reflections on pentecost 2023

 The late Henri Nouwen, spiritual mentor to many and seeker of God’s grace within our age of anxiety, used to regularly ask himself:

Did I offer peace today? Did I bring a smile to someone’s face? Say a word of healing? Make love flesh? These are the fundamental questions of faith, not doctrine or dogma, just incarnational peace-making in all its manifestations.

Nouwen’s questions ring true to my take on today’s Scripture, the appointed gospel for Pentecost, wherein Jesus returns to his frightened friends after the Crucifixion and offers them inner peace. They are hiding from the political and religious authorities of their day, imprisoned in angst, and frozen in feelings of helplessness. A witch hunt of sorts is taking place, you see; a well-coordinated campaign committed to eradicating the Jesus Movement from ancient Palestine and terrorizing its adherents into silent complacency.

· That’s what tyrants and bullies do when confronted by radical grace: they weaponize every-day life – including religion, intimacy, and information – so that we remain locked inside our homes instead of engaging our communities in acts of solidarity and compassion.

· It is my conviction that Pentecost is Christianity’s explicit challenge to society’s bullies – a clear alternative to fear and powerlessness personally and politically – but in a unique way. Jesus returns to his friends in their isolation to inwardly empower them to act outwardly by breathing the peace of the Holy Spirit upon them.

Victoria Lynn Garvey, bible scholar and Episcopal lay person writing in the most recent edition of the Christian Century, notes that breathing peace upon another is a singularly curious thing to do. “Breath as the simple process of inhale-exhale is one thing, if quite valuable. Breathing on someone takes a bit more effort and intention. This word breath on, emphusao, in both its Hebrew and Greek incarnations is used to describe the action of blowing on smoldering embers to coax a fire back to life generating sparks, heat, and roaring flames from faltering kindling.” Biblical interpreter, Brian Stoffregen, adds that:

This same word is used in Genesis 2 of the Septuagint (the Old Testament in Greek) where God breathes the breath of life into the nostrils of the earth being who then becomes a living being and again in Ezekiel 37 where the breath breathes on the slain valley of dry bones so that they may live again as well.

St. John, you see, portrays Pentecost to be part of Jewish history where the steadfast love of the Lord that endures forever brings order to the chaos, liberates Hebrew slaves from bondage in Egypt, shares Torah with Moses on Mt. Sinai, and inspirationally raises up the valley of dry bones. Garvey adds that the early Jewish disciples of Jesus would have known all of this.

They would recall the significance of being breathed upon. This breath now would take them way back to the “then” of creation when God also breathed purposefully… causing the first human to become a living being and suggesting that right now this breath might be generative again.

These ancient stories are retold today to remind us how the old can become new: how trust can replace terror, the personal can take on political or public consequences, and both community and courage can be restored. In this Pentecost is re-interpreted in our tradition to be a RE-creation story, always connected to its origins in Judaism, but sacramentally distinctive because OUR Pentecost begins inwardly. This isn’t better or worse than “the ancient Jewish pilgrimage festival of Shavuot, the Festival of Weeks celebrated 50 days after Passover” by the community as the close of the grain harvest, it’s just different. The SALT Project scholars write:

For the ancient Israelites, this festival was an explicitly diverse, inclusive harvest celebration for the whole community – it was tied to the seasons, the wisdom of the land, as well as the story of liberation – and over time came to mark the reception of Torah itself given to Moses on Mount Sinai.

· At first, the Jewish Pentecost was a spring feast: it began as barley was harvested, increment-ally became the Festival of Unleavened Bread at Passover, and concluded when the first crop of wheat was gathered up some fifty days later. Both crops are planted in the fall, but barley matures faster. As is often the case in spiritual traditions, our own as well as the festival of Norouz we recently shared with our Afghani friends, Mother Earth teaches us how to live into the rhythms of the sacred. The Hebrew wisdom says: “To everything there is a season, right? A time to be born and a time to die; a time to plant and a time to pluck up what is planted; a time to kill and a time to heal; a time to break down and a time to build up; a time to weep and a time to laugh; a time to mourn and a time to dance…” and all the rest.

· Eventually, a religious ritual emerged setting aside the first fruits of the grain harvest to be a thanksgiving offering to God: primal piety intuitively recognizes that giving gratitude to the source of life before baking bread for the community’s consumption is both respectful and re-sponsible. Consequently, Passover came to initiate the blessings of the spring harvest while Pentecost crowned the festival with a concluding feast. By linking the physical bounty of the grain harvest to the spiritual nourishment of Torah that Moses received on Mt. Sinai Jewish tradition sacramentally showed that beyond the official 10 Commandments of Torah, all 613 guidelines for personal and public life extracted from the first five books of the Hebrew Bible were food for the soul and ethical wisdom for the faithful.

This is the context into which a uniquely Christian Pentecost came into being. OUR

story stipulates that after the Crucifixion and the Resurrection of Jesus, the same Holy Spirit who brought order out of the chaos at the beginning of creation and inspired the ancient prophets of Israel to advocate for justice and mercy rather than mere religious rituals and sacrificial blood offerings, this same Spirit – Ruach in Hebrew and Pneuma in Greek both meaning the Spirit or Breath of the Lord – THIS same Spirit was breathed upon the first disciples of by Jesus himself.

· Jesus wasn’t discarding his tradition, mind you – there’s NO supercessionism in authentic Christianity – for Jesus and his first disciples were ALWAYS Jews. Like the ancient prophets and rabbis before him, Jesus simply adapted and reinterpreted the symbols and practices of his heritage. By breathing the Spirit upon his bewildered and anxious disciples, he inwardly filled them with the same peace that passes understanding that historically fortified God’s people in ancient Israel.

· In a way that historically and mystically connects heart and head to flesh and conscience, Jesus offered his frightened friends soul food that empowered them to leave their fears be-hind and live into the love of God out loud and in public much like Moses empowered the enslaved serfs during the exodus from Egypt. THAT’S what our text grafts on to the ancient legends of the Hebrew people: Jesus brings healing to his emotionally wounded friends by breathing the spirit of inspiration upon them like Ezekiel did in the valley of dry bones: Peace be with you – MY peace be yours – not as the world gives it but as the Lord our God has shared it with us since before the beginning of time.

· Are you with me on this? Is the connection between the events and mythology of ancient Israel clear in the reinterpretation Jesus evokes on Pentecost? Christianity claims continuity with the Holy Spirit who brings the same reassurance, solidarity, peace, and forgiveness to THIS era as she birthed in times past. Additionally, we link our prayers during the 50 days between Passover and Shavuot – or Easter and Pentecost – to the prayers Judaism offers.

In the fourth book of the New Testament, the Acts of the Apostles, we read that after marking each of the 50 days between Passover and Shavuot with prayers of gratitude for the liberating blessings of Torah AND the Exodus, the first disciples of Jesus joined the rest of faithful Judaism from all over the region by going to the Temple to express their joy over God’s benevolence. Chapter two of Acts says there were Jews from all over the known world in Jerusalem: Parthians, Medes, Elamites, residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia (in modern day Turkey); believers from Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, as well as Egypt, the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, Jews as well as Gentile proselytes from Crete and Arabia. The harvests were complete. Seven weeks of prayer were over. So, now it was time for a feast – and what a feast it turned out to be – a feast of forgiveness, a feast of peace, a feast of solidarity and compassion all expressed and experienced out loud and in public!

You may recall from last week’s Ascension Sunday message that I see the Ascension of Jesus to be an invitation for us to give up fundamentalism so that we might cultivate a spirituality of poetry and mystical, metaphorical wisdom. The brilliant novelist, Madeleine L'engle, liked to say: “Ours is an irrational spirituality where love blooms bright and wild (in the desert.) Had Mary been filled with reason, there'd have been no room for her child.” St. Paul said much the same thing noting that ours is the assurance of faith NOT the false certainties of Biblical literalism. That’s why we mark Pentecost as the BIRTH Day of the church: it was when the inner peace of spiritual grace embraced the outward fears of empire with concrete expressions of solidarity and compassion in public.

On this Memorial Day weekend, I sense this contextual background about Pentecost to be vital for us for two reasons: first, given the worldwide epidemic of virulent antisemitism and violence being waged against our Jewish sisters and brothers, the more WE mark, honor, cherish, and celebrate our spiritual and familial connections to Judaism, the more likely we’ll be able to own how OUR own well-being is eternally linked with theirs: Whatsoever you do unto the LEAST of these, my sisters and brothers, Jesus taught in Matthew 25, you do unto me. Historically Christianity seems addicted to repeatedly violating this foundational tenet in the ghastliest ways. Think the witch-hunts of Europe and the US, our genocide against first nations people, the Inquisition, the Holocaust, the Irish Magdalene laundries, 250 years of slavery and another 200 of Jim Crow. Our current crop of-so-called Christian nationalist vigilantes are sadly nothing new making the words of Bonhoeffer’s co-conspirator against the Nazis, Lutheran pastor Martin Neimoller, instructive:

First they came for the Communists and I did not speak out because I was not a Communist. Then they came for the Socialists and I did not speak out because I was not a Socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist
Then they came for the Jews and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak out for me

Did you read the recent NY Times OP ED column by Wyoming Republican Susan Stubson who confessionally described the fear, hatred, violence, and terror so-called followers of Jesus are perpetrating in her great Western state even as we worship today? It’s chilling, sobering, and sadly a portent of things to come. When prominent Christian leaders and politicians invoke the name of Jesus to promote slander, murder, race hatred, and antisemitism, other people of faith must link arms and stand as one another’s protectors in public. How did MLK put it?

Those who passively accept evil are as much involved in it as those who help to perpetrate it. The one who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it. That is why when evil souls plot, honest people must plan. When evil burns and bombs, we must build and bind. When evil men, women, and children shout ugly words of hatred, we must commit ourselves to the glories of love.

This is how we become people of Pentecost – souls bound together by grace, love, history, and shalom – who at our best SEE and feel our connection to one another trusting that whatsoever is done to the least of our sisters and brothers in all of creation is done to Christ Jesus and all of us as well. And now that we are finally putting limits upon Cartesian wisdom and gaining a greater perspective into what’s being called an ecological civilization, we can hear what indigenous people have known for millennia and our best ecologists and scientists have been telling us since the 70’s: that we’re ALL linked together – humans, animals, plants, wind, water, soil, and fire – and what injures ONE wounds us all.

Standing in solidarity against antisemitism – and ALL forms of social hatred including Black Lives Matter and the redressing of our origins – is faithfully receiving the sacred breath of peace Jesus breathed upon us at Pentecost. It is NOT coincidental that earlier this week not only did the Biden-Harris administration announce the first ever US Strategy to Counter Antisemitism, but our courts sentenced the founder of the Oath Keepers, Stuart Rhodes, to 18 years in prison for sedition. If you recall the chilling images from January 6th and Charlottesville that looked to Kristallnacht 2.0 you will give thanks to God. Renewing our solidarity with our Jewish spiritual cousins at Pentecost this Memorial Day weekend is the first reason for my overview.

The second is the unique interpretation Jesus adds to our Pentecost tradition: for

all intents and purposes, he reminds us today that we can’t give to others what we don’t have ourselves. We used to say if you don’t walk the walk, baby, you can’t talk the talk. So, notice that in this story Jesus returns to his friends after the resurrection to reassure them – to share his presence with them in their darkest hour – because presence matters. Sometimes we ALL need a shoulder to cry on, a lov-ing non-judgmental friend to listen to us or sit with us in the hospital when we’re enveloped in fear, or know that another living soul is available to share our joys and sorrows generosity and with pro-found attentiveness. Being present to one another is, you see, ONE of the ways the Holy Spirit becomes flesh within as its breathed upon us. So, too, inner peace: if serenity is foreign to our souls – if our insides are a sea of chaos rather than a harbor of tranquility – if we have NOT befriended silence and solitude and do not know how to cultivate being a non-anxious presence in our current chaos: then we really don’t have much to offer this wounded world. Thomas Merton put it well when he wisely wrote:

Inner serenity is a spiritual wonder. It is spontaneous awe at the sacredness of life, of being. It is a vivid realization of the fact that life and being in us proceed from an invisible, transcendent, and infinitely abundant source. (It is) above all, awareness of the reality of that source. It knows the Source, obscurely, inexplicably, but with a certitude that goes beyond reason and simple faith…It is a more profound depth of faith, a knowledge too deep to be grasped in images, in words, or even in clear concepts…

It is intimacy with and trust of God’s grace from the inside out and is key for authentic, transformative social action to spread the love of Jesus in public. In the words of today’s gospel, it is letting the peace of forgiveness that refuses to bind ourselves and others to sin ripen and mature within. The text tells us that when Jesus returned to this small, bewildered, confused, and frightened commun-ity of faith after the Cross, he didn’t scold them. He didn’t drag up their previous abandonment or betrayals nor sully them with shame.

Rather he set them free by consciously choosing to welcome them with reassurance, helping them reclaim their trust in God’s grace; and then, based upon their inner peace, going out into the world to share the acts of solidarity born of forgiveness wherever they went. Do unto others, he told them again, as I have just done unto you. Jesus did not breathe the peace of forgiveness upon them so that they would stay behind locked doors. It was given so that they might be in the world as he was once in the world – setting all types of people free.

And THAT, dear friends, is how WE are to confront the hatred of Christian nationalism in this era. NOT with shame. NOT with self-righteousness. NOT as bullies nor those ignorant of grace. So often we well-intentioned liberals get caught in the hurry up and DO something trap. Our hearts are in the right place, but unless we’ve been nourished at the contemplative feast of peace, we may do more harm than good. If we’re not certain that God is at work within and among us even in those events and people beyond our control – if we’ve not practiced cultivating discernment but give ourselves over to reacting with just out feelings that are NEVER the whole story – we’re adding insult to injury.

What’s more, and this is as true of conservative activists as well as liberals, in our rush to do something, we can easily guilt-trip one another – use shame to push our agenda – which only breeds greater resentment and eventually more passivity. I’ve done it – sadly – you may have, too. It’s how we’re trained in this culture. And it’s the exact OPPOSITE of how Jesus asks us to incarnate love, mercy, trust, peace-making, and activism in the world: we are to show others an alternative to the shame-based status quo by living into an inward serenity so that we can outwardly practice a radical and cleansing forgiveness with others. That’s what the sacramental and liturgical calendar of our tradition aspires to teach us, you know?

Have you noticed that the first half of the Christian year – starting in November and going through April – is ALL about discernment and contemplation; while the second half is all about action in the world? Talk about to everything there is a season, right? That’s roughly six months of inner work (Advent, Epiphany, Lent, Eastertide), and six months of outward engagement in Ordinary Time using the ordinal numerals to count the weeks after Pentecost as a season ordered for action. “Like a pendulum swinging back and forth, or a pair of lungs breathing in and out, the church alter-nates between these two modes every year: we have high holidays, and everyday life. The joys of celebration, and the grunt work of growth.”

Pentecost asks us to get honest about the health of our soul: it’s a holy invitation to become fully alive, fully gracious, and fully engaged as co-creators with the Creator. It also asks us to be certain to do our own inner work so that we don’t project our junk on others. More than many, St. Wendell Berry of Kentucky knows how these two truths are entwined and shares them with us in ways that we can hear – and love – and maybe even trust. In the “Peace of Wild Things,” he frames Pentecost like this:

When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be, I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds. I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief. I come into the presence of still water. And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light. For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Lord, may it be so among us. Amen.