Pentecost
Genesis 11:1-9 | Romans 8:22-27 | John 7:37-39

God our Father, who by sending into the world the word of truth and the spirit of sanctification made known to the human race your wondrous mystery, grant us, we pray, that in professing the true faith we may acknowledge the Trinity of eternal glory and adore your unity, power and majesty.  Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God forever and ever. Amen.

This feast celebrates a very important moment in history, the history of God revealing himself to his people and revealing to them who they are and why they’re here.  It’s the fullness of the message.  It comes in this form of an event that happened to the disciples, and let’s look at the event to start with so we can be in touch with the symbolism that is so rich in this experience called Pentecost and see if we can apply it to the reality that this feast is trying to put us in touch with.  And the reality is God entering into you and entering into me in this mysterious form of his presence, his Spirit, and his transforming power, what it does when it enters into us, but first of all, it’s a gathering after Jesus rose from the dead and then spent 40 days talking to his disciples and teaching.  And then he said, “I want you to gather in a place and this gift will be given to you.” 

Well, the apostles were there.  Mary was there, the mother of Jesus.  They consider that maybe 100 followers of Jesus were in this room, and all of a sudden there was this overwhelming sense of a wind, a mysterious, powerful wind, which has been used in scripture as an image of the presence, mysterious, powerful presence of God.  You don’t know where it comes from.  You don’t know where it goes, but it is so powerful.   And then there is this image that, while they’re gathered together, that there appeared as if tongues of fire had descended from the heavens and was above their heads.  The image is fire, and fire is used in scripture, throughout scripture as a form of transformation, and it’s two-fold.  It purifies.  It burns out everything that’s not authentic, not real.  It exposes half-truths and lies and removes them, and in its place, it adds enlightenment. 

So here are the disciples in this room with all these other disciples and followers, and there’s this noise and this happening thing that’s going on.  And what happens is that all of a sudden then there are a bunch of observers.  All these other people from all over the world are watching all of this, and then all of a sudden, these disciples, the followers of Christ who have these tongues over their heads, start speaking in language that everyone can hear and everyone can understand.  And some say it was speaking in tongues, and speaking in tongues is a very interesting thing.  I mentioned it last week in my homily, but it’s the idea that there is this language that often can overtake someone where it isn’t — doesn’t make sense to the mind.  It’s not words that you recall having heard before, whatever.  No, it’s a sound, and it conveys something, even though it’s not a literal thing that your ear hears and then your mind understands.  It’s the kind of language, what I call the language of the heart.  It’s like this language that carries with it not an information but a sense or a presence of something that goes directly to the heart. 

So those are the images.  Well, I left the other one out.  The people that were around from all different parts of the world understood exactly what they were saying.  Now, that’s just really bizarre, so let’s look at it.  This is the final piece of salvation history.  God began this whole story in a garden when he created Adam and Eve, and in that moment, he established a relationship with them where he was going to be the God that shared with these creatures the garden.  God was saying, “Would you help tend my garden with me?  And you have just one thing you shouldn’t do.  Be careful of that tree of knowledge of good and evil, and just stay away from that, and you’ll be fine.”  And we know the story.  That tree is an image of humanity, the desire of humans to be in charge, to know what’s right, to know what’s wrong or to be at least in charge enough to say, “This is what I want to do, and this is how I’ll do it.”  It’s an image of the autonomy that was also in these humans that God created.  It’s called free will, and it looks like it’s a major obstacle in the beginning, because they don’t follow what God asks.  They followed a voice, and the voice came from this creature.  We don’t know who the creature was.  We know what happened to the creature when he lied to these people and said, “Look, what you really want, and it seems to be something that’s pretty good, you want to be like God, and certainly God is going to be pleased if you want to be like him.  So go ahead and eat.”  But it’s just a beautiful image to me that there is a part of human nature that would like to be like the God that created us, and that means to be able to accomplish things on our own. 

So the rest of the story starts there, and then it evolves over 2,000 years or more with this story of salvation history where the story goes on, and we see human beings struggling with this autonomous part of them and a God who then has to work with them.   And sense he can’t reach them, he has to work on them from sort of outside of their psyche, their soul, and so all he can do is control them.  And so we have God in the Old Testament revealing himself as a jealous and sometimes angry and vengeful God who wants and has to, I guess, in terms of trying to help the people that he loves so much, he has to control them from being violent to each other and destructive to each other.  So he controls them by laws and regulations, and that’s so much of the Old Testament, and it’s not successful.  It’s resented on the part of the people who are told they have to do this or be punished.  It’s frustrating for God, because he can’t seem to reach their hearts, where he really wants to change them.  And so it just goes on that way until finally, even though there were prophets and priests and kings trying to lead them, it came to a point where something had to be done.  Something had to be changed in human beings, and so the God then, who was somewhat distant and worked through rules and regulations and rituals, he realizes, “I’ve got to reach these people, and I can’t do it through an institution.  I have to do it in a more personal way.  I will come into the world so that I can be with them.” 

With them — so God becomes a human being and enters into the life of a small gathering of people and starts revealing to them the fullness of God that was hidden in the Old Testament.  And what do we find?  A lover, not a taskmaster and not a judge but one who forgives, and the forgiveness and the non-judgment and the desire to enable them to feel the love that came from God’s heart to them was finally revealed in this person, Jesus, and it had a profound impact on these people.  But the fact that they didn’t fully understand it implied that just being present to them wasn’t enough, because God’s presence had another reason for happening.  It had to transform human beings.  So you get this long salvation history of God working with human beings, trying to change them, in a sense, from the outside, explaining to them who he was, and even when that was all done, these disciples, who represent all of us, our human nature, were still saying, “Well, we really love that you are there for us, and we can’t wait till you give us the authority and the power to run the world with you.  We want to be in charge.”  It’s like we couldn’t shake that autonomy until something radically changed, and that’s called Pentecost.

This is the mind-boggling thing that I don’t think I, as a priest, have really faced much in my earlier years of ministry, but in these years of retirement and reflection, I see it clearer and clearer that the only way in which we can be the people that God calls us to be is we allow this mysterious thing to take place.  And that is that God’s Spirit enters into us, and we live in God, not instructed by God, not working for God but working with God in us.  And when we allow that image to take root in us, that truth that becomes incarnate in us, something has to happen first, and the thing that has to happen is the heart of the New Testament, is this crucifixion thing that Jesus went through, to surrender the way our life, his life was written, give in, surrender.  So I don't know if you can feel this, but what I’m trying to say is we had a relationship with God where he was in charge and in control, and he managed us by rules and regulations, and it was a disaster.  It never really worked very well.  Then he sends his Son, and his Son comes and does his work, and they still didn’t grasp it fully.  And the thing that really completely confused them was the death of Jesus, the way he died, what he surrendered to, and it made no sense to them at all, and they were really confused.  And then comes the final piece, an example of what they must go through and then the empowering gift of grace that enables them to do it.  That’s that fire image coming down into the human beings heart and purifying it of everything that’s self-centered, everything that’s half-true, every lie.  It removes that.  In its place, it brings enlightenment, and enlightenment is the ability for a human being to be conscious enough to realize what it means that God says, “I want to live in you, with you.  That’s what I wanted when I made you in the garden.  That’s what I always intended, but I had to tell a story.  I had to do this long story, because the story is not simply about what happened in the past.  But it’s the story of every single human being.” 

We all go through this whole thing as we come into the world, one after another after another.  You come into the world.  You’re created.  You become conscious as a child.  You’re obviously engaged in a relationship from the very beginning.  That’s what human beings are made for, relationships.  That’s what God wanted with human beings.  He wanted a relationship with them, so he made them relational.  And the first relationships are with our parents, with our family of origin, with our culture and all of that, and that forms us.  Along with that whole process, there is this God in your life and in mine who has been engaged in every single event that happened throughout your young years and your formative years that are much like those years in the Old Testament where you feel the obligation of responsibility as a burden, and you have to do these things, and you do them, because you have to.  But if you can get away with not doing them, you won’t do them.  It’s like that’s our story until maturity and evolution brings us to a point where we’re realizing, “I don’t know.  There’s something in me that is made for so much more than just trying to fix my life and get it cleaner and more pure.  It’s not satisfying enough.”  And fixing yourself is never going to be that satisfying, because that’s not even our job.  God is the one that transforms us.  We don’t fix ourselves, but what happens when we are transformed, there, that’s the heart of who we are and what we’re here for, partnership with divinity in tending and shepherding the world.  And the world is most especially considered human beings, the crown of creation of God, tending them.

So interesting that the world is the context in which we — a place where we live, but the real work is always between us and each other and God.  That’s where it all takes place, and if you can imagine, the work is you and I participating in this phenomenal, wonderful task of awakening others to this reality and enabling them to live in it.  There’s a satisfaction in that that is beyond anything that has to do with being in some kind of self-improvement work.  To work on yourself, to get yourself into a really beautiful person, whether it’s physically or in the eyes of the culture and all that, there’s a longing to do that and a satisfaction in that, but nothing is as satisfying as being engaged in doing something that is actually going to create the kind of fulfillment that the world teaches us perfection and position and power offer us.  Those things don’t satisfy, but co-creating a world in which there is peace and love and, I don't know, a sense of wonder versus a world that is filled with envy and jealousy and pain and suffering and abuse, that work of entering into this other world, is the key to being who God has called us to be in this world.  And I don't know why it’s taken me so long to realize that it’s a partnership with divinity, is the only way that this can be accomplished, and that partnership can only be accomplished if I die to some egoistic part of me that thinks I’m in charge or focuses too much on me as the thing that I’m supposed to perfect for some kind of reward from God, from the people around me.  It’s hard to make that shift, and the other keeps coming back, lingering.  And even as close as I feel I’m getting to being, living in this world, where I am an instrument rather than the cause of every good thing that I am asked to be engaged in, even though that’s something I can feel and it works and it feels good, I will find myself slipping back to something so egocentric, and I have to just smile and say, “That’s just part of my human nature.”  Because the one thing God doesn’t want us to think is that, when divinity enters into us, we become divinity.  No, we are not ever going to become divinity.  How do you live in this relationship with so much goodness when it flows through us but it’s not us?  It takes amazing humility.  It takes a death to our ego but most especially an infusion of truth and grace. 

Father, you have created a world for us that is so much more than we ever could imagine on our own. How could we ever believe that we would be asked by you to share in the grace and the power that you are and bring that to the people that we are? Open our hearts, our minds, our imaginations to the beauty and the power of this gift of indwelling presence, and help us to be proclaiming it without words but just with the mysterious power that the Spirit has and how it can affect and change the people we care about. And we ask this in Jesus’ name. Amen.