking via Mark Noll’s summary of how Christianity has spread to other, very different places: “Christianity appears more and more as an essentially pluralistic and cross-cultural faith. It appeared first in Asia, then Africa and Europe. Immediately those who turned to Christ in these ‘new’ regions were at home in the faith. When they became believers, Christianity itself became Asian, European and African. Once Christianity is rooted in someplace new, the faith itself also takes on something from that new place. It also challenges, reforms and humanizes the cultural values of that place. The Gospel comes to each person and to all peoples exactly where they are. You do not have to stop being American, Japanese, German, or Terra del Fuegian in order to become a Christian. Instead, they all find rich resources in Christianity that are perfectly fitted for their own cultural situations. It is by its nature a religion of nearly infinite flexibility because it has been revealed in a person of absolutely infinite love.”

   For Thomas Merton, Pentecost is more listening than talking: “The mystery of speech and silence is resolved in Acts. Pentecost is the solution. The problem of language is the problem of sin. The problem of silence is also a problem of love. How can one really know whether to speak or not, and whether words and silence are for good or for evil, unless one understands the 2 divisions of tongues – Babel and Pentecost. Acts is a book full of speech. The apostles down downstairs and out into the street like an avalanche… Before the sun had set, they had baptized 3000 souls out of Babel into the One Body of Christ.”

   When rethinking Pentecost, it’s worth recalling that, in Judaism, Pentecost is the day that commemorates the giving of the Torah on Mt. Sinai. And don’t be tempted to say We have the Spirit, the law is kaput. The Spirit enables the fulfillment of the law; have you read Matthew 5??  The Spirit doesn’t unleash a burst of emotion; the Spirit plants and grows holiness in us. “The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, self-control” (Gal. 5). He/she is the “Spirit of Holiness” (Rom. 1:4).

   Growing things? Pentecost was also the celebration of a harvest. The Spirit, when you were sleeping, caused things to grow – and we humbly give thanks to God for the fruit of the earth. Do you garden? Or do you know someone who farms? Tell your people about the Spirit moving over the fields.

   Romans 8:22-27. For Paul, this same Spirit does amazing, tender, desperately needed work in each Christian's soul – and on the Church! And even in the world. Romans 8 in its entirety is a deep ocean we'll never fully sail across or understand its depths. Back in verse 15, sadly not in today's lectionary sectioning, the Spirit undercuts any sense that we are docile slaves, and any slavery to anything not of God; the Spirit stirs in us the reality that we are adopted into God's family - the greatest privilege of which is being able to pray with the same intimacy to God that Jesus exhibited.  The Spirit invites and liberates us to pray, "Abba! Father!" 

   And then Paul, so powerfully, speaks of the Spirit groaning within us, helping us in our weakness, sighing in us when we are clueless how or what to pray. Wow. I have used this often during the pandemic, and people resonate. When you sigh, in despair (as it feels to you!), this is actually God’s Spirit praying in you. Oh my. Such comfort, and hope. "Spirit of the living God, fall afresh on me" - please, and now. "Spirit of God, descend upon my heart; wean it from earth; through all its pulses move. Stoop to my weakness, mighty as Thou art, and make me love Thee as I ought to love."

   John 15:26-16:15. If we fast-forward a little to the Gospel text: at the Ascension, Jesus leaves, and the disciples must carry on down here - perhaps the way Gandalf kept leaving the hobbits to fend for themselves, trusting them with the fate of Middle Earth! But we are never as alone as they were. The Spirit Jesus leaves behind does amazing things, according to John 15-16. The Spirit bears witness to Jesus - so the pressure isn't all on us!  The Spirit convinces the world of sin - and us who are in the world but not good at being not of the world.

   Jesus tantalizes by suggesting things will be even better for the disciples once he's gone! Why shouldn’t Jesus just stay? “Only through the internal presence of the Paraclete do the disciples come to understand Jesus fully” (Raymond Brown). The Spirit's business isn't a starring role anyhow. The Spirit is deferential, glorifying the Father and the Son, like the stage director you never see but who makes the show unfold and keeps the stars in the bright lights, looking good.