“…behind locked doors….” we hear again today.
Again?
Still?
Several weeks ago we saw how the appearance of the Risen Christ had transformed Jesus’ disciples, their fear and despair, palpable behind the closed doors of the room in which they were gathered, turning to a feeling of peace and hopefulness:
- We weren’t deceived!
- Jesus was the Messiah, after all!
- He really did rise from the dead!
- Things are going to be okay!
So why, fifty days later, does it seem as though everything has changed – and nothing has changed? Their angst has been soothed, certainly – but today we find them once again gathered together in a room. Although they are no longer anxious and fear-ridden – their faith and confidence has been restored, knowing that their friend Jesus really is Jesus the Christ – they aren’t yet the disciples we meet post-Pentecost.
I’m wondering if the atmosphere in the room today isn’t almost “clubby” – a fraternity of followers with a shared experience, each having personally witnessed the resurrection. I can imagine the feel-good atmosphere in that room as they tell stories and laugh and reminisce about “the good old days” when their buddy Jesus walked the earth among them:
- Hey, Peter – remember that time when you decided to walk on water with Jesus?
- You should have seen the steward’s face when that water was turned to fine wine!
- How about the time he exorcised all those demons and they went into the pigs and the pigs jumped into the water?!!
The Holy Spirit has been a personal gift to each of them, bringing them peace and comfort after the emotional roller coaster they have been on...
But today, on the day of Pentecost, all that private, shared experience changes abruptly when the Holy Spirit descends!
They’ve been having a good time, when whammo!
This is a different kind of visitation of the Spirit: not one which is received on a gentle breath, as before – but one which seems to come out of nowhere, with a force that is overpowering!
With the sound of rushing wind come divided tongues, as of fire, filling them, moving them from their healing sanctuary into the wider and infinitely more dangerous world!
How frightening that must have been for them! To experience the unexpected, to feel so suddenly out of control! To have their peace shattered in such a way, their lives disrupted like that!
- Whoa! What is happening to me?!!
- Where did this come from?!!
- I don’t understand…
And yet, as quickly as the force and the abruptness frightens them, just as quickly they must have become aware that this is a benign presence – not something threatening, but something empowering, and their terror-fear is transformed into the fear that is awe.
They realize that they have received a gift.
They now have a mandate to speak what they know – not coming from without, as a rule to follow, but welling from within and empowering them, moving them almost involuntarily beyond their comfort zone…
Prophesy they must.
It becomes something they can’t not do.
Thomas Merton tells us that a prophet is “one whose life God has disrupted and through whose life God disrupts the lives of others.”
And thank goodness for that, for WE are the products of that disruption in their lives – the result of those prophets those Jesus-followers became on this day of Pentecost, as the ripple effect of their transformation is felt across time and geography.
I feel the trajectory of these fifty days, the days from the resurrection to Pentecost, as a shape of our own lives in Christ.
Often our life in Christ contains times of healing, renewal or refreshment.
We find ourselves in a gathering of like-minded believers, in a “feel-good” place with our faith, finding in it an assurance, a peacefulness and a comfort – something reliable, yet undemanding, that we can draw on…
It is very personal: it belongs to us. It makes us feel better.
- Yes, I know Jesus is the Messiah.
- Yes, he lives!
- Wherever two or three are gathered together in his name…
- Yes, there is resurrection on the last day…
It can lull us into a kind of complacency.
And at some point there is Pentecost!
We NEED Pentecost, because, as important as those times of healing or refreshment are, they are not enough; in and of themselves they do not make us disciples of Christ, followers of the Way.
We need that realization that our faith is more than just “make-me-feel-good.”
We need to be propelled beyond ourselves and into the community, the world beyond our doors.
Pentecost demands that we, too, begin to prophesy, each one in his or her own language, using his or her own gifts, in ways that others might understand.
Most of us take the old adage of St. Francis seriously: “Preach the Gospel at all times; if necessary, use words.”
- We open day care centers for the working poor, and support after-school tutoring programs.
- We feed the homeless.
- We take stands on immigration or peace or discrimination of all sorts.
- We donate time and money.
- We go on mission trips and tear down houses, as we did in New Orleans, or repair damaged ones, as we did in Mississippi.
The “using words” part of prophesying, or preaching the Gospel, is a bit more of a challenge for many of us: it’s often hard to articulate the source of our Christian living, what it is that inspires – and empowers! – us to be the hands and feet of Christ in the world.
Something to think about on this word-drenched day of Pentecost!
What is the “language” you/we speak?
How is it that YOU/WE prophesy?
Unlike the disciples on that day of Pentecost, we are not surprised by the Spirit this morning – after all, Pentecost does show up on a regular basis in the course of our liturgical year! Nevertheless, it is a day that reminds us of the importance of being more than the Social Club of Jesus-Followers, and it challenges us to be open to allow the Spirit to work in and through us, to propel us, too, into the streets to prophesy and to preach the Good News of the Gospel.
The poet Rilke (Ninth Elegy) has written:
Maybe we’re here only to say,
bridge, well, gate, jug, olive tree, window –
at most, pillar, tower… but to say them, remember,
oh, to say them in a way that the things themselves
never dreamed of existing so intensely.
This Pentecost may we say the old familiar words so that they exist with a here-to-fore undreamed-of intensity:
- Jesus
- Resurrection
- Disciple
- Hope
- Presence
- Love.
Amen.
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