Feast of Pentecost

From before the earth began, the Spirit was.

When humankind took its first breath, it was the Spirit giving breath.

And so, throughout time, the Spirit of God has been intimately present in everything.

But like the air we breathe, this life of God within us and about us is often beyond our perceiving. But thanks be to God, our acknowledgement of the Spirit has no bearing on the reality of the Spirit or the nearness of the Spirit. God is as God will be whether we are waking or sleeping, mindful or in darkness – this wind of God is forever sweeping across the face of the deep, and all that is, no matter how chaotic it may be.

And sometimes we sense it. Something in us awakens and we whisper with our little breath, “You’re here, God, aren’t you?” And in silence the Spirit answers.

And so, this deep work of faith is often worked out in silence – our spirits reaching out to mingle with the Spirit of God, an encounter of deep mystery beyond words.

Of course, the Spirit of God is not ours to control, but certainly ours to seek.

And to seek, not by ourselves alone, but with one another, as in this morning’s prayers.

Ronald Rolheiser writes,

Pentecost did not happen to a solitary man or woman, praying on a mountaintop, in a church, in a desert, or under a tree. It happened to a group of men and women at a church meeting. Moreover, it did not happen at a triumphal church meeting, where men and women were sure of themselves as they prayed to God in confidence. It happened at a church meeting where men and women, frightened for their future, were huddled in fear, confusion, and uncertainty, but were gathered in faith and fidelity despite their fears. This is how scriptures describe it.

The Spirit of God is not ours to control, but is ours to seek. Together. We can gather. We can pray, whatever our starting point of faith may be. And these prayers are not just so many assembled words, printed in the bulletin, but so many assembled spirits, joining together our most honest yearnings for God and God’s presence and God’s renewal of this weeping creation, so riddled with fissures and boundaries and sorrows.

So may it be, that these prayers are like so many birds – launching and darting together – in energy and purpose.

And so may it be, the Spirit’s presence is like so many birds – darting and swarming with us.

And so may it be, the answered prayers are like so many birds – the Kingdom of God alive in our midst – we now as partners with God in healing the divisions that beset us.

That is why, in the Pentecost story, when the Spirit rushed in like a violent wind, it empowered the disciples to speak in all the tongues of the Mediterranean world, that a people divided by culture and regional religions could be drawn together in the one story of God’s redeeming love.

That is why, when Paul describes the gifts of the Spirit, the gifts are always and only those which empower the one to bless the other – so the one who blesses and the one who is blessed are made one, made to drink of the one Spirit.

It is this spirit of oneness that will define us as a people of God. As Jesus prayed last week: “The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me” (John 17:22-23).

So may it be, the world would be like so many birds – animated from their shelters of dread – to rise and fly with us and the Spirit in the atmosphere of hope, of God with us.

And, when evening comes, may we all come to roost, in the one tree, the Tree of Life, to dwell there in safety, forever.

Let us commit ourselves to this work of grace, with hope of God’s Spirit meeting us in the task, creating a world with the spirit of peace, the spirit of blessing, and the spirit of truth, where all may flourish.

After all, we are a Pentecost people.