Pentecost 2024/May 19 Holy Wisdom Monastery
Pam Shellberg
Acts 2:1-21; Romans 8:22-27; John 15:26-27; 16:4b-15
Before the days of smart TV’s and Netflix, Hulu, and Roku, before the days of being able to watch just about any TV show at any time day or night, of being able to binge watch seasons of any particular show in a weekend – back in the days when we followed a series one episode a week, some of you might remember how each new episode would begin with, “Previously on _______” and then there’d be minute or two of clips of the last week’s episode, a way to refresh our memories, get us back in touch with the story line.
Well …. Previously at Holy Wisdom’s Sunday Worship… the story of Jesus’ ascension and how in the ascension Jesus moved beyond our experience of space and time and in so doing became more present than when he walked the roads of Palestine. Previously at Holy Wisdom’s Sunday worship … words can’t sufficiently describe the presence of Christ; but in Christ’s ascension in our lives we have been unified as God’s people by the spirit to be people of peace. Previously… we are called to treat each other with humility and gentleness, patience and love so that all will know God’s unifying spirit of peace in Christ. Previously, we were promised that the outcome will be unbelievable.
This week, the story continues with Pentecost – the other side of the coin of ascension. Jesus ascends, the spirit descends – and God is a circle, the center of which is everywhere, the circumference nowhere.
All three lectionary readings for today are from the New Testament – the book of Acts, a letter from Paul, the gospel of John. No Old Testament readings. It is almost as if, even though we know that words can’t sufficiently describe the presence of the spirit, we are compelled reach for them anyway – maybe because we so long to experience the transcendence they reveal. The Pentecost liturgy is saturated with the words of writers all trying to say something about the unbelievable, pushing the language available to them – stuck as they are in space and time – to illuminate the unsayable, this phenomena they call, they recognize, they’ve experienced as spirit, the Holy Spirit, God’s spirit, the spirit of Christ. If the ascension was unbelievable, Pentecost is unspeakable.
All three writers – Paul, Luke, and John – are living decades of time past the death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus. All three looking back over those decades of time when – in the absence of the man and against all odds, against actual efforts to quash it – the community of believers in Jesus the Christ grew and grew. From our historical distance and with our enlightened minds we can apply all kinds of sociological, anthropological, and even psychological analyses to account for the unbelievable emergence of a new religious sect and its establishment as the faith tradition which would come to be known as Christianity.
The new testament writers make a different account.
In Acts chapter 2, Luke describes the gathered crowd by way of a list of all the countries from which they’ve come, a list of the nations present in Jerusalem on this day.
One of the more interesting takes on this list is that it actually imitates a common form of political propaganda employed by the Roman Empire. Great leaders like Pompey, Julius Caesar, Augustus Caesar and others all used catalogs of nations just like this to extol their military accomplishments and the expansion of Rome’s territory. These lists of nations appear time and again in the literary works of ancient poets, and in the writings of the ancient philosophers and historians; they are represented by statues and monuments in public spaces, and inscribed in the walls and ceilings of imperial temples. A different kind of map, they celebrated the boundless geographic area under Roman rule and were designed to evoke the power and glory of the empire.
By including a similar list in Acts 2, Luke challenges and critiques Roman political ideology. Luke’s catalog of nations is a recognizable form, and the people hear, in the form, a message about authority, power, reach, and glory – except they are given an alternative vision of God’s power and glory, the reach of the Christ-spirit’s universal authority.
Luke looks back over fifty years’ time, sees the expansion of the movement and its own geographical reach, and maybe he considers how unbelievable it seemed that the proclamation of Christ found expression in so many places and in so many languages – save that it was spirit guided.
All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit
and began to speak in other languages,
as the Spirit gave them ability.
And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered,
because each one heard them speaking
in the native language of each.
All were amazed and perplexed saying to one another, what does this mean? But others sneered and said, they are filled with new wine.
But Peter said, no, no! this is not drunkenness – THIS is exactly what was told to us by the prophet Joel: When the spirit of God is poured out on flesh, there will be dreams and visions, prophecies, signs in the heavens, blood and fire, the sun’s light will be extinguished and the moon turned to blood (we might think about reactions to the eclipse) – these are things that defy belief, things for which there are no words.
When the spirit of God is poured out on flesh the veil parts, a seam opens, the alternative reality is revealed and there are no words for it, only these kinds of experiences.
What you are seeing, experiencing, hearing, says Peter – is just THAT – it has the very same character, don’t you see? This is not drunkenness, it is transcendence.
It is the very experience of the spirit described by poet Scott Cairns:
a thread drawn through us,
which rippled as any taut rope might be, lifts
or drops us as if riding a wave, and which fends
off, for brief duration, our dense encumberment
—the flesh and its confusions—if not completely,
if only enough that the burden be felt and savored,
just shy of crushing us.
lifts or drops us as if riding a wave, and which fends off, for brief duration, our dense encumberment
—the flesh and its confusions…
Just a decade or so after Jesus’ resurrection and ascension, Paul writes in his letter to the Romans that those who have the first fruits of the spirit, can only groan – groan in the labor pains of new birth, groan inwardly because there are no words for it. And in that weakness the spirit helps, the spirit who intercedes with sighs too deep for words. Groans and sighs. Our deepest and most primal connection with spirit.
In gospel, written some 70 years after the resurrection and ascension of Jesus, John also sees how the Christ spirit has been moving and active through the time. Again, there is that sense of a presence that is unspeakable. John’s Jesus tells his disciples that when the spirit of truth comes, it will take what has been Jesus’ and declare it to them; it will guide them into all the truth. These will be the many things that Jesus wants to say to them, but will not because he knows in that moment, in their flesh and blood, time and space moment with him, they cannot bear them – they won’t understand them because the fullness of what Jesus has to say is more than his words can contain, more than their language can hold.
There was a show once, maybe on the Discovery Channel or on National Geographic, about the elephant seals of Argentina. The show focused on this one mother seal and her pup, who had just been born. Soon after birthing her baby, the mother, who was famished, abandoned the pup on the shore so she could go feed in the waters off the coast. After feeding, she returned to a different part of the beach and began to call for her baby. But other mothers – many other mothers – had done the same, and all had returned at a similar time. It seemed impossible that mother and pup would ever find each other. The camera closely followed the mother as she called to her pup and listened for a response. Following each other’s voices and scents, the mother and pup were soon reunited. It turns out that from the very moment of birth, the sound and the scent of the pup are imprinted on the mother’s memory, and the sound and scent of the mother are imprinted in the pup’s memory.
What if this is what happened in the story of those many nations gathered in Acts 2? What if they didn’t really hear in the actual language of their native countries, what if they just thought they did? What if what they heard sounded intelligible, clear, and true because they were recognizing something imprinted on them before they were born?
I think this might be the story of Pentecost, what we call the story of the church but is really the story of all humanity, all creation, of us, of each of you – imprinted in the memory of God whose center is nowhere and whose circumference is everywhere; imprinted with the memory of God – come to us in dreams, groans, and sighs; God and God’s people finding each other then, finding each other now.
Unbelievable. Unspeakable.