In Seasons of Our Joy, Arthur Waskow writes: “Seven weeks of seven days. Day by day, week by week, the community watches the spring grain grow, watches with hope and with anxiety. Day by day, week by week, the community moves forward from the moment of freedom’s first explosion—[the Exodus] moves forward with hope and with anxiety. Will the earth succeed in unfolding its fruitfulness? Will we succeed in finding new truth and [exercise] our freedom?” It is “a season full of hope [and] a season full of anxiety that hope may fail.” It was the question in ancient Israel. It is the question of our culture today. Liberation from slavery under the Pharaoh in Egypt had taken Moses and their ancestors deep into the desert where they wandered without hope for years. Many died—even Moses—without seeing the Promised Land. The Jewish people remember—hope can fail. Jesus’ followers—those early disciples—also remembered. Seven weeks of seven days following Passover they awoke each morning remembering the horror of the crucifixion. On Shavuos, the Feast of Weeks, the Feast of First Fruits, they gathered in one room. Jesus had appeared to them the evening of his resurrection and had breathed onthem, his own breath, his life. “Receive the Holy Spirit” he told them. He offered them freedom, liberation from the bondage of fear and hopelessness. He offered his Peace, offered them Hope, and gave them a way out of anxiety and despair. Receive the Spirit, he said. She will teach you about forgiveness. What you forgive you let go. What you don’t forgive remains within you. The choice is yours.
When the Spirit descended on the disciples gathered for Shavuos they had wandered through their own desert those 50 days. Many of them still held on to the false hope that Jesus would restore Israel’s political sovereignty. They even asked about it just before he ascended into the clouds on Mt. Olivet. “Is this the time you will restore the kingdom to Israel?” they asked. Jesus told them “it isn’t for you to know how things work.” You will be empowered to spread compassion, mercy and forgiveness to the ends of the earth when the Holy Spirit comes upon you. That has been my mission and I hand it on to you. The Spirit will tell you everything you need to know. He didn’t say, but his example had shown them, they would need to listen and watch, be alert, to hear and see what the Spirit was saying.
When Shavuos arrived they were gathered together to celebrate the Feast of Weeks. Thousands made the pilgrimage to Jerusalem for this seasonal festival but, notably, the disciples were still huddled together in their own circle away from the crowds. When the Spirit tore through the atmosphere like the rush of a violent wind, people outside heard and came to find out what was happening. The disciples began speaking to an astonished crowd of Jews and converts all of whom could understand what they were saying despite the fact so many language groups were listening. All were hearing the same message through the frame of their own culture. Standing together as one people, hearing one message, profoundly connected everyone, regardless of differences. The people experienced a wholeness they could never have imagined. From the isolation of fear and uncertainty, the disciples stepped into a very small taste of the amazingly diverse family unit of God. They hadn’t yet visited the “ends of the earth” and had no notion of the vastness of the world. This was a dip into the pool of the Promised Land, where diversity makes unity even more noticeable, and where everyone has a sense of belonging. Where people feel connected and know they belong, Spirit is alive whatever language we might use. But when belonging and connection are withheld or denied by individuals or groups, the soul of that people sickens, withers, and may even die.
The symbol of Pentecost is the extravagant diversity of language and culture brought into a mystifying unity through the unseen presence of some force no one can name. But we want and need words in order to talk about such a mind-blowing experience, so we call that force the Holy Spirit. We celebrate Pentecost to remember where we are going—toward a tangible sense of connection and belonging for everyone, and toward a concrete, lived awareness of the interconnectedness of all life We celebrate to remind each other to hold onto hope and not give in to the forces of division and alienation. Those forces are anti-Christ, anti-Spirit. The soul knows only union and feels devastated in the throes of hatred.
Our culture, our country, is spiritually ravaged by the energies attempting to tear us from one another and set us against our sisters and brothers around the world. Our spiritual suffering is so acute that we are numbing ourselves to handle the pain. We celebrate Pentecost to validate our experience of this barren and seemingly hostile landscape while helping one another find the courage to hold on to hope so we can create such solidarity between us that, through its extension, our world…our earth…can be saved.
Richard Rohr calls the Holy Spirit “Implanted Hope.” That hope anchors our connection with the Divine center of all things. With hope we draw our reserves to the surface, we renew our fortitude, we move as disciples of mercy and understanding back into the world we may have been hiding from. With hope we come alive. We begin to see the passion for justice in the hearts of young activists, the healing images of our artists, the environmental fervor of gutsy politicians, and the revolutionary connections between religion, art, hard sciences, technology, social and environmental justice that are happening around every corner of global society today. Let’s build on hope this Pentecost and take the Spirit with us as we leave this church today. Look for signs of life in dark places. Follow those signs. Together we can, we will, we are making a difference as we find the courage to live our conviction that we are one family and all of us belong.
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