PENTECOST
SUNDAY (23rd may) 2021
Readings
Acts 2:1-21
Psalm 104:25-35, 36b
Romans 8:22-27
John 15: 26-27, 16:4b-15
There is a whole infinity of
ways to describe this formative moment in early Christian history, this
strange, beyond words moment – or perhaps period of moments – in which the
church was suddenly empowered, liberated and commissioned to reach out through
space and time. A glance at the readings shows Luke, John and Paul all giving
different nuances, almost irreconcilably different narratives of the first
Christian Pentecost. As with the stories
of the first Easter the writers are attempting to narrate that which is beyond
narration. As with the stories of the first Easter the writers have to resonate
with the experience of those who witnessed and experienced the events of which
they tell.
Those who days or hours or some
other period of time before had been broken and terrified were suddenly
overwhelmed and empowered to continue the work of Jesus. More than that, they
were empowered to experience an all but tangible sense of the presence of Jesus
with them in the words they shared, the rites they performed, the scriptures
they read. The invisible but overpowering presence of Jesus would be a part of
the Christbearers’ story from that moment to the present, though we have
manipulated and distorted it from one extreme to another from era to era.
In 1970 Lynn Anderson warmed (or anaesthetised!) the cockles of the heart of the western pop music world with a syrupy little song called “(I Never Promised You A) Rose Garden.” It was a song largely typical of its time, pleasant enough, far from profound. Anderson re-released it last decade, and while her voice hadn’t changed the world probably had. Or hadn’t. But now I’ve promised you an ear worm! But there was and is still no rose garden. Anderson and God have much in common: neither promised a rose garden.
Why? At times the Holy Spirit of
Pentecost was turned into a vague and mostly forgotten theological abstraction. At other times she became a warm and fuzzy, and sometimes dangerously misleading spiritual high. Both
were rose gardens. Complacency. Idiocy. Opposite extents of a pendulum swing.
The Holy Spirit that Luke, Paul
and John wrestle in their writings was neither. She was the overpowering presence
who had appeared throughout the history of the people, shocking and changing
God’s people and God’s universe from the moment the universe exploded into
existence – or thereabouts. She had danced over chaos in the milliseconds of
creation, had danced in the hearts of God’s people, had enflamed and enraged the
prophets as she cried out for justice and compassion towards the oppressed (Palestinian and Israeli).
Now she was empowering a new,
parallel people of God with the immeasurable challenge and immeasurable gift of
the timeless, dangerous, life-giving presence of the physically risen but now
visually departed Christ. She was liberating irrepressible, death conquering,
justice proclaiming Jesus throughout space and time, so even we can experience
him, far away and long after. But she wasn’t and isn’t promising us a
rose garden – nor a bed of petals. She is promising the dangerous, unsettling,
yet resurrection bringing presence of Jesus.
If much Christian preaching seemed
by and large to forget her from about 150 a.d. to the late second half of last century,
that more recent era didn’t do her many favours either. As she swept through
mainline churches, liberating us from our formulaic stuffiness, she was manipulated
and transposed to become a plaything, entertainment, a rose garden. We
domesticated the dangerous wind of God.
As Trinitarian theologians emphasize
she had and has what we could describe as one main job description, at least
insofar as she relates to God’s people this side of the grave. She makes the
presence of Jesus and all he did and is available to his people. Many over the
last twenty years have heard me tell the story of the parish I inherited where
a group of parishioners believed the Spirit had set them free to crawl around
barking for Jesus. I suggest that, no matter how much fun they had, how
liberating the experience was, it was not the work of the Spirit of the Christ
of the Cross. The work of the Spirit is to make Jesus and all he stands for present
to us. Barking was not the forte of the Christ of the gospels.
Yet we are
experiencing a powerful era of the Spirit. If, yes, the charismatic renewal of
the ’60s and ’70s blew our cobwebs away, the Spirit of God is now blowing our
false western gods away, our Baals and our demons of complacency and deception. We are
being forced to chose now whom we will serve: a god of entertainment and good
times, a rose garden god, or the justice proclaiming God of the Cross. The dubious
god who gave us massive privilege and prestige in society, buildings and bank
accounts, or the God who declared that the Christ can have no place to
rest, will have no flash palace until, as another pneumatological hymn puts it,
“his work on earth is done.”
Pentecost is the great feast of
the church, inseparably linked to Easter. We are renewed, re-immersed in the
challenging Christ the Cross. We are this day thrown back on the mercy and
empowerment of the Risen Lord, who forgives, restores, and sends us out into
the world to be love and justice for the unloved and the broken.
The Lord be with you.
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