Pentecost May 23, 2010

Pentecost
May 23, 2010

The Feast of Pentecost means so many things:
--the end of “Eastertide”
--the celebration of the birthday of the church, the capital ‘C’ church, when the Holy Spirit came down upon the disciples and pushed them out and into the world with Christ’s healing message—birthday cake for coffee hour!
--our special (official word ‘patronal’) feast here at Church of the Holy Spirit

I love Pentecost because it is a passionate feast—see all this red?
The description of the first Pentecost in the Book of Acts could hardly be more passionate: the mini-hurricane of wind filling that rented room in Jerusalem, then fire—fire!—above the heads of the astonished men and women, and finally the passionate rush of words, words, words that poured out of their mouths, words—where were they coming from?, words they had no control over, words that translated themselves in midair into all the languages of earth.
They were in the grip of something—Someone—a Spirit—bigger, deeper, way more articulate than themselves. This Someone, this Spirit, was taking control, changing them and their world carrying them along with it.

Have you felt that Spirit? I have, every once in a while. No “sound as if of a great wind,” no tongues of flame above my head (although sometimes it does feel as if my hair is standing on end), but—this is it, for me—a sense of pure wonder at something much bigger than I am moving me where I never expected to be going.
In this church, about eight years ago, a committee headed by Bill Batchelder was charged with looking at how the church might expand its physical space. We met with an architect for about a year. At the end of the year, he gave his report. He showed us that it would be cheaper to buy new land and build or retrofit other buildings, than to try and expand this church building. He was surprised at the outcome.
I remember it so clearly: We all walked out of the Undercroft. I don’t remember what season it was but it was chilly. We looked at one another and we knew, knew!, that the Spirit was pushing us where we’d never expected to go. It was scary and exhilarating all at once.

Pentecost keeps on happening. Recently I was roaming about online and came upon a blog whose headline read: “How the Holy Spirit Moves Today . . . in 100 Words or Less.”
I’d like to read some of the responses and after each, to pause and consider how the words resonate in us.
So . . . “How does the Holy Spirit move us today?”
Here’s Byron Wade, an African-American Presbyterian pastor in North Carolia:
“Many people question if the Holy Spirit is at work in the world today. Put on some different eyes and see—
The claiming of an infant in baptism
The faith of a spouse in the loss of a loved one
The building of a Habitat for Humanity home
Strangers assisting in areas of a natural disaster
The grace exhibited to one another after a difficult discussion
And the ability to awaken to see a new day . ..
Then you can say the Holy Spirit is at work.”

Reflection: Putting on your “different eyes,” look for one place in your life and the world around you where you see the Holy Spirit at work, in your family, the church, the world around us.

Here’s quite a different take on “how the Holy Spirit moves today.” Listen to the words of Sam Hamilton-Poore, Professor of Spirituality at San Francisco Theological Seminary:
“Closer to us than our own breath and breathing, the Risen Christ fills us with his own Spirit—quietly, intimately. With this breath, this power, we then go about the everyday, unspectacular, grubby work of forgiveness. Breath, forgive; breathe, forgive; breathe, forgive. Although we often long for the dazzling or spectacular, we live in a time, a world, in need of people who breathe in, regularly, the quiet power and grace of Christ’s Spirit—and people who, likewise, breathe out, regularly, the power and grace of forgiveness. Our world—so spectacularly broken and burning—needs people for whom reconciliation is as normal and natural as breathing.”

Reflection: Name or imagine someone you need to forgive (building on our Lenten work together on forgiveness). For just a few minutes, breathe in the Spirit, breathe out forgiveness.

In the briefest comment on the blog, a woman named Cas Mata offered: “The Holy Spirit works within the darkest corners of your life, where no one else dares to go.”

Reflection: Take a look at one of these dark corners of your life—a place, maybe of fear, or shame, or deep discouragement—and let the cleansing wind of the Holy Spirit blow through it.

Coda: Pentecost with its rush of wind and fire gives us the Holy Spirit, the mover and changer, who can sweep us off our feet.
But the Holy Spirit comes also as Refresher and Comforter, and I want to end with this image. The Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins captures the Spirit who never ceases to care for us in his poem “God’s Grandeur.” Here are the last lines I’ll read them slowly so we can savor them):
. . . And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights from the black west went,
Oh, morning at the brown brink eastwards springs—
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with, ah, bright wings.