Sunday Stretch: Pentecost

Come, Holy Spirit

Good morning, Sunday Stretch Readers,

Happy Pentecost! Today is the day!

Before I wrote today’s Sunday Stretch, I forced myself to sit down - put down my phone - and watch this video without distraction.

Typically, I suffer from the affliction I suspect many of us do today, which is this sort of inability to focus for too long on anything, and to inadvertently pick up our phone or check an app or distract ourselves from the deep message that God is giving us right before our eyes and in our ears.

Fortunately, this video was not that experience at all. Instead, I was captivated. I experienced the presence of the Holy Spirit, which is what we celebrate today - in the third high holy day of the church year, in addition to Christmas and Easter.

Click on the image above to access the YouTube video

I felt my body relax into the moment as I watched the video, and it took me back to another place and time.

For a moment, let’s go there together …

It was May 31, 2020, and we were more than two months into the global COVID-19 pandemic. People were dying all over the world, there was no cure in sight, and many of us had been confined to our homes, with schools, restaurants, stores, and events all canceled.

As I watched, I remembered distinctly an unexpected gift of that time - much like the unexpected gift of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost.

In the midst of the pandemic, there was a burst of musical creativity. Musicians all over the world were banding together to share ideas and music virtually. As a Pastor at the time, I especially saw church musicians and worship leaders seeking to share ideas and work together in ways I’d never seen before. The competitiveness of the past, the fear of “losing members” to other congregations had dissipated in the face of the global emergency, and so instead creativity flourished. Everyone wanted to share ideas and encourage one another. The gatekeepers who for so long had wanted to keep the Church and music in its proscribed box had become irrelevant. They no longer held sway, especially in a time when churches were able to access supportive funds from the government.

It was incredible to see happen in real time. I watched the immense musical talent of people all over the world, and how generous they were about sharing it.

I realized something that people who have lived through war and famine and crises and danger and migration and poverty have long known better than those of us who live daily in unrealized privilege and comfort.

In times of struggle and unfairness, it is the artists who save us.

So often misunderstood or cast aside, forced to work multiple jobs and rely on wealthy patrons in order to have space to make their art, artists and musicians and, yes, writers, often toil away in obscurity and pain and loneliness. They have a sense of a gift that God has given them to share with the world, but they also have a sense that the world does not care and does not want to hear them.

And even when the world does look or see or hear, the moment is fleeting. Or, often, it comes after the artist has died.

On May 31, Pentecost, 2020, there was a moment where the clouds parted and the gift of art and music shone through this opening in the sky. In tiny rooms around the world, lonely artists banded together by the power of the Internet.

They all spoke different languages, but they understood alike the language of music. It was enough. What they made together outdid anything they could have cumulatively done on their own.

The Holy Spirit intervened, and something magical broke through.

Of course, we all know how the story ends. About 30 years after the Day of Pentecost, Peter, the rock on whom Jesus founded the church, was crucified in Rome. Christians were constantly persecuted and under threat of arrest or death at the hands of the Roman government. There must have been so many times that the believers thought it was all going to end, and the Gospel just might not survive. Despair and abandonment and lament and fear are all part of God’s story.

And we know, too, how our story has gone since May 31, 2020.

The hopeful days of the early pandemic quickly waned. Even on that day, as the singers desperately called together for the power of the Holy Spirit to come to our world, the world was also reeling from the brutal murder of George Floyd. Even as a pandemic raged, Americans were reminded that racism is our Original Sin. Even as a pandemic raged, white American Christians were forced to see the ways in which white Christianity supported and upheld a racist hierarchy in our country, too often granting it Biblical backing and theological underpinning, twisting God’s words to support human power and control.

So soon, the early hopefulness for cooperation and understanding, the outpouring of creativity and musical offerings, descended into partisan rancor, anger, and violence, culminating in the storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Come, Holy Spirit

Veni, Spiritus Sanctus

Writing all of this down, it seems unrealistic to think that one could watch that video from May 31, 2020, of Christians all over the world, simply repeating and singing these three words over and over and over again, and be moved.

But I was.

Maybe you will be, too.

After all, that’s the gift of this day, of Pentecost. The Holy Spirit winds its way into unexpected people and places, creating understanding, hope, camaraderie and love where it may have been least expected.

What often drives religious leaders and institutions crazy about the Holy Spirit is that it absolutely cannot be controlled. It can’t be boxed in and asked to follow conventions and orders and wait its turn. The Spirit waits for no man. It comes when it comes and it goes where it wishes. It works through people the world has rejected and ignored. Its gift bubbles up and crackles and spits and flows, like living water. It burns, and some may think it’s destructive, like fire is, but in its wake, new life begins, like the fires set by Indigenous people in the American West, and in burn tracks green plants grow.

Some churches mark the gifting of the Holy Spirit by speaking in unintelligible tongues, but when I read the story of Pentecost, what I see is understanding, cooperation, and hope in togetherness. The Holy Spirit may, like Jesus did, initially bring division, in its explicit uplifting of the truth. And still in the end, that truth cannot help but end in love.

I think part of celebrating Pentecost means resigning yourself to letting the Spirit lead, and blow where it will. Ironically, it’s often in releasing my own power and control that God does God’s best work in my life. The Spirit blows so hard and hot that I can’t help but step back. Listen. Watch.

Veni Sanctus Spiritus.

The Story of Pentecost

Acts 2:1-21

Acts 2:1   When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place.  ² And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting.  ³ Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them.  ⁴ All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.

Acts 2:5   Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem.  ⁶ And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each.  ⁷ Amazed and astonished, they asked, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans?  ⁸ And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language?  ⁹ Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia,  ¹⁰ Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes,  ¹¹ Cretans and Arabs—in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.”  ¹² All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “What does this mean?”  ¹³ But others sneered and said, “They are filled with new wine.”

Acts 2:14    But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them, “Men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to what I say.  ¹⁵ Indeed, these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o’clock in the morning.  ¹⁶ No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel:

¹⁷ ‘In the last days it will be, God declares,

that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh,

and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,

and your young men shall see visions,

and your old men shall dream dreams.

¹⁸ Even upon my slaves, both men and women,

in those days I will pour out my Spirit;

and they shall prophesy.

¹⁹ And I will show portents in the heaven above

and signs on the earth below,

blood, and fire, and smoky mist.

²⁰ The sun shall be turned to darkness

and the moon to blood,

before the coming of the Lord’s great and glorious day.

²¹ Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.’

PRAYER

Dear God,

Thank you for the gift and the promise of the Holy Spirit, the Advocate. Help us to relax. Breathe. Let the Spirit lead. Help us to follow with courage and hope. Lead us to others with whom we can persevere.

In Jesus’ name we pray,

AMEN

An Invitation

A Community that prays for one another is transformed by the power of the Spirit. We’ve been praying for and with each other now for about nine months! For the new year, and about once a quarter, I will re-start this space for prayer requests and praises. Please email with your own requests and I will share here with your permission!

1. We continue to pray for a cessation of violence and war in Ukraine, and for refugees and migrants around the world who are without a safe place to call home. In the same vein, we lift prayers of rescue and safety for the people of Sudan, who have been victimized in a war between two military leaders that has threatened the lives of civilians.

2. We pray for all people experiencing extreme weather, and those without safe shelter or a warm/cool place to sleep at night. For all those in need of food. For all those looking for work. For those injured in travel on the roads and on the sea and on the rails.

3. We pray for the people of Holy Land, for Israelis and Palestinians, Christians, Jews, and Muslims - that all will be treated with justice and be given equal rights before the government, to live, work, and practice their faith. We pray for an end to violence and protection of the vulnerable, especially children and the elderly.

4. We pray for all churches, church leaders, and volunteers as they lead congregations in this season of Pentecost. May religious leaders step aside to make way for the creativity of the Holy Spirit, and not resist the blowing winds of change and disruption.

5. We pray for the people of Iran, where protesters’ lives are being threatened and women are being arrested simply for advocating for their lives and criticizing an abusive government. We also pray for women and girls in Afghanistan, whose right to education and employment has been taken away by the ruling Taliban.

6. We pray for the victims of gun violence across America, and for brave legislators who are seeking to change overly permissive gun laws in states, like Texas, Tennessee and Kentucky, where mass shootings have recently occurred. We also pray for all those impacted by the school shooting in Serbia, including those close to the child who carried out the shooting. Bring justice, resolution, truth, and mercy, dear God, and culpability to those who profit from the sale and manufacture of guns.

7. We pray for all those living and existing at the U.S./Mexico borderlands, and for migrants around the world who are seeking safety and a better life for their families. Protect and keep safe all those who travel far from home, risking their lives, especially parents, children, and seniors - and people from countries at war and under political strife, especially people from El Salvador, Haiti, Venezuela, Honduras, Colombia, Peru, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Syria, Ukraine, Sudan, and many other countries around the world. Grant mercy and open hearts to those who work in border enforcement, and prevent violence and death at the border.

Dear God, we pray for renewal and hope and change in the power of the Holy Spirit!

AMEN

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P.S. …

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