Today we celebrate the Feast of Pentecost, the Birthday of Christ’s Church by the Power of Mother Spirit, and the Third in a Trinity of High Holy Days in the Christian Liturgical Year.. With the Holy Mother and the Midwives, we witnessed the Very Good Love of Eternal God made flesh at Christmas. With Mary Magdalene and the women who stayed, we tasted the everlasting goodness of the Bread of Life, the Living Water who is Christ, Resurrected at Easter. And today, with the 12 Apostles, a few other men, and at least a hundred Women, according to Acts 1, we are Born anew of Breath and Fire, formed into One Body — the Body of Christ, and His Second Coming— by the Indwelling of God’s Eternally Hovering Holy Spirit. Our Beginning, Our Brother, Our Breath: One God, now and forever. Today we are invited to cease any efforts to wrangle the wind and instead practice presence: To dwell within the ineffable who dwells within us by the promise of the Son who was indwelled by the Father in whom he also dwelled. If it all sounds and feels chaotic and confusing: congratulations and welcome to Pentecost! We are in Very Good company as we enter the scene and witness Spirit, who comes more like a crashing hurricane or a raging fire than a balloon that flits and floats and weightlessly falls into the eager arms of those She has come to transform. Before we go further, a word about my use of feminine pronouns for Holy Spirit. I do not use them simply because using gender-expansive language for our Unspeakable God is a fun practice, especially during PRIDE month, although that would certainly be reason enough. Nor is it just a nod to the Triune One who claimed They/Them/Us pronouns in Genesis 2, though They most definitely did. Instead — really, also — I have, did, and will continue to refer to Her in the feminine because that is how Jesus referred to Her. Not in the Greek, which, like many Latin-based languages, misgenders Spirit; but in the languages he actually spoke: For in both his native tongue Aramaic, and Hebrew, his ancestral and rabbinic language, the Spirit who breathes and births us into Being, first in the Beginning and now here at Pentecost, is a distinctly and definitively feminine Presence. And if there’s one thing Pentecost demonstrates in most spectacular fashion, it is that Words have power — words are power -- and language matters. It mattered at the Beginning when God told us who They were. It mattered to the Living Word who spoke all creation into being. It mattered to Spirit whose indwelling landed as foreign languages in the mouths of the faithful. So it matters to me, especially today, as we celebrate Her coming in fullness, all wind and fire and Breath. Now, while this is a unique pouring-out of Her Power and Presence, it is not the first. She is one strand of the Eternal Triune thread who, together with Jesus Christ and God the Father, weaves Right Now into Back Then and Always Was, even as all that was and is, including all of us, are stitched and sewn into What Forever Will Be; the whole of it a glorious tapestry called Eternal Life. So I’d like, for a moment, to trace the length and breadth and strength of that thread, not just from Pentecost to Easter to Christmas, but even farther back, with the Apostle Peter, to the prophet Joel. For it was Joel who received Spirit’s visionary promise of the Eternal Kin-dom into which all are called in our own language, and from which none of us are excluded. And it is his vision which Spirit Breathes to Life at Pentecost, when the people are transformed and the Church is born. But it is more than the fulfilment of Joel; It is also, as Rev. Dr. Wil Gafney writes, “a transformation of Shavuot, The Jewish Festival of Weeks, which marks the end of the holy days that begin with Passover just as Pentecost now marks the end of Easter season. Passover marked redemption from slave labor. Pentecost was marked by rest from honest labor. Passover memorialized a bitter harvest with the bread of affliction. Pentecost memorialized the new harvest with its first fruits. Passover commemorated the procession out of Egypt and the death of their firstborn. Pentecost was commemorated with a procession of newborns as the first fruits of their families.” So we begin to see that the God of the Prophets, who led Israel to Liberation through the Red Sea and the Desert as a Hovering cloud by day and a pillar of Fire by night; is the Same Spirit who rushes in like wind and fire at Pentecost, to birth and indwell the Church Eternal. It is the same tapestry, and the same Thread woven throughout. If we go back even further, to long before the prophets, and even before Israel’s enslavement and Exodus from Egypt, we can witness Holy Spirit the first time she birthed new life through language, in Genesis 11’s Story of Babel. Now, while some theologians, including many I respect, admire, and generally yield to, warn against such comparisons because they’ve been used to spark wildfires in strangers’ lands, I’m a glutton for a hot take, and I firmly believe this particular spark can be — like most all fire can be, especially Spirit’s fire — the kind that warms the bones in the deadest of winter and lights the whole house from the hearth. Through the light of Her glow we see a Truer Truth revealed in the weaving of Babel and Pentecost . Again, the wisdom of Dr Gafney: “It may not seem like it but even the tower of Babel…is about God’s preference for diversity in the family of God. Yes,” she says, “at one level the story is about the Israelite low opinion of Babylon. That’s where the story is set. The story is the Israelite version of Babylonian history, not exactly unbiased. We are supposed to think that those Babylonians are…arrogant to build a tower to reach up into heaven. And we are supposed to notice that their efforts were so puny that God had to come down to even reach the top. But if we just ridicule the Babylonians, we miss the point that they wanted to reach heaven, to be in contact with their God, they wanted a direct path. That’s not a terrible thing. And even though the Israelites considered them to be enemies, God came down to see about them just as God came down to see about Israel.” She goes on: “The Babel Story is topsy-turvy: People reach out to heaven and are pushed away. People working together harmoniously are separated and confused. God doesn’t need towers or temples to reach God’s people, so God directs peoples’ creative energy elsewhere. God creates diversity out of uniformity. What looks like chaos and confusion is community building. The babble of Babel is not non-sense. People found themselves able to understand some of the people around them, those people became their people and each group grew into a distinct people with their own language and culture, enriching the beauty of God’s creation. God scattered them across the earth, that the world might be filled with diversity.” You see where we’re headed as we move into the heart of Pentecost, don’t you? What Babel and Pentecost both show us is that unity, oneness, and life are not created as unique individuals and cultures are amassed and contracted into a single homogenous center -- a center that sucks everything into itself, consumes all particularities, and swallows each one’s light the way a Black Hole does, producing nothing regenerative in the end; just radioactive toxicity. Instead, and always, Life extends and expands ever-outward like an earth covered in cultures and languages; like a universe full of galaxies that are full of stars that are each full of their own remarkable light and life -- Stars that connect across and throughout the cosmos, always reflecting and be reflected in each other’s brilliance, even as new lights are continuously exploding to life. Ever since the very same Breath and Fire who breathed us into Being, began Her work with them billions and billions of years ago, the stars have sung this song: That to be made whole is to be made of infinite parts. That each and every part -- like each and every one of us, with all our distinct languages and cultural touchstones, in endlessly imaginative expressions and identities — is as unique as we are essential to the wholeness of Christ’s body. In fact, we are essential because we are unique. If that sounds impossibly beautiful and/or utterly ridiculous, welcome, again, to the ungraspable mystery that is Holy Spirit. She cannot be purchased and will not be possessed but She is always, always present, in every breath we breathe. So, Beloved, just breathe and stay present. Because now, finally, we come to what must be understood: The Why and To What End of Pentecost. On this, both Word and Spirit are clear. First, the Word of Christ in verses 26 and 27 of our gospel: Why does He send Her to us? So that through Holy Spirit, whom the world does not know, we may experience the Peace of Her Consolation which the world cannot give. Hers is Peace born of Breath, Fire, and Presence, and is the precise and perfect rebuttal to the Pax Romana and all other manner of false and manufactured calm. The Peace of Christ through Spirit is created not kept; enfleshed, not enforced. It is cultivated, not coerced, through accord if not agreement, and never through assimilation. So that we may be freed and unafraid. And why does He leave us the Fearless Freedom of Her peace? So that when ever Spirit falls in fire and wind, in a collision of cultures we don’t recognize and a flurry of words we don’t understand, we will neither hide in terror nor mock those She indwells, but will instead breathe Her presence and dwell in Her Mystery. Then what we will hear is the Living Word calling out: through the visions and prophecies of our friends and neighbors, our children and elders, our Queer and marginalized, our poor and oppressed, unhoused, incarcerated, undocumented, discarded -- From these the Word will pour out, until every one of every color and kind, from every nation and culture, can hear in their own language the promise of Christ; and see their own self reflected and at Home in His Body. When that day comes, we will celebrate the Day of the Lord’s Favor, when all -- all -- are saved, and we who are many are finally made Whole and One in Christ Jesus, our Lord to the Glory of God. And until then, Beloved, may our prayer of invocation be: “Holy Spirit, you are welcome…. you are welcome here.” Amen. Permission to stream the music and liturgy in this service obtained from ONE LICENSE (#A-704010),
CCLI (#112052), and Augsburg Fortress liturgy (license #SB170502). All rights reserved.
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