Pentecost - Holy Spirit, breathe fresh life into us

Scripture: Acts 2:1-21 or Numbers 11:24-30  • Psalm 104:24-34, 35b  • 1 Corinthians 12:3b-13 or Acts 2:1-21  • John 20:19-23 or John 7:37-39

Especially during this time of pandemic and divisive rhetoric, Debi Thomas, in her truly remarkable “I Will Pour Out My Spirit,” gives us a lesson of wisdom and hope as she reflects on the Scripture on this Pentecost Sunday. Click the link “I Will Pour Out My Spirit” to read her essay. Here is a snippet.

“Like the disciples in our Gospel reading for this week, we are huddled together behind locked doors, waiting for Jesus to come among us and say, “Peace be with you.”  Waiting for him to breathe on us.  Waiting for him to speak the words we need so desperately: “Receive the Holy Spirit.”  

Pentecost — from the Greek pentekostos, meaning "fiftieth," was a Jewish festival celebrating the spring harvest, and the revelation of the law at Mount Sinai.  In the New Testament Pentecost story Luke tells, the Holy Spirit descended on 120 believers in Jerusalem on the fiftieth day after Jesus's resurrection.  The Spirit empowered them to testify to God's saving work, emboldened the apostle Peter to preach to a bewildered crowd of Jewish skeptics, and drew three thousand converts from around the known world in one day.  For many Christians, Pentecost marks the birthday of the Church.

The story Luke describes is a fantastical one, full of details that challenge the imagination.  Tongues of fire.  Rushing wind.  Bold preaching.  Mass baptism.  But at its heart, the Pentecost story is not about spectacle and drama.  It’s about the Holy Spirit showing up and transforming ordinary, imperfect, frightened people into the Body of Christ.  It’s about God disrupting and disorienting our humdrum ways of engaging the sacred, so that something new and holy can be born within and among us.  It’s about the Spirit carrying us out of suspicion, tribalism, and fear, into a radical new way of engaging God and our neighbor...

But even in that atmosphere of suspicion and cynicism, some people spoke, and some people listened, and into those astonishing exchanges, God breathed fresh life.

Something happens when we speak each other's languages.  We experience the limits of our own words and perspectives.  We learn curiosity.  We discover that God's "great deeds" are far too nuanced for a single tongue, a single fluency.

I hope that the Pentecost story compels us, because it's a story for this time, this moment.  As we continue to face the coronavirus pandemic as people of faith, we will be tempted to grow complacent, or to despair, or to turn in on ourselves and forget that we are part of a much larger whole.  We live in a world where words have become toxic, where the languages of so many cherished "isms" threaten to divide and destroy us.  The troubles of our day are global, civilizational, catastrophic.  If we don't learn the art of speaking across the borders that currently separate us, we will burn ourselves down to ash.”

Jesus' prayer for us - that we all may be one

Scripture: Acts 1:6-14  • Psalm 68:1-10, 32-35  • 1 Peter 4:12-14; 5:6-11  • John 17:1-11

This is the Sunday following Ascension Day. The gospel account is of Jesus praying with his disciples on the night before his crucifixion. This is known as Jesus' priestly prayer for us before he leaves us to go to the Father. Both of our authors give us perspective during this time of social distancing, loneliness, and issues of trust and hope. We need Jesus' prayer for us, especially now. Read The Rev. Anna Tew's " Split Screen," and Debie Thomas' "That they may be one." 

We Are Not Alone - Thanks Be to God!

Scripture: Acts 17:22-31  • Psalm 66:8-20  • 1 Peter 3:13-22  • John 14:15-21

This week Jesus tells his disciples, and us, two weeks before the Pentecost (birthday of the church) that we are not alone. He said he will ask the Father, and He will send another Advocate, the παράκλητος (paraclete), a helper, counselor, who provides guidance, consolation, strength, and support to us.

The Rev. Jason Cox, in "Paul: Appealing or Appalling" (I would have called it "Taking it to the Greeks," gives us insight into what God, and this Advocate, is like, as Paul appeals to the Greeks in Athens,  the birthplace of western philosophy, at the Areopagus (Mars Hill) in the shadow of idols of Greek gods and goddesses.  The Greeks, like us, were searchers, as is evidenced by their monument to the "unknown God." What did they, and do we search for? What idols stand in our way of seeing God, and receiving God's help. In what ways is God, and his Advocate present today?

In "Orphaned? Reflections on John 14:15-21," The Rev. Dr. Anna Hosemann-Butler, poignantly tells and shows us that we are not alone.

In this Sunday's Scripture, Jesus gives us a new commandment, Love one another. As I have loved you, love one another."  And then he tells us how to love one another, as he loves us. By keeping his commandments.  In "Love and Obedience," Debie Thomas says, "Everything else we say and do as believers in Christ comes down to this.  Prayer, evangelism, repentance, generosity, asking, seeking, alms-giving, truth-telling, honoring, serving, feeding, sharing… all of it, in the end, comes down to love.  The essential question, the searing question, is this: Do we love one another as Jesus has loved us?  Or do we not?  He says, 'Love one another as I have loved you.'  As in,  for real.  As in, the whole bona fide package.  Authentic feeling, honest engagement, generous action." Not just acting in rote obedience. But as she, and our other authors say, We don't have to do what seems impossible ourselves. We are not alone. As we say, and believe, when we reaffirm our baptismal covenant, "We will, with God's help." Thanks be to God.

Do you know the way?

Scripture: Acts 7:55-60  • Psalm 31:1-5, 15-16  • 1 Peter 2:2-10  • John 14:1-14

This week's readings contain the imagery of rocks and stones - the stoning of Stephen, the rock of refuge and fortress in Psalm 31, and living stones building a spiritual house, believing on the living stone which is the cornerstone the builders rejected. See "And then the Stones Cried Out, " by Native American writer Coyote Terry Aleck and Melanie Delva.

These passages are read together with this week's gospel account in which Jesus tells us he is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, and that he goes to prepare a house for us - that in his Father's house there are many mansions. That no one comes to the Father except by him. What does he mean? What is the way? What are false gods? Do you know the way? See Debie Thomas' "You Know the Way," and Susan Butterworth's "All We Need."

Is Jesus inclusive or exclusive in his statement that no one comes to the Father except by him? Consider "No Power Shortage Here, " by The Rev. Dr. Fred A. Anderson.

The Gate, the Good Shepherd

Scripture: Acts 2:42-47  • Psalm 23  • 1 Peter 2:19-25  • John 10:1-10

This is Good Shepherd Sunday in Lectionary Year A. This year we read the first part of the Good Shepherd story in John's gospel, verses 1-10. In Year B, we read verses 11-18. In this year's lesson, Jesus is telling his diverse audience about the shepherd who is the one who enters by the gate, who calls the sheep by name, whose sheep know him, and that he is the gate of the sheep. 

 At another point, Jesus says that he who enters by him (the Gate) will be saved. He leads the sheep in and out, and they will find pasture. Read this in conjunction with the 23rd Psalm. Jesus says that all who came before him were thieves and bandits, who came to destroy, but the sheep did not listen to them. In contrast, Jesus said he came that they might have life, and life abundantly.

Does this mean, as we hear so many Christians say, that Jesus only offers salvation and life to a select few? What does Jesus mean when he says he is the Gate? Read The Rev. Whitney Rice's "The Gate," and Debie Thomas' "I am the Gate."

The picture above is of the fence and Gate to Alex's garden. We worked together to clear, hoe, plant and sow the garden, and even to paint the fence and gate. Working in the garden helps me understand Jesus as the Gate, as well as the Garden of Gethsemane, the vine and the branches, the parable of the sower, and the 23rd Psalm.