Pentecost Thoughts

“For in hope we were saved. Now hope for what is seen is not hope.”
In the Name of God…
     I freely confess that I have struggled with what to say this morning.  Friday’s news was tragic again with yet another school shooting with people murdered.  That alone might render one speechless. Followed Saturday by the royal wedding of Prince Harry and self-described “strong, confident, mixed-race woman,” Meghan Markle—an event that seemed covered all over with the Spirit’s fingerprints.
      Today is the Feast of Pentecost, when we celebrate the gift of the Holy Spirit.  I didn’t say “gifts,” as Paul later speaks of them.  This morning, in these moments--let’s just consider the initial “gift.” Because what it will be, as Jesus tells us—remains yet to be seen. 'The wind blows where it wishes and you hear the sound of it,” he tells us, “but do not know where it comes from or where it is going; so is everyone who is born of the Spirit.”  We just never know when it is going to show up or in what form.
    The poet, Emily Dickinson, might having thinking of the Spirit, when she wrote, “the soul must always stand ajar.” The soul—our deepest selves must always be open—if only a little bit—to what may come of the Holy Spirit—when the Spirit comes. 
     We’d all rather we know when and how----but it is that very uncertainty that allows the Spirit the freedom needed and provides us with a context for hope. Writer, activist Rebecca Solnit reminds us, “Hope is not about what we expect. It is an embrace of the essential unknowability of the world, of the breaks with the present, the surprises. Or perhaps studying the record more carefully leads us to expect miracles—not when and where we expect them, but to expect to be astonished, to expect that we don’t know. And this is grounds to act.”
      Spirit is invisible and almost impossible to grasp. Like our own breath, we don’t think about it until we need it. When we are feeling down, lost and alone. Or when we are fidgety and need quiet. Or troubled by a thought or lacking creativity, we often pray for the spirit to come. But like our own breath, the Spirit is already quietly there, sustaining us—and enabling us to act.  In that way, we almost always recognize it in hindsight, like the travelers to Emmaus, recognizing Jesus only after the event was over.
      “So, today was an amazing experience,” wrote someone who signed herself “Effie Black” on a social media platform Saturday evening.   “Not only did I watch a black woman marry into the royal family, I saw it happen in a way that totally connected with me, that made me feel like I was included and respected. The royal family didn't just accept this black woman into their family, expecting her to assimilate, to be absorbed into their fold, without adding any of her own uniqueness to the mix.”
     “No. She brought ALL of herself into the equation. She was proudly and unequivocally black and made sure we all knew it. From the black pastor (our own Bishop Curry, who lots of people in St. George’s Chapel were sure had gotten into the new wine that morning!) to the black choir to the gospel songs to her beautiful black mother who didn't straighten her hair to fit in but rocked her naturally kinky locs, it was clear to all of us that all of us were a part of this. It was beautiful."
      On days when there isn’t any wind, and at times when we are truly out of breath, the spirit still encircles us.  Because the Spirit is God, and God has never left us. Through the Spirit God breathed all creation into life. It was the first thing to BE and it has never ceased to be.
       Barbara Brown Taylor offers this wonderful illustration. Think about the Spirit—as if it our earth’s atmosphere.  Think of the invisible layer of gases that constantly surround our planet.  The atmosphere itself keeps the air we breathe here on Earth from being sucked out into the cold and consuming vacuum of outer space. And inside this layer is all the air—in it’s various molecular permutations--that ever was, is, and will ever be. Those same components making up the same air of the ancients keeps recirculating, passing from one generation to the next.
     So God’s first breath is still blowing through this old world, filling our lungs with new life. This is the same breath—God’s first and lasting gift to us—breathed by brontosauruses and T. Rex, the Pharaohs, and Greek philosophers. /// Mozart and Elvis both breathed elements of the same air that the Kingdom Gospel Choir breathed at the royal wedding while singing “Stand By Me,” “And this little light of mine.” Every time we breathe in, we take a baby’s first breath or someone’s last.
And when we breathe out, our breath rejoins the wind so it too can be shared with someone else.
     When Jesus exhaled his last breath on the cross, it rejoined with Abraham’s and Jacob’s and all of our ancestors. But God took that breath, that last sacrifice, and strengthened it into a mighty wind that continually moves through creation. Like a holy hurricane, it blew through the upper room on the Day of Pentecost; igniting sparks that burst into flames above the disciples’ heads; made the Archbishop of Canterbury sit up straight grinning ///and surprised a lot of people listening yesterday in St. George Chapel who seemed to not know what to think---which is probably a good thing.  Sometimes not knowing is best of all for keeping our souls ajar.
     It is never ours to direct, but always ours to share. In hope we are saved.  Stay hopeful, stay open.   Let me close with a poem by Wiiliam Stafford, titled   

You Reading This, Be Ready

Starting here, what do you want to remember?
How sunlight creeps along a shining floor?
What scent of old wood hovers, what softened
sound from outside fills the air?
Will you ever bring a better gift for the world
than the breathing respect that you carry
wherever you go right now?
Are you waiting
for time to show you some better thoughts?
When you turn around, starting here, lift this
new glimpse that you found; carry into evening
all that you want from this day. The interval you spent
reading or hearing this, keep it for life—
What can anyone give you greater than now,
starting here, right in this room, when you turn around?