Sunday May 28, 2023
Pentecost Sunday
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Ruah
We took long Saturday afternoon naps. But neither of us need the sleep as much as we need a big wind to blow us out and about. Important relationships are foundering. Even though our various semi-emergencies are not atypical for 73 year olds, our health awaits our attention and gives us … pause.
We are headed for Port Aransas on the Gulf of Mexico tomorrow morning for four days, and we might be excited and happy. Marc is flying down from Champaign and joining us. It will be great to talk together. We will sit or walk on the beach and listen to the crashing waves. We’ll watch Miles and Jasper run and skip while we walk, and build sand castles and find shells and strange creatures, and test themselves against the waves. There will be a little fishing. The sun will rise each day at 6:33 am. By the time we leave the waxing moon will be nearly full.
And we have games and puzzles. If there are thunderstorms, we’ll have plenty to do in our air B&B, no stairs to climb, and plenty of room for all nine of us.
When the time for Pentecost was fulfilled, they were all in one place together. And suddenly there came from the sky a noise like a strong driving wind, and it filled their entire house.
Yeah! That’s what we need. My theology is more poetry and pictures than logic, and I imagine God is constantly blowing through us, sending us reeling, lacing us with generous bolts of lightning in the Holy Spirit. If that’s true, then my resistance inside must also be fearsome. It’s good to call that spiritual warfare, but I feel more like a pacifist these days. There’s a great, great joy in Jesus, waiting for me to be still and silent enough to know it.
There appeared to them tongues as of fire, which parted and came to rest on each of them. They were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in different tongues, enabled by the Spirit.
Someone suggested that Ruah (the wind of the Spirit) poured through the people in that house and empowered them to listen and understand the languages of everyone from every country gathered for the Jewish holiday. As they listened and understood, the strangers no longer felt strange, their very languages were accommodated by the disciples, by the Holy Spirit, by God. Welcome! Tell us anything you want to share. We are your brothers and sisters.
The crowd was astounded and amazed. How does each of us hear them in our native languages? We hear them speaking in our tongues of the mighty acts of God!
I think of Aelred of Rievaulx, abbot and monk around 1150 A.D., and the invitation he extended to those who wanted to speak to him:
Here we are, you and I,
 and I hope a third, Christ, is in our midst.
 There is no one now to disturb us;
 there is no one to break in upon our friendly chat,
no man’s prattle or noise of any kind
will creep into this pleasant solitude.
Come now, beloved, open your heart,
and pour into these friendly ears whatsoever you will
 and let us accept gracefully the boon
of this place, time, and leisure.
In our small piece of God’s world, we’ll be leaving one place and arriving in another. Who knows what will happen along the way? The waves are crashing against the beach. We can watch God take our problems and pain, and change us.
When you send forth your spirit, we are created, and you renew the face of the earth. Lord, send your Spirit!
 (Acts 2, Psalm 104, 1 Corinthians 12, Veni Sancte Spiritus, John 20)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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