Pentecost Sunday, June 5, 2022
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Veni Sancte Spiritus (Come, Holy Spirit, Come!)
Lord, send out your Spirit, and renew the face of the earth.
Zora knows how to talk about Pentecost, or rather what Pentecost is made to redeem.
When God had made The Man, he made him out of stuff that sung all the time and glittered all over. Some angels got jealous and chopped him into millions of pieces, but still he glittered and hummed. So they beat him down to nothing but sparks but each little spark had a shine and a song. So they covered each one over with mud. Â And the lonesomeness in the sparks made them hunt for one another. (Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God)
Tim Jennings MD calls his translation of the New Testament The Remedy. Today we’re celebrating part of that remedy, the Pentecost. Because when, as Zora said, we tried to “hunt for one another,” we found nothing except more mud and more lonesome. Turning our eyes up we could see only the nighttime beginnings of a hurricane.
It is so easy to be hopeful in the daytime when you can see the things you wish on. But it was night, it stayed night. Night was striding across nothingness with the whole round world in his hands … they sat in company with the others in other shanties, their eyes straining against cruel walls and their souls asking if He meant to measure their puny might against His. They seemed to be staring at the dark, but their eyes were watching God.
Which storm will be the one that kills me? Because they keep on coming, and coming, and the storms are the powerful watchers, sent from heaven to examine us. Oh, no, please, let us alone. Let us live in our mud!
But it will not be.
They were all in one place together. And suddenly there came from the sky a noise like a strong driving wind, and it filled the entire house where they waited. Then there appeared to them tongues as of fire, which parted and came to rest on each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in different tongues, as the Spirit enabled them. They spoke in the tongues of all the people around them, from Africa and Asia, from Egypt and Mesopotamia, and from Rome. They spoke of the mighty acts of God.
I am ready for an eye-opening moment, for a rebirth of wonder, for a Holy Spirit hurricane. But when I think about how life works, I remember that the times when God comes and shows me why I’m alive, who I am, what my purpose is, those Pentecostal Holy Spirit knock-me-down-for-dead moments, come when I am giving myself away, giving my time, my muscles, my money, my listening, loving, caring about someone else so they feel cared for, that’s when God shows up. That’s when Pentecost happens.
If you love me, you will keep my commandments. Love one another as I have loved you. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you always.
Here’s how Zora put it:
Love is lak de sea. It’s uh movin’ thing, but still and all, it takes its shape from de shore it meets, and it’s different with every shore … O to be a pear tree – any tree in bloom! With kissing bees singing of the beginning of the world!
(Acts 2, Psalm 104, 1 Corinthians 12, Romans 8, John 20, John 14)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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