Pentecost 2024
May 17, 2024
Acts 2:1-21
INTRODUCTION
On this Day of Pentecost, the 50th day after Easter, we celebrate the coming of the Holy Spirit. Pentecost, you might be interested to know, was actually a Jewish festival called Shavuot, that fell 50 days after Passover, a day to celebrate the harvest and the giving of the law on Mount Sinai. The Christian celebration is based on the story from Acts, in which the Holy Spirit comes wooshing into Jerusalem as a rushing wind, leaving tongues of fire on the heads of those gathered, and everyone can suddenly speak and understand different languages. By any metric, it’s a remarkable story!
That story is the centerpiece of our celebration today, but it’s not the only story we’ll hear. We will begin by hearing a dramatic reading of the Valley of Dry Bones from Ezekiel. This is a vision Ezekiel has while the Israelites are in exile, and Israel is feeling, well, like a vast pile of dead bones: hopeless. The hand of the Lord leads Ezekiel out to this valley of bones, representing the people of Israel, that seem too dead to possibly live again. Before his eyes, the bones come together, sparking a bit of hope… but they do not live – until the Spirit of the Lord comes into them. Like that Spirit on Pentecost, breathing life into the Church, the Spirit in Ezekiel’s vision breathes life into these slain Israelites.
In all of our readings, we’ll see how the Spirit brings hope and life in implausible and unexpected ways. As you listen, consider where you could use that spark of hope and life in your life – and hear that God sends the Spirit also to that place! Let’s listen.
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| Holy Spirit window at the Taizé monastery in France. |
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
“Do what is on fire inside of you. More often than anything else, the world needs persons who are on fire.” I came across this quote this week from Howard Thurman, who is sometimes called the spiritual leader of the Civil Rights Movement. I used it for a liturgy I was putting together as a part of an event where we watched a documentary about Howard Thurman.
I chose that quote, in part, because, well, I like it! I kind of want to use it to create cards for graduates and anyone about to embark on a new chapter in their life. “Do what is on fire inside of you. More than anything else, the world needs persons who are on fire!” But I was also drawn to it because it reminded me of Pentecost, and that fiery Holy Spirit that came blowing into Jerusalem and igniting the diverse group of Jews who were gathered there. The way that story is told, it is so exciting, and sudden, and the response is immediate. 3000 people were so inspired, that they were baptized that very day! It’s just the sort of reviving and transformative excitement we can only imagine in the church today, which, if we’re honest, can sometimes feel a little same-old-same-old, comfortable, and sometimes also helpful and fun, but stable. That first Pentecost was anything but stable and comfortable!
This week, having explored Howard Thurman’s approach to faith, and considering where we are as a congregation, I read the Pentecost story a bit differently. First of all, one of Thurman’s trademarks was that he was a contemplative. Contemplation, as defined by the Center for Action and Contemplation, is “a way of listening with the heart while not relying entirely on the head. [It] is a prayerful letting go of our sense of control and choosing to cooperate with God and God’s work in the world.” Sounds lovely, but also, it sounds really hard, especially for heady people like myself and I know many of you! Contemplation is so different from logic, which has a clear way forward, a starting point, an ending point, and a defined outcome. On the contrary, contemplation may have a clear starting point, but not an ending point, no clear outcome, no guarantee of something measurable on the other side, if there even is an “other side.” That nebulous place is not a comfortable one for many of us! We like our SMART goals, our action steps, our expected outcomes, and contemplation does not seem to fit in with those objectives.
As I brought all of this to the dramatic Pentecost story, I started to see some things in new ways. First of all, I noticed the waiting. With what we hear today there isn’t much waiting, but recall what happened in the days before this: 10 days prior, Jesus ascended into heaven, telling the disciples that the Spirit would come “not too many days from now.” So they have been waiting… waiting for… something… but they don’t know what it looks like, they don’t know when exactly it will come, and they don’t know what it will feel like or what its effect will be. Boy, is that hard waiting. It’s one thing to know when your waiting will end, or waiting for you-know-exactly-what. But this? Well, it's a lot like contemplation! Something you start without knowing what will happen, or if, or when, or maybe why you’re even doing it. That’s a pretty uncomfortable place to be, especially for people often driven by their heads, and logic.
And yet, discomfort isn’t such a bad thing. Sit in that discomfort long enough, and you might come to notice something that your comfort had kept hidden. That creative boredom might just yield a new spark that hadn’t previously had space or air to ignite. It might just make space for the Holy Spirit to come rushing in!
And that is just what happens to those gathered in Jerusalem. Sure enough, like a rushing wind and tongues of fire, in comes the Holy Spirit. There is certainly a sense of chaos in the telling, but there is also the undeniable clarity and understanding that comes from it. There is the understanding of language – people from all corners of the known world, each speaking their own native language, suddenly understand each other! There is a clarity to it! And there is also the understanding and satisfaction that the thing they were praying for and waiting for, that thing they knew next to nothing about, whose timing and essence and mode of operation had been previously a mystery – has finally arrived! Now, they know something that they had not known before.
Contemplation is like this, too. You pray, and listen, and hold space, and sit in that listening place… and then suddenly, something becomes clear. You get that feeling in your stomach that directs you down the path you know you need to walk, that gut instinct that is suddenly so obvious, though it was completely obscured until now. You now know, without a doubt, that you need to… leave your job, or marry this person, or take that trip. You have clarity about your vision for the future. Contemplation made this clarity possible.
But then… despite your newfound understanding… the realization seems impossible, implausible, untrustworthy. We see that in my favorite part of this story: “Others sneered and said, ‘They’re drunk.’” Because that makes more sense, doesn’t it? A mysterious wind, people claiming they can speak or understand a language they never could before, something called a “Holy Spirit” – how could that possibly make sense? A Holy Spirit cannot be measured or understood. Your decision to leave your job or marry that person or take that trip doesn’t make a bit of sense. You must be drunk, or otherwise out of your mind, because this thing you are declaring to be by the power of the Holy Spirit doesn’t make any sense. And things that don’t make sense should not be tolerated. They are uncomfortable, and uncertain, and do not fit in with what a good head would do.
Have you ever experienced this? When you knew in your heart that something is the right decision, against all odds or logic? And someone, even someone you trust and care about, tells you, “That’s not a good choice. Just look at this logically, and you’ll make a better choice.” It can be tempting to cave to that! As a self-proclaimed rule-follower, I struggle when someone points out the error or lack of logic in my decisions, when my heart’s choices, guided by the Spirit, are dismissed. Once again, contemplation results in discomfort.
So, here we are: we’ve got the waiting, and contemplation. We’ve got that sudden understanding that comes when the Spirit finally arrives. We’ve got the doubt and skepticism that creeps in when we would dare give more credence to the wacky and unpredictable and illogical Spirit rather than the stable and trustworthy brain. Finally, we have Peter – dear, impulsive Peter, who is a model for getting caught up in the blowing wind and just going with it. He jumps to his feet (I imagine him jumping up on a rock or a table or something) and implores them to “Listen!” For once, Peter says what comes to his mind in the moment, and with the Spirit’s help, it is exactly the right thing. This Spirit-led moment is so much the right thing, that 3000 people are persuaded that very day to ride that wave with him, to put aside their desire for a sense of control, to stop relying entirely on their head, and to choose to cooperate with God and God’s work in the world.
That is the sort of transformation and action that can come from contemplation. That is people on fire! I have usually imagined the contemplation practice that guided Howard Thurman and some of the great Civil Rights leaders and many others as mostly a quiet, even passive one. But here we see how making space for the Spirit to enter in can be absolutely transformative, for us as individuals, and for our communities – our churches, our country, our world.
I’ve been thinking about it especially this week in relation to the large Keymel bequest that we are still waiting to receive (like those disciples, waiting for the Spirit that was allegedly coming “not many days from now” – which we’ve been hearing since last fall!). I’ve thought about it in regard to the process of discerning how best to use that money so that it would be the transformative gift that it has the potential to be. The waiting is hard, the contemplation feels unending, and it is tempting just to plan on spending that money in concrete and logical ways. But I wonder what would happen, how the Spirit would move, if we committed to intentional contemplation on how the Spirit plans to transform our ministry and opportunities, to, as our mission statement reads, “spread the word of God, build a strong community, and make the world a better place”?
As we continue to wait, I invite you to join me in contemplation – on this, and on whatever in your life needs the Spirit’s unsettling, illogical movement. Inspired by Howard Thurman, I’m planning on building in just a few minutes a day to start, time when I sit in the discomfort of not relying on my head, leaving space, and waiting for the spark of that fiery Spirit to ignite in my heart, to set me on fire. Just think what transformation that wacky and wild Holy Spirit might bring about in our lives!
Let us pray… Come, Holy Spirit… come, Holy Wind… come, Holy Fire... Amen.
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