The Spirit Keeps Showing Up
On Memorial Day, we take time to remember those whose lives were lost in military service to our country. Perhaps that was in traditional military service in times of conflict or peace. It is a day to remember specific persons and specific moments in time – single lives that accumulate into a more comprehensive experience of sacrifice and loss, a reality of the tension between war and peace.
Memorial Day is about remembrance. And remembrance is important.
This year, the Memorial Day holiday weekend happens to coincide with the church’s observance of Pentecost. Sometimes we refer to the Christian observance of Pentecost as the “birthday of the church,” a remembrance of the moment the Holy Spirit showed up, as Jesus had promised, to enliven and gather folks of disparate languages and experiences and backgrounds to be a body of people worshiping God, following Jesus, and sharing the good news of God’s love in the world by the power of the Holy Spirit – the Spirit of Christ, who was both embodied and “in the beginning as the word of God.”
Now I realize, in that outrageously long 72-word sentence, I framed a big church-word laden definition of Pentecost. AND I think our work today – and every that follows – is to simplify and expand that a bit. So that Pentecost isn’t a day, it isn’t a remembrance, it isn’t a memory. But rather, I think our work is to see Pentecost – or more specifically, the in-breaking of the Holy Spirit – as an ongoing experience that we watch for and participate in and are changed by.
Let’s unpack that.
Starting in the full scope of scripture…
You may have heard me say (many times) that the revised common lectionary is a three-year cycle of readings, four or five each Sunday covering the Hebrew scriptures, the psalms, the gospels and the epistles, that takes us on a journey across the expanse of the bible hitting much of the storyline and wisdom.
And if you look at the scriptures for Pentecost each year, you’ll encounter so many stories throughout scripture that point to different occasions and ways that the Spirit has been tangible and felt – from wilderness to the valley of dry bones, from the tower of babel to the peace Jesus promises when he departs from the disciples, from the enlivening breath of creation to Jesus breathing on his friends with authority and promise – not just once but again and again and again.
We risk limiting our understanding of the presence and work of the Spirit if we limit our recognition to one event on one specific point in time that we think about one day in the church year. Because the Holy Spirit keeps showing up.
Let’s focus on today’s texts a bit.
The text read from Acts is the traditional telling of the Christian Pentecost story – it is included every year in the lectionary for this day. For background, it is important to remember that Pentecost was one of three traditional feasts kept by observant and faithful Jews. It happened 50 days after the Passover, and was a celebration of harvest – a time when an offering of the abundance of one’s harvest was made at the Temple in Jerusalem.
And so, on that day, there were a lot of people from a lot of different places in Jerusalem, gathered “in that place.” That there were so many geographic locations and languages present reflects the way exile, economy, politics and asylum had impacted the Jewish people over generations. To make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, people would be coming from throughout the Middle East, North Africa, and the Mediterranean. We can’t think of “the Jews” we read about in scripture as a single monolithic culture, and this text reminds us of that.
And as I typed about this, I thought a lot about how we sometimes think that our diversity, our global nature, first is something “new” and second, makes commonality impossible.
Some years ago as I was watching the World Cup, I marveled at how football fans (that’s soccer to most of us in the US) sported different jerseys from clubs all over the world, and they streamed into various host cities speaking so many different languages. But they were all excited and passionate. And somehow their excitement translated within a stadium as they cheered on their favorite clubs. I thought about how Pentecost might have been a little like that – a chaotic roar of different kinds of people suddenly connected by a single thing.
Of course, the single thing in Acts is marked by a rushing wind, tongues of fire and a miraculous ability to share a common language or at least a common understanding of what was being said among them.
But as I mentioned, while this might be the event we point to most often on Pentecost, moments of the Spirit’s in-breaking are everywhere.
In today’s gospel text from John, a text we visited just weeks ago on the Sunday after Resurrection Sunday, the risen Jesus appears to some of the apostles (but not others). Clearly this is Jesus, as he shows them the wounds on his hands and side. And before he leaves, he breathes on them –instructing them thereby to receive the Holy Spirit. And giving them some power and authority – to know what sin is and to forgive sin. Along with that comes some complicating responsibility, right? Because if you know what is sinful, then you probably need to figure out how to avoid it... but without taking a deep dive on sin (we can do that another day), let’s be clear that none of us have mastered being sinless. And that power and authority, held in community, becomes even more complicated.
These are but two moments that shed light on the Holy Spirit in scripture. There are so many more.
Pentecost is not just a memorial event - it serves as a reminder that the Holy Spirit keeps showing up. And that is mighty good news.
Today, at the table up front, one of the activities was an invitation to draw a picture of what it might have looked like when the disciples experienced the Holy Spirit. Does anyone have a picture they would like to share and tell us about?
I wonder…have you felt the presence of the Holy Spirit?
Do you often feel the presence of the Holy Spirit?
Perhaps….
As a remarkable force drawing disparate people and ideas together into a whole?
Or as a surrounding breath that offers peace and centeredness in the middle of hard things?
Or as a sense of calm in the midst of a complicated conversation?
Or as manna in a time of great need?
Or as a remarkable solution that suddenly emerges from hard circumstances?
Or as a chord that the ensemble has been struggling to get right, and then out of nowhere, each voice finds its place?
Or when people show up to sweat and get dirty to make a garden where once there was not one?
Or when a community struggles for a name, and someone says, “what about “FAITH” and all those gathered know it is the right name?
When I first arrived at Faith, I heard a number of remarkable stories from people here about the way the Spirit had showed up for them.
I heard an equal number of people say, wow, I’ve never thought much about the Holy Spirit.
I hope we’ll change that – I hope we’ll commit to paying attention.
Because here’s the thing.
God is still speaking.
The Holy Spirit is still moving.
Are we paying attention?
Are we praising when it happens?
Are we part of how others know about it?
May it be so. Amen.
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